Just a note today and it's about Mexico and politics. Normally I don't feel this is the proper place for politics and gosh knows we're all sick of hearing about it, but you can't get away from it and I sort of swerved into a political situation and thought it might be worth sharing because it might apply to some of you.

Before I moved down here I bought a used Jeep Liberty to tow the trailer and get Max and me down here and over the cobblestones etc. and it's great, a perfect vehicle for the way I live. It also has some neat features like radio control buttons on the steering wheel and other accessories including a tire pressure monitoring system. When a tire gets low you get a gong and light and a message on the console, apparently it's not smart enough to know which one, maybe it adds up all the pressures and if it doesn't equal at least 128 lbs it rings the alarm, who knows, so you have to figure that out for yourself, it only knows that at least one is low.

Now, I had assumed the spare tire wasn't included in the sensors, but I was wrong, about 3 weeks ago I got the gong and a message saying the spare tire was low - wow, ain't technology great except, the spare tire is covered with a big hard shell cover and hard to get off so I ignored it, the car has 46,000 miles and the spare has never been on the road, so what's the chances I'll have a flat I figured.

Now the politics enters the picture; a few days later Obama (I call him the big O) announced his energy policy and said if we'd just inflate "all" our tires to the proper pressure we could save as much oil as Venezuela sells us or some such thing, I didn't pay much attention. But then someone at NASCAR said it was a good idea and does make a difference, so that I took seriously and immediately peeled off the hard cover on the low tire and inflated it to proper pressure as measured by my MX tire gauge (the other 3 I own are still in storage). Just to be extra sure I actually over inflated it a bit, it lost 2 lbs of air in 3 years so I over inflated it by an additional 2 lbs, I figure I won't hear from the gong again until sometime in 2014 (who needs the hassle right?)

I was totally excited that with the additional savings I could explore more of the area with the same carbon footprint (whatever that is). So, after inflating the tire I drove for 2 weeks around town, to Joco and Guadalajara, Zapopan, even El Chante and this morning I filled gas tank (actually had it filled, there are no self service stations in MX) and with great anticipation I checked my mileage and ? - nada difference? I was expecting a huge increase in mileage. Apparently big O's energy policy doesn't actually apply to "all" tires after all.

Ok, so the part about needing to inflate the spare tire is true, but I didn't really expect inflating the spare tire would make a difference (after all a politician said it) now maybe if I'd used helium it would have made the car lighter and that would help mileage? - I'll have to think on that one.