In My Words: Kimberly Burton Allen, Writer

Starting time: 11:47 AM, EST, Southampton. Starting mileage: 56640.  I love road trips. Packed and ready to go! This dates to my childhood when our family vacations were always treks from our Southern California home back to the Midwest to visit our relatives. My mother and father, who had relocated to Southern California from Illinois and Kansas respectively, were the Western outposts of family that rarely traveled more than a few hundred miles. So every couple of years, we loaded up Dad's GMC truck with the jerry-rigged heating system into the camper shell, packed up the sleeping bags (for warmth) and munchies and prepared to set out. We always left at o'dark thirty in order to get over the Cajon Pass and through the high desert and Las Vegas before temperatures got too warm. None of us except Dad were morning people, but armed with a thermos of coffee for my parents and a box of warm freshly-made doughnuts as incentive for the rest of us, we pulled out of the drive...

Our original Duchess, East Hampton, circa 1995 A little background: In California shortly after we were married, we needed a second car. Almost as a lark, we called on a Pennysaver ad for a 1967 Jaguar 420 sedan. Jaguar built the 420 model for only two years -- 1967 and 1968 -- and of that run, only a very small percentage were built for the American (e.g., left hand drive) market. The owner had backed the car into the garage so that the first thing we saw as the garage door rolled open was the car's Rolls Royce-like grille. One look, and we were hooked. We bought the car, named her the Duchess and three years later when we relocated to the end of Long Island, we shipped her out to join us. For the first four years, we drove the Duchess during the temperate months and garaged her all winter with Chris's employers. Then Chris switched jobs and we lost the winter storage facility. Build a garage at our East Hampton house, or sell the car? Chris's vote, of course, was ...