Fuel: More Than You Ever Wanted to Know

Getting nerdy with the fuel mileage spreadsheet. Throughout the trip, a few of you may have noticed this snippet on the Miscellany page:

Well, I've had time to play with the spreadsheet a bit, which is a personal joy of mine. So here we go:

This chart shows the cost of fuel in US dollars per gallon over the course of the trip. The two big spikes were the times I bought fuel out of a bottle instead of at a gas station: in Ollagüe with Nick just after crossing into Chile, and in Barú on the day Sarah and I rode through the soft, sandy beach. Other than those two instances, all fuel purchases were at gas stations, with an impressive dip in the cost of gas going through Ecuador, and clear spikes in remote areas like the Yukon Base Camp in Alaska.

After noting the dip in price in Ecuador in the last chart, I got to wondering about the average cost of gas in each country along the way, so created this chart. I eliminated the times I purchased gas from a bottle (Barú and Ollagüe), as those don't really give a fair reflection on local trends. The blue columns in this chart show the average cost for each location, sorted from beginning to end of the trip. Again, Ecuador was a clear winner. Chile was clearly the most expensive gas, even ignoring the gouging in Ollagüe. The red line shows how many gallons I purchased in each country...very closely related to the number of miles we spent in each country, of course.

And here we have the miles per gallon that the ol' V-Strom achieved throughout the adventure. When I changed my chain and sprockets, I swapped out for a different gear ratio, affecting the fuel mileage. Thus, I've used blue and red for the differing gear ratios.

Any other miscellaneous data or reports you're interested in seeing? Let me know and I'll see if I have the data to create a chart!

SCHMEST!

We are so glad that the boys are back, to celebrate, Sarah and I planned a camp out called Schmest.  We kept it a secret from the adventurers for almost 2 months!!  Now it is finally here!  Around 30 jugglers, friends and family will be in attendance.
We revealed our Top-Secret plan to the boys just last week as Sarah posted previously.

Kansas City is all a twitter with excitement for the long over-due camp out.  Nick has made a wonderful slide show to show everyone, Ryan is bringing his motorcycle for displaying and Sarah and I will drink.

For those of you who cannot make it: 😩  But fear not!  Photos of the event will be up soon on Facebook and hopefully here on this blog.

Thank you all for following their epic adventure.  We had followers from Connecticut to Florida to all of us here in KC.

What is next?  Who knows!  But hopefully it will be filled with fun, laughter, challenges and love.