On Wednesday I stopped by the monthly Corvallis Bike Night at the downtown American Dream Pizza. This was the first time I was able to go to one of these events. It is unfortunate that they are always on Wednesdays when I have meetings. Total distance of this ride was just under 10 miles.
My bike was pretty cold-blooded at first but after blowing the cobwebs off it did okay. I will have to take it on a longer ride soon to see if it gets happier once it’s warmed up properly.
I bought gas on the ride. 2.69 gallons. The bike’s fuel gauge indicated empty but with 4 or 4.5 gallons total in a tank that means I could have gone another 50 or more miles before the situation got critical. Nice to know I have that sort of margin. My gas mileage on my first tank of regular was 48.7 mpg. I went 131 miles on the tank. The price difference of 20 cents per gallon between premium and regular means that I ended up paying slightly MORE per mile using regular. Using premium I was averaging $0.05733 per mile while using regular I got $0.05827 per mile. However the last tank of regular included about 20 minutes of idling in traffic. I will run another tank or two of regular to see how it continues to perform. If it keeps being marginally less economical to use regular, I will try out plus. If that is still less economic, I will switch back to premium.