Wayne's Whirled

This is the chorizo at the Ranch Market at 16th Street and Roosevelt:

I don’t want to see that they make with bull testicles.

You know the kind of place: the table is still sticky after it is washed, the condiment bottles have petrified ketchup/mustard on them and the top of the salt and peppers shakers are dented?  I’m okay with all that, but why on TOP of all that do I always get a fork that I have to perform some sort of Uri Geller manipulation on before it can actually be considered to be useful as an eating utensil?

Okay, most people are probably too young to remember the great truckin’ and CB radio era in the late 1970’s, but that was the joke in the subject line.  Check it out:

Unlike the Scottsdale-ians who give lip service to being green while driving around in their Land Rovers, we LIVE IT in downtown Phoenix.

Pretty sad when the landlord can’t the get repairs made (changing the water) and has to move you into temporary housing (mixing bowl) so you don’t die (of algae poisoning).  Sherry’s fish does nothing but stare at his temporarily condemned home:

Okay, this sucks.

Nothing like when a marginally-maintained lawnmower is fired up for its first work of the morning.  Why are there no emissions requirements on these things, and why the HELL are leaf blowers even ALLOWED in this town???  Are there lots of leaves?  All they do is create dust, pollution and noise and just move the crap to your neighbors yard, who just blows it back unto yours when it is his turn…

Considering a family member cratered my credit score because I co-signed for a lousy $4000 car loan as was never notified when the payments were not kept up, it didn’t look too bad when I checked it recently.  Without that crap it would have been 800 easy, but right now I am only in the 72nd percentile.  No more money to family members.

Wouldn’t we all love to know how they calculate this stuff?

I don’t know who is familiar with hypermiling, but I have been trying it lately.  It basically consists of varying your driving characteristics to try to get better mileage from your normal car; the guy who runs the site linked to above gets 50mpg with a regular Honda Accord, though he is a bit of a nut who takes corners full speed (braking wastes kinetic energy!) and who shuts his car completely OFF when he wants to coast for a while.

I don’t take it THAT seriously, but I have been more aware of trying to time lights so I don’t have to stop and start, shifting into neutral and coasting when appropriate and accelerating more slowly when driving in town (he suggests slowly accelerating to 25MPH and then enabling the cruise control and accelerating using the cruise “increase speed” button which accelerates in small increments.  Here are some results, keeping in mind that I can normally get over 30mpg on the highway but overall was averaging 19mpg between highway and city:

TWENTY NINE miles per gallon in my 2007 Acura TL with a 258-HP V6 engine?  Not bad!  This tank DID have a lot of highway driving, but my overall average gas been between 25 and 26 mpg for the last thousand miles, which represents over a 25% INCREASE by driving technique alone.

Who needs a Prius?  And what are they going to do with all those used up batteries?