Cash for Clunkers

My new chair makes working at the computer so much more enjoyable! I don't whack my knees into the table every time I sit down or get up! And, I might be getting the hang of this blog thing, too. At least until school gets started up again. Today I found myself thinking, as I often do on my solitary drive to and from Seattle, and after one particular thought went through my mind, the next thing was, "that could be a blog idea!" ha! This is probably bad that I think of the blog when I'm not really thinking about it, but I'll just go with it for now. At least it's keeping me motivated to update!

At any rate, onto the blog idea. On my way to work this morning, I drove by the Roy Robinson dealership and oogled at the brand new Subaru Foresters. LOVE. My thoughts morphed into thinking about Cash for Clunkers and I smugly reminded myself about how I was immensely surprised yesterday that my 1999 Subaru Forester gets around 28mpg. According to various sources online, my car should get 21 mpg on the streets and 24 mpg on the highway. yeah, that's right, my car is 10 years old and gets better gas mileage than some brand new "fuel efficient" cars. My little car might scream 1999 with its awesome green color, but you can't beat the fact that it's a $7,000 car that is perfect for hauling things from dogs to camping gear to moving boxes to people, shopping bags (lots of those!) and more AND gets great fuel efficiency.

AND, I tend to drive about 70mph on the freeway, which is supposed to be worse for fuel efficiency. Imagine what it would be if I went 60mph. Except that will never happen because I can't bear to go 60. It feels soooooo slooooow.

The quest to discover what my car's mpg average is began when Johnny announced that after months of keeping track of his mpg, his 1995 Honda Accord is consistently getting 32 mpg! Amazing! That car is 14 years old and has 163,760 miles! Knowing that my car would get worse gas mileage, I nonetheless decided to try it out for myself and see what it was getting. I feared it would be 21 or less, but after a couple tests 28 mpg is the magic number! I'm so impressed with my little car all over again. And I bet it would get better gas mileage if I changed the oil, which is quite overdue! So, considering that I don't think either of our cars qualify for Cash for Clunkers, I don't think we could really ask for a pair of better cars!

Now I am going to play frisbee with Harley. And by "playing frisbee with Harley" I mean that I throw the frisbee while encouraging him to chase it, he watches it sail away, and I go get it, and the process repeats. He thinks it's really fun.

want to figure out your car's mpg? This is what you do:

1. Fill your tank.
2. Reset the trip odometer.
3. Drive until it is time to refill again.
4. Look on the fuel pump or on your receipt to see how many gallons it took to fill up your car. Write this number down.
5. Look at your trip odometer to see how many miles you drove.
6. Take the miles driven and divide it by the gallons used. This number will by your MPG for that tank.
7. Make sure to reset the trip odometer again to calculate the next tank and compare.