Columbia, SC to Talahassee FL - ethanol in gasoline sucks

[tsbardella]

It was tough on the hills outside of Augusta on I-20 I slowed to below 50 at one point. That was mostly due to some really bad gasoline I got before I left. I did not have the same problem coming back also my millage had plummeted to the 50s and I was freaking out but it went back up to 67 again. I got off of I20 13 miles past Augusta I went through the middle of GA on 221 and 319 It was nice I could go the speed I wanted to -57mph- and It was pretty. Definitely need to start early when the high temp is going to be in the 100s F. I traveled for over 8 hours and my butt was not happy with me about it. I was also exhausted the next day despite having had plenty of sleep. I had saddlebags and a makeshift rack that I bungied my backpack to and I was able to carry quite a bit of cargo. If I had a better seat or even if I figured out how to maybe make one out of memory foam or something I could do it again.

[jonathan180iq]

You rear will eventually get used to it. The same thing happens with cyclists and guitar players, just in different areas of the body.

Ethanol does burn cleaner than gasoline but doesn't carry as much energy (25% less) so a drop in mileage should be expected. Using that calculation, if you normally get 65 mpg, you would only get around 48 on ethanol fuel. So, you didn't do too bad :)

That's really the whole problem with the ethanol buzz. It requires a lot of resources to produce and burns up faster than gasoline.
I know that it's good for the farmers and the atmosphere but it's not good for food prices and fuel economy. Go figure.

I'm glad you had a good trip.