Gas

So ever since we bought our Nissan Sentra in 1994 - and through our Honda Civic now - I've diligently tracked my 639 trips to the gas station. Remember - I have a degree in statistics so it's okay. During those 14 years, with minor interruptions where I didn't drive the Sentra due to safety reasons in parts of two years - I have tracked the price per a gallon of gasoline as a free piece of information from my data collection. That price per gallon is largely based on Central Illinois pricing, but also takes into account every roadtrip we took in these two cars. The resulting chart - which is totally foobaring the nice clean lines of my entries - can be seen here. Start scrolling:



Now isn't that interesting?

The prices held so steady for so long - and then... President and Vice President Oil screwed us all up. What a trend line we're all on. A few other interesting tidbits from those 639 visits:
* 6,541 gallons of gas purchased
* $11,682 spent on gas - still somewhat a bargain
* 203,000+ miles driven
* 31.15 average for miles per gallon across both cars
* The Sentra (154,000+ miles) averaged 30.4 MPG
* The Civic (50,000+ miles) is averaging 34.2 MPG
* I average 7.7 days between fill-ups

While at lunch yesterday, Josh brought up that he had been doing some reading and experimenting on how to get a little more out of each tank. He mentioned running in neutral more, coasting where you could. As an experiment on the way home today I ran in neutral as much as I could and was very surprised at the results. My 30 minute and four second ride home today found me in neutral for an astounding 10 minutes and seven seconds - or 33.6% of the time. I took advantage of every hill. I took advantage of every posted decrease in speed to coast. I coasted from as far away as I could to every stop. The Civic idles around 700rpm - and in cruise control it rarely goes above 2,000 rpm. The only gotcha I have to work on is revving the engine past 2,500rpm when starting back up. Smooth starts keep the RPMs low. I may take a tank or two and see how much I can really stretch it... Just for the COMPLETE FUN of experimenting.

The pic: A sunrise over East Peoria from the Peoria riverfront and the oft-photographed Murray Baker (I-74) Bridge. Kudos to Debra who bought a framed print of this. She's da (wo)man!