DC Says: Leaving San Francisco

As any seasoned motoring hacks will tell you, it takes almost no time to get used to a new car, driving in the wrong seat, on the wrong side of the road with jetlag as your best friend for the next few days. It is, as they say, part of the job.

Then, hopefully, the car or the experience is solid enough for you to write 1600 words on. And really… thank god for autofocus… because you may or may not be able to stay awake, much less take a half decent picture. Then there is the tendency to fall asleep at the oddest hours… like dinner. A face plant in a plate of lasagne is not recommended.

But I am not one to complain, the job has taken me all over the world. And while I may not have been able to truly enjoy the destination, at the very least, I was able to sample a small portion of it.

So I am just back from San Francisco on the Mercedes-AMG GTS drive and it is a different world. Firstly, the cold spoilt my enjoyment of cold weather. I am pretty much used to walking around the cold dressed in what I would normally wear in Malaysia… but not this time. I had to layer myself with 4 pieces of clothing just to stay sane.

And if that was not bad enough, it had to rain. From what I understand, it rarely rains there and a thunderstorm happened right smack in my test laps on Laguna Seca. Brilliant…

But what really caught my attention was the way people drove there. By and large, everyone was really well behaved. And this is very important… a “STOP” sign means you stop… not crawl. The first to stop, first to go rule ensures the absence of traffic lights in some areas and works brilliantly. If Malaysians could learn this, the roads would be so much more enjoyable and the traffic less annoying.

Here in USA, pedestrians have the right of way. If I drove in San Francisco the way most Malaysians drove, I would have killed quite a number of Americans or at least have a pile of them on my hood as ornaments. Jay-walking? No, just no, okay. Walk a little farther to the end of the street and cross at the designated path.

Driving out of the city was a bit dicey, because you could turn right on a red light. Really-really. And I had to be mindful of pedestrians-first mentality and look at the GPS for directions in a completely foreign land. I was probably the only one who managed to cross the Golden Gate Bridge by mistake. Hey, part and parcel of the job.

Oh yes, the genius of heated seats, just the right solution when the… errr… extremities go numb. And how do you really avoid a tram? Ever tried playing chicken with one? Another bad idea. A quick visit to the wharf will find you face to face with some killer-seagulls the size of a dog. They were large and menacing, and will gorge your eyes out just for looking at them funny.

And the extremely hilly terrain on the city is legend, but I would not recommend gunning it and let the metal fly, which would have been very easy in the AMG GTS… maniac of an engine. The food was great, always wanted to clog more arteries with hash browns, deep fried bacon, gigantic beef burgers, butter-soaked bread and local beer. And the portions? Ridiculously large, with two adults capably sharing one normal portion.

The drive would eventually take me out of the city and there the terrain is as flat as an airport. The horizon is a single line, thanks in part to the maximum height of any given house or housing project. Farm land includes the waft of manure… as my co-driver and I look suspiciously at each other. We are close, but probably not close enough to ask, “Sorry old chap… did you just let go one?”

Then there was that small earthquake. It’s just a small one. One of many. Normal and all that, we are smack in the middle of a fault line apparently. Well, at least the bed shaking was not due to any paranormal activity or presence…

All in, a great trip. One that I would fly for almost two days for. Thanks Mercedes-Benz (the Malaysian chapter). And by the way… loved your new AMG-GTS.