I’ve been waiting for this day since early April, when we first brought our Meerkat home. Meerkat, of course, is our Subaru Outback. I think every Subaru in the United States is born in Indiana, and our Meerkat is no exception. Vehicles traditionally are thought of as female, so I suppose “she” is the appropriate pronoun. Our adoption agent was Sandy Jackson, and the adoption agency was Grand Subaru. Sandy actually had to get the car from another dealer in Indiana, so when we took Meerkat home, she already had ~250 miles (400km) on the odometer.
I can’t speak for other manufacturers, but Subaru specifies a break-in period… and that’s why I’m celebrating today. The break-in for our car is 1,000 miles (1,600km), and coming home from work I hit it today!
As I approached my milestone of mileage, I decided that a song would be in order. One of the really cool features of our Outback is the versatile sound system. The head unit has two AM settings, three FM settings, and three SiriusXM settings, with each of these having six presets, for a total of forty-eight presets. It also plays CDs, has a 3.5mm (headphone jack) input, a USB port and Bluetooth. The USB port has a 64Mb flashdrive right now, containing ~45GB of music.
I finally settled on Boston’s “More Than A Feeling”.
It was 0810 (GMT -6). It was a beautiful Spring morning, with just the right amount of sunshine. The car turned over 1,000 just about the time I was passing a county mounty who was taking pictures. Remember the counry song “Convoy” recorded by C.W.McCall? The citizen’s band (C.B.) craze of the 70’s was pretty much single-handedly created by that song- in C.B. lingo, a “county mounty” is a county sheriff’s police car, and “taking pictures” means they’re using radar to catch speeders.
So, Meerkat hit 1,000 miles today (better hurry up and grab a slice, that virtual cake won’t last forever!) In practical terms, we can now take Meerkat out on the open road!
That’s all of the news that’s fit to print for now- I need a nap. I wanted to share this little bit of everyday joy before the details faded.
Before I forget- a quick note about today’s photos. The first one is of Meerkat (of course) patiently waiting for me to snap a few frames. The second is me in the de rigeur photographer’s pose, shot against the driver’s side rear door window.
When you’re done here, if you like you’ve read and seen, take a look at some blogs that I follow: Ed Mooney’s very cool blog https://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/22587945/ and Mary Widdicks’ hilarious blog- http://outmannedmommy.com/about/
Fly low, keep your powder dry, and always remember to keep Ridin’ the Storm out!
hochspeyer 