Truth be told, I’m not feeling real well today; I think something I ate yesterday is disagreeing with me.
Anyway, I’ll be posting later with a new link to another Examiner.com article that I’ve written.
I just wanted to say to all my readers out there I’ve found a new way home. For now at least, it’s taking North to Gratiot down to 12 mile road, instead of Mound, for you local Warren, MI peeps. Late at night when I’m heading home from teaching my classes, it’s a great route, the light timing is nice, I get a nice scenic drive going through Mount Clemens at a slower speed. Sure it’s orange barrels for a lot of it on Gratiot, but late at night, traffic is light and slow moving, just the way I like it. I averaged 42.1 MPG last Friday and 41.8 MPG the time prior. So, it seems to be working out for me!
Though this was created as an act of vandalism, it is really pretty neat. If he’d gotten permission from the city/township/state/whatever to do it, I’m sure it would be something well received in the community. For added fun, the traffic sign system could even have a warning of the barrel monster ahead.
Talking with my tech friend Tom, who hosts this site, it seems in doing an update, instead of updating the files, they were deemed corrupted and deleted by the server. Fortunately none of my articles were lost, but for the moment, the design/theme is going to be off from the nice road themed site it was. Hopefully it can be found again and re-applied, I rather liked it, and I think you guys did too.
Being low on fuel, I did a quick check, and found a station that was selling for $2.69. With my 3 cents off fuel card, that was $2.66, good enough for me!
I can add another 40+ MPG tank to my stats, with a 40.1 tank over 554.5 miles. If you’re wondering how come I’m getting gas again so quickly, this tank included normal driving plus two trips to Metro Airport, two trips to Rochester, and a trip to Greenfield village. Lots of driving to be sure! This tank was 138% of EPA, lifetime is now up to 126.31% of EPA.
My current tank is at 41.8; had I checked before I keyed Liberator off, I would’ve taken a picture of it, as I did with the last tank.
Summer is nice, though looking back I seem to have only about 11 more tanks before I’m back to the hum-drum of cold or cooler weather and my MPGs go back into decline. Ugh.
It’s that time again! Liberator turned four today. Estimated savings in fuel by having the FEH instead of a standard Escape, $4,916.63, and my previous 1995 Ford Explorer… $8,012.54. At this point, not only have I recouped the “Hybrid Premium”, but I’m ahead by $1,221-4,317 dollars over the Escape and my old Explorer after subtracting said premium.
Still no problems to report, I’ll be going in for an oil change next week or so.
Some fun facts: I filled up 20 times in the last year, at an average of 11.8 gallons per fillup for 8.5K miles, which has been the least amount of miles I’ve ever driven in a year. Worst tank ever: An abysmal 22.4 MPG over 273.9 miles. (Winter, cold, lots of snow, many short drives, etc.) Best tank ever: 44.3 MPG over 719.9 miles. 7 tanks above 40 MPG. 23 tanks above 37 MPG.
As for benefits, that’s always changing, especially in today’s economic climate, but I was hired by the Detroit Examiner to be their alternative fuel and efficiency writer.