{"id":29,"date":"2007-08-08T07:27:28","date_gmt":"2007-08-08T14:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trampleasure.net\/lee\/?p=29"},"modified":"2007-08-10T00:08:54","modified_gmt":"2007-08-10T07:08:54","slug":"into-north-dakota","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trampleasure.net\/lee\/2007\/08\/into-north-dakota\/","title":{"rendered":"Into North Dakota"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I made it across the Mississippi today! Guess that means I&#8217;m in &#8220;the West.&#8221; I crossed the Big Muddy where it isn&#8217;t so big, nor so muddy, in Brainerd, MN. If memory serves me right, Brainerd is the city where Marge Gunderson is from in the movie <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0116282\/\" title=\"Movie's web site\">Fargo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Well, put a physics teacher behind the wheel of a car for hours a day, provide him with a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scangauge.com\/\" title=\"Scan Gauge web site\">Scan Gauge II<\/a>, and you&#8217;re bound to come up with statistics on gas mileage. Scan Gauge will tell you any engine error codes, but in addition it provides real-time gas mileage values. Driving my 1999 Saturn SW1 with the air conditioning on uses 17.2% more gas. Driving at 65 MPH compared to 55 MPH uses 22.3% more gas. Of course, this is where the challenge arises: Today I&#8217;m trying to cover 518 miles. If I drive 55 instead of 65, it will take me 1:27 longer (9:25 vs 7:58). What do I care more about, future generations having gas or my time? (Is that a loaded question, or what?) I&#8217;m glad I installed cruise control on the car, because this sure makes it easier to drive 55. I&#8217;ll probably set it around 57 today.<\/p>\n<p>Remember that the shape of the car determines its air resistance, which has a lot to do with the change in mileage at higher speeds. My wagon is fairly square in the back, which is not a very aerodynamic shape.<\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s experiment: Driving with the windows up vs driving with the windows down.<\/p>\n<p>One other thing I noticed about driving 55 vs 65 is how much faster 65 <em>feels. <\/em>55 feels like plodding along, where 65 feels zoomy. Of course, the speed limit on the Interstate I&#8217;m now driving on is 75!! It&#8217;s no wonder 55 feels safer when you compare stopping average stopping distances: 50: 175 feet; 60: 240; 70: 315. The change from 50 to 60 MPH creates a 37% increase in stopping distance!<\/p>\n<p>I got in another 400+ miles yesterday. Since today I&#8217;m going to try for 518, making it to Winnett, MT, I&#8217;ve got to get going quick.<\/p>\n<p>Lee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I made it across the Mississippi today! Guess that means I&#8217;m in &#8220;the West.&#8221; I crossed the Big Muddy where it isn&#8217;t so big, nor so muddy, in Brainerd, MN. If memory serves me right, Brainerd is the city where Marge Gunderson is from in the movie Fargo. Well, put a physics teacher behind the wheel of a car for&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ed-sci","category-su-2007"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trampleasure.net\/lee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trampleasure.net\/lee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trampleasure.net\/lee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trampleasure.net\/lee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trampleasure.net\/lee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/trampleasure.net\/lee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trampleasure.net\/lee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trampleasure.net\/lee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trampleasure.net\/lee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}