1,624 miles (12.93 gallons @ $2.999)

One of the things about diesel pumps at most gas stations is that they won't turn on unless you go inside the station first and ask the pump to be turned on, which seems ridiculous until you realize that it's only because they mostly don't have credit card readers on the diesel pumps.  Not sure why this is, but it's annoying to have to make two trips in.  On the other hand, after having spent all but five of my previous waking minutes this morning driving back from the beach I didn't mind the break quite so much.  I had originally left with the temperature in the mid 60's, which is far cooler than anything I've felt outside in most of a month.  It was great—I had the windows and the sunroof open, no bugs or oppressive humidity, no other traffic that early, nothing on the stereo—and then after about fifteen minutes I rounded a corner and the temperature shot up ten degrees, and the sun came out from behind a cloud…so I closed everything up and turned the AC back on.  Someday I'll get to drive the thing wide open without getting so sweaty that I can't go to work.  Alas.

I've officially managed to transport my bike and a bunch of lumber and such in the back of the car with the seats partly folded down, and the noise is pretty much no different than with everything wide open. I've nevertheless been contemplating a roof rack of some kind. The car has rails, but no crossbars and no attachments, and this was intentional; if I'm going to buy a roof rack, I want at least to be able to remount it on another car someday.  To that end, I've been pricing out Thule and Yakima racks.  Holy crap, those things are expensive.  Maybe the existing strategy of just strapping the kayaks (on pads on towels) directly to the roof will have to suffice for a bit longer.  Or just leave them at the beach.  In the meantime, we'll see how long it takes me to scratch the hell out of the paint getting the bike in and out of the car.  Probably not long.

The car is averaging about 39 miles per gallon overall since I bought it, which is kind of amazing given the amount of commuting and traffic-sitting included in that figure.

So now is a good time to point out that I'm not one of those people that names cars.  Those people are crazy.