Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

Jeremy and I will be leaving tomorrow morning and heading off to Austin, TX from here on Long Island.

We retrieved one of Jeremy and Nicole's kayaks from their storage unit earlier, quite an interesting thing.

So Jeremy had his car checked out and fixed up yesterday, so we should be good to go for the cross-country drive.

From what Nicole says, we either need to leave at about 5 AM or 10:30 AM. Since it is unlikely we will be getting to be early tonight, it is highly unlikely that we will be leaving at 5 AM.

We are using the route that Google Maps has plotted out for us. (See below)



View Larger Map

Jeremy calculated it out and picked Knoxville, TN as our stopping point for Day 1. We will be crashing at the La Quinta there, not exactly sure where that is, but I am too lazy to look it up right now.

But below should be a map of Knoxville on the route.


View Larger Map

So it is going to be 1,788 miles from here to there.

Jeremy filled up his car with gas earlier today, I calculated the gas mileage of his car to be about 21.9 miles per gallon, with about a 15 gallon tank.

The average price of gas is $2.808 (thanks AAA).

So this means:

81.64 gallons of gas
6 stops for gas
$229.25 for gas

Now, the 21.9 miles per gallon that is from his driving around here, with tons of stop go traffic and lots of speeding up to get on the highway, so likely a very bad waste of gas.

I am guess, based upon my car, that his car will get a boost in gas mileage of about 25% when doing straight highway. That would mean that he would get about a 5.5 mileage boost, so let's just say 27.5 miles per gallon.

Now, there is a kayak strapped to the top of the car. I have no idea how much this will effect the gas mileage, but I know it will. Only the actual trip will tell.

However, based upon the 27.5 mpg that would mean:

65.01 gallons of gas
5 stops for gas
$182.55 for gas

I am not sure how many pictures or blogging we will be able to do from the road while we are on the trip, but I will try to keep some sort of digital record of our trip. I mean how often do you drive from NY to TX with your buddy.

Laterz

Well this is probably the last entry before we hit the road.

I will might try to do an entry when we stop for the night, we will see. Might be too groggy by then.

It is going to be a fun adventure.

Now, for anyone who knows me. You know that I a bit anal retentive.

Last year's trip i kept all the receipts that I incurred for gas along the way, but never did anything with them.

Not so this year. I plan to keep a running total of the cost of gas along the way. From my travels around texas I have noticed that the price of a bottle of Dasani varies by about .20 - $1.00. I think while I am at it I will keep a list of that.

Of course I am going to throw this into a database, but the real interesting bit will be if I can easily "Mash Up" the db with the google maps api, to allow for a visual of the trip and the prices along the way.

Well I best shutdown the puter and get to loading the car, or I very well could get left behind.

if you need to reach me you can use my Click-and-Connect button which I have routed to my cell phone.



laterz