Day 2: Lincoln, NE to Wheaton, IL

Image of the day: This is me after a full day of sweating in the car. My shirt would go well with a lime and a shot of tequila.

Trip meter at start of day: 505.2 miles
Gas: $2.879/gal

Claire and I made good time today, leaving Lincoln at 8:45 a.m. and arriving in Wheaton, IL, a Chicago suburb, at 5:30 p.m. The biggest thing slowing us down was having to repeatedly fill up the U-Haul's tank. The truck gets about nine miles per gallon, compared to the Sentra's 25. In an attempt to get better mileage and to pay less for gas, I tried out a fuel that is fairly unique to the Midwest: ethanol fuel.

Ethanol 10 has been getting more publicity in the news, but I had never put any in my car. I decided to try it in the truck today for two reasons. First, it had a higher octane rating, which presumably would give me better performance. Second, it was cheaper than regular gas; while 87 octane unleaded gas cost $2.879, gas with 89 octane and 10 percent ethanol cost $2.659.

I tried out the ethanol gas, and while I didn't calculate my exact mileage with the fuel, it appeared that I got worse performance with ethanol than without it. When we arrived in Wheaton at my cousins' house, I asked my uncle Bill some questions about the cheaper fuel. Bill, who works at a chemical company, told me that ethanol fuels actually deliver fewer miles to the gallon than regular gasoline.

"But it's cheaper," I said. "So maybe it doesn't give better miles to the gallon, but does it give better miles to the dollar?"

"Nope," Bill said.

"So the only real benefit is political," I said.

"Yes." It turns out, Bill said, that ethanol-mixed fuels have been available in the Midwest for years. They are big in the Midwest because they're made from corn, and they're mostly unavailable in other parts of the country because of the cost of shipping ethanol across the nation, which is high because ethanol cannot be transported in pipelines. However, American farmers benefit from ethanol because of the increased demand for corn, and America as a whole benefits from being slightly less dependent on imported oil from the Middle East, Venezuela and Russia. Supporting ethanol-based fuel (and placing high tariffs on the same product imported from Brazil and China) is a political win-win, even if the benefits outside the political realm are minimal.

Later in the trip, I'll try to calculate whether or not E-10 is actually any good for the consumer in terms of miles per dollar. In the meantime, it seems to only be good for a small-scale political statement.

Day 1: Boulder, CO to Lincoln, NE

Image of the day: The 14' U-Haul truck we rented to move Claire's things.

Trip meter at start of day: 0.0 miles
Gas: $3.399/gal

After two years in Moldova as a Peace Corps volunteer, I have returned to the United States and I'm eager to see and experience the country again. I've taken advantage of my current unemployment and the several thousand dollars of readjustment allowance from the Peace Corps and have decided to go on a long road trip with no set schedule. I have only three rules for myself, which I'll explain on another day, since I'm exempting myself from the rules for the first few days on the first leg.

The first leg is different from the rest of the trip because it's with my sister, Claire. She's moving from Boulder, where she did her undergraduate studies, to Chicago, where she'll start grad school. While she drives her 2004 Nissan Sentra, which will soon become my car for the remainder of the road trip, I am driving all of her possessions in a 14' U-Haul truck.

The truck has what I first considered a major drawback; the entire audio system consists of an AM/FM radio. No tape deck. No CD player. No line-in for my iPod. Just the radio. Today, however, we drove from Boulder to Lincoln, NE, and I found that the radio was actually my favorite thing about the truck. Especially once we got into Nebraska, the radio offered me a connection to the area around me and the wider American culture from which I had been so far removed for two years. Among the many things I listened to were several NPR news programs; three innings of the Kansas City Royals' game against the Toronto Blue Jays; Guns and Roses; Chumbawamba's '90s hit, "Tubthumbing"; severe weather warnings for counties in northwestern Nebraska; and parenting advice from Focus on the Family. Even when I take over the Sentra next week and can use my iPod and other kinds of entertainment, I think I'll still switch on the radio often.

While my in-car entertainment is low-tech, my way of finding a place to stay isn't. For our first stop in Lincoln, I used CouchSurfing.com, a community of people who offer their couches or other accommodations to total strangers online. I had several people visit me for the day or stay the night when I lived in my Moldovan village, and so I decided that I would finally be the person staying at someone else's place. My sister was slightly skeptical of the idea, but she eventually agreed to it. Suzie, a woman a few years older than me, welcomed us into her Lincoln home at 10:30 p.m., talked with us for 20 minutes, and then showed us where we could sleep. Claire is currently in the guest bedroom, and I'm on a couch in the living room. Although an important understanding of CouchSurfing is that people stay at your house for free, I gave Suzie a Moldovan leu, which is currently worth a little more than eight cents. But now it's now past 1 in the morning, and I've been writing on this blog and my previous blog for over two hours now. If I'm going to wake up and drive tomorrow, I'd better sleep now.