OK, what is it with the oil companies? Do they think we're all stupid or something? Yes, we're all dependent upon gasoline ... way too much so ... but there has yet to be a logical explanation made to me (or at least not one that makes sense) as to why? Why is it that when oil was exploding at new highs every day, the pirce of gas shot up correspondingly ... but now the price of oil has been dropping and the price of gas hasn't?
According to the current price of oil per barrel, today, when it was at this price on the way up, the price of gas should have fallen to approximately $3.85 a gallon on averge. Why hasn't it? Because the oil companies all know that we need their product, and apparently we are willing to pay whatever prices they demand. Never mind that some people are forced to make decisions over whether to put gas in the car to get to work or food on the table to stay alive. For the past 4 summers, now, we have seen the price of gasoling spike, dramatically, between roughly Memorial Day and Labor Day ... just long enough for Big Oil to get us accustomed to thinking that the next benchmark dollar is "cheap" gas.
We complained three years ago as it approached, the topped, two dollars, ending up thinking that $2.25 was cheap. Then came $3.00, and now $4.00. News Flash: I don't think $4.00 a gallon is cheap for anything ... not gas, not milk, not water ... nothing.
I've decided to fight back. I may not be able to control the price they demand for gasoline, but I can certainly control how much of it I use. I went and bought me a motor scooter (50 cc 2-stroke engine) that gets 91 mpg. You know the kind, you see them in James Bond movies in European and Asian countries, at least in the big cities "over there". Mine is Chinese made (and you can imagine how the translated owner's manual reads) but it's very efficient, and I get a kick on it. It gets up to 35 mph on the flat out, and if I open it up downhill with the wind at my back, I've seen the speedometer hit 45.
I gotta tell ya, after riding this thing a couple weeks, i'm rethinking my whole motorcycle phobia!
I still have my Ford Escape for big trips and large errands like grocery shopping. But for everything else, I use the scooter. It took me around to and from work (an 8-mile trip one way, using surface streets instead of expressways), stopping at the PO Box for my snail mail almost every day, and when I had to fill up, it took LESS THAN ONE GALLON. And I drove it for 8 days before I had to fill up.
