Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Beware the Hypermiling Feline...

Well, I was just so appalled after reading that Melanie at Bean Sprouts doesn't love her dog enough to give him bottled water that I ran out and bought Blicky a Hummer. We chose the H3 Alpha. Now I was surprised to find that they were even still available. Apparently the liberal media is still convincing people to consume less gas.

So I was finally able to find one and it only cost 40,000 USD. But you get so much! It is 73 inches tall and 6000 pounds. You can haul 1500 pounds of groceries in it and when you peel out of the parking lot, you can go from 0 to 60 mph in 8 seconds. I think it's the perfect vehicle for your pet -- especially if he has a defense contract and needs to haul around some heavy and dangerous raw materials. 

It is such an environmentally friendly car too. According to their Web site it's 85% recyclable. That means if gas goes too high or polar bears take up residence in your garage, you can just drive it to the recycling side of your local dump. The only little snag is that gas is a bit on the pricey side: 13 mpg. But that's OK. We've come up with a new solution: hypermiling. Blicky averages an impressive 20 miles per gallon now, but he often comes home with small animals, various assortments of shrubbery and slower-moving humans stuck in the front grill of the H3 and his kittens all have whiplash and contusions from his whipping around corners.

We prefer a more measured approach:
Were starting to use a bike when possible (tough with car seats).
We try to plan driving carefully and get errands done all on the same day.
We've seen a small increase in our mileage by coasting in neutral at times, accelerating slowly and not braking too often.
We buy local produce either at farm stands and farmers markets or (as we're attempting this year) growing our own.
We're even thinking or buying a more fuel efficient car for our pet next time.

Have any other tips (serious or otherwise) for saving gas? Feel free to email BlickyKitty@comcast.net or leave a comment.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Aren't Blicky's legs a bit too short to reach the pedals? Or does he have kittens on an elaborate string-pulley system??

Loving the post, btw!

Melanie Rimmer said...

People write "lol" when they didn't even break a smile, "rofl" when they did break a smile, and "roflmao" only ever in sarcasm at something that's really not funny at all. What do I write to indicate I did, in fact, laugh out loud at the first line of this post?

Blicky Kitty said...

Despairing, I think like a lot of short-statured Hummer owners, he uses highly-trained baby seals.

Melanie, I'm happy to return the real-"lol". We'd probably have to come up with our own, more sincere taxonomy for the digital laugh.
How about ALOL - actual lol
Or JNIRL'edOL - No-joke-I-really l'edol
There should also be a CLOL for - courtesy lol