[gregsfc]

It was ideal for riding and getting great fuel economy from a weather standpoint, but I still can't figure out why some got such great numbers, including myself. There was really quite a bit of stop-and go through towns, rolling hills with consistent speeds when we were out in the open, which means, down the hills we were engine braking and not tucking (only Fred and myself tucked from what I saw, but were tucked less than 50% of the ride).

Yes the riders stay tight but no where near to the point of drafting or not having clean air. There was almost no wind, and it was round trip, so there could not have been one of those one-direction, tail wind anomalies, and some of the rides came in about what one would expect, e.g. Vic, and the Vespa scooter and the DR200 and the 500 Ascot. Everyone else though, did very, very well. Better than it seems for real-world conditions, but believe me, it was real world. Traffic sometimes kept us below the speed limit, but the slow goers that we got behind occasionally did that speed up and slow down variation thing, so I don't see how that put some of us over the top. If slow-fast-slow-fast was the key, then why didn't I do that well on charity rides that were actually slower than this ride.

The only difference for me than my back home trips was the tucking, but for Allan, Fred, Craig, and me, it had to be considerably better than normal, and I'm not sure why. When I got over to the hotel that morning, I was worried about it still being a little cool, because the Honda 670 Parallel does not do well mpg wise in cool weather. Fred says it's because it runs so lean and that Honda must not accounted for that for cold weather. Anyway, I pumped up my tire pressure to 40 and did a little ride before fueling up. I knew that some would be right on time and have warm engines at the start. I didn't want to be at a disadvantage, so I made sure mine was warm too. By the time we started though, it had warmed considerably.

I'm not sure what drove our numbers so high. Craig said it was the first time that he got 100 or better. I've found, by comparing my trip meter a couple of times versus a GPS, that my trip meter is about 2.3% optimistic, and so, using my own calculations, I came up with about 97 mpg for my ride, which is about 13 mpg better than my all-time high, and I'm ethanol free back home. But the leaders decided to go with a higher trip distance based on an average or something like that, and that drove my number, as well as everyone else's number a little higher, but is still close and still works for a comparison basis, however I'm not sure why they don't run a few GPSs and take the median of those instead of vehicle trip meters.

Professor Golf, who has a similar box as mine directly behind his seat on his Zero stated that he thought that my box helped my number, but I ride with this box back home. But maybe the box, in conjunction with tucking, is what put me so far out of my normal mpg.

A few minor issues I'd like to complain about in a respectful way. The stock diesel was DNF, but it still got listed up there with the contenders. I think that it should have been in the middle list with the nobodies like myself who couldn't hold the groceries. Sure, it was getting in the 130s when it went kaput, but it didn't finish, and that should be at least a big of a penalty as not being able to carry groceries in a specific way. It was stated before the competition that the only alternative-fuel vehicle was the stock diesel; nothing about the streamlined diesel, yet Fred was declared winner of the alternative-fuel class. Craig stated that the car would have finished 4th, but they count differently than I do. If you look at the list. Out of all the vehicles that could carry the groceries and that also finished, the car is 3rd best; not 4th.