5,493 miles (14.21 gallons @ $3.099)

So the car has seen its first serious traffic jam. Two or three minutes after leaving work I failed to notice cars stopped dead, two wide, until about twenty feet too late to do anything about it, so I sat in first gear, periodically riding the clutch forward several dozen inches at a time for close to thirty minutes.  (I timed it using the trip computer, which mocked my stillness. I got about 8 miles per gallon, which mocked my decision to get this fancy TDI instead of a Prius.) It wasn't too bad, because what can you do?; I must be getting old.

I will say that traffic in general is way worse now that summer has ended, and the number of non-commuting, out-of-town trips on this tank of gas was probably one. So now we're back to commuting at the height of rush hour, thankful that the company's new office is about a million times easier to get to and from than the previous.

A-and I washed the car for the first time during kid soccer on Saturday morning. It came out looking dirtier than when it went in. The car wash did such a horrible job, in fact, that I spent an hour or so today driving to the hardware store, kids in tow, to get some actual car soap and a wash mitt, and then washed the damn thing in the driveway with the hose. The kids loved spraying it with the hose until they got too cold. The lovely wife sent word via one of them that the other car should also get washed. Then I had a beer and mostly didn't watch football. Good times.