lostime
Member
I know this story is a little late but oh well.
Last summer I was in Biloxi, MS for cross-training and all was well. We'd seen a few tropical storms miss us but nothing major, however the week I was supposed to graduate just happened to be the week that Katrina paid us a visit. After all the wind, rain, and distruction I found myself sitting in a 95 degree school house sleeping on the floor for 4 days when they finally decided to let us go. So the scramble was on, people were trying to decide which routes to take to avoid the chaos and find fuel along the way.
I had to get back to Texas and since I-10 would be a lost cause I would head north to Jackson and then over to Dallas. I had a classmate from Hawaii riding shotgun because his flight out was cancelled and had never been on a road trip more than two hours, so I knew this would be interesting. I didn't know how far I would have to drive until I found a station with power, much less fuel, so I set the cruise at 55, rolled the windows down and just coasted. It was hot but I knew that I could drive a long a$$ way at this speed with the mileage I was getting, and seeing the 2 mile long lines at filling stations gave me plenty of reason to conserve fuel.
Jackson was in sight but wasn't looking good, the lines were just as long as i'd seen all day so I decided to push on, so far we had gone 180 miles on less than a 1/4 of a tank and I had plenty of fuel to keep going. Halfway through Louisiana I saw a truck stop with a shorter line so I pulled in and drove past the cars waiting praying the whole way that they had diesel. When I got to the front there was a policeman directing traffic and keeping the people from killing each other over a gallon of gasoline. I asked him if this station had diesel? He said "this car is a diesel?", "you're in luck, this station hasn't had gas for two days but he just received a diesel shipment a few hours ago." Fantastic news, I pulled in and filled up. I can't remember the exact numbers but I do remember that after all the slow driving and no A/C the little diesel pushed out 58mpg.
So kids, the moral of the story is: driving a diesel can save you from hurricanes and looters.
Last summer I was in Biloxi, MS for cross-training and all was well. We'd seen a few tropical storms miss us but nothing major, however the week I was supposed to graduate just happened to be the week that Katrina paid us a visit. After all the wind, rain, and distruction I found myself sitting in a 95 degree school house sleeping on the floor for 4 days when they finally decided to let us go. So the scramble was on, people were trying to decide which routes to take to avoid the chaos and find fuel along the way.
I had to get back to Texas and since I-10 would be a lost cause I would head north to Jackson and then over to Dallas. I had a classmate from Hawaii riding shotgun because his flight out was cancelled and had never been on a road trip more than two hours, so I knew this would be interesting. I didn't know how far I would have to drive until I found a station with power, much less fuel, so I set the cruise at 55, rolled the windows down and just coasted. It was hot but I knew that I could drive a long a$$ way at this speed with the mileage I was getting, and seeing the 2 mile long lines at filling stations gave me plenty of reason to conserve fuel.
Jackson was in sight but wasn't looking good, the lines were just as long as i'd seen all day so I decided to push on, so far we had gone 180 miles on less than a 1/4 of a tank and I had plenty of fuel to keep going. Halfway through Louisiana I saw a truck stop with a shorter line so I pulled in and drove past the cars waiting praying the whole way that they had diesel. When I got to the front there was a policeman directing traffic and keeping the people from killing each other over a gallon of gasoline. I asked him if this station had diesel? He said "this car is a diesel?", "you're in luck, this station hasn't had gas for two days but he just received a diesel shipment a few hours ago." Fantastic news, I pulled in and filled up. I can't remember the exact numbers but I do remember that after all the slow driving and no A/C the little diesel pushed out 58mpg.
So kids, the moral of the story is: driving a diesel can save you from hurricanes and looters.
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