The Final Tally – Statistics of Note

A prolonged and potent deep breath in.

A very large deep breath out.

What, exactly, can I make of all of the preceding posts? Besides sore fingers from typing a whole lot, of course. I want to try and make some sense of the above in two major ways, and split them into a pair of posts. This one, the first summary of the overall trip, will focus more on tallying up those facts which, in their aggregated form, nearly beggar belief. I will split this into a few areas of interest.

1) Fuel and efficiency: I am a nut for these types of things, as this blog has likely made clear, but now it was time to sit down and figure out just how much I had paid the petroleum piper in tears and dollars.

• The Good: with over 10,000 lbs of weight for the majority of the trip, I had clocked in at an astonishingly solid 17.7 mpg as the overall average.
• The Bad: with a total of 33,325 miles driven on the trip, that was a total of 1888.783 gallons of fuel. That works out, given an average fuel cost of $3.478 per gallon.
• The Ugly: the math for the average does not matter, because I tracked all of it. This trip cost me a heart-stopping $6506.09 in fuel. I can confirm, in the months which have followed, that this trip was well worth these costs and all the others.
• Bonus: ignoring the pre-trip charting, take a look at the visualized efficiency of the trip:

2) By the numbers: this segment required more self-control than I wanted, but I really did try to distill down to the noteworthy and/or odd data points from the whole experience, when it comes to putting it all together at trip’s end:

Vehicular (general):

• 2014 Hyundai Sonata hybrids rented: 1
• Miles driven on Oahu, an island 44 miles long and 30 miles wide… and a coast 227 miles long: 395
• Ferries boarded and driven off of, without sinking in between: 3
• Planes boarded as part of 3 flights: 8

Vehicular (Titan XD):

• Miles driven: 33,325
• Flat tires: 0
• Instances of check engine lights: 5
• Instances of being trapped by mechanical failures: 0
• Rounds of required maintenance: 4
• Gallons of oil changed out: 9.75
• Moments of surviving seriously adverse driving conditions, in large part due to mechanical excellence, approximately: 50+

Lodging:

• Nights spent at an Airbnb: 6
• Nights spent boondocking: 27 (only 1 of which was in the cab of my truck, thankfully)
• Nights spent in a proper campground: 29
• Nights spent failing to sleep in a cabin on an oceangoing ferry: 1
• Nights spent in a hotel or motel: 24
• Nights spent in the home of old friends: 15
• Nights spent in the home of new friends, met along the way: 5
• Additional offers from other strangers of a place to stay, a free home-cooked meal, or the chance to do laundry: 5

Exploring:

• Continents explored, thoroughly: 1
• States which captured my heart, with an Alaskan shape: 1
• Time zones explored: 9 (including the 1/2 Newfoundland and Labrador Time Zone)
• Moments when the splendor of nature took my breath away and battered me with beauty: countless
• Instances of being taken aback by the endemic decency of human beings when you speak to them in person, or even just smile at a stranger: hundreds
• All other moments of interest and awe, cataloged throughout the preceding posts: nigh impossible to reduce into a number

Growing:

• Percentage of my lifelong capacity for eating freeze-dried food used up: 100%. I am 100% done with freeze-dried food.
• … Suffice to say: 4 months of trip may have seen me accumulate a second lifetime of wisdom and potential. See the next and final post for more.

3) Visualizing the trip as a whole: There is a HUGE level of satisfaction from building the data gained (earned?) on the trip, into fuel efficiency figures and interactive GPS maps. Google Maps is ridiculous, as I can use Google Earth’s satellite view to actually pin where my truck was parked at a hotel, or where the Arctic Ocean tour bus took us. Unfortunately, there is a limit to how many lines can be drawn onto a map. So, please enjoy as a consolation prize the chance to visualize the 4 major concerns I tracked (refueling points; camping points; hotel/Airbnb/private residences used for sleeping; and particular points of interests).

This map is one you can interact with, zooming in and out; you can also click on any point to see the significance of it:

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So much more I might say. Fair warning: I may well add a bullet point or two above, as time goes on and the trek further settles into my bones.

I’d like to think that this post captured the heart of the numbers at hand.

For the next (and final) post about this trip, I shall endeavor to enumerate those matters of the heart.