2011 Metrics: Automotive

We drove our 2008 Toyota Scion a total of 17,450.4 miles in the last year, burning 542.58 gallons of gas for an average of 32.2 miles per gallon. That's more miles than we drove it in either 2009 or 2010. Our average miles per gallon has been about the same since we first started driving the Scion in 2008.

Our best mileage of the year, 36.9 miles per gallon, was in early September, when I logged a day's worth of highway driving from Lewes to Villanova to pick up daughter #1 and then to Upper Marlboro, MD, for our nephew's wedding. Our worst, 29.5 mpg, was the last week of the year, when I was driving only short hops from home to my vanpool meeting spot.

We spent $1,878.72 on gasoline for the Scion in 2011. Gas prices we found averaged $3.50 over the year, with a low of $3.03 per gallon at the start of the year and a high of $3.94 in early May.

These metrics are for the period December 31, 2010 through mid-day today. They are from my gas mileage log, a Google spreadsheet. I also track gas mileage using Matt Haughey's fuelly.com.

The Small Warship Named for my Small City

I have learned, quite by accident, that there was a US Navy warship named City of Lewes in service during World War I.

USS Lewes off Lorient, France, circa 1918. From NavSource Online

The City of Lewes started life as a menhaden trawler (likely on the Delaware Bay). She had been built in 1912 at the shipyard of W.G. Abbott, in Milford. She was 150 feet in length, with a beam of 24 feet and a nine foot draft. She displaced 245 tons and could make 12 knots.

In May of 1917, she was purchased by the US Navy and Commissioned as the USS City of Lewes. In July, she was recommissioned as simply USS Lewes. In August and September the Lewes sailed across the Atlantic for the port city of Brest, in France, as part of a squadron described in On the coast of France: the story of the United States naval forces in French waters (Joseph Husband, A.C. McClurg & co., 1919):

The next squadron of the patrol force, Captain TP Magruder USN in command, reached Brest on the afternoon of September 18, and consisted of the yacht USS Wakiva, the supply ship USS Bath, and the trawlers USS Anderton, USS Lewes, USS Courtney, USS McNeal, USS Cahill, USS James, USS Rehoboth, USS Douglas, USS Hinton, and USS Bauman. With these also arrived six 110-foot patrol vessels under the French flag. Due to the construction of the trawlers, which was soon proved to be entirely unsuited for the hard sea service required, they were withdrawn after a few weeks from escort duty and fitted for mine-sweeping. 

The USS Rehoboth was a sister ship of the Lewes, having also been built in Milford and bought into the service. And I've found references to a USS Henlopen, built by W.G. Abbott, as well.

According to the US Naval Historical Center, the Lewes spent most of her time as a mine-sweeper, keeping the coast of France free from floating German mines, an effort that continued int 1919 after the end of the war. She was decommissioned in September of 1919 and sold.

At the Lewes Christmas Parade

2011 Lewes Christmas Parade, a set on Flickr.

Last night we watched the annual Lewes Christmas Parade. It's one of the biggest and best parades in our little city. We'd missed it for some years due to scheduling conflicts with the Sussex Ballet's Nutcracker. This year's Nutcracker will come later in the month, so we were able to spend a pleasant, though cold, few hours watching classic cars, fire trucks, church groups, dogs, boats, businesses, politicians, beauty queens, and a marching band file by on Savannah Road.

Dancing at the Sea Witch Festival

5 who dance and 5 who want to dance, a photo by mmahaffie on Flickr.

Christina and her corps-mates from the Sussex Dance Academy gave a dance exhibition this morning at the Rehoboth Beach Bandstand. It was part of the Sea Witch festival. There were other dance schools, a choral group and a magician.

That's our lovely daughter there, second from the right. I liked the way the five dancers are matched by five little girls who dream of dancing in this shot.

It was a good morning for photography. I captured a container ship and what I think was a dredge platform for my Distant Ships collection. I took pictures of pumpkins,  costumes, benches and beaches. And more.

Then we all trooped off for lunch at Nicola's.

Coast Day, 2011 - A Photoset

I went to Coast Day, at the University of Delaware's Lewes campus this afternoon. Coast Day is an annual open house at what we used to call "the College of Marine Studies," or CMS. The University has changed the school's name a few times now, and I've lost track of what it's meant to be called; for most people who've lived in Lewes awhile, though, "CMS" still works.

Coast Day is an open house for the researchers that has grown into an environmental and marine culture fair. Many state and local agencies have displays, as do local government and non-governmental organizations. There are boats and food and music and general science-themed fun. I like it and I like to photograph it.

A Fine Brunch by the Wissahickon

valley run 1, a photo by mmahaffie on Flickr.

We were at Villanova University this weekend visiting Daughter #1 for parents' weekend. We watched football, met her friends, bought things with big blue Vs on them at the bookstore, and laughed at the best in improv comedy. And we had a fine brunch today at the Valley Run Inn.

23 Years Ago...

mimosas soon, a photo by mmahaffie on Flickr.

Karen and I were wed on this date (9/10) 23 years ago. We spent the first night of our marriage in Baltimore and then flew to Switzerland for a hot air balloon tour.

This bottle of champaign was waiting for us after our first landing after a long, bouncy, dragging landing in a Swiss field.

I'm Reading O'Brian Again

I do this every few years; I start reading Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series again. I ran out of library books to read during the pass-by of Hurricane Irene in late August so I went to my personal collection and grabbed Master and Commander. Again.

It may be the start of another run through the whole 20-book series. Maybe. Last time, it was May to October of 2006. That has been the only time I have read through the series start-to-finish. I've read most of the novels in the series at least twice, but usually in a disconnected, non-sequential way.

I enjoy sea-stories and stories from the Napoleonic wars. But what I love most about these books is the language. Writing like this:

...it would have been difficult to imagine a pleasanter way of spending the late summer than sailing than sailing across the whole width of the Mediterranean as fast as the sloop could fly. She flew a good deal faster now that Jack had hit upon her happiest trim, restowing her hold to bring her by the stern and restoring her masts to the rake her Spanish builders had intended. What is more, the brothers Sponge, with a dozen of the Sophie's swimmers under their instruction, had spent every moment of the long calms in Greek waters (their native element) scraping her bottom; and Stephen could remember an evening when he had sat there in the warm, deepening twilight, watching the sea; it had barely a ruffle on its surface, and yet the Sophie picked up enough moving air with her topgallants to draw a long, straight whispering furrow across the water, a line brilliant with unearthly phosphorescence, visible for a quart of a mile behind her. Days and nights of unbelievable purity. Nights when the steady Ionian breeze rounded the square mainsail -- not a brace to be touched, watch relieving watch -- and he and Jack on deck, sawing away, sawing away, lost in their music , until the falling dew untuned their strings. And days when the perfection of dawn was so great , the emptiness so entire, that men were almost afraid to speak.

I marked this passage as I read by it the other day and thought it might make a good blog post. In searching back through this blog for previous O'Brian posts I realized I've done this kind of post a few times before.

I finished Master and Commander yesterday. The library is closed, so I moved on to Post Captain, the second in the series. I don't know if this is the start of another run through all 20 novels. That would probably carry me into January.

A Near Miss?

the neighbor's garage, a photo by mmahaffie on Flickr.

Our next door neighbor's garage door took a mighty wrench at some point during the storm. another neighbor, across the street from this one, lost the top of a large tree as well.

The working theory around our cul-de-sac is that both were caused by the storm cell that spawned the tornado that hit Nassau station, northwest of us -- or maybe by the tornado itself.

We Survived Hurricane Irene

It's a wet, blustery Sunday morning here in Lewes and we're approaching the endgame of Hurricane Irene. Bottom line: we're just fine.

The storm has moved inland in New York state at this point and is down to Tropical Storm strength. It was a Category 1 Hurricane when it passed east of Delaware overnight. I think the worst of the wind and rain for us was later afternoon and early evening of Saturday.

We had a scare when a storm cell that appears to have spawned a tornado passed just overhead of our neighborhood. we'd had warning from local television and spent a few minutes down in the basement.

The twister apparently touched-down about three miles to our west and damaged a number of houses, at least one of them seriously. as of now, I have heard no reports of injuries or deaths in Delaware from this storm.

We spent the rest of the night on the main floor, closer to the basement, camped-out in the living room.

I took a quick look around the house this morning and so far just a small tree is down in the side yard. It may be savable.