I made it home with the Mercedes late Wednesday afternoon as planned and had absolutely no problems whatsoever on the road. The car drove like a dream and I’m not a HUGE fan of sun roofs (never had a car with one before)!

Rick at Atlantic Motor Group picked me up at the airport and drove me out to the dealership in Kennett Square, PA, which turned out to be quite a nice little country village… I guess it’s quite known around Eastern Pennsylvania for its mushroom harvesting. Anyway, Rick turned out to be a pretty nice guy and didn’t charge me anything extra for the additional fuel filter I asked him to get (but that he wasn’t able to get installed for me… oh well) or for the temporary tags. In exchange I agreed to take the car with just a quarter tank of gas in it. Fair enough. Got the car fueled up there in Kennett Square and hit the road at 2:20pm EDT.

I only had to make it to Zanesville, OH on the first day, but even that seemed really far away, especially since the first hour or so of my trip was going through small Pennsylvania towns where the speed limits would fluctuate between 35 and 55 mph. But once I made it to the Pennsylvania Turnpike (I-76) I made pretty good time the rest of the way, only stopping once for lunch at Burger King and another stop for a bottle of Mountain Dew when I started feeling sleepy. Once it started to cool off outside around 6:00 p.m. or so, I decided to run the rest of the way with the window open a bit and the sun roof pulled back, which gave me lots of fresh air and just enough wind & noise to help me stay alert. The Pennsylvania countryside was beautiful, and I had to pass through several mountain tunnels and got spectacular views of the upper Appalachians. I’d forgotten just how beautiful rural Pennsylvania could be, and it just got better and better the farther west I drove.

I was too busy trying to make time, not waste it, to stop and take any photos along the way, which is too bad as I would have certainly liked to. Maybe next time, haha. Wheeling, WV, is an interesting town, too. I hadn’t been through there in years, and probably not during the day since family vacations as a kid. All of the homes built right on the sides of the mountains and the brigde into town… very scenic, and very blue collar. The rest of the trip was a blur… Ohio, Indiana, Illinois… not much to report. But upon making it home I realized that the car got well over 34 mpg on the trip. Not bad for an 18-year-old automobile!

Now I just need to wait for the biodiesel homebrew kits to get restocked at B100 Supply so I can start brewing some biofuel!