maths

Today is my last day in the South of France, tomorrow I’m setting off early in the morning on the 1150-mile drive home. I thought it would be a pretty fun competition for you guys to guess how many times I fill up the van with gas/petrol, and whoever is the closest wins a $25 gift certificate from our friends at Split Reason. My journey will be finished on Monday eveing (hopefully), but I won’t tell anyone and keep entries open until next Friday evening so that everyone has a chance to guess. If you want to get all scientific about it to help with your calculations:

The van is a two-year old Ford Transit in good condition. The roof rack will be staying on even though it makes a whistling noise above 40mph. All but about 40 miles of the trip will be on motorways/autoroutes (basically, the fast roads). There is approximately 200-300kg of load in the back of the van. I will have a passenger, but he is thin.

Of course, trying to work out how much fuel someone is going to use is pretty tough since I don’t always fill up at the same level of tank emptiness, e.g. when we stop for lunch, I’ll probably fill up then even if the tank is half full, and I usually like to fill up when we first get on the road in the morning.

The winner will be the person who either guesses the correct number or is closest. In the event that two or more people guess the right number I’ll ask them to guess how many of cans of Red Bull I had to drink to ensure I didn’t fall asleep at the wheel.

{ 20 comments }