2008-09-17

Low Fuel?

I filled up before work this morning after a slow, fuel-conserving ride into work. My fuel light came on last night on the way home. It's designed to flash when there are four or five liters (a bit more than a gallon) left. The info center on the dash then begins a countdown of how many miles you have left before you run out of fuel. When I run on the freeway, I can really stretch out the fuel consumption. Pick the right gear and engine speed and it'll tell you it's getting 55+ m.p.g. Pick the wrong gear, or get caught in traffic, and the countdown drops a lot faster than the amount of miles you're actually traveling. The first time I saw the countdown in heavy traffic, I watched it drop 9 miles from the timer in only 2 miles traveled. This morning, I got stuck behing a line of cars (30 maybe) going through a four-way stop at a construction zone. All the stop & go and idling sucked everything out of the timer. By the time I got through, it said I was out of fuel. No miles left. Game over. And I was nowhere near a gas station as I got on the super-slab freeway. I took the last 14 miles to the station near my office at a very law abiding pace to get everything I could of any fuel I had left.

It took 7.015 gallons. The manual says it'll take 7.7 so apparently, I still had a ways to go. But from that 7.015 gallons, I got 305.3 miles! That works out to 43.52 miles per gallon. Cost wise, it worked out to $0.091 a mile. Nice!

I'm liking this new bike.

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