Originally Posted by dmafanp
Summer of 2013...
Skates, rollerblades, zoom shoes, whatever you call them each individual has their own thoughts and perception of what skating is. We do stunts on rollerblades. Every Year there is a skate park battle called The POPularity Contest, the formatt is who ever can pull off the most astonishing tricks and has the presence of being the most popular skater wins 1st. POP was celebrating its 10th year running in the beautifull city of Vancouver BC. My Friend Ryan Roux and I are both extreme skaters, and we are juiced on attending this event. Coming from Calgary Ab there are 3 ways of crossing the praries to the Pacific. Drive, fly or take the train. The train took to long, we had to manage our time and flying was very expensive for a last minute decision, so driving was our only option, which happened to be my 2011 Volkswagen Jetta 2.0L Gas. The EPA rating for my car is 25MPG or 9.4LHK and my tank holds 14 Gallons,The trip according to googlemaps is exactly 969km. we will need 24.08Gallons of gas to cover this distance, with fuel averaging 5$ a gallon we will need $120.40 to go one way. Being new to the hypermiling game i thought i could make it on one tank of fuel or $60! WOW! what a dream.
Equiped with a Scanguage fuel economy reader, and 42 psi in all the tires, we were off on our adventure with 12 hours of day light to get to vancouver.
The morning we left the Temp was +20 deg celcius but that quickly dropped in the mountains to 4 Deg celcius, along with high altitude i wasent sure if i could make it on one tank, i was getting scared i was maintaining 40 MPG AVG and i needed a steady 43 MPG AVG to make the one tank wonder! On our 3rd hour in we stopped to use the necessities and glared at the beauty of the canadian rockies, we chatted with european travelers who were hiking, then decided to jet. Little did we know the next 10 minutes of our drive was all down hill through the mountains. Note, my vehicle already being at optimum running temp, my scan gauge lit up with a bursting 80 MPG AVG i though maby its possible just maby and held on to my hopes. We Stopped in Penticton BC to skate the cement park which was also located on the beach for some post session bronzing and swimming. Were off, we filled up at shell i did some calculations we drove 670 km on 36.6L of fuel or on other words 43.1MPG My goal is in site but we still had 299 km to go and 18.4 litres to do it in. We missioned it 8 more hours to Hope BC 10 km from vancouver where i checked my 24 hour fuel usage on my scanguage and it registered as 15.3 gallons over 1048km, we had made a few stops at the parks and beaches and took some detours adding to the journey, we made it to my good friend Brian Raymond's appartment where he greeted us with cold beer and goodies. Now the moment of truth, i put down my cold one, and I calculated my mpg, it was 42.96mpg! I couldent believe it! we made it to van on one tank, i will round .4 up anyday! Oh by the way Ryan Roux ended up taking 1ST at the 10th annual Popularity contest in his humble fashion just adding excitement and celebration to the whole 5 day outing. SPECIAL THANKS, Razors, Shop-Task, IDFA, VW,
Daniel Davidson-Pilon
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