Thursday, March 5, 2009

Just can't get good gas mileage, can you?

Well, we *tried* to go the speed limit enroute from San Francisco to LA -- but that big, wide open Route 5 down the middle of the state frowns on you when you do that.

Doing 80 you feel like you're just cruising along slowly. Go 65 and you feel like you could open the door, step outside, walk around the car, and get back inside without having to hurry much.

So we did 70, and 75, and 80 (except inside LA, where you do whatever everybody else is doing, or risk your car!). 

And we got around 20mpg. Worse, to my surprise, than when we were coming in from Death Valley at 80. 

Baffling.

Thank goodness gasoline prices have dropped in half, or we'll never be able to drive around the country. Not that we'll be doing that this year (2009), until our savings have recovered. If they recover.

Close Call in the Fast Lane
As we were coming back, up Route 5, which is two lanes in each direction and mostly very straight and open, Bernice, driving, notices something up ahead, in the fast lane, where she is. She slows, suspiciously. And a good thing: It's a small car stopped in the fast lane.

You know how you react in a situation like that -- You want to veer over into the righthand lane, but you haven't been paying close attention the last 125 miles, so you don't know if somebody has crept up on you and is sitting in your blind spot. So you slow down, check your rearview mirror and your right side, tap the brakes repeatedly to warn people something is up, and finally move to the right. And hope you do it fast enough not to crash into the guy parked in the fast lane.

Bernice managed to do that, thank goodness, and as we flew by, we saw the driver get out of the car.

Note that the car didn't have any emergency lights on or anything. Why he hadn't managed to limp over to the left breakdown lane I can't imagine -- it's only two lanes, no matter how abruptly he lost power he would have been able to drift to the side one way or the other. And no emergency lights either! What on Earth was going on?

We woosh by and that remains a mystery forever for us now. I called 911 on my cell phone, and thank goodness I get them, even though we're in the middle of the California Central Valley. 911 Emergency wants to know the type and color of the car. Heh. Don't know -- it's the only car parked in the fast lane northbound just above whatever that last exit was (I knew then, I forget now). 

Wow. No fun. Bernice just kept saying, What if it had been at night? And he didn't have his lights on? I would have plowed right into him, at 80!

Not a fun experience!