hobbit
01-04-2008, 05:53 PM
I didn't really do a trip log for the Florida jaunt this year, but
here are a few notes. Driving conditions/methodology were roughly
this: both grill blocks in [opened the lower as I reached warm temps],
*NO* WAI installed -- this is sort of a test this year -- and my usual
trying to stay loaded within 1700 - 2300 RPM as we've been discussing.
No attempts for SHM, since my travel speeds were well over where it
would begin to be useful, but plenty of WS down the hills.
.
For the trip down, overall average MPG as read by the car was about
58. It was pretty warm; above freezing for most of the run and things
actually got humid by mid-North Carolina and the lower blocker was
open before I reached Georgia. As seems usual for these trips, I
arrived showing a 60.0 average. I did a reasonable amount of the
around-town errand driving, too; those huge, open and flat roads in
FL really lend themselves to the half-mile glide. It was nice to be
able to hose out the bit of road salt I'd picked up in a band of snow
through NY/NJ on the way down and then have the car stay clean for a
few more weeks.
.
Coming back was a different story, and yielded a couple of my most
all-time abysmal tanks. I took off on an unusually chilly morning
for that area and it was pretty much 43F throughout the next 5 or so
hours still in FL. A running 66.0 average from just tooling around
locally got pulled down to 58.1 at a fillup outside of Jacksonville
where the grill-blocker went up again, and then the serious cold started
hitting. And I was bucking a vicious northwest headwind the whole day.
Next tank was a more disappointing 52.0. The car's OAT dipped below
freezing within another hundred miles or so, and by the time I climbed
out of the SC foothills up into the first big ridge, it was down to 14F.
[Ridges, you might ask? Yup, I took I-77 north to 81 to avoid the whole
I95-BosWash corridor mess. Adds about 1.5 hours to the drive time, over
better roads, avoids a huge mess of tolls, and is 100% worth it.]
.
Where I overnighted in a rest stop it was maybe 18F, and the car's
engine cycled on and off quite a bit more than I expected to keep the
gentlest level of cabin heating I could set going. I'd guesstimate
the duty cycle was about 30% - 40% on and idling, and it took a while
to finally get used to the periodic little lurches and get some sleep.
I tried using the outboard fan controller to run a lower level of air
circulation but the fact that I'd turned off the *car's* notion of
supplying heat made the auxiliary engine-coolant circulation pump
turn off so while the engine ran much less often in that state, I
basically didn't get any heat at all. Even with all the bedclothes
over me that didn't last long before I was freezing my butt off, so
the fan control went back on. I felt bad about this, almost like I was
one of the many nearby steady-idling semis. The night dropped one pip
out of 7 off the fuel gauge, and pulled the already ailing 49-something
MPG average down to a hopeless 42.2 by predawn. I *hope* I didn't burn
a whole gallon to stay warm, but it's not like a car is your most
super-insulated type of domicile. I managed to fight that back up
to 47.7 by the next day's first fillup, but I think that's my worst
tank ever. Maybe it was the generic-brand Circle-K gas, too?
.
The building at the rest stop was all boarded up for construction, so
they had a row of port-a-johns out front. Which were fairly frozen,
of course, so think "tall cow on a flat rock". Probably impossible
to service, too. This is why outhouses are passe'...
.
The rest of the day pulled out of the slump a little bit, but it was
all wikkid cold cold cold. Wherever I stopped, everyone was of course
griping about the weather. Southerners have trouble with this "water
not flowing" thing. The Northeast had become pretty sloppy back when
I had left it and effects were still showing. Many cars on the road
were crusty white ghosts of their former selves, especially the ones
in tow behind RVs aimed south as their owners fled the salt belt.
Massachusetts was in the iron-hard grip of single digits, and I'm
amazed that not only did my last fill in NY state show 53.2 for the
tank but I wasn't even in too bad shape upon final arrival at home:
http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/pix/FL07/home54.jpg
.
For the weather and no WAI, that's not half bad. This is starting to
really trash the whole WAI-for-the-Prius (http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/heatgames/) theory outright, i.e. the car
seems to just read the mass of whatever's coming in and deals with it.
I do have the intake snorkel[s] still unhooked from the air box so the
intake air might be just a *touch* warmer than ambient but probably
not much at highway speed.
.
Speaking of pictures, I will say this about the new camera [talked
about briefly in the digicam thread (http://www.cleanmpg.com/showthread.php?t=7830&page=3#post60386)]: with lightning-fast boot time,
the taller zoom, image-stabilization, and a nice big bright display on
the back, this thing is like THE ultimate tool for solo truckspotting (http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/pix/ky07/wall_shame.html).
Just look at the detail in a tiny excerpt --
http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/pix/FL07/tankd.jpg
.
from the full version of this,
.
http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/pix/FL07/tankh.jpg
which I whipped it out and snagged because I thought it was an
interesting thing to see bombin' on up the road. This guy was
emphatically NOT one of the many meathead truckers harrassing me
all day; by contrast he was quite courteous and we gave each other
plenty of room as he came by me on that fairly open stretch of I-81
through Pennsylvania. I actually caught up to him by chance at a
quick rest stop later and chatted briefly, telling him I was
entertained by what he was hauling and by the way WTF *is* it?
It's an underground fuel tank, like for a gas station.
.
But if I had been needing to reach his dispatcher, I would have had all
the info I needed. I shot quite a few more pix on the way home, most
of it not of exactly picturesque scenery. There was the typical amount
of bad behavior going on and one of these days I want to open a civil,
constructive dialogue with the trucking community about just why this
is happening and what they want from the 4-wheelers in return for
allowing all of us to keep our distance from each other. It's just
ridiculous. I called in about five of them on the return trip alone
because I really felt threatened several times and heck, the driver
at the car show (http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/neas07/) had recommended being persistent about such matters.
I mean, these guys bring us our groceries and hold a heck of a lot of
our infrastructure together, and they're out there doing it every
day -- I've got nothing but respect for that, only wishing that maybe
we could all have a less fuel-intensive alternative. That isn't their
fault, it's just the way the whole system has evolved. But that same
respect should be earned through responsibility, and for truck drivers
to place that same general public they're helping to *feed* at risk of
life, limb, and property is totally unacceptable. One of them acted
like he was trying to play some little puerile revenge game and impale
my front bumper on his DOT bar as he swung back in , and I hope that by
0800 today his supervisors have "reallocated" his job. I was really
trying to be nice in asking to maintain my space -- a gentle flick or
two of the normal hazard flashers as a first/second warning, escalate
to the yuppie button if that had no effect. Many of them do just go
around on their own, but often with a fair bit of intolerant vehicular
"body language" -- usually waiting until the very last second of
approach before swinging over fairly abruptly. WHY, when there's
plenty of time to plan and move before all I see in the rearview is
their big ol' chrome teeth and it looks like impact is imminent??
What if they pulled that swerve on the ice patch they couldn't see
because they'd blocked their own view ahead with the outline of my
car? The behavior wasn't even all necessarily directed at me but
also plenty of other neighbors on the road, and at least one got
called in for persistent pushing in the left lane behind a parade
of equally-misbehaved SUVs. They tailgate cars, other trucks,
whatever -- just way too close to everything ahead, like that had
any likelihood of making it go faster.
.
I must emphasize here that it wasn't like I was holding anyone up in
any unreasonable manner, even in the right lane in those long 70-MPH
limit stretches in the south -- rather, I will say that for some value
of it I too was "driving to get there", possibly averaging about 65
while moving but not let the iFCD stay too low for too long and
hillclimbs still limited to 3000 RPM [which still yields a faster
climb rate than most trucks]. With basically only one quick waypoint
in NJ to drop off the repaired MFD (http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/mfd/) to its owner, I had no scheduled
stops on either leg so this wasn't exactly like the summer tourism (http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/pix/hf07/)
runs. Even with that and the temps and my butt killing me after two
long days of it, I managed to pretty much keep it on the efficiency
peak and probably get whatever I was going to get from the car under
those conditions. Only on the flattest ground could I let the cruise
control do any of that -- for the most part, my foot was in command.
.
Side note -- I recently happened across this site (http://iplateu.com/), whose creator is
apparently trying an interesting but likely hopeless approach to the
road-rage problem. Perhaps it's as close as anyone could get to the
inter-car, distance-based radio link idea I was propounding over
the summer. Downsides here are that it would require everyone who's
ever going to participate to sign up, because I don't think a private
individual's going to have access to a nationwide matched database of
cellphone numbers and vehicle tags. They'd also be more encouraged to
play with their phones in the car, which is the last thing anyone
should be supporting. And it too is probably doomed to become
another means of yelling FU to the other guy or be overrun with
spam, just like the CB did, partially because there would likely
be no accountability structure.
.
A local friend gets high kudos for coming by periodically and keeping
the end of my driveway clear by removing the plow ridge from all the
slop that the Northeast got while I was gone. Wow. I was in no shape
to jackhammer what would have been two feet of solid-pack away by the
time I reached home and pried my ass out of the cockpit, and all I
had to do was kick away a few remaining klinkers and bull my way in
over a small mound. I'll go un-stuck the car and finish up once it
gets vaguely above freezing, which it's supposed to do over the next
couple of days. In the meantime, it's hunker inside, eat soup, and
post silly stuff into forums.
.
_H*
here are a few notes. Driving conditions/methodology were roughly
this: both grill blocks in [opened the lower as I reached warm temps],
*NO* WAI installed -- this is sort of a test this year -- and my usual
trying to stay loaded within 1700 - 2300 RPM as we've been discussing.
No attempts for SHM, since my travel speeds were well over where it
would begin to be useful, but plenty of WS down the hills.
.
For the trip down, overall average MPG as read by the car was about
58. It was pretty warm; above freezing for most of the run and things
actually got humid by mid-North Carolina and the lower blocker was
open before I reached Georgia. As seems usual for these trips, I
arrived showing a 60.0 average. I did a reasonable amount of the
around-town errand driving, too; those huge, open and flat roads in
FL really lend themselves to the half-mile glide. It was nice to be
able to hose out the bit of road salt I'd picked up in a band of snow
through NY/NJ on the way down and then have the car stay clean for a
few more weeks.
.
Coming back was a different story, and yielded a couple of my most
all-time abysmal tanks. I took off on an unusually chilly morning
for that area and it was pretty much 43F throughout the next 5 or so
hours still in FL. A running 66.0 average from just tooling around
locally got pulled down to 58.1 at a fillup outside of Jacksonville
where the grill-blocker went up again, and then the serious cold started
hitting. And I was bucking a vicious northwest headwind the whole day.
Next tank was a more disappointing 52.0. The car's OAT dipped below
freezing within another hundred miles or so, and by the time I climbed
out of the SC foothills up into the first big ridge, it was down to 14F.
[Ridges, you might ask? Yup, I took I-77 north to 81 to avoid the whole
I95-BosWash corridor mess. Adds about 1.5 hours to the drive time, over
better roads, avoids a huge mess of tolls, and is 100% worth it.]
.
Where I overnighted in a rest stop it was maybe 18F, and the car's
engine cycled on and off quite a bit more than I expected to keep the
gentlest level of cabin heating I could set going. I'd guesstimate
the duty cycle was about 30% - 40% on and idling, and it took a while
to finally get used to the periodic little lurches and get some sleep.
I tried using the outboard fan controller to run a lower level of air
circulation but the fact that I'd turned off the *car's* notion of
supplying heat made the auxiliary engine-coolant circulation pump
turn off so while the engine ran much less often in that state, I
basically didn't get any heat at all. Even with all the bedclothes
over me that didn't last long before I was freezing my butt off, so
the fan control went back on. I felt bad about this, almost like I was
one of the many nearby steady-idling semis. The night dropped one pip
out of 7 off the fuel gauge, and pulled the already ailing 49-something
MPG average down to a hopeless 42.2 by predawn. I *hope* I didn't burn
a whole gallon to stay warm, but it's not like a car is your most
super-insulated type of domicile. I managed to fight that back up
to 47.7 by the next day's first fillup, but I think that's my worst
tank ever. Maybe it was the generic-brand Circle-K gas, too?
.
The building at the rest stop was all boarded up for construction, so
they had a row of port-a-johns out front. Which were fairly frozen,
of course, so think "tall cow on a flat rock". Probably impossible
to service, too. This is why outhouses are passe'...
.
The rest of the day pulled out of the slump a little bit, but it was
all wikkid cold cold cold. Wherever I stopped, everyone was of course
griping about the weather. Southerners have trouble with this "water
not flowing" thing. The Northeast had become pretty sloppy back when
I had left it and effects were still showing. Many cars on the road
were crusty white ghosts of their former selves, especially the ones
in tow behind RVs aimed south as their owners fled the salt belt.
Massachusetts was in the iron-hard grip of single digits, and I'm
amazed that not only did my last fill in NY state show 53.2 for the
tank but I wasn't even in too bad shape upon final arrival at home:
http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/pix/FL07/home54.jpg
.
For the weather and no WAI, that's not half bad. This is starting to
really trash the whole WAI-for-the-Prius (http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/heatgames/) theory outright, i.e. the car
seems to just read the mass of whatever's coming in and deals with it.
I do have the intake snorkel[s] still unhooked from the air box so the
intake air might be just a *touch* warmer than ambient but probably
not much at highway speed.
.
Speaking of pictures, I will say this about the new camera [talked
about briefly in the digicam thread (http://www.cleanmpg.com/showthread.php?t=7830&page=3#post60386)]: with lightning-fast boot time,
the taller zoom, image-stabilization, and a nice big bright display on
the back, this thing is like THE ultimate tool for solo truckspotting (http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/pix/ky07/wall_shame.html).
Just look at the detail in a tiny excerpt --
http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/pix/FL07/tankd.jpg
.
from the full version of this,
.
http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/pix/FL07/tankh.jpg
which I whipped it out and snagged because I thought it was an
interesting thing to see bombin' on up the road. This guy was
emphatically NOT one of the many meathead truckers harrassing me
all day; by contrast he was quite courteous and we gave each other
plenty of room as he came by me on that fairly open stretch of I-81
through Pennsylvania. I actually caught up to him by chance at a
quick rest stop later and chatted briefly, telling him I was
entertained by what he was hauling and by the way WTF *is* it?
It's an underground fuel tank, like for a gas station.
.
But if I had been needing to reach his dispatcher, I would have had all
the info I needed. I shot quite a few more pix on the way home, most
of it not of exactly picturesque scenery. There was the typical amount
of bad behavior going on and one of these days I want to open a civil,
constructive dialogue with the trucking community about just why this
is happening and what they want from the 4-wheelers in return for
allowing all of us to keep our distance from each other. It's just
ridiculous. I called in about five of them on the return trip alone
because I really felt threatened several times and heck, the driver
at the car show (http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/neas07/) had recommended being persistent about such matters.
I mean, these guys bring us our groceries and hold a heck of a lot of
our infrastructure together, and they're out there doing it every
day -- I've got nothing but respect for that, only wishing that maybe
we could all have a less fuel-intensive alternative. That isn't their
fault, it's just the way the whole system has evolved. But that same
respect should be earned through responsibility, and for truck drivers
to place that same general public they're helping to *feed* at risk of
life, limb, and property is totally unacceptable. One of them acted
like he was trying to play some little puerile revenge game and impale
my front bumper on his DOT bar as he swung back in , and I hope that by
0800 today his supervisors have "reallocated" his job. I was really
trying to be nice in asking to maintain my space -- a gentle flick or
two of the normal hazard flashers as a first/second warning, escalate
to the yuppie button if that had no effect. Many of them do just go
around on their own, but often with a fair bit of intolerant vehicular
"body language" -- usually waiting until the very last second of
approach before swinging over fairly abruptly. WHY, when there's
plenty of time to plan and move before all I see in the rearview is
their big ol' chrome teeth and it looks like impact is imminent??
What if they pulled that swerve on the ice patch they couldn't see
because they'd blocked their own view ahead with the outline of my
car? The behavior wasn't even all necessarily directed at me but
also plenty of other neighbors on the road, and at least one got
called in for persistent pushing in the left lane behind a parade
of equally-misbehaved SUVs. They tailgate cars, other trucks,
whatever -- just way too close to everything ahead, like that had
any likelihood of making it go faster.
.
I must emphasize here that it wasn't like I was holding anyone up in
any unreasonable manner, even in the right lane in those long 70-MPH
limit stretches in the south -- rather, I will say that for some value
of it I too was "driving to get there", possibly averaging about 65
while moving but not let the iFCD stay too low for too long and
hillclimbs still limited to 3000 RPM [which still yields a faster
climb rate than most trucks]. With basically only one quick waypoint
in NJ to drop off the repaired MFD (http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/mfd/) to its owner, I had no scheduled
stops on either leg so this wasn't exactly like the summer tourism (http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/pix/hf07/)
runs. Even with that and the temps and my butt killing me after two
long days of it, I managed to pretty much keep it on the efficiency
peak and probably get whatever I was going to get from the car under
those conditions. Only on the flattest ground could I let the cruise
control do any of that -- for the most part, my foot was in command.
.
Side note -- I recently happened across this site (http://iplateu.com/), whose creator is
apparently trying an interesting but likely hopeless approach to the
road-rage problem. Perhaps it's as close as anyone could get to the
inter-car, distance-based radio link idea I was propounding over
the summer. Downsides here are that it would require everyone who's
ever going to participate to sign up, because I don't think a private
individual's going to have access to a nationwide matched database of
cellphone numbers and vehicle tags. They'd also be more encouraged to
play with their phones in the car, which is the last thing anyone
should be supporting. And it too is probably doomed to become
another means of yelling FU to the other guy or be overrun with
spam, just like the CB did, partially because there would likely
be no accountability structure.
.
A local friend gets high kudos for coming by periodically and keeping
the end of my driveway clear by removing the plow ridge from all the
slop that the Northeast got while I was gone. Wow. I was in no shape
to jackhammer what would have been two feet of solid-pack away by the
time I reached home and pried my ass out of the cockpit, and all I
had to do was kick away a few remaining klinkers and bull my way in
over a small mound. I'll go un-stuck the car and finish up once it
gets vaguely above freezing, which it's supposed to do over the next
couple of days. In the meantime, it's hunker inside, eat soup, and
post silly stuff into forums.
.
_H*