brick
06-26-2006, 08:05 PM
I don't know about you guys, but this was a rough weekend in southern New England. As mentioned in a previous post, my current tank started with a "huge" 44.3mpg, 100+ mile segment on the nice, dry roads last week. But the problem with getting a good start to a tank is keeping it, and that has been incredibly hard given the weather. Friday's drive from my conference to my girlfriend's place wasn't so bad except for not knowing the route at all. But at least that was a short segment and didn't hurt me too much. (Tank down to 43.xmpg). Sunday's drive home was where it all fell apart. No sooner had I hit the road than the heavens opened up and covered the roads with a solid 1/4 inch of water. This kept going off and on and included some of the worst torrential downpours that I have ever seen. At one point I was crawling along at 40mph with the hazards on and probably still driving faster than I should have been. (At least one car that passed me during that cloud burst turned up in the median, buried in mud and shrubbery a mile or two down the road.) That did not help my FE at all, bringing my tank down to 40.5mpg.
Finally, after I thought it was all over, a localized downpour screwed up traffic on my commute home this afternoon. But this was worth the 36.3mpg (hurts to say it) segment because I learned a lesson: when given the choice between battling snarled traffic on the highway and battling lots of controlled intersections on an alternate route, just deal with the highway traffic! I've tried it both ways and the city driving circuit never works out because I have so little control over how I use my momentum. In the traffic I can come close to peak FE numbers, in the city my numbers tank no matter how few cars are there, and it is impossible to recover.
Ahh, well. Currently at 40.3mpg and just about 300 miles in. (The scangauge reads a little low, so that's probably more like 40.7 at the pump.)
Finally, after I thought it was all over, a localized downpour screwed up traffic on my commute home this afternoon. But this was worth the 36.3mpg (hurts to say it) segment because I learned a lesson: when given the choice between battling snarled traffic on the highway and battling lots of controlled intersections on an alternate route, just deal with the highway traffic! I've tried it both ways and the city driving circuit never works out because I have so little control over how I use my momentum. In the traffic I can come close to peak FE numbers, in the city my numbers tank no matter how few cars are there, and it is impossible to recover.
Ahh, well. Currently at 40.3mpg and just about 300 miles in. (The scangauge reads a little low, so that's probably more like 40.7 at the pump.)