BilikFamily.com

Jetta - Shortly after I started at ATI (now AMD), I started research on what I could drive to bring the costs of the hundred mile commute down. I was not the biggest fan of the Prius, but also the Prius tends to be optimized more towards city driving. I looked at the Civic hybrid but among internet forums would hear these guys brag about the mileage that they got without needing hybrid technology using their Volkwagen TDI engines.

This lead me to the website called TDI Club, where I learned a lot. Among their forum discussions would be an informal bragging rights group called "The 700 Club". These were members who managed to get over 700 miles on a single tank of gas. It's pretty much a stretch goal as the car has a 14 gallon tank. You have to exceed 50mpg for the whole tank with enough margin that you aren't just rolling into the station on vapors. I've come reasonably close before, but I tend to like to fillup around Milford. If I miss the stations near my house, my commute doesn't take me by many fuel stations, especially stations that offer diesel.

Since my last fillup, my driving has been predominantly to the office with almost none of the short trips that tend to offset the excellent performance I have driving to work. Since Saturday I decided to drive to the Merrimack YMCA, it gave me a nice medium length trip to get the trip odometer past 700 without concern that I'd be out in the middle of nowhere without a place to fuel up. So viola! I'll tank up again tomorrow morning. Click on the thumbnail to see the full dashboard.

Sunday - As has been the case for many days this past week or two, we woke up today with forecasts for thunderstorms. The morning was nice and cool as we went to Mass. Because of the rain forecast, we punted on going Ogunquit, Maine. After watching a TiVo'd version of men's gymnastics from last night, we head over to the pool to catch it right at its opening. It was a good thing we did because as we left the park, there were rumbles of thunder and the pool was closed because of the weather threat. Once we got home, I wanted to try the new Chinese buffet restaurant that opened down the street a few months ago. Unfortunately the boys weren't in the mood so I sent the Michelle and the girls and they brought me a meal home.

From there it was a pretty quiet late afternoon and early evening because of the rumbles of thunder all around us. We didn't eat dinner because we had such a late lunch. As it got to around 6pm Michelle and I were in the mood for a family dessert, perhaps pie. I did a search on Yelp.com which reminded me that the mom and pop diner called Gary's Harvest in Wilton served pie, as well as soft and hard ice cream. The boys like it there because they can eat at the counter and spin on their barstools. You like that kind of thing when you're seven. *grin* I won't itemize what everyone had, but I enjoyed a nice slice of apple pie ala mode. It was a nice way to wrap up the anniversary weekend.

Speaking of the boys, they got their Phineas and Ferb shirts. See them here. Hey, I didn't say it was easy to get them to smile...