DAY TWO - And what a great driving machine!

As I mentioned earlier, we were planning on taking a ride to my sister's house today. We did just that. And I played with the Navigation feature of the iDrive a bit on this trip.

When we got on the highway, I spoke the address (love the voice command feature!) and the map came up on the display. When it was time to turn, I noticed that the German GPS girl (I shall call her Gypsy) wasn't paying attention, because she wasn't giving me any directions. This seemed strange and very much unlike most of the women I've been around, especially when I'm driving. I knew something wasn't right with this situation.

In Gypsy's absence, I scrolled around in the Nav system for a while, and I learned that you have to put a "check" by the "Voice Instructions" option. Once I did that, Gypsy came back and started giving us some very good directions. So I was pleased with how that worked out after I got the pilot error corrected and figured out how to program it correctly. My bad.

The technology and the toys on the car are great, but driving it is where the fun really happens. I'm not overly thrilled that the car is still in "break-in" mode because it would be so easy to drive it a little faster. And it certainly feels like it wants to go faster. It's like a cobra, coiled and ready to spring. I tried to vary my speed on both the outbound and return trips, actually getting up to 85 mph a few times. The car had so much power left at that point that it was very hard to keep from using it. But I didn't. One thing I noticed was that the oil temperature never went past the centerline 250 degrees. In fact, the highest it got was one click below 250.

The ride was smooth and quiet, even with the Continental run flat tires. The car was responsive to my every instruction, and it had a very confident attitude at all speeds. What a pleasure it is to drive. And I'm beginning to think I may have those rain-sensing wipers after all. I'm not sure, but I pushed the button on the end of the stalk with the "A" on it. It swiped the few drops off the glass on an intermittent frequency. At some point I noticed it wasn't raining any longer and the wipers were not moving. I didn't recall turning anything off. I still haven't quite figured that one out yet. If you know, leave a comment.

I need to figure out how to modify the radio "Tone" in order to boost the bass a bit. Speaking of the radio, my wife mentioned that this is the first car we've owned that the radio actually sounded like music. So there's a good plug for the Harman Kardon Sound System that came with this car.

I'm off to wipe the brake pad dust out of the wheels and see about that "Tone" adjustment. We're currently sitting at 138 miles.