Road Trip!

:cool2:

Yup, in the 1979 Sedan DeVille d'Elegance

So, my friend was going to come down from Dec. 22nd-Jan 1st, my Christmas break, he is in NY and it was gonna be a cool time to just hang out and stuff. I *was* going to fly up to NY on my Spring break hang out and drive the Caddy down.

Well, truth is I miss driving that car.... kinda funny eh? never thought it would be this bad, but I really miss that car.

So I called up my friend to night, me and him are like brothers, always know how each other is feeling and stuff. So I ask him about the Winter break, no plane tickets were bought at the time.

So I ask him about this... I fly up the 22nd my fist day off, visit friends and family in NY and kinda enjoy the time back home and stuff, do that on the 23rd and 24th, maybe there would be a Christmas party I can go to somewhere. Christmas I will spend with family.... then the fun begins!

Dec. 26th me and my friend Chris are gonna embark on a 1,500 mile trip I first said we can drive stirght thru, switch driving and stuff, to get here sooner and spend more time down here, but before I could say "Or....." Chris was already asking about taking up to 3 days to go down, making stops along the way visitng places and making a road trip out of this

Naturally, since driving is one of my favorite things to do, and I *was* going to mention it, I agreed

So the plan is, we leave Dec. 26th, drive a bit, spend the night somewhere, drive on the 27th, spend the night then arrive in Clearwater on the 28th. The route, stops and places to see are not decided yet, we will figure that out proabbly once i get up to NY, but it dosn't matter.

So I just booked my plane ticket for the 22nd in the AM, gotta stop in D.C. for an hour, ah well... going to Albany where my mother will pick me up.

from the 28th to the 1st we will hang out in FL go to Busch gardens probably since neither of us have been there, his grand parents are in Tampa so we'll visit them. So while our time in Clearwater is cut by a day or so, the overall enjoyment of the trip will be better

The best part? I am taking the '79 DeVille .... that to me is just sooo cool. She was bought new in FL and brought up to NY in 2001 or so, now she is going back down to the sunshine state

I KNOW the car will not have an issue making the trip, with 4 new tires I feel comfortable, they are not balanced yet, and that is the only thing that I need to get done, so I'll ask my father to take it to the shop to get the wheels balanced.

Nearly everything on the car works, cruise control is a life saver... only thing that isn't working right now is AC, but my father replaced the O-ring that was bad and pulled a vaccum and said it was holding, so he is gonna shoot it up and see,. either way its going to be a great trip down.

I have the cassette adapter for XM radio, I'll have my MP3 player, Chris is bringing his laptop and iPod, all these can be hooked up to the radio via the cassette adapter... its going to be a blast this ride down, it really is.

I figured 1,500miles. a bit more then when I came down with the '93 Coupe, but we are probably gonna do more recreation stuff on the way down, I was going to use an estimate of 18mpg overall, but Chris said yeah right, try 15...so I tried 15.... basically I'll use 100 gallons of gasoline to come down, it runs on regular, right now regular is $2.20, it should go down a bit more, but at $2.20, that means the gas bill will be $220 to bring a '79 Caddy from NY - FL

I think it'll do alot better then 15mpg though. The modified 472 intake manifold is now in, the rebuilt carb and a couple other things... I really think she'll get atleast 18mpg with the cruise set around 72mph.

This is probably going to be the best roadtrip I'll be on in a loooong time, this is the ultimate road trip car..... atleast compared to my other 2 cars, floating down the highway with the music up, it'll be nice.

Right now the car is back together, my father said it runs nice. It needs an oil change that he said he'll do (I have the oil and the filter in the car) and the tires need to be balanced.....other then that, road trip material!

Man I am excited, driving, driving the '79, going back to NY, making use of my vacation.... but most of all hanging out and spending time with my best friend because I havn't been able to do that since I moved... this little road trip is perfect for both of us, and we always talked about doing a cross country road trip after HS.... not quite what we had in mind, but damn, it'll pass.