Life In These United States

I've decided to write some blog posts about my time in the US....for no other reason than the photos or events will be about subjects that are so different to anything I'd experience in my life back in the UK.

These posts may be quite dull for everyone else but they'll remind me of my time here and God knows that with my memory these days, I need all the help I can get.

This afternoon we went out around a couple of local car dealerships looking at......well.....cars. Well SUV's to be precise as that's the type of vehicle Deb & Den want to replace the one ton truck they have right now. The truck has served its purpose as a hauling machine and with the 5th wheel sold, they can downgrade to a smaller vehicle...one that uses gas and not diesel, has a better turning circle than the Queen Mary and doesn't need a fill up every 15 miles.

While Deb was doing the serious looking, I admit I went wandering off, enticed by the bright, shiny colours and alloy wheels of totally impractical vehicles. Ok not impractical for a young, single man about town stud, like wot I am.

I think I'll suspend the comments section for this post !

As I claim to be more of a parrothead than a petrolhead, I've no idea what these cars are, but I know I liked them. Yes, yes Camaro, Mustang blah, blah, blah. I really mean I don't care - they just looked pretty and if I ever cash in some of my Nigerian lottery winnings, I could see myself zooming along the sunny Floridian Interstates in any of them !

At the final dealership, we were about to leave when a customer arrived in this....thing. We heard him coming when he crossed out of Georgia and by the time he reached us, the ground was vibrating like a marital bed on honeymoon night.

Once it came to a rest and the surrounding cloud of toxic waste finally cleared, the bodywork descended several feet like ET's neck and out stepped the biggest man I've ever seen who wasn't green and bursting out of his pants.

I did ASK if it was ok to take a photo of his car as I really didn't want to see him angry.

So all in all, car shopping is somewhat different here. I never saw any 1.2 litre cars like mine (unless they were being stored in the trunks of the others) and rear view cameras, cruise control, usb ports, bluetooth and built in satnavs were standard on fairly basic models. Prices were relatively low, as were miles per gallon figures. I think that the 50mpg my Renault Clio gives me back home is so alien to most vehicles here that I may well ship it over next winter - I could drive from Sebring to Houghton Lake with just one fill up along the way !!

After the car shopping (just a scouting mission), we went grocery shopping - but that's for another post.......