Coasting through the gas-price spike
2 + 2 = 4, and gas prices hit $2.20 this weekend in the Twin Cities.
Both are as obvious as three fingers slammed in a car door, but only one doesn\’t add up. And only one is making me feel like, well, slamming my fingers in a car door.
It’s the gas prices, the arbiter of all things automotive, the sword by which we live and die.
My trusty Toyota Tercel usually gets around 30 miles to the gallon. The gallon being of refined petroleum; the miles being air-conditioned-less.
But I’m not complaining. My car is four cylinders of pure driving excitement, especially when you get up to around 70 mph, and it starts quaking like a Slinky.
Still, I started a new job a few weeks ago, and my commute is up to 30 minutes. That’s about 15 miles, and most of the drive is on the freeway, at quaking speeds.
So I’m driving about 30 miles a day, not counting wherever I go after work. My gas tank, bless its little heart, only holds about 10 gallons – there are SUVs out there that carry more windshield-wiper fluid than that.
Oh, how I wish my car ran on windshield-wiper fluid. Or, barring that, that I at least had some windshield wiper fluid.
Because at the rate I’ve been going through gas, I can’t afford any. Every week I’m putting a steak dinner’s worth of gas into my car, and every week it asks for more. At the end of the month, as you can probably calculate, that leaves me very, very lacking in the steak department.
So I’ve resolved to increase my gas mileage. My goal is 100 miles to the gallon. It will take some practice – it’s an art, after all – but I think I can do it. And I’ve already made some progress.
For starters, I try to be in neutral as much as possible. I drive a manual transmission, so the opportunities for coasting are frequent. Any downward slope or flat stretch of road is reason to shift. Even a subtle wind at my back sends the clutch down.
And then I glide, basking in the glory of momentum, saying to my car, “We’re saving gas! We’re saving gas!”
I loathe the accelerator. When I must, I poke at it with the tip of foot, as if it were a dead animal. When I have no option but to climb a hill, I grudgingly depress the gas pedal. “We are wasting gas,” I say to the car. “Sweet mercy, we are WASTING GAS!”
It’s gotten so bad that I’m starting to dislike using any of the pedals. Just the other night I caught myself coasting down a big hill, behind a city bus. As it slowed to pick up passengers, I sort of panicked. I knew I had to hit the brakes, but as I did, I caught myself thinking, “Uh-oh, don’t touch the pedals…”
Using the brakes doesn’t directly deplete your gas supply, but it does decrease your speed. And isn’t there a universal law that holds: what slows down must speed up, and what speeds up must use gas?
My real objective here is to break the laws of physics and economics (as opposed to the speed limit). I want something for nothing. I want to drive to work every day and never see the little white needle hang its head.
I know I can’t live this way; none of us can, it’s just too much work. But it’s going to take a while for me to get used to paying over $2 for gas, and until I do, I’m going to keep practicing. So if you see me crawling along I-94 at 8 mph, I’m either on the end of a really good coast, or I’m out of gas.
If it’s the former, give me a honk and a wave; I’ll need all the support I can get.
If it’s the latter, and you’re feeling charitable, do me a favor. Drop off a can of gas for me. Or at least toss a bottle of wiper fluid out the window.