Being one of millions invested with both a car and a drivers license, I am put in an interesting position by this mere fact. I am called upon to do things, at my own expense (gas, wear and tear, etc...), by other people with no consideration as to the impact to myself. The thing is, I don't really mind most of the time. I've been know to offer rides for people and I've been known to do ___ Runs for people. If I'm already going a direction it's especially not a problem. But it's starting to become too expensive.
It was reasonably easy to afford gas when it was around $2.00 a gallon, harder when it reached $3.00 and now that it's $4.00 it's really hard. Let's examine shall we:
I drive roughly 25 miles a day round trip for work. I drive an additional 5-10 miles on an AVERAGE day for personal business. My car gets (approximately) 25 miles to the gallon.
So, for an average week of driving I use approximately 7 gallons of gas, or round to 30 gallons per month. That used to be $60 a month, which is not so bad in terms of transportation costs.
Now that costs me anywhere up to $120 a month, a difference of up to $60. That differnce could get me:
one 360 game
or 2 new roleplaying books
or 4 fifths of decent liquor
or 5 racks of good beer
or lots of not so good beer
or 15 books at powells
or 4 months of WoW
or a decent meal out for 2-3 people
or a good amount of steak
or 1/2 of a subwoofer
or 2 gigs of ram
or 1/2 a new hard drive
or 20 24oz. cans of pomegranate rockstar
or 3-5 dvds
or 1 1/2 full seasons of something on DVD
or 30 boxes of shisha for my hookah
or 2 100 disk spindles of blank dvds
or 3-4 cds
or 1/4 of a new gun
or 1/2 of a decent power tool
or 60 bags of individual size cheetos (crunchy)
or 20 big bags of cheetos (crunchy)
or 3 co-pays on my insurance
or 3/4 of a month of car insurance premiums
or 3-4 cakes
or 50 boxes of incense
or 1-2 new knives
or a trip to the shooting range for me and a friend
or a lot of dice
or 3 trips to the movie theater (including snacks)
or 2 new pairs of pants
or 3 nice new shirts
or 3-4 webcomic collections
or a box of mid level cigars
or lunch for everyone on my team at work
or 60 items at the dollar tree
or 1 month of my internet bill
or 1/7 of an iPhone
or an hour long massage
or a sack of groceries
or 1/50th of a 2 week trip to berlin or rome
or 1/15th of a 1 week trip to Las Vegas
or 1 share of a cow for a third world country
or 2 gifts of bees for a third world country
or a pocket watch
OR LOTS OF THINGS.
The problem is that the international oil cartel (and cartel is a deliberate word choice here) is doing what they do: Fixing prices to maximize profits. What is happening is that they are making it very hard for people to make a living if they have to drive to work. I strongly suspect that we are going to reach $5.00/gallon before the end of the summer. I also think that will be the breaking point. If It gets to that point I'm either going to carpool for EVERYTHING or i'm going to start taking the bus and only use my car in emergencies.
As a side note, I suspect we will have a big drop in prices at some point, before it creeps back up to previous levels.
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2 comments:
Holy cow I was just thinking the other day, how high does gas have to get before I give up on driving altogether? The thing is I already take the bus to school, and I kind of need to drive to work.
What a pickle. But everything you said up there is part of why I hate giving people rides.
And I bet you all thought I was just trying to be a bumhole.
We know you are trying to be a bumhole.
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