Prius Crushing

We went to a wedding Friday night that was a fair distance away. In the evening, it finally got cool enough out to disable the A/C in the car so I thought we'd try and do a max. fuel mileage test on the way home. Last time I drove with the A/C off, the engine only had a thousand miles or so on it so I'm sure mechanical efficiency hadn't peaked yet. 

I put fuel in and reset the trip/mileage computer. Here we're 80.9 miles down the road and averaging 37.9mpg over that distance. It broke in to the 38s for a little while but couldn't hold there. Looks like A/C is worth at least a couple mpg, as we usually see 34-35 on this type of trip (100% highway).

The Real Deal

Finally we didn't have to settle for watching a storm go by on radar. Some pretty awesome shelf clouds went right overhead today while the temperature dropped fifteen degrees or so.

Sky Turnover

Sadly we missed out on the real t-storm tonight but there were some pretty decent views. All three of these pictures were taken within fifteen minutes of each other.

Saturday

We've been up extra early for work lately and there have been some great sunrises. Today was especially nice as there are clouds which is a rare commodity these days. 

Turned a bunch of fuel into smoke and noise, then headed home. 

We put in a five mile walk out to Big-Rock Park. This is the longest walk I've ever done on flip-flops, score Olukai.

Thursday

Warrior Dash

Corrine ran Warrior Dash  in Iowa this year. It was an impressively big event - I think 7000-some people actually raced. I was spectating so was only able to see the fire leap and mud pit as the rest was out in the forest somewhere. I'm not sure if I'll run it next year or not. It was tons of fun to wander around because the general energy level is so high but I'm not really a fan of giant mud-pit type things. Organization was great and it never felt too crowded.

Meadow

In process since last summer, the flower meadow is starting to really look like something. I had wondered for quite some time after sewing seed if anything at all would happen. We had such a long early spring that it was touch and go for a while helping the flowers beat already established weeds. If this keeps going well, it's a big chunk of the yard which will only need to be mowed once a year. Plus we get some great color out of the deal. There are like 20 flower varieties in here and we've only seen maybe five so far. The meadow keeps constantly changing. The first picture is a little older than than the second. You can already see the colors shifting from yellow to purple as the early annuals die off. It's even more purple than that now with a smattering of red thrown in.

We found this cat in the back yard. It seems to occasionally live here now, which is ok, as it's about the most friendly cat ever.