Date:         Sun, 27 Jun 2010 22:44:31 -0700
Reply-To:     Don Hanson <dhanson928@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Don Hanson <dhanson928@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Cruising Speed
In-Reply-To:  <BB9EC357-AE3F-40EE-AB75-F7074490D614@ashtec.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 5:57 PM, David Klein <david@ashtec.ca> wrote:

> I do 55 mph. It is not the destination it is the trip along the way!!
>
> David
>
   He is so right about traveling across the desert.    So yah, maybe the
first time you cross parts of the Mojave or any of the other western
deserts, or make your first trip down the interior of Baja, it is sort of
interesting and the trip is....happening.  But make that your tenth trip, or
your twentieth across the same two or three day desert and you just want to
get there....When you think....Jeeze, I have almost 1000 miles of THIS...at
50mph that will be....20hrs    Then it occurs to bump up the speed to 70 and
you can get done with the boring stuff in just 14 odd hours...Leaving you
with 6 extra hours to do something besides stare out the windshield at the
passing sagebrush.....again...

  We did some Open Road racing in Nevada in a really fast Porsche.  They
close down a section of highway about 100 miles long and let us run our cars
as fast as we wanted...(simplified)  You attempt to achieve a target
speed..or if you run in the Unlimited Class, you try to go as fast as you
can over the 100 mile stretch...
   So I recently re-traced one of our courses...Austin, on highway 50 up to
Battle Mountain on I-70...about 100 miles, more or less  It took us about
2.5 hrs in my Vanagon.   We ran that course (The Pony Express Open Road
Race) in my 90 GT 928 Porsche in the Supersport class with a target speed of
165mph and that meant our target time for the same course was about 36
minutes....A lot more fun at that speed and I don't think I missed any
'scenery' even though at that speed you only have about 20-odd seconds to
see each mile ...

  But in the Van, I just endure the boring parts of the drive and travel at
65 or so.  I always  attempt to find alternate routes.  The trouble is there
aren't enough alternatives up and down the west coast or east/west across
the western deserts...been over them all dozens of times.  I choose 395 when
weather permits...but it's still boring south of Bishop...I need Scotty to
beam me down from Bishop to La Paz...me and my van..
  Don Hanson