Guys,
I just got back from a few weeks' vacation down in the Pyrenees and finally have reliable mail access again. I drove the truck down from Caen with the family, loaded up with 4 mountain bikes on my home-made carrier on the back. It was a great trip and we covered over 1400 miles. The truck got a great reception everywhere - you'd think a spaceship had landed in some of the places we stopped!. It was trouble-free but took a lot of cleaning after - I didn't know you could get so much sand in a vehicle and it was crusted with salt as it was at the front on an open car deck on the return ferry.
To top things off I've been made a very attractive offer for my truck by someone who saw it at my local Harley dealers a few weeks ago - so I'm now seriously thinking about letting it go to get an 02 model - so maybe I'll be taking a trip to Florida soon to go truck shopping.
As for the important stuff, I managed to get 24 full cases of good Bordeaux in as well as all our gear, so that rounded things off nicely. The perfect tool!