Cost per mile

Before the latest visit to the shop, I told myself that it was OK to spend more on Indy. She's been a fun learning experience already and the worst case scenario would be we'd sell her for a loss and recoup half our costs -- making the cost per mile around $6. I've made costlier mistakes. And best case, she's ours for another 100K miles and provides us with lots of adventure.

Surprisingly, the visit to the shop didn't feel expensive -- I'd prepared myself for worse. And so I ready to run the cost per mile numbers again.

Major expenses since the last report:
Replacement parts
New Battery
New (used) fuel pump
Gas (and that is no longer incidental at $2.5/gallon)
Hand soap
Throw pillows

A back of the napkin estimate says we've driven about 600 miles now. And without bringing up the spreadsheet of expenses (eyeballing the events since the Jan 5th estimate) it appears we may gone beneath the $10/mile milestone.

What about the theoretical minimum... say just gas. At 15 mpg and $2.5/gallon, that's about $0.2/mile. Of course, insurance and registration really ought to be considered part of the theoretical minimum at ~$400/year (?) and our insurance limit of 5000 mpyear means another $0.1/mile. Total: ~$0.3/mile. That's under the government reinbursement amount. Not sure the same can be said for the Hummer (we don't own one -- and won't until one can legally mount a submachine gun in the turret and stilll drive it on the California roads.)

Regrettably, we can't reasonably add in the cost of campgrounds and beach parking and camping gear and road trip snacks to the per mile costs. But given we'll soon have a working laptop (cheaper than the bus) Indy may be getting more short trips to Sunset Cliffs or the OB Pier for "work".