Its about 600 miles straight thru. I broke the trip by crashing overnight with an old old friend in Tarrytown NY. I have done it straight thru in one day, but that was with a relief driver. I looked at "infrastructure" on the way. Except for New York, the roads were in good shape. Fresh new asphalt in many places, some road work going on here and there. In New York, everything needed resurfacing, I84, I684, Palisades Parkway. The New Jersey state line was noticeable for the improvement in the pavement of the Palisades Parkway. Could it be, most of the media pundits leave in New York, and their constant cries for more infra structure spending are driven be the miserable state of New York roads? The rest of the way, NH, Vermont, New Jersey, Delaware. Maryland, was good.
The national motor vehicle fleet has some regional variations. Upstate in NH and Vermont, there is still a good portion of pickup trucks on the road. Less so as I went south. Presumably $4 gasoline has pretty much limited the use of pickups to those that really need them for work. Used to be, a lot of guys commuted to work in pickups. Not so much now. The two seater sports car is pretty much gone, I only saw a couple of them. No hot rods at all. Every one is driving four door little sedans, either ecoboxes, or Bimmer wannabes. My full sized Mercury Grand Marquis was pretty much the only one of it's type left. Merc was running good. Over the winter his gas mileage had dropped off to a measely 20 MPG. I gave it a new engine air filter, pumped up all the tires to rated pressure, and I got 25 mpg all the way down. Not bad for 100,000 miles and 11 years on the road.
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