55 MPH = 25 MPG

I have a lot to talk about tonight, but let me start with the mathematics formula which is the title of this particular post.

I once told all the friends I have e-mail addresses for that I believed just about everything could be reduced, one way or another, to a mathematical formula. I love numbers and equations so much, I sometimes do long division and other math problems for fun and relaxation. My mind is very "left-side of the brain". I make a good living working for the State of California as an accounting technician, though my primary job duties have become more customer service oriented lately, when I'm entering the numbers into the accounting program, interpreting the data and presenting the results each month, I'm in a state of Zen. But I digress.

For the last two months, I've been experimenting with my driving speeds, lowering from 75 MPH to 55 MPH by 5 MPH every other week, and watched with satisfaction as my MPG indicator kept up a slow and steady climb until today, when it seems to have peaked at 25.2 MPG, up from 20 MPG. Think of that! Simply reducing my speed 20 MPH, I have increased my gas mileage by 26%. Now, 26% may not seem like all that big a savings for some of you reading this, so lets put it in to dollars and cents. Say you have a 14.5 gallon gas tank (industry average), at $4.00 gallon it would cost $58.00 to fill up. If you drive at 75 MPH and get 20 miles per gallon, you would be able to drive 290 miles at an average cost of $0.20/mile. If you drove at 55 MPH you would be able to drive 365.4 miles at an average cost of $0.16/mile. Again, a $.04 savings may not seem like much, but consider this, the average driver will put 15,000 miles per year on his or her car. At $.04/mile, that's $600.00/year, or $50.00/month. Which one of you is so rich that they can afford to throw away $50.00 every month?!? Frankly, I have much more important things to spend my money on.

The only other thing I have to talk about is a comment that was sent to my blog on the "Fresno's Coronation" post. Someone calling themselves "ihateise" was very rude and said some mean things about the Imperial Court of Alameda. I just want to apologize to all of you for what that person said. If I can find a way to delete the comment, I will, but in the meantime, we have to remember, the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protecting free speech isn't there to protect the things we want to hear, it's there to protect the things we DON'T want to hear.