Tank 348 - 24 April 2K13 (The Gas Station Was Rockin' - Literally!)

I refilled the Mighty Corolla last night at the Fas Mart near the library. Gas was $3.249/gallon, which is pretty cheap around here. The car had been driven 383.7 miles at that point, and received 10.920 gallons, making for a fuel economy number of 35.14 mpg.

Last week I got the car inspected. The inspection had expired at the end of March, so my secret evil plan is to take it in after it's expired so I get an extra month from the inspection process. When I picked it up, the guy reported that a bearing needed replaced ("needed replaced" is poor language, I know, but it's a Southern convention that explains the thought in fewer words. It's much easier to say "the bearing needed replaced" instead of "the bearing needs to be replaced." It's like two less words!). So shortly I'll get that done. It currently makes a very noticeable hum as I drive around, but when I curve to the right and the weight of the car shifts more over the left wheels, the noise disappears. That's kind of fun.

I wonder if the poor bearing is helping to keep my fuel economy so subpar over the last year...

Oh, but more fun is that it was quite windy last night as I put gas in the car. The weatherman reported steady 20 mph winds with higher gusts. As I stood there squeezing the gas pump, the wind was coming right across the front of the car and it was hitting the gas pump straight on the wide side. And that pump was leaning back and forth. The top part where the cigarette ad was on its little flexible stand was leaning about an inch in each direction. The whole pump! So that was cool...

Tank 347 - 13 April 2K13 (The First Time This Happened)

Refueled the Mighty Corolla at the Fas mart near my home. 363.8 miles, 10.674 gallons, so 34.08 crappy miles per gallon. An interesting note is that after the second click, I had put exactly $35.00 in the tank. I wasn't even watching.

You'd think this would happen roughly once every 100 tanks. You'd be wrong. I looked at the numbers and this is the first and only time this has happened to me. I have a few tanks that ended in $x.99 and a few that were $x.01 or $x.o3, but this is the first that randomly came to an end right at a round whole dollar amount.

So I guess that's pretty rare.

Other than that, I have nothing to add.

Tank 346 - 2 April 2K13 (Too Much Going On To Post)

Sorry, I took the rest of last week off for personal reasons. But I did put more gas in the car on April 2, 11.297 gallons after driving 396.7 miles. So mileage of 35.12 mpg.

It was thirteen days between tanks of gas. I expect this tank will last at least that long, as the Mighty Corolla was parked for most of the 5-day weekend. Plus, I'm taking this Friday off, too. So probably it'll be a couple weeks before I refuel again.

Yay.

Meanwhile, I am questioning the profitability of this blog. I clearly underestimated the number of people in this country who are interested in not only fuel economy (not even great fuel economy any more, it's merely average) but also recreational bike riding stories.

Alas, there are too few to make this a worthwhile wealth generator. :-(

But this has been a good blog in that it goves me history of when my back went bad the first time.

And also one of the most popular posts is about how crappy the Delta Touch Faucet is, so I like to think I saved a couple people from making that horrible decision.