My son sees a medical specialist every couple of months for monitoring. That specialist works at the research hospital in Portland. For us, that is over an hours drive on a good day. Normally, I make the next appointment when we are at the doctor’s office. I try to make it where it will have the least impact on the school day or in other words ‘as late as possible’. That leaves us at the whims of rush hour traffic during most appointments.

As a life-long, small town guy I find rush hour traffic extremely frustrating. This is born largely out of my belief of the colossal waste of time commuting is. My two years living in the suburbs or Portland cemented that for me in the 1990s. I have tried very hard not to live or work where I had to deal with those frustrations.

First, I needed to get fuel before we left. The Mustang has a small tank to begin with at 16 gallons. With the low price of gasoline I filled the car up for $32. I almost always reset the trip counter when I fuel up because I monitor the fuel economy during that period. It is a habit that I have always done as a double check on the gas gauge.

During our trip, traffic was incredibly light. I would characterize it as Saturday morning. I think that we stopped at two lights in Salem on our way to the freeway and two lights once in Portland. For an appointment at three PM, we would start to encounter the afternoon rush hour at this time, however typically not terrible in the mid afternoon.

Our round trip spanned from 1:30-5 PM. I would have expected 1:30-6:30 PM so I was really happy about that. Now, the best part… the Mustang’s overall fuel economy. I averaged 29.2 MPG on that trip. I have never seen the economy that high before. I usually average about 20-22 MPG. For that trip specifically I have seen it as high as 26 MPG.

The net of this is that the Mustang can be more than double as efficient as my other two vehicles. I am typically no lead foot nor am I a hyper-miler. I enjoy the power sometimes, but it is hard to find a place where I can safely exert it because usually there are too many people about. That usually leaves me with merges or passes when I flex it the most. But, when there is little traffic, it is nice to see what can be done at a steady pace.