on the road to victoria

I made my somewhat ambitious goal of getting to San Antonio today. As planned, I made it to Moriarty yesterday. Today, I shipped out early and made it to Sonora before 1600 where I stopped for a couple hours to meet a work friend and eat dinner. Then, on with my last leg to my stop tonight in San Antonio. All told, I drove about 700 miles today. Combined with the over 200 miles from yesterday, I only have about 125 more to go tomorrow. I just might make my 1030 meeting tomorrow.

The U-Haul (made from a Ford E-450) with the car trailer is proving to be a very interesting drive. I have some very limited trailer-driving experience from back in the day. This is rather different since both the truck and trailer are much bigger than the old 300E and trailer made from a chopped pick-up that we had back in Los Altos. For starters, the U-Haul is much wider than a normal car, even wider than the F-350s I've grown accustomed too. In fact, the trailer is even wider if I don't count the side mirrors on the truck. Then there's the 'tow haul' mode which really means some lower gearing on acceleration and much stronger engine braking while coasting or braking. Finally, there's the fuel economy. It's somewhere just over 8 miles per gallon. That may have something to do with the load and the speeds I'm going, but that's just awful. I'm surprised it's not a diesel, but I suspect that if it were, there would be a good chance that someone might accidently put gasoline in it and wreak havoc on the engine.