Fuel for Thought

No Pot Of Gold

The weekend load started out pretty good when I topped off my tank with $3.45 diesel in Missouri. My parts of the storms on Sunday were bad from southern Illinois to central Indiana. The worst was near-zero visibility rain and high winds when I was caught in one storm cell. I followed most of it. The conditions must have been right, since I saw a couple storm chaser teams set up along the way. Highest winds from Weatherbug showed 30 mph winds with gusts over 50. I was hoping to catch a good tail wind, but all I managed was a strong crosswind during the west to east leg then everything switched to a crossing headwind when I turned north at Indianapolis.

From mile marker 15 to exit 42 on Interstate 70 in Indiana, I had a chance to study the end of rainbows. First a rainbow terminated on the shoulder of the road about thirty feet ahead of me—no pot of gold. Then a rainbow landed in a field and then onto the back of a flatbed trailer. Still no gold. Not even any leprechauns (I hope leprechauns aren’t a race—still, no offense intended). The last ten miles the rainbows kept sweeping across my windshield and ending on the passenger side of the van’s hood. One miniature rainbow even pprojected on my driver’s side window. All of that and not one pot of gold, so I’ll have to continue settling for the standard Load One rate.

This was my first trip out with the new gps. It’s nice to have routing that recognizes the new section of US Highway 24 between Fort Wayne and Toledo. It is disappointing to only have “less fuel” routing for the automobile profiles. It took a while to set the display layout to something I like. It was a little confusing until I figured out that the settings don’t carryover from car to RV to truck. My preferred layout is zoomed out view until the map rotates to 2-dimension view. At 13 miles from a turn, the map flips back to 3-D. On open roads with turns within 13 miles, the map flips back down to 2-D. On the right side of the screen I display “direction of travel,” ETA, “distance to arrival,” and speed limit. The speed limit is adjustable for when the stored information is inaccurate or not listed for a particular section of road.

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