July 2012 - Kia

Personally I think GM is too late to the Hybrid party and rather than spend and write off all the billions of dollars on their EVs that are actually selling well, they should have stayed the course and not followed Stupid Ford and Idiot47. GM has a 'handful of hybrids' coming - but are they the ones you want? I do not see GM actually doing well in this space as they are already too far behind.

On a more positive note, travel related stuff ... A historic milestone was achieved by Cunard Line within the last week.  When she was built, Queen Mary 2 (QM2) was too big to transit the Panama Canal.  The same was true for other supersized passenger ships.  In the interim, new larger locks were engineered and put into service. https://travelweekly.com.au/queen-mary-2s-first-transit-through-panama-canal-on-way-to-australia/ I saw the QM2 enter San Francisco Bay in 2007 because I was living out West.  It came in on a Sunday and I spent the weekend south of the city and near SFO.  I went there in a rented 2007 Monte Carlo costing less than $25 a day and stayed at one of the cheap chain hotels near SFO costing about $50 a night, which was ridiculously cheap even then. The ship went around South America and sailed northward up the Pacific.  As such, it's not a trip they would be making too often with the QM2. QM2 transited the Panama Canal for the first time just days ago.  She is headed to Los Angeles AND San Francisco.  To clarify the article's headline, Australia is just its next leg - this is the full world cruise.  She was last in Los Angeles in 2006 when she saluted her namesake Queen Mary and last in San Francisco in 2007 and seeing the passage under the Golden Gate Bridge was unforgettable.  These were the only visits to these ports.  With the new Panama Canal locks, her visiting the North Pacific Ocean and its major ports is much more likely to be on future world voyages. In the Panama Canal transit, the nail biter was supposedly going under the Bridge of the Americas - the one with the curved top.  I saw this YouTube with passengers cheering and motorists up above honking. I blame my parents for this!  They took us across the Atlantic a time or two too many when we were kids and this fascination began.

RIP