now, this is smart

Behold, the smart car. Literally. The Smart gets 60 mpg with a 60-horse engine. This isn't the car for the Grand Prix or the inside lane on the Interstate, the Autobahn or the Autostrada, but for getting around town, this is the car I want next. Unfortunately, you can't get them in the U.S. This photo was taken in Florence, Italy, in 2002.

driving under the influence of gasoline

To paraphrase the colonel in Apocalypse Now, we Americans love the smell of gasoline in the morning. Even with gas prices hitting $3.00 per gallon, we will not change our driving habits. I drive to work and home daily on a stretch of Interstate highway, and I generally poke along at 60 to 65 m.p.h. We have three lanes each way which is good. I can stay in the middle lane while the drivers practicing for the Grand Prix in their Hummers, big SUVs and pick-up trucks fly by in the inside lane. Some of them talk on their cell phones, probably griping about the price of gasoline.

There's an easy way to fight high gasoline prices: Slow down. The people who run the Edmunds.com web site studied various techniques that are often suggested to improve your gas mileage. They found that some of the suggestions actually will make a difference: Accelerate moderately, not like a jack rabbit (improves mileage about 30 percent or better), drive the speed limit (saves about 12 percent on average), and use cruise control on the open road, if you have it (about 7 percent). That's about a 50 percent savings. That effectively cuts the price of gas in half. If I sold gas at $1.50/gallon, do you suppose a line would form at the pumps? Sheesh - there would be a riot.

A few years ago I spent a lot of time on the road between home and the east coast of Florida. I discovered a cheap (free) way to make a long trip at a slower speed not merely tolerable but fun. Go to the library and pick up a book on tape, or CD, and let somebody read to you while you drive. I would cross the peninsula on S.R. 70 and watch the cows fly by at 70 m.p.h. (OK, gas was cheaper then) while listening to the reader. At the moment I am listening to the unabridged edition of Dracula, the book, not a sound track from a movie. On the relatively short drive to work it makes me want to slow down so I can hear more of what's coming next.

The only disadvantage is that other drivers are beginning to look like vampires, but I know the fast ones prefer gasoline over blood.

bagpipes - a different perspective

why wait for trouble. . .

Air Force General Chuck Yaeger was the star of TV commercials for an auto parts store some years back. After extolling the virtues of replacing old auto parts, he looked the camera squarely in the eye and asked, "Why wait for trouble to come to you?"

I can tell you why some of us do it. Laziness. Inertia. Procrastination. "I'll get it checked out on Friday," you say, and a month of Fridays goes by.

See this tire? I've been driving on it, in this condition, for at least two months. It made a rumbling sound that was noticeably worse driving back from Jacksonville in February.

I drive the Interstate twice a day, five days a week. The noise got worse. I finally dropped by my garage earlier this week. "You will be shocked when you see it," the man said. I was shocked. The missing tread was on the "inside," hard to see if you don't have the right angle, impossible to see if you don't get down and look. There isn't much below that exposed belt except a thin layer of rubber and a whole lot of compressed air.

As the man said, it could have blown sitting still.

There's no doubt in my mind that God watches over me behind the wheel, and this is just one more example.

Moral of the story: If it sounds wrong, feels wrong, or smells wrong, it's wrong. Get it fixed. Do it now.