Archive for March, 2014

Getting the 1998 Porsche Boxster Ready for a 15K Mile Trip – Part 1

Friday, March 28th, 2014

I bought the car in December, 1997.  I had been on the wait list for four months when the dealer called me and said they had received a shipment and did I want to come in and take a look.  I hadn’t even specified a color and I think I would have taken just about any color at that point.  As luck would have it, the car was white (just like my first 1970 914) with dark blue interior.  Perfect!  Thank you, Santa Claus for bringing me just about the best Christmas present ever!

So, you can figure out that the car is over 16 years old and, at this writing, has just over 94K miles on it.  The Boxster has always been serviced by the Porsche dealer (thank you, Gunter) and I am confident we will have no mechanical problems on the trip.  We recently had the 90K service done and, at that time, we replaced the front struts.  We also recently put on four new Kumho Ecsta tires, which are not quite as “sticky” as the Pirelli’s we ran previously, but so far we like the ride and they should last a little longer.

Chantal SL92-TUltimateCupHolders (2)One of the shortcomings of the early model Boxster is the lack of a good place to put a coffee cup.  We’ve tried several after market cup holders, without much success.  Recently, I bought two cup holders from Mike at www.ultimatecupholders.com and we have found them to be the perfect solution!  Because the cup holders are at floor level, there is less risk of spilling coffee when you are cornering.  Couple these great cup holders with our recent new Chantal SL92-T Travel Mugs and we are ALMOST ready to go.  The last item is the coffee!  We suspect there will be a few Starbuck’s along the way, but I’m fairly confident there will be areas where we won’t be so lucky, so we bought a small Presto 6 Cup Stainless Steel Percolator to use when there are no other options.

Next blog I’ll talk about Music, Bluetooth and Hands-free Microphones . . .

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Roadtrip Planning Software – The Search and Selection

Monday, March 17th, 2014

We knew the minute we started mapping our route, that we were going to need three tools:

  1. Good planning software for the tablet (in our case, a Lenovo Helix running Windows 8)
  2. A real paper map (we are old school and still like the visual that a map gives you)
  3. A new GPS for the Boxster

First, the Software

We started with the planning software.  We looked at (and tried) several products:

  1. Google Maps (maps.google.com)
  2. Roadtrippers (www.roadtrippers.com)
  3. AAA’s TripTik (www.aaa.com/travelinfo)
  4. TripIt (www.tripit.com)
  5. My Scenic Drives (www.myscenicdrives.com)

We chose My Scenic Drives because it was easy to learn and use, and it had some features that we really liked, for example:

  • You can set your start date, so you know when you might actually arrive at your ultimate destination (assuming not too many side trips!)
  • It lets you set your estimated MPG and what you think fuel will cost, giving you an estimate of the cost of the entire trip.
  • You can set your default speed to the speed limit, or 5%, 10%, 15% or 20% slower.  Since we know we are going to be stopping to take photos, (and, of course, we would never exceed the speed limit in our Boxster), we are opting for 20% slower.
  • You can set your default daily start time and the number of hours per day you plan to drive.  These defaults can be overridden easily for each leg of your road trip.
  • You can opt to avoid highways by default (my favorite) and also opt to avoid tolls.  Again, easily overridden.
  • You can add notes to each destination (I’ve added average temperature, so I know how to pack for this trip) and you can add activities (like stop for ice cream).

During the coarse of our planning, I have sent emails to the developer asking for help and he has always been responsive (a very important “feature”).

Second, the Map

We chose the National Geographic Road Atlas – Adventure Edition.  It had everything we needed and it was spiral bound, which we think will hold up better.  It is rather large, which could be a problem given our limited space.  We’ll let you know!

Third, the GPS

In our case, since we had an old Garmin and we had good luck with it, we decided to stick with what we knew and just buy an updated version of the Garmin.  So we chose a nüvi® 50LM.

 

So, with these three tools, hopefully we won’t get unintentionally lost; although we will, no doubt, get intentionally lost a number of times!

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The Plan – A Drive to See Fall Colors

Monday, March 10th, 2014

Fall ColorsAh, nothing like autumn in New England.  So we have set our goal to try to hit the fall colors at their peak (which is always a gamble).  Steve has never seen New England in the fall – as a matter of fact, he’s never even been to New England.  He thinks he knows what autumn colors look like.  Ha!  He is in for a big surprise!!!

The first thing we did was trade our Marriott’s Kauai Beach Club timeshare week for a week at Marriott’s Custom House in Boston.  We were lucky and got the week of October 10 through October 17.  We know by the time we reach Boston, we will be ready for a week of “down time”, getting out of the bucket seats and into our walking shoes!

So, now that we have the Boston pivot point, we can really get down to the serious planning!  The next undertaking is to find the best roadtrip planning tool.  That will be the next blog, so stay tuned.

 

 

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Okay – So I’ve never blogged . . . .

Wednesday, March 5th, 2014

The last month has been all about learning how to blog (and I’m fairly confident I still don’t have a clue).  I wanted to find a cool theme that would include a map of the planned trip and, after some serious searching, I found Blogabond.  Then I had to learn how to navigate the Blogabond site and build the map.  I think the map you see above pretty much represents the plan – so far.

I’m still not clear in my mind the difference between a Plugin and a Widget and my mind melts when you start adding Tags and Categories and the rest.  So I’ve decided to dive in and start writing and hopefully the rest will sort itself out over time.

I’m hoping that people will share with me the places we should go, things we should see, great places to stay and, of course, the best places to eat.  I’ve already found the Kelley Country Creamery in Wisconsin, where we plan to stop for Ice Cream!  Do you think they would believe it if I told them we dropped in from California just for a double scoop?

Off to do more planning . . .

TooCoolJo

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