Month of February 2024 (Nat’l Avg $3.150)

Today I am driving the Fit.
42 deg F in Naperville and Elk Grove.
Wind SSW 10
33.4 miles, fcd = 49.4 MPG.

I start my pet-and-house-sitting gig after work today. Daughter and
her family are going out of town until March 3. I may only drive the Elantra
on Sundays during this time.

Thanks ! I need to actually take some time this weekend and study the car.

 

Will walk to the Senior Center for lunch for chicken chow mein. Should be excellent. Two days ago, predicted to be chances of rain today. But, this morning looks sweet. Again, weather predictions maybe OK for the next day. But, 2 days ahead, predictions can be off.

 

8:14AM....Drops of rain through most of the day. Temps in the mid-to-high 40degF. Need some walking today. Yesterday, I was late to the church breakfast & had to take the Elantra. Afterward, it was a surprisingly nice day, so I exercised the Hyundai Accent too. Actually took the Accent for the longest drive I've had in over half a year. Very nice drive. Since I have the really tall (+8%) over-sized winter tires on the Accent, driving the highway was very nice. In March I'll be switching off the Winters(to less tall tires), so I should take the Accent on other highway runs soon. Think I'll take two of my favorite highway drives & leave my favorite backroad drives for later.

PS, 3:31PM, PST.....Super Bowl beginning. Anyhow, the weather radar says there is incoming rain. & sure enough, the western ridge is disappearing in sheets of rain 4 miles to the west. So, I'll watch the Super Bowl & not the weather.....beginning now.

PS, 5:17PM, PST.....Half-time. Lots of back & forth, with SF getting only a 7 point advantage. KC only mounted 1 enduring drive that netted only 3 points. We'll see if things break lose in the 2nd half.

Meanwhile, our apt parking lot has not only 1 small emergency truck flashing away, but another larger fire-truck vehicle flashing, too. Don't know what is going on. One of the residents will eventually fill me in....maybe one of the kids. Outside of my own emergency, I probably don't need to be undated early.

 

Coming from beautiful Bolingbrook IL for the e next few weeks.
Idon't take the tollway ,either going to work or coming home.
Instead, I take IL Rte 53. It's mostly 4-lane, some places only two lane ,
PSL 35-45. Not stressful at all , compared to the tollways around here.

24 deg F in Bolingbrook , 26 in Elk Grove.

Wind SW 1

27.6 miles, fcd = 51.2 MPG (in the Fit)
Approx 45 min in the morning.
If I did choose to take the tollway, I'd pay $1.90 each way.

 

3:13am, PST....Woke about 2PM. Made some early breakfast. Even at this time of early morning, I see action in the parking lot. Someone parked & went to their apt. Just a minute ago, I saw them jogging to their car to...get something & then back to their apt. I should charge them a fee, because I have patents on so many ways to forget things.

 

Would any one know a reference to "Mrs. Kravitz?" From an old TV show...

Winter storm tomorrow, just as we're headed out for a few-day getaway. Wife's nervous, but the car's been storm tested in the last storm several weeks ago.

 

Sounds so familiar. I'm gonna have to put BOTH remaining healthy brain cells to work on this one.

 

Mrs, Kravitz was the voyeur neighbor on the 1960s TV show Bewitched - always peeking out the windows at the neighbors. I think the husband's name was Abner. Or Aaron. Considering Bewitched was sponsored by Chevrolet, Mrs. K would have seen some pretty stylish V8 2-speed coupes in the neighbor's drive, most of them in the overplayed and unavoidable Marina Blue.

Anyone else think of Jimmy Stewart in the Hitchcock classic "Rear Window" as well? Another unhealthy obsession with surrounding people by a desperately lonely individual.

 

Wasn't that the neighbor on Bewitched, who was always seeing things across the street from Samatha's place?

Oh, I see that MaxxMPG already answered. Sorry for stepping on toes. I agree with MaxxMPG. Bird & animal watching is much more interesting than people watching.....specially in the suburbs.

 

2-speed autos? Now I know why manual 3 & 4 speed transmissions were desired by some drivers. Just had to get the most out of those V-8's. Grandpa had a streamlined 1951 two-toned beige & green Chevy 6 cylinder in the latter 50's & 60's. Previously, Grandpa had the black "Klunk", my name for a flat-windowed something or other (from late 30's-early 40's?).

Noted a passenger train traveling west less than 10 minutes ago. Now, a freight train is passing east towards the mountains.

 

I remember the 2-speed Powerglide. My parents had some
GM car that had one. It may have been the 1968 Skylark convertible,
350 2-bbl. They used to buy new cars every two years.
Cars were pretty crappy in the 60s. Also, my mom was a terrible
driver and often destroyed cars.

Stille driving the Fit today. 29 deg F in Bolingbrook, 30 in Elk Grove.
Wind NW 5
27.7 miles , fcd = 50.9 MPG

27 miles remaining on this tank. I will fill up at a BP in Wood Dale,
which is not more than 100 feet out of the way (and also in DuPage County,
which has lower fuel tax). Tomorrow, I'll stop by my house (NOT on the way)
and swap cars. The Elantra needs to be driven.

 

Excellent result. I am down at 48.6 this morning thanks to the snow and wind. Northerly wind meant headwind all the way. And 34F so it's all slush - the car will roll to a stop from all the resistance and because of the density of meth heads driving diagonally on the roads, there are no ruts to follow so you can lose some of that rolling resistance.
The Elantra will be just fine in the garage, safe from moisture and overnight temperature plunges. The only concern with long term sequestering in the garage is the little critters - Mickey and Minnie - that find their way under the engine cover and they chew on the wiring. There's a wild photo on a Hyundai-focused forum that shows the injector wiring for cylinder 4 chewed and split apart. Only symptom was that it runs like sh*t and is spewing out misfire codes. Yup - Time to get the hot-pepper electrical tape and fix 'er up.

 

Yeah , this storm bypassed us , but I'm sure we'll get one soon.

Do they really make hot pepper electrical tape ?

 

Yup. https://www.hondapartsnow.com/genuine/honda~tape~rodent~19mm~20m~4019-2317.html
Honda moved to soy-based wire insulation to be environmentally friendly, and didn't stop to think that mice love vegetable-based anything. The solution was the "pepper tape" coated with capsaicin - the substance that makes hot peppers "hot". People wrap wiring in vulnerable areas to keep Mickey away from the expensive wiring harnesses.

 

If the mice aren't related to Norwegian rats, but are Italian or Mexican ancestry, the mice might like the "pepper tape" .

 

Today , I'm driving the Elantra.
25 deg F in Boling brook,26 in Elk Grove.
Wind SSE 1
Not sure what the tripmeter read for distance ,
but in the Fit it's 27.7 miles. Fcd = 60.5 MPG.

 

Is the Elantra somewhat bigger than the Honda Fit? The Fit has very efficient cargo storage, & still must be able to carry a lot.

 

Excellent. There is a screen that shows power flow from the engine and from the motor/battery, and it includes tank mpg and also the "KW" number that shows the number of kilowatts of electricity contributed by the battery. That KW number rises and falls during the trip, so my guess is that it's a rolling "within the last ten minutes" figure rather than overall trip usage.

With the snow yesterday, the trip home looked more like a Saturday because everybody in the county called out due to weather. So my drive home ended at 73.2mpg - not bad for 35F and light wind and running on Blizzaks. This morning, people were making up for missing their chance to crash yesterday and were tailgating and speeding (even more than usual) and weaving around on roads that had icy patches in spots where the sun didn't hit yet. I reached the office safely and at 54.8 with 28F showing on the dash and headwinds from the north.

 

Today I'm in the Fit again.
I know how to drive this car.
42 deg F in Bolingbrook , 40 in Elk Grove.
Wind SSW 11 Wet roads
27.6 miles, fcd = 51.1 MPG

The Fit is much shorter and a bit taller.. Yes , it seems pretty big inside.
But because of longer wheelbase, bigger wheels/tires, and extra (battery)weight,
the Elantra rides pretty nicely. One of these days , I will take it on a trip to Michigan.

 

February weather (& the whole Winter except for 1 week of latter "cold" last year) continues pleasant. My "pleasure walks", before & after my heart attack, have been Winter sweet. I am so happy, that my "pleasure walks" for 8 months have been continuous & never been long-term weather-interrupted, so I have been able to lose 25-30 pounds, leading up to my attack. This past February week has been excellent. When the sun did peak through the clouds, you could feel the increasing warming radiation. On my Winter "pleasure walks", I've seen older people sitting outdoors, which people DIDN'T do in Winter weather 60 years ago. Almost always, I haven't had to worry about slipping on icy sidewalks. I've even been able to wear my old 900 mile-traveled tennis shoes, which continue wearable, except for worn out tread.

Also, Arctic temperatures are definitely increasing. Arctic sea ice thickness averages 1 meter thinner than 1980's sea ice thickness. On the island of Greenland, ice melt since the 1980's(?) can be represented by an ice cube, 10.5 miles wide, by 10.5 miles long, by cube tallness of 55,000+ feet high. Millions of people complain about their cold weather. But, it is because stronger & warmer weather systems from the south, invade & push into the Arctic, which in turn thrust North Pole cold weather to the south onto populated regions of the Earth. The Earth as a whole, is having its warmest weather in hundreds of thousands of years. The oceans, fed by north, south pole, & mountain glacier ice-melting, are rising.