Sunday, November 20, 2011

24 Hours, 1600 miles.

Holy cow. We made it. Well, we made it to a stopping point at least. We're crashing in Show Low, Arizona. Despite the weird name, it offered a good hotel just across the New Mexico border, and is just before a great mountain drive we're going to take in the morning.

We're exhausted. I wasn't able to sleep very well in the car, so I think I totalled about 3 hours of sleep. That said, it was a hell of a ride, and charging it is always fun. The Car performed beautifully, and as Coop said after filling it up before checking in at the hotel, "It's funny that after 24 hours, it's still really fun to sit in this car."

A brief rundown of the hell of a day we just had. After meeting Curtis at the airport, we went back to his place and went over the Car for a while. His attention to detail is mind-blowing and is a large part of why I was so confident in buying this car. More on that later. Anyways, he showed us around the Car and all of the spare parts he's amassed. He started up his E39 M5 for us as well, which is another great black beast. Once we couldn't really think of anything else to go over, Coop and I declined Curtis' gracious offer to stay and opted to get on the road and have some fun. Checking out a little after 8pm, we stopped at a gas station, filled up the tires, and headed onto the unknown roads of Tennessee. Tennessee quickly led to Arkansas.

We didn't see much of these first states with it being so dark, but we did see some serious lightning and rain through Arkansas. Oklahoma was similar, though we stopped at the Oklahoma City Memorial, a site that had left an impression on me earlier this fall. It was equally impressive early in the morning, and we were glad we stopped.


Oklahoma went by uneventfully after that, and then it was Texas. Oh, Texas. The coolest part about Texas was seeing some people on a bike ride across the country, and then getting out of Texas. 

After Texas comes New Mexico, which was fun in that we got off of I-40 on the recommendation of another MyE28 member and got on some great 2-lane highway backroads. It got a bit tedious still, and my inability to sleep caught up with me and made me start to feel pretty wonky. It all culminated with an incredible sunset at the Continental Divide, about 6,000 feet up. Truly mind blowing and the pictures don't do it justice. We were having a good time.

Coop made the final push through New Mexico and we landed a bit across the Arizona border in the aforementioned and oddly-named Show Low. Grabbed some food and a hotel room, hopped in the pool and then a shower to wash off a couple days of traveling, and now it's time to rest before we start it up again tomorrow. Our efforts today should pay off in making tomorrow nearly 1/3 of the driving time and landing in Manhattan Beach a day early. It was one hell of a push and I've never gone for 24 hours straight, but I'm so glad to be in Arizona tonight as opposed to Oklahoma, and every time I look at the car I can't believe I own it. 



Miscellaneous and out-of-order slideshow:

No comments:

Post a Comment