My natural curiosity vs caution pisses me off. The distance from my place to Canberra is about 650Km. I'm driving my little "Rally Roo" to and from, and it's averaging around 11 Km per litre. (33 MPG) The fuel gauge doesn't work, which is common for that model apparently (I have the same problem with the twin turbo beastie) but I just zero the trip meter when I fill it up, like I do with my bikes.
I left Canberra yesterday with around 130 Km travelled since I fuelled it up in Yass on the way in on Tuesday, so I reckoned that I would fill it up again at the BP service centre near Glenrowan, but the joint was closed for renovations? Oops, by this stage the odometer was sitting on 550 Kms, and the next fuel stop was in Benalla, another 30 Km down the road. There wasn't much I could do to conserve fuel as I'd already set the cruise control at slightly above the speed limit anyway, it was cold, so the aircon wasn't on, so I thought about turning the internal fan and lights off, but it was getting dark, so for safety's sake I just continued on. I briefly thought about pulling the seats and luggage out to reduce weight, but decided that this was probably too extreme.........
As it turned out, when I filled it up, it had only used 51.5 litres, and the 'Roo has a 60 litre tank, so technically, I could drive from my place to Canberra on one tank full, but I have a natural (or perhaps unnatural) fear of running out of juice. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to stop and get fuel when I need to as it's a good idea to have regular breaks on any long drive, but my curiosity keeps sneaking out and whispering in my ear, "C'mon Big T, give it a go!" (my curiosity always calls me "Big T", which I've never thought to ask why)
I have also thought about carrying a jerry can of fuel in the boot, but of course that's not really practical, as I can't leave it in the boot all week, even though the temps in Canberra (and Melbourne) are very low at the moment, so I'd have to stop and empty it into the car at some point, so I'd be much better off just stopping for fuel along the trip anyway. Curiosity vs caution pisses me off............