I remember when I used to live in Las Vegas, the story was very different. There, the city was smaller and there was only one main freeway, the 215, which encircled the city. This freeway was far from stressful, and combined with surface streets was sufficient to reach anywhere on west of the strip quickly and easily. When I moved to San Diego, the story was very different. Though far from the nightmare driving of LA, I was still quickly introduced to such things as carpool lanes, ramp lights, and hopping on three freeways to get to work. Freeway driving burns fuel efficiently when compared to regular city driving, but driving these longer distances made me want to increase efficiency further. So here are a few tips:

- Use cruise control – If you’re going to be driving a long distance at a constant speed, using cruise control will allow your car to maintain a speed and feed fuel at an efficient rate.

- Change your air filter. Changing your air filter has can increase your car’s mpg by up to 10%. This is a quick and easy change which can be done by anyone, usually for under $20. Generally, it is good to perform this change about once a year. Often your mechanic will remind you of this during an oil change.

- Use your car’s momentum – This one may sound obvious, but the less you press your gas pedal, the less gas you will use! It is beneficial allow your car to pick up speed when rolling down a hill and use the momentum. You can also pump the pedal to increase speed, rather than flooring the gas. Let those other guys pass you! They’ll feel it when its time to fill up…

- Purchase parts which add mpg. There is a whole industry devoted to selling parts which will enhance both performance and mpg. For example, adding a truck tuner has the potential to increase horsepower, torque and mileage.

- Keep your tires inflated to the right pressure. This is a minor change, but has the potential to slightly increase mpg.

So the moral of the story: take time to care for your vehicle and your wallet will thank you!

• 7.0mm Akoya Pearl Earring – This size is made for young women. A gift for a college grad., a wedding gift, Valentine’s Day, Secretary’s Day, Mother’s Day, a baby shower, or a perfect piece of jewelry to wear on that all important first day of her career.

• 7.5mm Akoya Pearl Necklace – Our most popular size. This size is almost a universal size. It is perfect for younger women, or older women. This size pearl necklace is perfect for that informal affair, a day at work, and it crosses over to being a fantastic size for formal wear. And perhaps the biggest reason that this size is so popular is that it is the largest size of of pearl before making a really large jump in price and progressively higher prices, in the sizes above this one. This is an excellent”starter” necklace.

• 8.0mm Akoya Pearl Bracelet – Next to the 7.5mm this is the fastest selling Akoya Pearl size. Investment grade, can be worn formally or casually. There will be no doubt in anybody’s mind that the wearer of this necklace is successful.

• 8.5mm Akoya Pearl Sets – From the boardroom to the ballroomwearing these symbols of power will place the wearer amongst the higher levels of success.

• 9.0mm Akoya Pearl Earrings – the business woman climbing the ladder of succes, this makes for a fine gift, be it Christmas, a birthday or Mother’s Day, this size, which is extremely rare, makes the kind of gift that she will remember you for always. Guaranteed to make you a very special person for this gift.

• 9.5mm Akoya Pearls – Rare. It takes progressively more years for a pearl to grow to this size, and then out of all that do, only a few become invester grade. Only grown in Japan, the ultimate in Pearls. The very finest gift that you could give. A gift of this magnitude will set you the giver apart from the rest.

All right, stop worrying that this sounds like a lot of work!  Instead, really envision reading on your front porch, shooting serious hoops every day with your friends, and scheduling one day a week to work with a conservation group to beautify your town.   Then imagine telling your roommate all about it freshman year in college.  That’s a big picture you’ll want to frame.

Some very useful online tools including free software to design your own railroad model layout; search for it – it is even fun to use. You can also do it the “old fashioned” way, using pencil and paper with a compass for curves and a ruler for straight-aways. Keep in mind that no matter how exact you are in your design, when it comes to laying the materials, some adjustments will always be necessary.

You can also design your layout right on location, placing track pieces and switches loosely in place to get a feel for what it will look like. You can move things around until you have it exactly the way you want it. This is known as “going free-lance.”

It’s helpful to deliberately leave openings for later changes and additions. Leave some space for a train yard you might be able to add later, or other details you might not have the time or money for in your railroad model right now. This makes for a rewarding, multi-stage project, growing in complexity over time.

There are several different types of yards you can add. A “hump” yard has a gentle slope with an uncoupler, allowing uncoupled cars to gently roll away from the mainline. A staging yard is a section of track deliberately hidden from view, where you send your trains to wait. It’s useful to simulate long-distance runs, or simply for storage purposes.

One important guideline to keep in mind is the minimum radius for your turns, which in HO scale model trains is 18 inches for 4 axle diesels and 22 inches for 6 axle diesels. As a general rule, things will look and work best with 24 inch radius turns. For a full circle, this means 48 inches diameter, so you will need slightly more than a 4 foot wide space for such a layout.

Another important guideline is the maximum grade, which for HO scale model trains is 4%. What this means is that you should take 100 horizontal inches to rise 4 vertical inches. And that’s a maximum. Try to keep hills somewhat less steep than that. And test your engines to find out what they can handle and how many cars they can pull up that grade you’re creating.

To simulate greater height, instead of creating a steep climb for the rails themselves, drop the ground level underneath. You can create some breathtaking gorge and valley scenery, or even just send a road or another track underneath.

For getting started with your first layout, it’s probably best to stick with sectional track, which is fairly easy to snap together. More advanced modelers of HO scale model trains prefer to construct their layout from flex track. It comes in bundles, so it’s generally cheaper, and, as its name implies, it is a very versatile option, with greater opportunity for customization. It will make your railroad model look good. You can create small, brief curves with more natural lead-ins as opposed to being restricted to standard radii and straightaways in the snap-together sets.

A final point to consider in your design is to be sure you will be able to get to all parts of the finished layout for maintenance purposes. Some advanced modelers constructing larger layouts will even make “access hatches”, large holes covered by a movable portion of scenery, where they can come up from beneath and actually stand in the middle to work on those less accessible portions. Be sure the opening is large enough to comfortably stand and move around in. The scenery on the removable section should be light and durable for ease of handling. You may also want to create a screen of trees or some other visual obstruction in front of the removable section.

 When you are talking about getting a single ply roof, there are quite a few things you are going to want to take into consideration. Although these roofs are chemically superior to other roofs, they also happen to be much thinner and susceptible to puncture should someone drop a hammer or throw a bottle up there. It is important that people weigh the pros and the cons of single ply roofs before deciding what is going to be the best option for their own building.

 The biggest downside to single ply roofs is that they can get punctured easily. If somebody is walking on the roof, or if somebody drops a hammer or a knife when they are on it, then you are going to have a leak. So that is a problem, especially with lower buildings where people can easily throw things up there.

 If you are building a one-story, fourplex home, where people might be climbing up on the roof and making a mess, then you definitely do not want to go with a single ply roof. In that case, you are going to want to choose a two or three ply built up roof or a modified roof simply because those options are physically stronger. There are multiple layers to those roofing styles, which means they can physically take more abuse before wearing out or causing leaks.

 Because single ply roofs are chemically superior, though, they can be a great alternative to restaurants that might have animal fats building up on the roof. The chemical properties of these roofs allow them to stand up well to things like animal fats or acid rain, along with inclement weather like wind, snow, or extreme sun. So all of those are reasons why a business would certainly choose a single ply roofing option.

 Another industry that commonly asks for a single ply roofing system is hospitals. If you are a hospital, you really don’t want a hot tar roof material that is going to be seeping through and producing noxious fumes, especially once heat and temperature changes are taken into consideration. So instead, what you would be looking for in that type of situation is a single ply roof that is going to be chemically superior and cleaner at the same time.

 There are many grades of single ply roofs, and depending on which grade you have chosen, you may need to get your roofing maintenance done more or less often. Generally, you can get a good 10- or 15-, even 20-year manufacturer warranty on commercial projects with these roofs.

 Meanwhile, the average life span for a single ply roof is no more than 16 years on average. And after 16 years, people should plan on needing to do some re-roofing or some other type of major repair. One good aspect to single ply roofs, in this regard, is that the roof’s lightness means that you can overlay the roof a lot of times before needing to tear it off entirely and start over. So people who have a single ply roofing system in place can just go over the areas where they need additional layers of roofing, which can be cost-effective.

 Finally, I should explain that a lot of people prefer the single ply roofs for climate reasons. The single ply roofs are usually white in color, which can be reflective and therefore beneficial for those living in hot climates thanks to its thermal properties. So environmentally speaking, that is another reason why single ply is favored.

 There are a million factors why you would or wouldn’t choose a single ply roof, and all of the above reasons only start to touch on those factors. Most important, though, is that each homeowner or building owner knows the specific needs of his building, because that will be the biggest determination when choosing between a single ply or another roofing system.