PA Bound

At the end of last week, I joined about 50 others from Powertrain and other GM groups in participating in a service activity for GM's Week of Caring.  We spent time boxing and sorting food items at the Eastern Michigan Food Bank in Flint, MI.  When the morning started, the warehouse wall was full of palettes to be sorted and, surprisingly quickly, our two assembly line teams broke the wall down into all the individual items and re-packed them into smaller, sorted boxes.  Random fun fact: during this event I met the Dad of the guy who founded both Reddit.com and Hipmunk.com (Hipmunk is an awesome travel site by the way) - he works at GM and was stationed right next to me!

This weekend was the second time I drove the eight or so hours down to Pennsylvania.  I did so in my fourth of five rental vehicles for GM (two for being an intern and one per quarter per the regular employee policy).  This one was the most ridiculous one I will have of the bunch - a 2011 Grand Sport Corvette.

In keeping with most of the other vehicles I have received from GM, it was silver (random, but true), and it was an automatic (I know, car purists, go ahead and sigh).  That model goes from 0 to 60 in just over 4 seconds (the 2013 Grand Sport, for reference, is now just under 4 sec for 0 to 60 MPH) and the Grand Sport is in the middle of the pack as far as Corvette offerings go.

Push button start on the left, Navigation and Audio system in the middle

On Saturday, since it was sunny and cool, we took the roof off of the Corvette (it's not a convertible but the panel over the seats is removable) and headed off for a few hours into the hilly, curvy roads of PA.

The roof off shot

Our path included turns tight enough to be marked 15 MPH and multiple 10% hill grades.  This is, approximately, the route we took.

So many winding roads!

Could not ask for a more gorgeous day for a drive

To get back to all you car purists, even though I had this fantastic Corvette this weekend, I did take some time to drive (or try to drive, or work at learning to drive) a manual VW Golf GTI.  I can proudly say that after some tribulations earlier in the weekend, I finished my visit to PA having driven that car under my own power on both back roads and highways.  I'll still be somewhat stressed to get behind the wheel of my final GM reservation (a manual Sonic in the middle of October), but I feel much more prepared now.