Butterfly Footprints

Here is the butterfly footprint project

The Big Day Redux

Friday afternoon, December 3rd, Knight, my salesman at Seattle BMW, called and said: “Hey, your car is here.  They’re loading it off the truck right now, when do you want to come get it?”

Me: Uhhh, NOW!

Him: Oh, not now, we have to wash it, get it registrered, load US maps, etc. etc. etc.  Maybe it will be ready tomorrow.

Me:

So, we sat around the house all day Saturday saying, please today, please today.  If not today, I know the service dept. is closed Sunday and I won’t get the car until Monday, at the earliest.  About 3:30 they finally called, car will be ready at 5pm.  The whole family came along.

Camden says he’ll buy the Mustang from me for $2.  I told him I’d just give it to him if he had a driver’s license, but I’m not keeping it in the driveway for the next ten years.  Hunter called dibs on the 335i “when Dad dies.”

It was too dark to get a good picture but we wanted one with the Space Needle to proove the car made it to Seattle.

Porgy has Arrived

A very pretty picture.  Porgy is in the USA.  Now we have to wait for unloading, customs, transoport to Seattle…Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!

 

Hot off the Internet

Porgy has been circling the entrance to the Panama canal since early Sunday monring.  Early today she entered the Gatun locks on the Atlantic side of the canal.  Now, right now, she is passing through the Miraflores locks and will soon be in the Pacific Ocean.  Live picture here.

In case you missed the live picture here is one from 5:17 Pacific time.

Look what came in last night

It’s the Porgy!  In Bremerhaven. 

Did I mention I love the Internet? 

Tomorrow she will set sail for Port Hueneme, California.

Finally…I have a boat

It’s been over two weeks since I dropped off the car.  The transport company supplies a web site where I can track the status of my car.  I’ve checked it multiple times every day of course.  Until today it simply said…yep, we’ve got your car.  Today I checked and saw this…

Yes!!!

Just a little bit of Internet research and some help from the guys at Bimmerfest and I found some info about the Porgy.  The Porgy is a 199 meter cargo ship flagged out of Panama with a top speed of 18 knots and she is my new favorite boat.  Well, I wish she was faster

Her last port was Alexandria, Egypt.  Currently she is steaming through the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Sicily, towards Bremerhaven…where she will pick up my car!  Her current position can be tracked on this web page…did I mention I love the Internet.

Day 16 & 17: London

And now for Tiffany’s favorite part of the trip…

I have to admit, Harrod’s is an impressive store.  Even I could spend the whole day shopping in there.  They have a coffee bar, a chocolate bar, a wine bar…

London still has all the iconic London things like red telephone booths, black taxis, double-decker busses, the underground…

 

We found a guy who got into Ripley’s for making the face that Camden makes when he drinks “spritey” drinks.

And we found a blinged Mini.  What do you think about that Brooklyn?

Our flight home leaves at 6:30AM so we’re staying at the Yotel in the airport.  It feels like a cabin on the Enterprise.  We miss our family a ton and we can’t wait to get home.

Day 14 & Day 15: Paris

We did a whirlwind tour of the most famous sites in Paris.

The Louvre

The Eiffel Tower

Notre Dame

The Arc de Triomphe

We ate croissants and drank coffee at sidewalk cafes.  We took cheesy tourist photos.

We went underground  

Now we’re on the Eurostar and will go underground again to reach London via the Chunnel.

Day 13: Giving Up the Car

Arriving in Paris Wednesday we drove straight to TT Car transport – near the airport.  This is the company that will handle shipping of my car.  We have an appointment at 9AM Thursday so we wanted to find our way Wednesday evening then stay near the airport to make things easy in the morning.  It’s kind of a scary neighborhood.  The steel fences around every building don’t make you feel too comfortable.   The fact my car is inside one of those fences makes me feel better.  If we had to park on the street we’d have been looking for a different hotel, in a different neighborhood.

The process went quickly and smoothly Thursday morning.  By 9:20 we were in TT Car’s shuttle then dropped at the airport train station where we took a train then the Paris Metro to our hotel.  Now this is all I have left of my car, my owner’s manual, a warning triangle, the first-aid kit, US style license plate holders and one key.

I took these numbers off of the car’s computer at the drop-off site.

• Driving time: 37:49 hours
• Distance: 1235 miles
• Fuel usage: 22.4 MPG
• Average speed: 34.7 MPH

Fuel seemed to be about €1.5 per liter and the exchange rate is about $1.30/€1.  So…

(1235 miles / 22.4 MPG) * ((€1.5 / Liter) * 4) * 1.3) = ~$441 in fuel expenses

It was worth every penny.  It’s going to be very hard to wait for this car to get to Seattle.  But hey, we’re in Paris.

Day 11 & 12

Not a lot of pictures to share as we got to the point of the trip where we have a bit of driving to do.  First we headed back into Germany.  We had two things on our agenda.  One, drive fast on the Autobahn. 

There is a stretch along the German-French boarder that has no speed limit.  My impression of the AutoBahn is this…it will be great if they ever finish it.  We drove a good thirty miles, all of which was on the shoulder, 40 miles per hour, because of construction.  Next to us was two gleaming lanes of perfect asphalt but apparently it was not ready for traffic yet.

We did find a stretch outside of Heidelberg and another by taking a different route back south.  For a short while I followed an orange Porsche at about 120 MPH.  That was fun.  I wish I could have done more but didn’t have the patience for all the slow parts of the autobahn.  Also, there was too much traffic to go faster than that.  As expected, slower cars always move out of the left lane when they see me approaching.  What surprised me was the slower cars in the right lane that would move left.  Trucks are usually traveling about 80 kilometers per hour.  Vehicles may be traveling 120 or so when the approach them.  They would just move left to pass despite the fact I was coming up behind them at 180+.  That surprised me, and didn’t feel safe.  

Goal number two was to visit Baden-Baden.  Baden means bath in German.  This town is home to mineral springs and has a huge Roman style bath house.  There were multiple pools, inside and out, with temperatures ranging from 60F to 100F.  We waded around for about an hour, stopped for a snack and water, got a massage, tried out the sauna, steam baths, they have multiple different kinds, and left about four hours later very relaxed.  Sorry, the camera stayed in the locker.  Here is a picture of the building. 

If we had known how nice Baden-Baden was we would have planned more time there.  But, we have to get to Paris.  We left Baden-Baden and settled in for the trip, which is over 300 miles.  This means Tiffany had to take a turn driving.  It was the first time she has ever driven my car, any car of mine.  It also meant we got to rock out to Miley Cyrus for two hours.  Half way there she stopped and let me drive again so I could watch the odometer rollover the  first four digit number.

Next stop Paris.