Traveling is not so rare a hobby and it becomes quite exciting depending upon how the journey is (company matter critically but in that case life in itself is a journey!) One of my friends is one such travel crazy person, but before calling him travel crazy his much well known obsession is driving (and) cars! He recently achieved a mile-stone in this, when he bought himself a brand new BMW. Owing to the reputation of BMW lesser I say about it better it is. I was one of the privileged invited 'accomplice' to bring his BMW back from Spartanburg, South Carolina. The trip was fun and it ended as quickly as it all started.
We started on Thursday evening by taking a flight to Raleigh, NC from Philadelphia. The flight was reminiscent of ST travel in Maharashtra in all respect; right from finding you a best seat to getting to the destination unexpectedly early! The flight was smooth though. Driving Pontiac GP from Raleigh to Spartanburg was not too bad. It’s very interesting the way GM has designed dash-boards in this car. They have made every effort to make the passenger feel that he is the neglected 'Object' in that car. The complete dash-board is pointing towards driving seat. Thankfully it was not a long journey and a stop over in Charlet, SC for dinner helped us a lot. We tried Mexican restaurant that day and believe me I was completely wrong in guessing how hot Tabasco sauce is. I had to pay my wrong guess by loosing all my senses for the rest of the dinner. I can now confidently assert that cartoons are not out of the world drawings... you can see people almost exactly like that if you are at the right place at right time. The desserts for the day were served as a stay in an excellent hotel arranged by BMW for their esteems customers.
Next day started pretty early morning (although I am sure my friend may not have noticed it, owing to his excitement!). BMW offers their customers test ride in testing cars, making them experience the power of the car they are buying. We had a slalom drive, ABS testing, DTC testing and x-5 off-road drive. Driving slalom on 335 was fun, you don’t get to turn and twist the car otherwise. ABS, Antilock Breaking System was a challenge for me. You are asked to drive the car at the speed of 45mlh to 55mph (drivers didn’t follow the speed limits even there) and when you reach at certain predefined point, apply the breaks as hard as you could. The screeching noise assured me of the speeding violations! Third ride was REAL fun; it was the Dynamic Traction Control. You drive the car on the skid pad and you get to test the DTC capability of BMW and stunning they were.
One interesting thing was, before this all ball-game started, we were taken into the room and the expert drivers of BMW educated us on how to drive. At one point, Marvin was explaining us how you can take a sharp corner turn. While explaining the speed-limits; he made this interesting remark - 'If you enter a sharp corner turn where prescribed speed limit is 35mph at the speed of 100mph, all we can say is 'Then Physics takes over''. I wonder how thoughtful that remark is. It exactly tries to capture what human endeavors are all trying to do. It was the most less words anyone could have used to express what our race is trying to achieve. The day ended with an off-road drive of x-5 preceding the actual delivery of black-beauty.
Because we were in the vicinity of Smokey Mountains, we also drove there and stayed there for a day. It was not the best season to travel there but we had our fun, after all hiking on frost trails is not something that you can plan on. It was 3 mile long trail and both of us were pretty exhausted by the time we were done with it. Next stop was Gatlinburg, TN. It’s a nice small little tourist town where we enjoyed 'Brownie Obsession' at TGIF. Enjoying chocolate fudge with ice-cream in dead cold whether really speaks for your addiction to chocolate. After that we drove to Virginia and stayed near the National Mnt. Roger recreation area. Although we were planning on visiting that park, early morning blues helped us to conveniently skip on that plan. The big gawking thing next was driving back to Delaware, a 10 hour long drive, eased by driving pleasure of one of the best cars I have ever been into.
On our way back home we decided to take the Blue-ridge Parkway, the part of Appalachian Mountain trails but unfortunately that road was closed. So we had to take a d-tour, which did not disappoint us at all. The d-tour was as good as a racing track with banking to it. It would only take a fool not to take all the (undue) advantages of that road; and my friend wasn't ready to be called as fool.
Reaching back home after that long journey was not as exhausting as it was to think about the next working day! Another thing that I came to know on this trip was you can still go to sleep with a 300hp twin turbo engine vrooming in your ears and a dark blue sky with frost trails on your mind and a busy next day at your hand!
Photo-album link -
http://good-times.webshots.com/album/562442968IoOHQp?vhost=good-times
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