2013 Airstream Interstate

Piloting an 8,500-pound motorized house down the highway is far from my idea of fun, yet inexplicably, I'm enjoying myself. My grin has nothing to do with my camper's handling, as this heavily accoutered Mercedes-Benz Sprinter drives like a 25-foot long breadbox. My smile has nothing to do with on-road stability, as the ten-foot-tall, slab-sided vehicle reacts to wind gusts like the vertical stabilizer on a Boeing jet. My delight has nothing to do with its throttle or braking response, either, as both are as numb as your forehead after the eighth beer.

This monstrosity makes me happy for one reason - my passengers are undeniably having a good time.

Two days earlier, I had shoveled my wife and two kids into this Airstream Interstate 3500's sliding door, cranked over its six-cylinder diesel engine and pointed its black and chrome nose out of greater Los Angeles and towards the Grand Canyon. Now, with the 17-million-year-old fissure less than an hour over the horizon, and with everyone chatting giddily about the upcoming spectacle, I've pleasantly come to realize that the motorhome method of travel isn't just for those hobbled bodies with thinning gray hair.

Airstream is the Rolex of the luxury recreational vehicle industry. Tracing its roots back to the early 1930s, the manufacturer had become a household name by the 1960s as the public quickly took note of its trademark streamlined, polished aluminum shells. Even NASA jumped on board, welcoming the crew of Apollo 11 home from the moon at the end of the decade only to quarantine them within a specially modified bright silver Airstream trailer. The Airstream Interstate, a Class-B RV, isn't built for returning astronauts. However, it accommodates earthlings in an innovative package with "car-like" handling, performance and safety, says it maker. The magic is in its chassis, and the details are in its appointments.

Unlike most monstrous RVs cutting wide paths down the highway – nearly all built on steel truck chassis with lightweight wood, metal and fiberglass framing and walls – the Interstate starts as a steel-bodied Mercedes-Benz with a dually rear axle. Even though it's huge by passenger-car standards (nearly 25 feet in length, around 10 feet in height and almost seven feet wide), the RV industry considers this Airstream a compact. Yes, a vehicle that casts a shadow larger than your college dorm room is considered a "compact" in the recreational vehicle world.

Airstream sells two versions of the Interstate, both with the same 170-inch wheelbase. The standard model, with a base price of $125,630, is 23-feet and one-inch long, and six-feet and eight-inches wide. This particular stretched Interstate EXT is 24-feet and five-inches long – with all of the additional length being welcome cargo space behind the rear bench. My EXT tester carried a base price of $136,657. Its optional equipment included a special golf bag storage rack ($452), additional rear flatscreen television ($808), black exterior ($1,260) and a roof-mounted solar panel ($1,307) to maintain the batteries. The grand total, after destination ($984) amounted to $141,468.

Even though you'd expect something this massive to pack a V8 or perhaps a V10, motivation comes by way of a smallish 3.0-liter V6. But this isn't a standard six. Instead, it is the excellent Bluetec turbodiesel from Mercedes-Benz, drinking its oil diet from a 26.4-gallon tank filled through a panel accessed just behind the driver's door. In motorhome application, the engine is rated at 188 horsepower and – more importantly – 325 pound-feet of torque, with that power routed through a traditional five-speed automatic to the dually setup in the rear. The suspension is pure truck, with an independent design up front and a live rear axle at the back end. Stopping the Interstate are four-wheel disc brakes with sliding calipers. It is unusual to find electronic nannies in an RV, yet the Airstream Interstate features electronic traction control, stability control and anti-lock brakes.

But the mechanical specs don't stop there. Slung beneath the rear end is a 2.5-kilowatt generator, fed liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from its own 18.9-gallon tank. It's used to provide fuel/electricity to the 13,500-BTU secondary air conditioning unit (there is an engine-driven A/C compressor too, but cold air is only delivered from the front vents when the V6 is running), 16,000-BTU furnace and the other appliances within the passenger cabin. Other goodies include a 45-amp multi-stage charger, with a 750-watt inverter to divvy and sort the power properly, and a 30 amp/110-volt shore power service. In addition to the diesel and LPG tanks, there is a 32 gallon freshwater tank, 27 gallon gray water (sink drainage) tank and a 15 gallon black water (sewer) tank.

Most passengers will never know about that aforementioned below-the-deck stuff, but they will appreciate the Airstream's luxurious cabin – with a caveat. When we think of an RV, the first thing that comes to mind is stepping up into a cavernous interior complete with swivel captain's chairs, kitchen appliances and a rear bench sofa that turns into a bed with the pull of a lever. The Airstream Interstate does all of that, but in a skinnier... let's say..A polished finish in this solaroutdoorlight for men.. Slim-Fast version.

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Claire Williams and Peter Mills

They wore dresses from Marrime, in Kendal, pearl hairpieces from Monsoon and jewellery from Pilgrim.

The flower girl wore a white dress from Debenhams.
GROOMSMEN: The groom's best friend and band member Daniel Colagiovanni was the best man. The groom's brother Mark and the bride's brothers Stephen and Thomas were ushers. Stephen travelled from Australia to be part of the wedding. The couple's nephew Johan was a "mini usher".

The ushers wore brown suits from Mr Mister, with ivory waistcoats and brown ties, and the groom wore an orange tie.
FLOWERS: Flowers were supplied by Dodds of Ulverston, which provided wild flower-themed arrangements.

The younger bridesmaids wore small daisy chains in their hair.
TRANSPORT: The bride and bridesmaids arrived at church in classic white cars provided by the groom's brother and usher, Mark Mills. Guests travelled to the reception in an open-top bus.

RECEPTION: A wedding breakfast for 130 guests at the Eden Lodge, Bardsea. The grounds were decorated in wicker hearts, lanterns, fairy lights, and wild flowers.
TABLE SETTINGS: Wild flowers in jam jars, vintage cupcakes provided by Corrs Cakes and small, vintage photo frames containing messages of love.

The tables were decorated with music trivia cards, rainbow coloured favour bags containing retro sweets and the couple made a donation to Cancer Research with a pin broach for each guest.
ENTERTAINMENT: A ceilidh band played as guests arrived at the reception. After the meal Ailsa Mcintosh sang, accompanied by her Sugarfoot band mate Graeme.

DJ Trev, a friend of the groom's, entertained the evening guests, who also enjoyed ice-creams from a van and a sweet buffet. The couple and their bridal party, accompanied by younger guests, sent lanterns into the night sky.
FIRST DANCE: The Garden by Take That, followed by Love Shack joined by other guests.

HONEYMOON: A road trip round Europe with stops at Paris, Brussels, Luxemburg, Strasbourg, Zurich, Verona and Venice before returning home via London.
PHOTOGRAPHER: Nick Collinge at Love-it Studios, Barrow.
VIDEOGRAPHER: The ceremony and speeches were videoed by Haroon of Love-it Studios with additional video taken by a friend, Andrew Beattie.

Tevatron Closing: Shutdown Casts Shadow Over Fermilab's Future

In the coming months, the eyes of the physics world will be focused here to see if researchers can confirm the startling findings announced last week in Europe – that subatomic particles called neutrinos traveled faster than the speed of light.

But this is also a time of transition for Fermilab. On Friday, physicists will shut down the facility's accelerator called the Tevatron, a once-unrivaled atom smasher that has been eclipsed by the Large Hadron Collider buried beneath the border of France and Switzerland.

For some in Batavia, it will be a somber moment, akin to losing a family member. Others wonder whether it signals a lack of commitment to high-level particle science on U.S. soil.

Fermilab leaders say they hope that's not the case, because there's plenty of research to keep Batavia at the cutting edge.

That point was underscored after researchers using equipment at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, revealed their finding that cast doubt on Einstein's theory of relativity.

Fermilab – named after Enrico Fermi, who helped develop atomic energy at the University of Chicago – is one of only two other labs in the world that could try to replicate the work. The other, in Japan, has been slowed by the earthquake and tsunami.

Fermilab saw similar faster-than-light results in 2007 while shooting a beam of neutrinos to a lab in northern Minnesota. But the scientific significance of that observation was undercut by a large margin of error. Now the lab hopes to upgrade its own "clock" to see if it can confirm or debunk the European findings.

But long after the light-speed question has been answered, Fermilab hopes to make neutrino research one of the centerpieces of the post-Tevatron era – and retain its standing as one of the world's premier research labs.

That would involve building a new accelerator to study the universe in a new way – by producing the most collisions, rather than the most powerful. The accelerator also would be capable of producing neutrino beams more intense than anywhere else to help study the particles that scientists theorize helped tip the cosmic scales toward a universe made of matter.

"The idea is to look for things that happen very rarely, and the way to find them is to create lots of examples and see if you find something," said Steve Holmes, who's in charge of the new venture, called Project X.