I'd been wanting to check the fuel efficiency of my '99 Honda Civic for some time now. I'm not sure i ever have checked it, but the EPA rates it for 29 City/35 Highway. (You can check your car's efficiency on www.edmunds.com.)

I suspected it might get quite a bit less than the EPA estimates becus when i bought my kayak 3 years ago, i had a kayak rack mounted on the roof of the car, so there's probably considerable wind drag. And are my car tires properly inflated? I don't really know; it's not something i check regularly.

My Honda model is one most people have never heard of. It's not an EX, DX or LX. It's an HX. What makes it unique is the CVT, or "Continuously Variable Transmission." As explained in the sales literature this transmission works a little differently and is supposed to eke out a little more fuel efficiency. That's the extent of my knowledge on fuel efficiency! I believe it's the only CVT in the whole Honda lineup, but CVT does exist in other vehicles.

The car has an automatic transmission, BTW.

So I made note of the odometer reading when i filled up 13 days prior, and then again this weekend. I drove a total of 390 miles during this interval. Most of that is my RT 47.5 mile commute. I divided 390 by the number of gallons on the 2nd refill.

I was astonished to see that i'm getting a whopping 39.4 miles to the gallon! To what do i attribute beating the EPA estimate by 4 miles to the gallon?

I am a master of fuel-efficient driving techniques. I've driven this way for years. Here's what I do:

First of all, my entire commute is done on back roads. The county i live in is largely affluent residential and there just aren't any major north/south highways; the only alternative to the back roads if you're traveling north/south is one mostly 2-lane highway that is heavily commercial with much traffic as they are widening and adding lanes in certain areas, but it's a patchwork effort. Most commuters i know avoid this highway like the plague becus it is thoroughly congested, and in fact mile-wise, it adds 8 miles to my drive. In any case, the back roads are very scenic and you pass by some lovely reservoirs.

On these back roads, the fastest you can drive is 50 or 55 mph tops. The opportunity to drive that fast only occurs in 2 spots, if you're lucky enough not to be behind a slow driver and you don't mind risking a speeding ticket.

(If i do have to drive on the highway, i try not to exceed 60 mph, but that's not always possible with other impatient drivers, even in the slow lane.)

My average commute speed is 45 mph. Now i had thought that the optimum driving speed was about 50 mph, but maaybe 45 mph is in the sweet spot as well.

I try to drive at a consistent speed and, importantly, leave enough room between me and the car ahead of me so that if the other driver brakes for any reason, it may be possible for me to simply take my foot off the gas; if i do brake, it's gentle and gradual. So no tailgating and no hard braking!

When starting off from a stop sign or traffic light, i accelerate gradually.

Basically, i treat my car as if it were a slow-moving senior who needds extra time to get where they're going, and i don't push it to do spectacular feats. (Actually, its 4 cylinders never really made it s a speed demon, so that's just as well.)

I plan to continue taking odometer readings to make sure this check wasn't a fluke or error, but i'm pretty sure it's not.

I'm heading down to visit dad mid-week this week, and i've been wondering if i can maintain 55 to 60 mph the whole way down. (It's a 3-hour drive.) What usually happens is that i start off driving very well, but in the last hour i get impatient and start increasing my speed. But i would like to see how adding significant highway driving into the mix affects the mileage if i drive at just 55 to 60. Will doing so keep my miles per gallon up or will the higher speeds be a drag on my fuel efficiency? We'll find out!

(I can't tell you how many times, btw, i've regretted the HX doesn't come with cruise control...it would make it so much easier to maintain a consistent speed on the highway.)

This has been a 3-day weekend for me. I haven't done a whole heck of a lot. A fair amount of reading on the porch, lawn mowing, sweeping the patio, weeding the driveway, general tidying up inside and preparing stuff i gotta do before my 3 day trip south. Oh, yes, i did finally make it to the Japanese stroll garden. It was quite small, but a gem.







On the agenda then is a kayak trip with dad, blueberry picking (NJ is one of the biggest blueberry producers in the country) and maybe a trip to the jeweler to appraise a large blue stone in a ring my grandmother gave me years ago.

I've finished my 2nd week on my herbal protocol for the Lyme disease. My neurologist had said, after the spinal tap was normal, let's wait 2 weeks, then let me know how you're doing. The 2 weeks isn't up yet. I've had daily headaches except for a 1-week period just after the spinal tap, and then the past 2 days and so far today i've had no headaches. I'm crossing my fingers becus this has been a long, frustrating thing to deal with and no clearcut answers from the doctors.

Getting back to fuel economy, i'm starting to get into the habit of just clocking my mileage when i go just about anywhere. Becus for example, i was never really sure whether it paid for me to say, stop at the cheapest grocery store on my way home from work, since doing so required me to take that dreaded congested highway home, which i knew added 8 miles to my drive. But when i got around to checking the mileage in going to that supermarket from my home on a weekened, it was quite obvious that even with the extra 8 miles it still was quicker stopping there coming home from work. As i recall, making a separate trip from home was around 16 miles or more, becus of course, it was going there AND coming back. So i'll try not to do that anymore unless i have other errands in that area.

I had a window company out here on Friday to measure and estimate installation of a replacement window in my downstairs bathroom. I put in a nice new light fixture a while back, and now i'm stripping the wallpaper, which was old, curling and even had mold on it. This is the time to replace that window, before i re-wallpaper. The mold problem is something i definitely want to address. The reason for that, i'm sure, is that there's no ventilation in that bathroom. It has no bath, but the window that's in there now is the only one remaining in the house that wasn't replaced with Andersen windows. It's a pain to open, so i usually don't bother, but being able to easily open it would improve the circulation issues. It opens onto my screened porch, so i'm having the lower half of the replacement double-hung window "frosted." Well, that's not the term they use, but i think you know what i mean, the glass is a pebbly texture so you can't see in, for privacy purposes. I asked the guy who was here if the frosting looked nice, and he said "no." However, my plan is not to have curtains on the window so it lets natural light in there, which is needed. I suppose i could save money if i had a curtain, but i'd rather not.

The prices for Andersen + installation were just too much, so i opted for another brand whose name escapes me now. However, what sold me is that the window is Energy Star-rated, plus there's no sales tax, so that saves me 6%. The rebates are no longer in effect.

This, I hope, will be my final home improvement/major expense for the year. Thanks to the added income of my new job, i have done a number of things to the house i'd wanted to do, as well as a few splurges not on the list, but which beautify....the new kitchen faucet, an expanded brick patio out back, repair of the front stoop step.

One really big expense that will need to be addressed at some point is the driveway. It's pretty long, 150 feet, i think, and it widens considerable at the top so there's a whole extra parking space to the left of garage. The asphalt is in rough shape and getting worse each year. Still no potholes per say, but major crevices with weedsd growing in them.

Anything petroleum-based is going to be super-pricey now, and i remember more than 5 years ago i got an estimate and at that time it was around $6,000. My plan to at least partially control costs is as follows: The bottom half of the driveway is on an incline; ;the top half is level. So i would repave the bottom half, then transition with a 3 foot wide Belgian blog apron, then have the level part at the top all gravel, or perhaps something nicer than sharp-edged gravel like round stone. I know a lot of people don't like stone becus it seems to migrate into the lawn, but in my case that wouldn't be a problem becus the gravel would be completely contained by stone walls and the side of my garage wall. I do foresee that keeping falling leaves off it will be a bit of a problem, as will snowblowing with my new snowblower, however, i think if i learn to hold the snowblower at a certain angle, it won't pull up debris at such a low level. And despite the issue with fallen leaves/debris, i still think the gravel is worth it in terms of appearance; i never liked the look of pavement on such a large surface, and i imagine drainage improves as well with gravel.