May 27
Gasoline!
It was just last year when I filled up and it cost about $35.00. Last week it cost me $46.00 for the same fill up.
I am going to travel back in time when I drove a 1965 VW Beetle in high school - the year was 1971. I paid .25 per gallon of gas! It cost $2.50 for a fill up. You could also buy 5 White Castle Hamburgers for a buck.
This link is provided by the U.S. Energy Information Administration - provides the historical rise of gas prices:
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/mg_tt_usM.htm
Now leaping back to our current year.
Everyone is now fearing where this cost for fuel is going. The forecast looks bleak. The costs of food, travel, any products manufactured and carried to market - almost everything is being effected by the cost of rising fuels prices.
There is a huge push for alternative fuels. Solar, Wind, Hydro, Ethanol, Coal, Uranium, Hydrogen, used cooking oil - almost anything to meet our county's energy needs. attached is a link to Wikipedia about Alternative Fuels for more information.
Everyday we are faced with rising living costs that are out pacing our incomes. Fuel prices are effecting everything in our lives. What is going to happen to our way of life? We will be forced to adjust - change our ways, our choices, even our lives.
I think many people will start looking back in time to see how people were able to make due with less. Growing your own food, making your own home furnishings, making your own clothes, and especially traveling less. We may even find ourselves using horses, bicycles, or anything that will allow us to travel in a more affordable way. I also think communities will have to bond together and form coops for non profit reasons to survive. These coops will help provide food, clothing, building materials - the fundamentals of Life.
Articles about the growing Gas Problems:
We still use electricity in our daily lives for cooking, TV and of course, the Internet.
We need to look towards the future to solve today's problems, but until then fill your tires to the correct pressure, change your air filters and drive slower.
What do you feel about the rising costs of fuel and the future way of life?
I just ran across this article about Staycations from the Sun Sentinel.
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June 10th, 2008 at 7:58 am
Four more things to think about while buying gasoline
1) Only buy or fill up your car or truck in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold.
Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense the gasoline, when it gets warmer gasoline expands, so buying in the afternoon or in the evening….your gallon is not exactly a gallon. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products plays an important role. A 1-degree rise in temperature is a big deal for this business. But the service stations do not have temperature compensation at the pumps.
2) When you’re filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode.
If you look you will see that the trigger has 3 stages: low, middle, and high. You should be pumping on low mode, thereby minimizing the vapors that are created while you are pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapor return. If you are pumping on the fast rate, some of the liquid that goes to your tank becomes vapor. Those vapors are being sucked up and back into the underground storage tank so you’re getting less worth for your money.
3) One of the most important tips is to fill up when your gas tank is HALF FULL.
The reason for this is the more gas you have in your tank the less air occupying its empty space. Gasoline evaporates faster than you can imagine. Gasoline storage tanks have an internal floating roof. This roof serves as zero clearance between the gas and the atmosphere, so it minimizes the evaporation. Unlike service stations, here where I work, every truck that we load is temperature compensated so that every gallon is actually the exact amount.
4) Another reminder , if there is a gasoline truck pumping into the storage tanks when you stop to buy gas, DO NOT fill up!
Most likely the gasoline is being stirred up as the gas is being delivered, and you might pick up some of the dirt that normally settles on the bottom.