Portland Tour- No Problemo!
I took the 900 on my trip to Portland this week, where we stayed at the Embassy Suites Portland Airport because I was working out on NE Sandy Boulevard at 200th. The drive down was fine, though I did end up topping off the coolant upon arrival as it was right at the LOW mark on the bottle.
On Monday after work, the 900 took me to West Linn where I visited the Katkos. It climbed the big hill up Pimlico without incident. On Tuesday after work, I ventured the mile to Portland’s new IKEA store, where I had dinner with the Vogeltanzes. Ava liked climbing in the back seat just like Luisa does. Brenda and Jim thought I’d done a great job on the interior, though a huge squall was blowing through the parking lot as they were trying to look, so there wasn’t a lot of time to linger.
On Wednesday morning, I fought traffic through a thunderstorm to the Intertek office in Beaverton, where my manager and Intertek’s Cheif Electrical Engineer (himself an 80s/90s Jeep project car guy) checked out the car and complimented the interior as well as the “backwards” hood opening and engine orientation.
After a dinner Wednesday evening with our friend Lynn (who describes herself as an “operator” of her dented Altima rather than a driver), I loaded up the 900 and we headed out through a dark, rainy night toward home. In the first 50 miles of the trip I encountered plenty of showers (including one very heavy one) and standing water, which the car and its oldie-but-goodie Kumho Excsta tires handled very well. The remainder of the trip had just scattered light showers.
I filled up on the way home, 14 miles in to Washington and 340 miles into my trip. I calculated my fuel economy for that fill-up to be 26.74 MPG, not bad for the car being fully loaded with test equipment, driving in some heavy rain, and fighting traffic across town and back in Portland on Wednesday.
The car performed flawlessly on the trip, although the Black SAAB/ORANGE Stripe stickers I applied didn’t have strong enough adhesive to stay on the car, so I’ll have to tape them on next time. Also I discovered that there isn’t quite enough left-leg room to keep my leg comfortable on such long trips.
This morning I moved the car into the garage to unload it, and one of the headlamp bulbs burned out. Fortunately they were both working last night. I’m glad I did the trip to Portland in the 900, though I might not repeat it anytime soon…
