Not Rich Enough to Be "Green"

-- by Micheal

From the media spin, the thing to do to save gas (and the planet, they tell me), is to downsize my vehicle or buy a hybrid. Greeaaat. This is like Marie Antoinette's dietary advice.

With a mortgage payment up by $500 a month (because the schools simply MUST have more and more and more money), and various other expenses dramatically increased. I don't have a spare $25,000 to buy a hybrid. What I've got (and is paid for, btw), is a Ford Ranger pickup. While I could save on gas if I rode a Vespa scooter, I would have a heck of a time hauling fire wood, or rock or bark mulch, etc. (which I do weekly) on a Vespa.

Even if someone out there comes up with the all-electric "green" pick-up, I don't have the abundant liquidity of the richer liberal set who preach the get-a-hybrid advice. I can't buy a different vehicle. No, I'm stuck with my Ranger. All I can do is tighten my gas consumption belt as tight as I can.

What do I do? (I know you didn't ask) For one, I don't drive make unnecessary trips. I make my daughter angry at me because I won't drive into town that day because she's out of her special shampoo. "It'll wait until tomorrow," I said, "when we'll be driving right by there." (I was right. The world did not end that day for lack of shampoo.)

What I have done is scour the web for gas saving techniques that the rest of us non-Antoinette folk can use. Some are age-old maxims, such as keeping your tire pressure up, and not carrying around unnecessary weight. Others are less obvious and take more constant effort. One of those is to NOT keep a constant speed on hilly roads. Keep a steady throttle position. Let your speed dwindle going up hill and let it increase going down hill -- not to a crawl going up or careening 40 mph over the speed limit on the downside. Safety and legality are still in play. But, don't obsessed with constant speed. Allow that gravity exists.

All these techniques are called hypermiling (hyper-mile-ing) -- trying to get the highest mileage you can. Some hypermile enthusiasts go to extremes, such as installing a full body pan under their car to improve it's aerodynamics, etc. (I can't afford that either. )

Me? I just do what I can because I can't afford Marie's cake.