All Things Considered

Big Buick

Not so much a drive as an obese charge, swinging and swaying on water-logged suspension, the engine forcing a 3.8 litre nocturne through clenched teeth.

I love this hefty GM block, it guzzles gas like a pregnant sow at the trough, and pulls like a hot-rod tug-boat, the arse end of the car following it like a belligerent fat woman water-ski-ing on tea trays, leaning heavily out of line around the bends. Was there ever such a thing as straight-line braking in a Buick?

Tonight it's pitch-black dark with a grimy half moon leering out of the clouds, and I'm barrelling out of Minnesota straight from the show and back through Wisconsin like a horny bison on steroids and a promise of really smelly sex. So far I'm guessing this night and day's automotive hammer and dodge is a third done. The trip-meter says I've done 458 miles so far, and between the neurotic and profoundly unreliable new map programme in my lap-top and my very rough and milkman-like pencilled calculations on a tattered AAA map, it'll end up being 1200 plus to 1300 by the time I make Philadelphia.

I played by the decoy rule - that is, never go over the artificial speed limit unless some idiot is prepared to go first and pick up the local tax bill, and all has gone well so far, with a couple of useful eastbound drivers prepared to front a blind dash so we could get some miles down. One cop showed in the median, but he was scavenging nose to the westbound carriageway, and the radar detectors stayed silent as my decoy and I gently eased off the gas and dropped a cog to sneak past his tail without a flash of brake-lights.

The only really serious Smoky Bear call on the radio turned out to be me and the decoy - mistaken for cops by some overwrought, hallucinating trucker travelling our way. When I finally realised that each time he called the cop's mile marker there was only me and the decoy at that point,I called him up and tried to explain, and instead of being relieved, he seemed thoroughly put out to have his powers of observation publicly discredited. Maybe he had some obscure ulterior motive, or maybe he just wanted to build some tension to keep himself awake. Maybe he was just a myopic moron and we'd all do well to keep completely clear of his blind and under-braked behemoth.

The decoy must have had his ears on too, because pretty soon after that he hit the gas and our paranoid friend quickly became just another whining scratch in the ether.

And the 3.8 sucked and slurped at the gas tank, and heaved and hauled at the love handles on the front tyres, and the moon got tired and went home unsatisfied.

I kept my eyes on the road, my ears on the radar detector, and my foot on the floor.