Cerebral Gibberish

The other day I, for the first time ever, paid over $4/gal to fill-up my car. The total cost of that fill-up was $71.15. It does not seem like it was that long ago that a fill-up was costing me under $50. Ahhh yes.. those were the days.. hehe.. I guess when I have kids I’ll be able to tell stories about how when I was their age gas cost around $1/gal and they will look at me and disbelief and call BS.

By the way, based on the owners manual, my car requires premium gas. I know a lot of people will say just use regular but I’m under the mindset that the maker of my car, who designed the engine, knows what octane the engine needs to run efficiently. I personally see the ~$3 extra I pay to fill-up with premium worth the peace of mind and that most people probably don’t really spend the time to calculate how much extra they would actually pay by using premium if their car needs it. Yeah, I know $3 adds up over time but frankly, like I said above, it’s a peace of mind thing for me and most people would just waste the $3 by buying a bottle of water or something else wasteful.

Any ways, I can’t say that I’m mad about the price of gas. Don’t get me wrong, it does suck but at the same time other places in the world, like in the UK, have been paying > $8/gal for a long time (It should be noted that ~70% of that is tax). I can only imagine what goes through their minds when they here about the bitching and moaning that us Americans are doing about the price of gas.

So far, I haven’t had too make to many changes to my driving habits. It’s not like I really drove around a lot in the first place. My round trip commute to work is only about 20 miles and if I have to go to a store I typically hit one of the many choices between home and work that does not add much to my trip. On the weekends I do try to plan trips so that I hit all the stores in a logical order to limit any back tracking. I’m also trying to ride my motorcycles to work more often since they tend to get gas mileage in the upper 30s to 40s. But with the recent 95+ (F) temperatures, the lack of AC on the motorcycle can make being stopped at light uncomfortable.

I guess the only thing to make things worse is that the prices don’t seem to be leveling off or going down. I believe the price of regular has gone up another .10 cents since I filled up making the price of regular $4/gal or very close to it. It will be a sad day when I have to pay three digits for gas which would mean gas would cost about $5.70/gal.. YEAH!

There has been one good thing to come out of the rising cost of gas so far. It has caused the demand for SUVs and Trucks to go way down to the point that the major vehicle manufacturers have stated they will scale back their SUV and Truck production. This is not to say that their production will stop completely. There is still a need for these types of vehicles when it comes to things like construction but a majority of their sales were to people that have no real reason to own one in the first place. Most people bought one as a status symbol or to compensate for something else. Some people will even say they are safer to drive but I think it really made the roads more dangers for everyone else. So score one for the higher gas prices!