I’ve been riding my single cylinder BMW thumper a lot. My sidecar outfit is in a state of disassembly, with the tub and fender removed for painting and pin-striping. What a job! Incidentally, when you’re adding wiring to your ride don’t wire for the ages. Quick disconnect hook-ups rule. But you probably knew that.

I tried driving the hack with just the frame, but every right turn flew the hack tire like a  frightened bird. Fifty years of sidecar driving pretty much prepared me, but I think it gave pause to a following cage that hammered its breaks when I took off.

So I’ve been getting my two wheel skills back. There is a world of difference between two wheels and three…you can get out of practice if you spend too much time on the hack.

Putting on the two wheeled miles meant a gas stop or two. Shock-a -rooney! $4.09/gal for mid-grade gas at my local foothills station. Okay, it was the foothills and it was mid-grade gas. Also that price was an anomaly. The average price per gallon in Arizona on March 5th was $3.793. And if you shop around you can do much better than that.

But the handwriting is on the wall.

There are spots around the nation where four bucks is the rule rather than the exception: New York City, $3.99; California, $ 4.35.

I used to buy gas for cash. Now I use my credit card, but at my last fill-up I got 67 miles to the gallon—mixed city and highway—at that mileage I can still afford my transportation.

Smaller vehicles, smaller engines…there must be a lesson there someplace.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 12th, 2012 at 8:14 pm and is filed under Motorcycle Travel, Motorcycles, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.