Hyper!

Well, I'm two kinds of hyper today. I had a latte on an empty stomach, so I have caffeine jitters, plus Tony and I tried our hand at hypermiling today. I know, I have to slow down this crazy rock-star life I'm leading before I burn out!

For those of you who don't know, hypermiling is driving in a very specific way to get huge mpg numbers out of regular cars. I learned about it from a Washington Post article many years ago and had never really tried it. For one, you have to drive much more slowly than I normally do - hypermilers recommend staying around 40 miles per hour. I like to drive about 90. For another, you have to accelerate very slowly after braking and Tony likes to red-line the throttle every time. He would hit third gear before he got out of the driveway if I let him.

The hypermiling started innocently enough. We filled up a bone-dry tank at the local Kroger (we got 10 cents off a gallon, in case anyone cares), which is about three miles from our house. Between there and here, we hit four stoplights and some serious hills, all of which are anathema to hypermilers the world over. Any time you have to stop or step on the accelerator, the terrorists win. When we started out from the first stoplight, I reset the miles per gallon counter on the car - the Mini has real-time digital information available. When I saw that we were starting at 66 miles per gallon, I challenged Tony to get to the house with the counter above 50 mpg, a comfortable 16 mile per gallon cushion.

And so it began. Ten tension-filled minutes of Tony driving s-l-o-w-l-y along the highway, cars piling up behind us as we pretended to sight-see. (Who gets mad at tourists?) Every light was against us, though, forcing complete braking and accelerating from a dead stop. We watched the counter slip slowly below 60, then lower, finally dipping below 50 in front of the high school that is still a good mile and a half from our house. Desperation set in and the flop-sweat started. We revised the bet. I told Tony that 40 miles per gallon was still admirable and well above the 26 city we were used to getting.

We shifted to and from neutral, willing the car up steep hills and free-wheeling down the other side, only to inch up the next one. As we finally coasted into the entrance of our neighborhood, we were sitting pretty at 46 mpg. The last hill is a doozy, though, and we nearly stalled in front of a neighbor's house. With the a/c off, and windows down, we cheered the Mini down that final hill, only to roll into the driveway at 43 mpg.

When we pulled into the garage, Tony summed it up quite neatly. "Well, at least that killed the last 10 minutes."

God, we're bored.