With premium diesel selling for 1.35 a gallon, it would seem to be more economical to drive a diesel truck, rather than pamper oneself riding in a fully insulated, finely leathered, air suspension softened, luxury sport coupe. The fact that the Lincoln Mark VIII must run 93 octane premium gasoline at $1.71 a gallon is the price one pays for encasing ones.eh, backside, in fine leather.
So here we are, bouncing along I-20E at 70 MPH+ in Bad Leroy Blue, an 1987 F350, Crew Cab, turbo charged 6.9L oil burner, keeping up with all the other idiots going that fast or faster. Present in Leroy is the driver/mechanic/me; the wife in shot gun position and #2 daughter in the back seat. We are truck pooling to work.
"Why are we doing this to ourselves?" The wife yells at me.
"Because, dear, diesel cost much less than gasoline, that's why."
With an unidentified swear word, she plucks her purse from the air as it lifted from the floorboard and hits the roof. Once thing about Leroy, he ain't got the Lincoln suspension, so it rides kinda rough. She digs into the purse and extracts a calculator. She drops the purse back to the floor. Soon it is floating about 10 inches from the floorboard. The ten-inch height may be result of antigravity. Or it could be the complex product of the distance between the floorboard, the roof, the mass of the purse, minus a calculator and the acceleration imparted to the purse due to rough riding truck. I'll have to analyze that later. On thinking about it, it might be easier to explain mathematically, antigravity.
"What is your MPG in this shaking POS?" She yells.
"At this speed? About 13, I think." I yell back.
She keys number into the calculator. She is apparently having problems reading the answers on the small, rapidly shaking display. So she puts her shoes onto the dashboard and lays the calculator onto her thigh to prevent it from shaking so badly.
"You know, sitting like that is not very lady like" I yell at her.
She glares at me for a minute and went back to her calculations.
I sense something to my left. An 18 wheeled Freightliner was in the process of passing us in the hammer lane. I estimated his speed to be 85+. With the grace and majesty of the space shuttle positioning to dock with the space station, that 18 wheeler slowed down and positioned itself perfectly to allow the driver and the passenger to look out of their right window at my wife's braced position in the front seat of Leroy. I even saw little puffs of smoke from the tries as if they had to fine-tune their station keeping with thrusters. They activated their tractor beam and radar controlled autopilot. There was no way the driver could look out the right hand side window like that and still drive. To experiment I tapped the brake and stroked the accelerator. Nope, our relative positions didn't move an inch. I was held fast with their tractor beam. I tried to ignore them.
"We have to drive 76 miles every day. At 13 MPG, we will use 5.85 gallons. At $1.35 per gallon that is $7.89. Remember that." She pushed the memory plus key on the calculator so hard that it cause her panty hose to run. "Your hot rod Lincoln gets 22 MPG when we car pool. That means it uses-" she keys in numbers. "3.45 gallons. At $1.71 per gallon, that's $5.91. Ha!" she pushes the memory minus key on the calculator and another run forms. "That's $1.98 less per day to drive your Lincoln than it does for us to ride in this loud, ___ ____ stinky ____ _____ shaky ____ ____ _____ ___!"
The website censor will more than likely edit the words she actually shouted. But both the truck drivers and I got the message.
Tomorrow, I will drive my Lincoln and save $1.98 in fuel cost. Not counting the money saved for a hearing aid.
The truckers, who apparently heard my wife, or else were expert lip readers, were totally grossed out and embarrassed at the bad language. The driver removed his blushing face from the right window and enabled both afterburners. They were last seen heading into Fort Worth at 85+ MPH.
#2 daughter fainted dead away. She slept the rest of the way to work.
Jerry "HOTLNC" Heep