[SentraSE-R]

Au contraire. I just completed a 35 day, 7238 mile cross-country trip and return, averaging 44.7 mpg, in my xB. I think my average travel speed came out to only 46 mph. I took the extra nights on the road to visit with friends and to see things like the evening bat flight out of Carlsbad Caverns (200 bats/second, for 23 minutes, = 276,000 bats!). When you're not in a hurry, you have time to smell the roses.

If I'd taken the faster Interstates, I'd have missed seeing the world's longest-running drive-in theater (since 1938, in Saco, ME), the world's largest rotating globe (in DeLorme USA's HQ in Yarmouth, ME), a 1700 lb milk chocolate moose in the Len Libby candies company in Scarborough, ME), and the monument to Phineas Gage in Cavendish, VT. I would have missed interesting tidbits of history, like a marker for the town of Blackdom, NM, a once-thriving community of 15,000 African-American farmers. And I wouldn't have met Rona Figueroa, who sang the roles of Eponine in Les Miserables and Kim in Miss Saigon on Broadway, in Weston, VT.

55 mph didn't drive me crazy. The mind-numbing boredom of going 70 mph would have driven me crazy.