Topic: The car thread.

[JDeck]

  I took the car to a road they call "Back of the Dragon" today. It's this crazy mountain road,  highway 16, that goes from Marion Va to Tazewell Va. It has 400 curves in 34 miles and covers 3 mountain ranges.  After interstate driving for 4 hours, it was a dramatic change of pace.  Going back down wasn't bad though. I kept pace with this riced out Civic SI, until we got behind a group of slow bikers. One biker ran off the road into the ditch, but he was alright. It's mostly motorcycles  there, but I did see a few MX-5s and Porsches. 600+ mile round trip, but it gives me an idea for how far I can drive in one day for when I go out to Colorado next month. I'm definitely going to hit Pikes Peak when I get there.

[Darth More]

Wow, that's crazy impressive, I wish gas would be as cheap here as it is in the U.S.
What a trip! The longest distance I ever drove o far is 550 miles, which was from Pécs, Hungary to Dresden, Germany. Drove through Slovakia and the Czech Republic with two short breaks to pay the highway toll.

If you ever are here in Europe, there are various nice routes to drive. Back of the Dragon sounds awesome! Probably would never ever have heard of it, if you hadn't mentioned it.
Telling by the beautiful landscape you shared, that's the sight you'd also see in France for example.
Hope the biker is alright. Sounds like a challenging track with lots of curves. Here in Germany roads between cities in rural areas are the most dangerous.

Thanks for sharing the story about your fun trip and have a safe ride to Colorado!

[Tamer]

Interesting drive. Man if you want to find some turns come on over to WV and man there are some roads. Route 50 is notorious for having some routes like this. Love that Dragon pic!

[JDeck]

Wow, that's crazy impressive, I wish gas would be as cheap here as it is in the U.S.
What a trip! The longest distance I ever drove o far is 550 miles, which was from Pécs, Hungary to Dresden, Germany. Drove through Slovakia and the Czech Republic with two short breaks to pay the highway toll.

If you ever are here in Europe, there are various nice routes to drive. Back of the Dragon sounds awesome! Probably would never ever have heard of it, if you hadn't mentioned it.
Telling by the beautiful landscape you shared, that's the sight you'd also see in France for example.
Hope the biker is alright. Sounds like a challenging track with lots of curves. Here in Germany roads between cities in rural areas are the most dangerous.

Thanks for sharing the story about your fun trip and have a safe ride to Colorado!

Yeah europe has great mountain roads. Pretty much every country has a mountain range. I was on the croatian Slovenian boarder, and that was a cool ride, unfortunately I wasn't driving. Flying over the swiss alps was cool. Italy in particular has this road, i forgot its name but it's ranked #1 best drive in the world with Pikes Peak #2.  Pikes peak is insane. Back in 2018 an EV VW broke the record at 7.58 minutes, when it normally takes the average car about 90 minutes to reach the top, which is about 20 miles.

Yeah that biker was okay, he was with a bunch of others. It took 3 guys to pull his bike out then they were gone.

Are you familiar with the Nurburgring in Nurburg Germany? It's this super tough road course that I think is open to the public. I like watching videos of everyday cars like Renault Clios pushing their limits on one of the toughest tracks worldwide.

Interesting drive. Man if you want to find some turns come on over to WV and man there are some roads. Route 50 is notorious for having some routes like this. Love that Dragon pic!

Oh im sure WV has a ton of nice roads, it's just knowing the area. There's this road there that goes something like 20 miles to connect two towns that are only 2 miles away as the crow flies. That's just nuts.
I think that honda i was pacing was a local, because when we caught up with those bikers he turned off on to another road. I just don't know these rural areas enough.
There's another famous road called the tail of the dragon, thats on the NC/TN boarder, but i hear traffic is a nightmare and they reduced the speed limit to 30, that is heavily monitored and enforced by state police. Botd had a 50mph limit, but very few times could I actually go that fast. Some of those switchbacks were so tight i was looking out the side window to see where i was going.

[JDeck]

I started my Colorado roadtrip today. I drove 800 miles 20 miles short of st louis. Stopping for gas every 250 miles or so I got it done in 12 hours. I got my air mattress laid out front to back in my car with the seats down. Its cozy.  I have to get an early start to beat st louis rush hour.  Im used to getting up early. I get to live like a trucker/gypsy for a few days.

[Tamer]

That is some miles in one day! I am guessing you are staying at a rest or truck stop?

It does look cozy. Kind of nice you can just decided to stay whereever you are. I hope you have a good time.

[JDeck]

That is some miles in one day! I am guessing you are staying at a rest or truck stop?

It does look cozy. Kind of nice you can just decided to stay whereever you are. I hope you have a good time.

10-4 good buddy im at a choke and puke in Amarillo TX. Did almost 800 miles again today,  over 1500 miles in two days. Im going straight to Colorado from here instead of going to Santa Fe first. I like the mountains and forests and everything, but out here you can see for miles and miles. Makes me want my pilot's license even more.

This car is not built for roadtripping, mainly because of the 18" wheels and low profile tires. At one point I was driving over grooved pavement and seriously thought my tires were flat. It was that bad. A sunday drive on country roads 10/10, substantial interstate travel 5/10.

Oh yeah i went to Uranus lol. Its this stupid place in Missouri it's like one big butt pun. It's pretty funny. Unfortunately the freak show was still closed. I just got some tshirts and fudge. Get it ? Fudge.... uranus. Lol. I just chuckled the whole time. 

[Tamer]

Glad you are having a good time. Uranus sounds fun.

[JDeck]

  I got to my brothers house. Yeah he's a big collector, of new and old, star wars, star trek, gi joe, marvel, pota, 6 million dollar man, everything. His toy room is incredible photos don't do it justice, theres figures in every square inch and that's just the showroom.

[Tamer]

Wow, now that is just plain awesome. Brings a tear to the eye. I bet you spent some time in there!

[JDeck]

Wow, now that is just plain awesome. Brings a tear to the eye. I bet you spent some time in there!

Yeah he spent a ton of time putting it all together. Evey once in a while something would fall over but not that much. Yeah it was like a crazy where's waldo in there, you always see something new.

Im headed home. I did get a speeding ticket in kansas. The whole trip so far I might have seen 3 police, except for kansas that had one every 10 miles. I screwed up because there was one in the slow lane between two cars, so by the time I saw him it was too late. I was going like 90 in a 75. That's 200 bucks ill never see again. So remember kids slow down in kansas.

[Tamer]

Ouch. I have kind wondered which states had the most highway patrol. Sounds like Kansas ftw. Well not so much.

Hope you have a safe drive home.

[JDeck]

Ouch. I have kind wondered which states had the most highway patrol. Sounds like Kansas ftw. Well not so much.

Hope you have a safe drive home.

Yeah I'm home now. If I had to guess I probably did 900 miles today. Once I saw the Virginia sign I couldn't stop.  Round trip, 4.5 days, 3,580 miles. I didn't drive at all the 4.5 days I was in CO. I didn't get to drive up Pikes Peak, which sucks but truthfully I was tired of driving.  Id say my favorite drive was between Amarillo TX and Colorado Springs. It was neat watching the sun rise over the prarie and seeing the plateaus transition into the alpine rocky mountains, while listening to country western music.

Its weird the day I left the springs airport got a bomb threat and shut down, so I would have missed my flight and been delayed at least a day. That's why I don't fly commercial. There's always some kind of problem. 

Yeah damn Kansas gets everyone. It's like highway hypnosis, since there's nothing around you, you get in the passing lane and next thing you know you're doing nearly 100. Kansas makes a ton of money off outsiders. Didn't help my brother gave me some kind of damn military grade mexican energy drink. I was all jacked up.

Aishiii! Don't get me started on WV construction. I pay 8 bucks to drive through a construction zone and everybody's just standing around. Put on a show or at least smile and wave.  They could make it like "It's a small world" ride dress the construction workers up in different outfits and sing songs. Id pay 8 bucks to see that.

Overall it was a good experience. I've never done a solo roadtrip. I used to take trains a lot, that's cool too, but time consuming. It was good seeing my brother and his wife, i haven't seen them in 10 years. I didn't want to "do" anything, i just wanted to hang out. We went to garden of the gods and the cave dwellings, but mostly we drank and watched Star Trek , Jaws 1-4 and weird ass korean shows on Netflix. Some of them are actually really good. Im obsessed with Squid game now. Yeah I had a great time.

[Tamer]

Sounds like a great time to me. Minus all that driving, but that was an experience in an of itself.

I always thought I would like to drive all the way across the country once and especially go see some stuff like Yellowstone and what not.

Glad you got home. Definitely gotta stay out of Kansas, they would have me for sure. And WV roads they do take you home! Not! You oughta seen Pennsylvania if you want to see construction and folks lean on their shovels.

[JDeck]

Its the whole the journey is the destination thing. Driving route 66 was cool. The roadside stuff was kind of meh. They build it up to be much better than it is of course.  Yellowstone would be cool, probably could do mt Rushmore while you're there.
I mean it is construction season, but man. Missouri was bad too. They had a bottleneck created by signs they forgot to remove. There were several signs saying merge left, so everyone was scrambling to merge, stopping traffic completely, then it turned out the lane was open the whole time.
I miss southwest food. I lived in Texas, came back and forgot how great it is. We have "Mexican" food here but it's mostly El Salvadoran influenced. Pupusas are good but there's nothing like a tamale or a good breakfast burrito.  While I was there I had a lot of Mexican food, jamacian korean and Indian. Our Indian food here is better though.

 I got a good lead on where I can find Tamales here. I feel like im trying to score drugs or something, i could literally go out and find any drug I could want, but can't get decent Mexican food. i just want some damn tamales made by an old Mexican grandmother. Is that so hard?  I  went to place today, that was supposedly "the best" and even the waitresses don't eat there. If I start making them myself, I'm quitting my job and going full time, ill turn my truck into a tamale truck. I just need an old lady as the front woman and make it myself.  You think I'm joking? I'll run this town with tamales.  I read an article years back that stated millions of dollars worth of  Pointsettas and tamales were being smuggled across the border during Christmas time. Just make them here!