The event is planned for Sunday, October 26 in the Berkshire Mountains in MA. This post was updated Oct 7, 2014, so anyone seeing this for the first time gets the whole story right here. There are some follow up posts in this thread as we discussed different ways to plan the meetup, but our settled plan is here in this first post.
A fuel economy challenge and meetup.
Meet: Sun Oct 26, 12 noon, at Pontoosuc Park on Hancock Road, Pittsfield, MA.
The weather will be a bit cool, but should not be wintry.
Here's the plan:
We've settled on driving this loop from the park, up Mount Graylock, and back to the park. It's just over 44 miles:
Mount Geylock MPG rally course - Pittsfield, MA
Thanks to Sheepdog44 for the route details!
It's a beautiful scenic route, and we should see some good fall foliage, while driving scenic country roads. There are some noteworthy grades, both up and down, but most of the route is either a gentle slope or level. The route link above has a nice elevation display and notes on grades.
The route passes a gas station just a mile or so after leaving the park, going North on Rte 7. We'll fill up there, and top up again at the end of the run (heading South at that time), to get our mpg for the run.
I envision lunch before the Mt Graylock run. Fellowship, and comparing mods, rides, and notes can be before and/or after the drive. It's a one-day event; back home the same day unless someone drives in from very far away.
We'll handicap the scoring, using EPA estimated combined city/highway mpg. Basically, like what EcoModder does, in calculating your improvement over the EPA estimates: Actual mpg / EPA Estimate mpg = your score.
Of course, we will have the raw mpg scores too, there's no way to ignore those numbers!
We have about a half dozen people already "in"; there's definitely room for more.