To the Gulf Coast - Club Class all the way.

[Kingy]

I'll add to this thread over the next few days as I'm struggling for time with being back in work (boooo!). 

As folk will know we had our hollibobs over the last couple of weeks. My wife Yaz works for BA, so whenever we go on our jollies we fly BA. It means a drive down to Heathrow or Gatwick - but I really don't mind that as I love driving and we have a big 'funbus' that eats the miles up and is like driving a big leather armchair. 

This year we had decided we would go back to the Gulf Coast. We love the place and would both like to live out there at some point. I managed to sort it so I had 10 days off which is a luxury for me. We flew from Gatwick on a Wednesday and a week later than we usually would have. This was good ... and bad.

Good: Flights weren't as busy, so we got on and got bumped up. We got bumped to Club World seats there and back. These are the 'pods' which can lie flat. Were we paying for them ourselves the full cost of our flight (only) tickets was £17,400.  Yes, you read that correctly .... £17,400 just for flight tickets. Needless to say, the flights were amazing.   I've flown Club World a few times, but never got bumped 'both ways'. 

Bad: I missed three United matches.   I know that would be a 'good'' for a lot of you, but I've never missed a game I've had a ticket for. Still, £17,400 seats was a fair trade I guess! 


So, we park the funbus in Gatwick longstay and then within 12 hours we land at Tampa International Airport. Part of my holiday is arranging car hire. I have a very specific taste in cars, so it's something I enjoy doing. We got there and had to wait 30 mins until they reluctantly stopped trying to fob me off with vehicles they thought were suitable and gave me what I'd ordered .......

Behold, The Beast ....



A GMC Yukon. 5.3 Litre V8 Petrol engine. Auto with stick shift.
All the bells and whilstles. Electric everything. Easy to set up as my car has very similar kit, so setting everything up just took minutes. 
Officially seats 8 people, so plenty of room for the four of us. We always leave a lot of kit in the car for beaches, so want a bigger car - plus with petrol at £1.44 a gallon why not have a big monster like this!  

Best economy I saw was a huge 24.2 mpg at 55 miles per hour on a stretch of freeway (cruise control) and worst was 1 to 2mpg when booting it hard! 
Fantastic, ridiculous dinosaur of a machine and I loved it. 


To be continued ....