Old Timer Garage

For this second trip, considering how cheap the flights were, I managed to convince my mum to come with my wife and I so that she could see the US and where my brother lives so we will meet in London and then fly the three of us together to the US.

I realized that the car park in Gatwick airport was cheaper than taking a bus to London and then a tube and train again to get to the airport from Bristol so even better for me, we will drive there. As soon as I finish my day at the office, my wife and I are in the car and heading to Stansted airport where we are going to meet my mum before going to Gatwick. It will take us a good 3 hours to get to Stansted because of the rush hour traffic but finally, her flight lands almost one hour late so for me who loves seeing planes land, it is a great opportunity to spend some more time on the side of the runway.
We pick up my mum around 10 pm and get back in the car to get to Gatwick. For those of you who are not familiar with London airports, Stansted is located at the north of the city and quite far away from it (around 50 miles north I would say) whereas Gatwick is at the south end of the city. It will take us more than an hour to get from one airport to the other and this is late at night with no traffic. We park the car where it will spend the next 10 days. We have plenty of time anyway because our flight only takes off at 6 am tomorrow morning and check-in only opens at 4 am. We didn’t book any hotel for tonight, we will sleep in the terminal if we manage to find available seats. I am not really worried about that, it is not the first time I sleep at Gatwick airport and I know where to find a good spot to spend the night.

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After having checked-in our luggage and passed security checks, we are ready to embark at about 3 am. It is late (or early) but it is good for us because it gives us a day head start on jetlag. Besides, we are going to have a 12 hour flight tomorrow to get to Los Angeles. Finally, we will get to Tucson towards the end of the afternoon where we will meet with my brother and his girlfriend who came to pick us up after a short moment of emotion because my brother didn’t know my mum was coming with us. I had arrange with his girlfriend to do this as a surprise for him so my mum followed us at some distance when we disembarked the plane in Tucson for my brother not to see her at once when my wife and I met him.

It is the end of April and the temperature in southern Arizona makes us forget about the cold and gray weather we left behind in the UK.

For this trip, I needed to rent a car for a few days because my brother won’t be able to take any holiday this time so he will need his car to go to work. So since I am going to rent a car anyway, I am going to rent a nice one that I have wanted to try for a long time. I had asked my brother if he could arrange the booking of the car for me before we arrived and the following day on their way to work, him and his girlfriend drop me in front of the rental agent to pick up the brand new Dodge Challenger 5.7 litre Hemi that I am going to drive for the next few days. The only restriction I have is that I can’t take it across the border and into Mexico which is just a mile away from where I picked the car up.
I drive back home with my 370 horsepower engine not without first refuelling. We will spend the rest of the day showing the surrounding area to my mum and filming and taking pictures of the rental car.

 

The day after tomorrow, I have an appointment to go and visit my friend’s company so I make sure all the batteries of my cameras are charged. We will have to get up early to make sure we have as much time as possible on side there.

To be continued… here: 21- 45 cars under the same roof and the workshop of my dreams.

 

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