Thursday, June 12, 2008

Ah Gas Prices, How We Hate Thee

So, I blew my gas budget for June. To be perfectly honest, I am not feeling too badly about it. The truth is that I wasn't entirely sure how much to budget - I was completely winging it! My gut said that $100 had to be too much, but I was sure I was spending at least $50... so I went with $75. Despite driving a pretty fuel efficient car, I am currently at $89.89 on the twelfth day of June. Sigh.... I have a full tank, so we will see how that does. I may have to modify the gas portion of my budget once I have really tracked my gas usage over the next few months. I have been doing a lot of traveling the last couple of days so that has an impact, but for the most part it has been for money making opportunities - trips to the post office to mail Amazon and eBay items, trips for my second jobs - things like that. Summer months are undoubtedly going to always be higher months for gas consumption for me since I have a cabin as well. I guess the best I can do is just keep practicing riding my bike!

So, I tracked how many miles it takes me to work - it is almost exactly 6 miles one way. I would love to think I could ride my bike, but we are talking about some major hills in between, and right now I am still panting hard when I hit a sloped driveway! I did, however, find a great riding path that is about 3 miles long (one way.) It also has some steep hills, so it might be a good training ground. Am I saying I will ride my bike to work? No.... not yet. Not only are there big hills to tackle, there is also the time and the heat. I don't want to arrive at work a sweaty mess, but it is something to consider anyway.

Unfortunately I didn't get any good bike riding practice in last week - too much going on in the evenings. I might have to start getting up early and taking a trip around the neighborhood. Goodness knows I could use the exercise!!



Thanks to TopSpeed for the photo of my car! Ok - this is the "Type R" version, but that is just the UK name for it - and I liked this photo the best of all the ones I found.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have always loved car trips but now am dreading the 2 I have coming up. I've been reading online about hypermiling and there are some really great tips. I'll have to try some of them out! I watched a video of a man whose hybrid has a sticker mileage of 66 MPG and his record so far is over 100! Wow!

Dawn said...

What in heaven's name is hypermiling? And while my gas budget has been exceeded I still have room in my Entertainment budget, so I will be throwing in on gas for one of those trips. (And don't even argue with me ...or else!)