Careful readers will know that I’m a bit obsessed with tracking the mileage achieved by my occasionally loathsome 2001 Volkswagen Jetta, and with mileage standards and automotive technology more generally, and with regularly straying far from this site’s ostensible focus on journalism and cat pictures. Not that the car is anything other than exceedingly average in the mileage department, or that my decision to live 17 miles away from my office was particularly forward-thinking. But, all things considered, I’m feeling pretty good, pretty cocky, about both the price of gas these days and my own performance.

It’s a bit small and I know there isn’t much detail, but that’s a little graph of my actual mileage between Jan. 1, 2006 and May 25, 2008 above, with my lifetime average of 26.802 miles per gallon in green and my rolling average in red. Notice the run of awesome tanks I’ve been on since last summer, each of which topped 30 mpg, with a peak of 35.4. Amazing what you can do by just slowing down. And by not driving a stupidly huge SUV with a name like Blockade or Onslaught on the premise that, though you have nothing to tow and no particular need for much more cargo space than that available in a Toyota Corolla, a 6,400-pound Hummer H2 with a 6-liter V8 pumping out nearly 400 horsepower and enough torque to pull an aircraft carrier is an entirely sensible purchase given that your driveway is a bit steep and occasionally covered in leaves.

Some further reading spotted in the past few days: A Washington Post story about mileage-competitive hybrid owners, a Los Angeles Times report on booming hybrid sales, a New York Times story suggesting Americans might finally be changing their behavior in response to “high” gas prices and another NYT story on the toll rising fuel prices are taking on truckers. While I’m linking all over the place, why not check out this little gas-price story I wrote back in 2004?