Day four
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Another early morning with nobody else on the road, and more gratuitous sunrise pix. Okay, this is starting to get old, and there are probably many better shots on numerous other web sites about the park. One thing I did *not* manage to get a picture of was the black bear that lumbered across the road fairly far ahead -- long gone by the time I got to the spot. I should really say that it more *bounded* across the road, displaying surprising alacrity in scooting into the woods -- after all, a bear's strength-to-weight ratio is *way* better than one would expect to look at it. Soon I exited the southern tail of the park; the gate there was completely unattended with a sign saying "please pay on exit". Seems like the honor system is alive and well around here. Now the road turned seamlessly into the Blue Ridge Parkway, with slightly wider shoulders, better pavement, and the base speed limit increased to 45. Eep! That meant I'd have to boogie more if someone came up from behind until they could pass. Since this is the no-cost part of the road I'd expect to find more workday traffic on it, but as it turned out there were relatively few vehicles on this part too. Still, I picked up the pace a little and it was fun bending smoothly around the turns and trying to predict the ups and downs for best running efficiency. At any given moment my speed might have been above or below 42, requiring me to adapt on the fly to whether the engine was spinning or not. More about this later. I did a couple more sections [where that's defined as stretches between the ridge "gaps" where another road crosses], and then diverted off toward Buena Vista because I knew there would be coffee and food there. This of course involved another 2000-foot scream down the mountainside, well outside the energy capture range of the battery despite how low I tried to bring the state of charge before starting that run.
'Nuff said. This is something I've always wanted to do! I don't even know
why they bothered building it here, though -- if a truck lost its stopping
power down this road, it would be upside down in the woods about two miles
before getting anywhere near this. Very steep and twisty.
I lost track of how many times I filled and emptied that battery pack while on
the ridge, in fact. Rises and falls were often on the order of a thousand
feet even while still working along it, and I got to wondering just how much
altitude the pack was good for without topping out and leaving me on physical
braking. I took a seat-of-the-pants observation or two and later did a little
research and wrote up a bit for the prius_technical_stuff group:
On my run through the Shenandoahs last week I pulled a running tank
average from 62.something to 63.5, with like three pips left on the
gauge, so I must have been doing fairly well. RPM limit of 3000 on
the up, and then trying to minimize regen current into the pack by
judicious use of B, braking, and vehicle speed -- knowing that I'd
top the damn thing a third of the way down anyhow. And that was
with a couple of 2000-foot drops out of the park to go into a nearby
town and then right back up into the woods. I also usually had
the leisure to EV my way up and over crests, and clear out more
regen "headroom" in advance of going down. Occasionally there
were warp-neutral opportunities, when I could begin a descent under
40 mph and see all of the terrain/obstructions ahead and just let
the car wail through it all reaching into the 50+ mph range before
having to re-engage on the following up-slope. Not recommended
practice during early dawn with deer all over the place.
I found that the pack under optimal conditions is good for capturing
about 500-600 vertical feet worth of careful regen before it's
topped. Hmm, that's about a foot per available watt-hour within
SOC limits. I know someone's done more careful math on the car's
potential energy -- anyone have that handy? Assuming a certain load
in the car [me, stuff, fuel], a quick grope around various conversion-
factor sites allows me to pull the following from unmentionable places:
1 joule .0002778 w-h
~3200 lb * -------------- * --------------- ==> 1.2 watt-hours
.73756 ft-lb joule
per theoretical foot of hair-raising descent, which ballparks nicely
into this observation and accounts for 70-80% efficiency. You certainly
don't get that *back* for climbing, but gently pushing with 10-20 amps of
all that nice green [trying to keep Peukert heating at a minimum] can go
a respectable distance afterward.
Since the roads were mostly empty, I was even able to play with seeing how
far I could crawl up the next rise on 20 amps of battery alone. Not very fast
or far unless it was fairly flat, but not burning any gas for a while. In
general, if you have the leeway to let the terrain be your master as far as
speed goes and largely dictate when to burn and when not to, fuel economy gets
a big boost. Unfortunately, this is at odds with the way a lot of other
people habitually drive.
I decided to duplicate part of a previous route and took highway 501 out of Buena Vista to stay in the valley for a little while. Two years ago a friend and I were traveling south in December, and after overnighting in Buena Vista, continued the same way but at the time we really wanted to try and do some Blue Ridge. No road salt can be used up there, so ice tends to form on the road and stay put. The roadside warnings are numerous, and there are several gates that can be closed by maintenance crews if conditions are too unsafe. But that day in December was a sunny one, above freezing, the highway was only officially closed along parts of its length but the rest was still open, so we decided to make an attempt on the part that takes off from 501 near Big Island even if it was likely to be a dead-end trip. Most of it looked clear and dry as we started up. We did find some icy patches but the Prius seemed to be clawing its way over them just fine like a little tank. As we climbed, the ice level increased but driving ability still felt fine. We managed to get up somewhere over 2000 feet and see a couple of overlooks. Then at some point we stopped midway up a mild but icy slope to look at something, and then I found that I absolutely could not get moving again no matter how delicately I feathered the pedal. Any time the front wheels pulled, the car would simply start sliding sideways toward the ditch.
We admitted defeat at that point, and that going any higher would probably just be worse. I had to carefully back down a bit and managed to do a very slow inverse K-turn in the middle of the road without going off either edge. Then the game became to get back *down* over all those ice patches in a controlled fashion. On the stock tires, yet. Yay, "B" mode.
During that somewhat hairy descent, my companion in between multiple assertions that I was trying to kill her captured one particular stretch by holding the camera out the window. Remember those shaded areas that stay wet all the time? In winter, they stay icy all the time, packed into armor-plate by the few vehicles that *can* reliably make passage over it. Note the chain tracks.
Compare the ice-chute to the same stretch of road as I found it now! Much more friendly, and this time I cruised up right past the old stuck-point without even noticing exactly where it had been.
There were some more overlooks, but sometimes with no view at all.
But gradually the morning fog lifted off the peaks as I journeyed on.
Finally, I made the last descent from the ridge into the Roanoke area to refuel and change direction toward Kentucky. Ending MPG average for the ridge run 63.1, and up to 63.5 a few miles later after some local noodling around finding a gas station. Not bad considering all the longish stops and forced use of hydraulic brakes.
The next leg took me up highway 311 over another ridge or two into West Virginia. More energy management games! Eventually this met up with I-64 but I'd already decided to take US 60 to sort of parallel that in a more leisurely fashion and see more backcountry. To get from 311 to 60 I had to go on I-64 a little ways. The on-ramp went downhill as did the rest of the highway following. I did that transfer as a glorious *three miles* of a soapbox-derby style warp-neutral glide at over 50 mph with the engine not turning at all, sailing gracefully off the US-60 exit which turned upward and brought me to a near-perfect stop at the overpass intersection. That was definitely one of those "prius moments". US 60 was a little more hairy; one of those two-lane country roads with a base speed limit of 55. That's sort of ridiculous for many parts of that road, and the stupidest thing is when they have a 55 sign followed immediately by a yellow-diamond warning of upcoming twisties with a suggested safe speed of 30. I mean *right* after, i.e. the 55 sign sometimes hides the curve warning. Despite moving right along through this, I picked up a couple of aggressive tails including, of all things, a *school bus* with kids in it that rode way too close but absolutely refused to pass even at perfectly safe opportunities. Later I had a Harley about a half car length behind me through some particularly bendy parts that *I* felt like I was going a little fast for; if this yutz with *NO HELMET* really felt safe that close behind a car, then he's certainly setting a bad motorcycle safety example. What the hell is *with* these people? I try to accomodate their perceived needs, but when they refuse a clear offer to fix whatever they think the problem is, there's not much else I can do. Some of that 60 stretch was a bit stressful in general, especially after the relatively beaucolic past couple of days.
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However, another multi-mile warp-stealth glide down into the little town of Ansted made it all worthwhile. Here the road descended to meet and follow a river for a while, through another town with some interesting old mill type buildings. Partially to get rid of a butthead Caddy who wouldn't take the hint about following distance and partially from curiosity, I pulled an abrupt left into a little park called Kanawha Falls. In post I managed to stitch these two shots together into a fairly seamless panorama.
Shortly thereafter came a side road onto an interesting bridge across the river, so I turned and wandered across it just for a diversion...
and found the way to get down underneath it on the other bank. It's often interesting how different modes of transportation infrastructure are packed into these narrow river valleys, sometimes including the river itself.
I used US 60 to sort of cut a corner off where I-64 goes, and eventually got back on I-64 to head toward Kentucky. According to the GPS, I also bypassed a toll. Given that I was driving a hybrid, I somehow found this legend near the interchange amusing, as in what happens when you grab the orange wires the wrong way. I shortly exited again in search of food, into the podunk little coal town of Marmet, WV. I had seen several coal plants go by and many hopper-car trains on those tracks by the river, and the whole area smelled of burnt hydrocarbons or something fairly obnoxious. It was here that I had the misfortune to visit The. Slowest. Wendy's. Ever. The counter people were totally disorganized, and it seemed like ONE guy was preparing all the food and was clearly being very harried. It took me a *half hour* to get food and coffee and out of there -- I had to wait not only for them to brew a new pot of coffee but also to use the one-holer bathroom because some little kid was in there goofing around with the hand-dryer. Several more coal trains rumbled by outside while I was eating, headed out to feed the nation's insatiable thirst for fuel whether it's clean or dirty. Finally I got on the road again, did about an hour, and by sheer dumb luck happened to pull off again at the same place where I slept on my way back from Hybridfest. This is where I had given up on the truck stop as just too noisy and populated, and slipped into a spot at the motel across the street. So I did that again. Hung the privacy curtains to wall off the world, and briefly jumped onto the motel's wireless to see if the internet had collapsed in my absence [it hadn't] and fire off some mail telling people I wasn't dead, and then went to sleep for a while. No interruptions. At this point I was only 3 or 4 hours from Cincinnati, where I was headed. I probably could have even made it there that night, but I had told Jud I was coming in on Saturday so I decided to take one more half-day or so of noodling around on the roads.
Day five
Rolling at dawn again, and an hour or so later passed into Kentucky. This is the first thing I saw. Pretty funny-lookin' horse farm, huh.
I branched off the interstate onto another diagonal path on highway 9, a high- speed but fairly pleasant road. There were several foggy stretches, as one might expect in the area. There were many permanent "fog area" signs, so it's obviously pretty common. In fact, some of those horrendous highway pileups have been in Kentucky and Tennessee due to fog and inadequate following distance, right? Lesson not learned, apparently. Fortunately route 9 had plenty of clear dashed-centerline straight areas and some 4-lane sections.
Then I branched off onto 10, which led me up right to the Ohio river. Note the big-picture MPG average here -- it becomes relevant very soon.
This is what I saw upon reaching the river. The banks of the Ohio are *lined* with many large industrial plants of various sorts -- power, gypsum board, whatever. They've probably all had their day of dumping all kinds of nasty stuff into the water, and for all the EPA knows, may still.
While scrambling up the grass bank for the shot, I found a very cool spider. About two inches leg-tip to leg-tip.
I continued along 10 and then 8 for another 30 miles or so, playing in that elusive "mid-speed" range. This is the region just above 41 mph where most Prius drivers note a significant MPG falloff, due to the engine having to run much more than in lower-speed pulse-n-glide when it can shut down. If I do the math over the before and after figures for this stretch along the river at pretty much a constant altitude, I come up with 80 miles per gallon, and the collection of 5-minute bars here pretty much confirms that. This demonstrates the serious benefits of a higher-speed pulse-n-warp-stealth strategy, where one uses the engine to accelerate and then a little bit of battery to glide just like normal P&G -- with the difference only that the engine happens to be spinning, albeit not consuming fuel. The PSL was 45 for much of this run; I was pulsing briefly up as high as 51 mph at 1600-2000 RPM and WSing back down to 42, just above where shutdown would have happened so I would't go through numerous full start/stop cycles. The slight up and down terrain matched this quite nicely. Because of efficient fuel use alternated with *no* fuel use just like in normal P&G, MPG results in this operational regime don't have to take that big dive. This really should just put that whole mid-speed problem to bed forever.
I was having so much fun with this, in fact, that as I neared Cincinnati I realized I was sailing right past Jud's neighborhood, except that by coming up 8 I wasn't using his directions and there didn't seem to be any place *to* turn toward it! Only running on Navteq basemap here, with none of the smaller details available. Must have been that small county road back under the I-275 bridge ... which, in fact, turned out to be Jud's road, so I made a perfect midafternoon arrival at his place. After befriending the dogs, getting a shower, and settling in a little, I and Jud chatted about lots of stuff. Jud started up a thread on Priuschat for the weekend in general, where a lot of other pictures landed. He showed me some of the very in-depth mapping stuff he does. His wife created a very yummy dinner, and didn't seem to want help on the preparation thereof! FireEngineer and his family rolled in later that evening, and soon it was time to sleep. It was nice being in a real bed after three nights in the car, but I must say that the car rig is quite comfy in its own right with the only downside that the low-speed-fan hack doesn't dehumidify the incoming air so it can be a bit too warm/sticky in there sometimes. But in general, I'm really happy with my little 60-MPG RV.
Day six
The next day was Block Heater day, with something like 20 people expected to converge on Jud's place! First, we did Jud's car in the morning with both an EBH and an EV switch, which he's written up in some detail on the thread. Then a couple more Priuses pulled in, and a couple more, and it started turning into a real Gathering.
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A whole lot of shuffling happened as some of the cars were run up into the garage to get their block heaters done, and other than that everyone had fun [despite the heat] ogling each others' mods.
When Hobbit and Bob Wilson aren't butting heads on some technical point, maybe their cars are? It was great to finally meet Bob in person.
A not-so-good shot of the inverter Bob has neatly installed in his trunk, on a flip-down panel that completely hides it when not in use.
Hypermilers should *work* for that increased tire pressure, to better appreciate the rewards! Many people seem to think that a bike pump can't be used on car tires -- that's ridiculous, especially when you consider that you're pushing 80 - 100 psi into a bicycle tire and only 50 or so into a car tire so it's actually *easier*. The difference is just volume, but it's totally doable to bring Prius-size tires from 36 to 44 or more.
A couple more block-heater install shots to add to the collective knowledge. This was taken from behind, sort of up along the exhaust piping, showing the heater's retainer clip [left arrow] just about to click over the shaped metal boss behind the heater hole [right arrow] as it nears full insertion. I got Wayne to momentarily stop his process and move his hand aside until I could convince the camera to focus somewhere near the right depth for this. Wayne's got a neat method of greasing up most of the circumference of the heater but leaving an air channel along one side to prevent the "pistoning" problem in the dead-end hole. A little bit of rotation just before it is clicked home can spread the thermal grease around the rest of the way.
The EBH power wire arrives from above to its little orange rubber connector.
Days seven and eight
