Jun 18th, 2008
The 5% Plan: First Success!
In week three of my plan to cut my gasoline usage by 5%, I finally had success. As you may recall, in my first week of this attempt, I cut my mileage almost 5%, but my fuel usage went down only about 2.5%. In the second week, I was able to increase my miles per gallon, but I drove more miles and used more gas.
In week three, finally, some success–and the reason why I was successful included.
My total mileage for the week was considerably less than in previous weeks: just 217 miles. My calculations after filling up on Sunday morning estimated my miles per gallon at 24.98, and total gas used at 8.69 gallons, beating my 5% goal handily. In fact, I used 17.3% less gas than my baseline!
How did I do it? I continued what I was already doing–using the efficient routes to and from work I had already found, keeping my tires properly inflated, driving the speed limit–as well as what really had to be done to reduce use:
Drive less.
I designated one day this week as a “no drive” day; I cheated and drove, but only in my little town of Kane’ohe, because I needed to pick up some groceries that I couldn’t reasonably do with my bike or walking. However, that is about 30 miles less than driving into the main part of Honolulu.
The coming week will be challenging as far as continuing to meet this goal. I have a social event (yet another bon dance) this coming week that will have me driving more than my baseline; in fact, it’s likely to be farther than the week before. I have turned down a few other social events (graduation parties) due to the driving distances, so yes, I will admit that I’m having to make choices I may not be thrilled about to drive less, but the alternatives are in many ways worse.
We’ll review things next week to see how I do with trying to meet my 5% goal even though it’s a definite I’ll have to drive more than I did this week!
