Vermont that is. Long trip, left the house at 8 AM, didn't get back til 5 PM. Didn't feel like posting last night. Rutland is way over on the other side of Vermont, the only way there is old US4, 42 miles from White River Junction. It's scenic, very scenic. The leaves are on the verge of turning, but not quite there yet.
US4 is only two or three lanes, curvy, lotta No Passing signs. Traffic moves along until it piles up behind some leaf peeper doing ten miles under the speed limit. Since everyone up here drives ten miles above the speed limit, that is really slow.
A good big engine makes the passing game less white knuckle. The 4.6 liter V8 in the Mercury is adequate, but could be better low down. The slushbox doesn't downshift as far as it ought to. A good four speed manual would help the car, but they haven't made those for 30 years. The DeVille, with the same size engine had 30 more horsepower and was quicker, much quicker. Got better gas mileage too. To its credit, the Mercury handles better than the DeVille. I could wrap it around mountain curves at 70 mph no sweat. The DeVille always felt a little twitchy doing the same thing.
Oncoming drivers are more uptight these days. I had one pull over on the shoulder, and another one blow his horn and wave his fists at me. I guess few people pass anymore.
Rutland is big for an upcountry town. Has a branch of UBS and one of Morgan Guarantee, both pretty fancy high finance outfits. We don't have anything like that in Littleton. I took in the train show at the Howe Center. Then I checked out the two book stores that showed up on Google maps. They were both literary stores, shelves full of main stream fiction, poetry and left wing political rants. Me, I'm looking for light reading, science fiction, adventure, history, or science. I didn't find anything. Business was slow for a sunny Saturday afternoon.
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