Our US road trip virgin realised that speed isn’t everything when trucking from New York City to Washington, D.C.
AS far as pastimes go, a road trip is as big a part of American culture as burgers and baseball. Blessed with vast interstate systems, rugged small towns and amazing landscapes, the home of the brave and land of the free off ers the willing traveller limitless adventures – as long as you own a set of wheels. I swopped a train for a Chevrolet Colorado for my journey from New York City to Washington, D.C. during a recent family holiday to find out what makes this time-honoured tradition so appealing. If you have never heard of the Chevrolet Colorado, it’s because it’s not sold in Singapore. Well, not anymore anyway.
Like many other pickups, it fell foul of the Euro V diesel emission standard some years back. It is what Americans term a midsize pickup truck. But at almost 30cm longer than a Mercedes- Benz S-Class, it’s hardly what you would call compact. My road trip didn’t start well. The one-hour drive it took to cover the 7km from our rented apartment in downtown Manhattan to the state of New Jersey was as excruciating as trying to flag a cab in Singapore. After getting lost, honked at and yelled at by impatient cab drivers, and getting stuck in the city’s infamous gridlock traffi c, I could see why most New Yorkers do not own a car.
For a country that prides itself on freedom and liberalism, the speed limits in America are anything but. The maximum speed on the freeway is 65mph (104km/h), which seems measly considering how wide and abundant the lanes are (five at times). Under the watchful eyes of numerous state troopers and “speed limit enforced by radar’” signs littered along Interstate 95, I stuck religiously to the speed limit. Misery loves company, it seemed, as everyone else on the road was as law-abiding as me. If the fast food at the highway rest stops did not help stave off the monotony of the motorway, the Chevy’s well-equipped infotainment system certainly did.
The Colorado, like most of GM’s vehicle fleet, came with OnStar, a connectivity plan that gives drivers access to a concierge service that provides anything from 24/7 roadside assistance and turn-by-turn navigation to remote services and automatic crash response. More importantly for us, the car came with built-in 4G LTE Wi-Fi! My son kept himself entertained streaming Youtube videos while the missus was busy googling attractions (and like typical Singaporeans, food stops as well) to visit along our route. It was by far the most useful feature alongside navigation and cruise control.
About 160km into our journey, we detoured to the City of Brotherly Love – Philadelphia. After deciding that Philly’s trademark cheesesteak was more interesting than the city’s main attraction (Independence Hall, the birthplace of the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence), we bought lunch to go and continued on our way.
Washington, D.C. is 370km from Manhattan, and at sunset, we reached our rented house in a quaint neighbourhood not far from the city centre. You have to tread carefully when it comes to parking here. Park at a wrong zone at the wrong time and your car can get towed away real quickly. Many times, when a lot was available, the truck was too long to fit (most of the lots here were for parallel parking only). America never felt so small.
A chance Google search at dinner revealed we were only 117km from Skyline Drive – a historic 167km mountain pass in Virginia that runs through Shenandoah National Park, which is home to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Besides being famous for inspiring John Denver’s 1971 hit song, Take Me Home, Country Roads, it’s considered one of America’s best driving roads.
Convincing ourselves that this would be our last time here, we planned a drive there the next day. Even with 305bhp under the hood of the V6 Chevy, the strict 35mph (56km/h) speed limit meant that Skyline Drive is better suited to nature lovers than driving enthusiasts.
Appreciating your surroundings is the name of the game when driving in this part of the world. Unlike in Europe, where I tend to wring out press cars and take full advantage of the glorious, near-empty test routes and liberal speed limits, over here I could enjoy what I normally ignored on road trips: the scenery. And Skyline Drive was the perfect place to “smell the roses”. Flanked by Shenandoah Valley to the west and the town of Piedmont to the east, the spectacular views lining the route just about made up for the lack of speed.
The American road trip has been immortalised in countless movies and songs (Easy Rider starring Dennis Hopper and Born To Run by Bruce Springsteen are some examples). For someone who has never driven in the US, my “short” 1200km trip was the perfect initiation to this celebrated culture.
My adventure was incidentfree, except for a US$45 ($61) fine for “indiscriminate” parking near our rented house in Washington, D.C. A small price to pay for an instant induction. And to do it in an American establishment like the good old-fashioned Chevy pickup truck was another plus. I left for my road trip a cautious, wide-eyed wanderer. I returned a laid-back, cap-wearing, gum-chewing “Yank” with a cheeseburger beside me and my left elbow out the window. If a US road trip does not Americanise you, then nothing else will.
