Travel Options

Before taking off on my last trip south to see my honey, a friend of mine mentioned that I should look into renting a car rather than drive my 6400 lb Avalanche.

Looked on line at Enterprise and they are running a 4 day special with unlimited miles.

Did some quick math and figured that it would be $60 more renting a car, but figured out that it would be worth it to keep the miles off of the truck.

Went there wanting to rent a full sized car but the lady there suggested this stylish sports mid sized thing since it was the only one that has cruise control (strange).

Stopped in Hannibal and got fuel but didn't pay attention to amount or price. First stop for fuel was in Ft. Campbell. Was thinking this is where I normally stop in the truck and was thinking that the fuel mileage was going to be the same as the Avalanche. Much to my surprise this mid-sized beauty only held 10.001 gallons. Quick math also told me that 365 miles into 10 gallons was 36.5 miles a gallon !!! This is double what the Chevy is getting. Sweet!

After I returned, I collected all my reciepts and took the car back and tallied up the total costs. The Avalanche used right at 80 gallons on a round trip. Gas spent on the rental was 41.2 gallons. Rental car costs were 101.17 for the weekend so the total difference between rental cost and fuel vs, the fuel alone on the truckster was $2.07 higher renting.

Got the real expence of driving a suv from this site, so the real expense of driving the truck jumps up with mait. and tires cost added another $83.20 onto the truckster total which makes it saving me some $85 dollars renting.

Sweet!

Blog Delay

Haven't been blogging lately because:

Been busy with summer stuff.

1. Old computer died.

Forgot password to blogger.

Mainly the last one.....

Garden Science Project

Seen that "upside down" tomato plant thing at the store and decided to do my own version. Used 2 five gallon buckets, one blue, one black. Know for a fact that tomato plant like the warmer soil so did a little experiment on my own. Used 4 of the same tomatoes from the same flat to make the results even.

Planted one in the bottom of each bucket and one in the top. Have watered and fertilized them at the same time and the same amount.

As you can see the results are somewhat skewed at the time.

Both of the plants in the bottom of the bucket are stunted on growth side of things. The one in the black bucket top has the most growth, but both the bottom one in each bucket both have a 2" green tomato on them.

Road Rage - Illinois Version II

First Pic is a Road Kill semi that mistakenly

read the road construction speed limit as 25

rather than 45. Added 15 min to the GPS

arrivial time.

Pic #2 here is "Scooter" . He was on a what I think was a 125 cycle doing 70 down the left hand lane from Ft. Campbell to all the way to the Georgia border. He spent 80% of his time in the left hand lane doing 70 MPH. Bike would not do anything over that.

Pic #3 is just some random dumbass that was crusing in the left hand lane that I passed on the right because he was doing 68 MPH.

Pic #4 is a pack of pokeys I got behind, as you can see the time stamp at 9:22 am. Notice the SUV in the lead on the LEFT who was going 70.0001 MPH who thought he deserved to drive in the left hand lane.

Pic #5 shows more or less the same cars 22 min later all following the same person.

Solar Pool Heat

Bought this on Ebay about 2 years ago. It's 2 panels 2' x 20' I mounted back to back on top of the pool fence. Have then titled about 45 degrees to the south. Panels are made of black PVC tubing that has multiple tubes running end to end. The water enters in the top, runs down the length of the panel and back again. Hooks up between the filter outfeed and pool inlet. This one came with a diverter valve that limits the flow thru the panels. Idea flow is 12 - 15 gpm.

Pool temperature, on a bright sunny day, raises about 1 degree an hour. The pool is 20' x 40' so it holds about 20,000 gallons of water. Before I installed this about the same sunny conditions, it would raise only a half degree and hour. Nice thing that I have also tried that if the pool temps get too high, you can run the filter and panels at night and it will act as a radiator and cool the pool off a few degrees.

For the first year I just had them laying out on the deck but decided last year that they were worth keeping. Have hard piped them up for easy removal during winter months.