Reaching 20 Mi./Gal.

Many years ago, before my car reached middle age, I had this sudden lightning storm that, "Hey, I should make sure I know how much mileage my car gets."  And so, over the course of a few full fill-ups (if I only partially filled up I didn't count those) I would make sure I reset the odometer so I would know how many miles my car went so I could divide that by the number of gallons it took to re-fill my automobile.

Uncannily, the same quotient came up, time and time again: 20.  So my car gets 20 miles to the gallon.  Well, it got.  Once my car reached middle age, that number wavered.  I think I first noticed it when I did the division in the winter and it went way down.  But I don't know if that was due to the car getting older, something wrong with it, or something I didn't know at the time: Winter gasoline being less fuel-efficient than in the summer.  I have long since disregarded that idea because I remember running the numbers all throughout the year, and the car still got 20 mpg regardless.  But ever since, my car has, overall, had worse mileage in the winter than in the summer.  Sometimes much more so; the teens, the worst, I think, being only 15 miles per gallon.

Hallelujah, then, for the past couple of cycles.  I have had good days (usually in the warmer months) where my mileage rebounds to "normal" and then some.  Hadn't had that for a while, but the past two times I've done the computations I have had (I think) 21.5 and then, today, 21.8.  That is well short of the record; I believe I hit 25 one time.  But I'll still take it.

This, of course, coincides with my long trip to the test scoring place (by the way, the car has not acted up since Monday morning, touch wood).  Meanwhile, I have tabulated mileage the past couple winters when I worked at the flu biller place, which was much, much closer, and it was much, much worse.  How can driving less than half as long to one place of employment to another yield a much worse mileage?  The answer, I have learned, is fairly obvious: My car, any car, burns a lot less fuel moving at the same speed, and you are buckin' if that speed is highway speed.  So that brings up the (somewhat) irony that you are saving more gas if you travel farther, provided that you travel on the highway, and not some side street, to get to work.

That isn't going to happen anymore, at least for the next two weeks.  The project I was working on finished today, and unless I get something quick, I am done until Tax Day.  That should mean I should drive to places closer to home.  Then again, with the way the mileage is working out, maybe I should instead drive a hell of a lot farther away from home.

At any rate, the traditional mileage for my car is 20 miles per gallon.