MPG

I drive a lot for work. My commute is a good 22 miles, and then I travel around to different sites during my workday. So with gas prices soaring, my car's MPG is a big deal (I know the topic of gas prices is becoming cliche, but please bear with me).

In fact, I calculate my latest gas mileage number every time I fill up. As a kid, I remember my grandpa doing that. He kept a little notebook above the sun visor of his 1970 Chevy and would jot down his mileage when he filled up. I never understood why; I guess I just though it was something all grandparents did. My grandpa loved statistics and figures. He was always rattling off numbers like the inches of rain we got last year, the distance between the rows of corn in his garden, and how many minutes are needed for an effective nap.

Yet here I am in my mid-20s, tracking my gas mileage like it's going out of style. If my MPG is down a little, I start to think up all sorts of reasons for the drop in efficiency. Did I hit an unusually large amount of bugs on the freeway? Did I put a new box of mints in my car? Is there a leaf stuck under my windshield wiper, causing drag?

Yes, these days I'm doing everything I can to keep my car's MPG optimal. The psi in my tires is right on the money, and I'm seeing all sorts of "birds" by driving 5 MPH under the speed limit. I've also stripped my car of any unnecessary weight (e.g., jumper cables, insurance and registration forms, my spare tire).

A few days ago I was reading an article about ways to improve your car's efficiency. One suggestion was to replace the air filter. The article guaranteed it was a do-it-your-selfer, so I stopped by Checker on my way home from work. I walked in the store and started scanning the isles for air filters.

"Can I help you find anything?" the clerk asked. "Yeah, I need to replace the air filter on my '97 Accord." He then proceeded to embarrass me with all sorts of ridiculous questions:

"Is your Accord a DX, LX, or EX?"

"I don't know, it's um, white."

"Is it a 2.2 liter, or a 2.7 liter?"

"Um, probably somewhere in between."

He walked down one of the isles, grabbed something off the shelf, and told me it was what I needed. For all I knew, it could have been a twenty-dollar air freshener.

Installing my new air filter turned out to be the quickest fix I've ever made on my car. I only had to go back in the house once for another otter pop, plus another three times for the correct size of socket wrench. Luckily, there's only three flights of stairs separating my parking space from our third-story condo.

Where I'm from, a man is measured by his ability to look at a bolt and gauge it's size. "Yeah, that's a five-eights incher," I initially thought. But after three trips up and down the stairs, I was loosening the bolt with a three-eights inch socket.

Sometimes just two-eights of an inch separates you from home-town manhood and better gas mileage.