The other day, we took one of our cars in for repairs in the morning (an aside: upsell drives me nuts. Seriously, just fix my brakes. Don’t try to sell me the overhaulin’ twin-cam dual overhead shift on the fly transmission flushing filter replacement “manager’s special.”) and when we returned to pick it up that same afternoon the price at the local gas station had gone up over five cents a gallon.

Ugh.

So, given skyrocketing fuel prices (and our sadly static income), I decided to follow DJ Chuang’s advice and drive slower in order to conserve gas. People here in SD drive fast. From my experience, most drivers on the freeways are driving between 70 and 80 mph. Given my chronic tardiness, and my bionic lead foot, I tended to be towards the higher end of that spectrum.

For the last week I have been driving about 65 mph and, wonder of wonders, it really does conserve gas. If being tailgated even though I’m driving in the far right lane doesn’t kill me first, I think we could stand to save over $400 a year at this rate. Crazy, just crazy. Plus, beating up on my car a little less should make it less angry with me.

* * * * *

Can someone tell me why the gas mileage on the 1984 Honda Civic (51 mpg city/67 mpg highway) utterly crushes the 2008 Toyota Prius (48/45)? How does that make any sense at all? It’s hard not to believe there’s some sort of conspiracy afoot when dealing with those kinds of numbers.

Is there some correlation between the amazing gas mileage of the ’84 Civic to the magical year of the Tigers’ last World Series victory?