saablog

Tonight I drove the 900 through Seattle’s rush-hour trafic to my parents’ house in Kennydale. Tomorrow morning I’m flying out to Madison to visit my brother and Katie, and I’ll stay with my parents tonight.

My aunt Donna and uncle Gordy arrived from England today so my uncle can work at Boeing, and my aunt is visiting the family while he works. When I arrived, I parked my uncle’s rental Jeep in the driveway at my parents’ house (they are staying with my parents for the duration of their visit). When it was time to go to dinner at Tapatio’s in Newcastle, the five of us decided to take the 900 to dinner, as my uncle was quite tired due to the jet lag.

I’ve never had anybody use the backseat of the 900 before today. It was christened tonight by two full sized adults (my dad and uncle), plus my Pig Aunt, rididing back there while my mom and I were in the front seats. We drove up 76th (a very steep hill in Newcastle, the 2nd steepest I’ve ever driven on) to the restaurant. In 2nd gear, the car didn’t slow below 35 MPH going up the hill, though it was audibly working pretty hard (and I ground the gear going into 2nd from third… still need to practice that heel-and-toe shifting). With that much weight in the car, the suspension sags to the point that the exhaust rattles against the underbody at low RPMs.

Why didn’t I drive the Volvo, again, since it has more-than-double the power and almost twice the space? Oh yeah, I hate leaving that car in the SeaTac parking garage, whereas I don’t care about leaving the 900 parked over there. At least when it’s in the airport garage, it’s saved from the daily barrage of bird crap it gets when parked outside of our house. Today was the third day in a row I’ve washed bird crap off of the car before driving it. It was too heavy to leave it on the car.