Getting ready for a hypermiling journey in my Civic
 

A friend and I are going to be traveling 260 miles on Wednesday starting at about 4PM. We are going to try to hypermile the best we can. The engine will be on when the car is in motion, but other than that, I want to try to get the best FE I can (I think I can break 45MPG for the trip if I do this right). 2008 Honda Civic Sedan Manual Transmission.

Right now my tires are just under the sidewall max. I'll inflate them back up to that when I get there for the return trip, but we'll have to bear with that on the trip down. I was looking for some last-minute advice and tips. Two main questions.

Optimal speed. When I'm on a level road, I plan on setting cruise control to something. I don't know if that should be 55MPH or 53MPH or what. I know the best way to find out is to experiment with FE feedback equipment, but I don't have that yet. Any suggestions?

Dealing with road rage. On my most recent trip there and back again, I got 41-42MPG driving with a max speed of 65MPH. In areas of speed limit 70, I'm going to be 15MPH or more under the speed limit. There should be very low traffic density, but what should I do if someone starts being a total jackass? Just ignore them and keep on? Slow down? Speed up? I think a lot of you have experience with this issue.

Other techniques will include driving with load so I will slow down on uphills, and I will shift into neutral on downhills as often as I can. I will minimize brake usage and when I brake, I will be in gear with injector cutoff engaged, and I will brake gradually.

Actually I have a bonus question about accelerating. My engine has a "performance" set of cams and an "efficiency" set of cams. I don't actually understand it, but it involves something about power loss when the throttle is really low (like cruising 55 on a level road) in traditional throttle arrangements. I am really not sure. But I have heard people call it "1.5L mode" on the Internet. Do you think there's a way to stay in that mode during acceleration? Apparently it kicks in in a similar way to Lean Burn, so any advice pertinent to Lean Burn would also apply here.

Thank you all so much for the great FE/modding community here and any and all help you can offer me.