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Filled the car up with petrol (gasoline) yesterday. Price here is now £1.11/litre (actually 110.9p - why do they do that 0.9p thing still?)

At the current exchange rate, this is $(111 * 3.8) * 2 per US gallon, or US $8.43 per US gallon, for the same octane as that's usually on the middle pump at a US gas station (that's the lowest available octane here, 95 RON. US octane rating is an average of RON + somethingelse, with the consequence that 91 octane in the US is about the same as 95 RON).

If you want to see eye watering prices, premium was 118p/litre as of yesterday IIRC (actually, again 117.9). Just under $9 per US gallon.

I won't be entirely surprised if normal petrol hits 120p/litre here by the end of the summer (and the premium stuff closer to 130p/litre).

I also hope the weather gets either warm or dry real soon now, I've been off the bike too long. With current fuel prices, riding into work instead of driving makes a saving of about £4.50 per day just in fuel (about US$9 per day).

In other news, I've got much better with my Honey Bee CP2 radio controlled helicopter, although I had a pretty bad crash the other day that bent the main axis (the driveshaft from the big drive gear at the bottom to the rotor head). I got a bit too confident, flew very fast across the room and didn't quite bring it to a complete stop, and the main rotor just hit the wall. I didn't crash right then - tagging the rotor just caused an upset, but I didn't recover in time, stuffed the tail rotor into something else (causing it to disengage from its drive gear) and then ended up spinning down to a crash where the heli ended up hitting the ground upside down. I'm not sure whether the upside down landing bent the main axis, or whether pranging the main rotor into a wall bent it. I think that crash also finished off the tail rotor motors (they aren't entirely dead, they are just very weak making it hard to control the tail). I straightened out the main axis enough to fly again another day, but the subsequent problem with the tail rotor has the heli grounded for now (and of course, just at that moment the windy weather goes away so I'm missing some perfect outdoor flying weather, well, in between intense rain showers at least!)

I also have a problem with the main rotor speed 'surging' (actually, unpredictable collective pitch changes) ever since I changed out the feathering shaft. I think this is just a worn pitch linkage which probably got some extra slop in it from the crash that created the need to replace the feathering shaft.

So replacements are on their way.