My mate Rob and yours truly were asked by a friend of ours to drive a 1966 Buick Riviera from NY to Austin, Texas.
In Austin we rented a 2009 Chevrolet Trailblazer for a trip to California and back.
Here's the report I typed on V8Buick.com:
On Friday November 28 I kissed the dog goodbye and tapped my wife on her shoulder, left home around 6 AM to drive to a nearby train station, to catch a train to Schiphol (Amsterdam) Airport.
I arrived at the airport at 7 AM, and had to wait for 5 minutes for Rob to arrive from the South.
After his arrival we checked in at Delta Airlines and we even made it through then security check at customs...
The plane left at 9.15 AM, and after an 8,5 hours flight we arrived at JFK NY airport at 11.45 AM.
For some reason I went through US Customs with flying colours, but Rob was sent back in a very angry way by this US Customs ''gentleman'' to work on his Visa form because he forgot to fill in his passport number (some of those foreigners are really stupid....)
Anyway, we had to reach Middletown, NY by train, so the big puzzle began.
We expected that JFK had a train station where we could board a train heading Northbound, but no......
After a confusing ride in an airport shuttle, we figured out we had to take the subway to Penn Station. So we went for a ride in the NY subway, along the journey a group of kids decided that they had to earn some money by performing a break dance act, supported by human beatbox sounds, right in front of our seats.
Very interesting, but we didn't handed them a single Euro when they tried to collect some money after their performance. Not because they wouldn't be able to figure out what kind of Monopoly money they just earned, but more because nobody in the entire train really cared about giving them some money.
At Penn Station we bought a ticket to Middletown, and were told that we first had to go to this station with a difficult name, to catch the direct train to Middletown.
At this above mentioned station with the difficult name we were told that we had to wait for a little over 2 hours before the next train left for Middletown.
So we sat down on a bench in the station hall, and I was fascinated by the structure of this hall.
Here are three photos I took, maybe somebody will recognise the station and post the (difficult) name ?
At 4.15 PM we left the station in a very slow train to Middletown.
Now you might wonder why we wanted to visit this Middletown place, but we had a very good reason to go upstate NY:
Boardmember austingta (Frank) bought a 1966 Riviera GS through eBay, and asked us to drive this car from NY to Austin, Texas where he lives.
That's an offer we couldn't refuse, what are our chances to ever again travel the USA from North to South in a classic Buick ?
So we said YES!!! and that's why we were in this train to Middletown to meet the seller of the Riviera at the local trainstation.
We set our first steps into Middletown at 6 PM, and Paul the seller, picked us up in his Ford Something to transport us to his house to pick up the Riviera.
After a good cool Coke and a piece of delicious home baked apple pie we drove off in the Riviera:
First we went back to Middletown to do some shopping at the local Wal Mart, and we were on our way to the PA state border.
Very soon we discovered that the heather in the car didn't work all that well, and that the vent doors for the cool outside air (AC delete car) were wide open with both cables jammed......
So we drove that night in our sleeping bags, all the way to Colombus Ohio....
In the morning (when we had enough light) we figured out what was wrong with the heather and even mangaged to close the vent door.
And we could have a good look at the car:
From Columbus, Ohio we continued our trip towards Indianapolis, but somewhere before Greenville, IL we were forced to stop our travels because the Riviera developed some serious trouble with the brakes.
More about this in a next post.
PS: Until now (Saint Charles, Missouri) we've enjoyed every mile of this trip, and we even met a few board members
