Rant #2,367: What a Gas!

One of the chores that most adults face is that they have to fill up their cars with gas at least once a week or so in order to be able to get to where they are going.

Gas had been relatively cheap for years after an explosion about five years ago where in my part of the world, it was about $5 a gallon.

Since then, gas had plummeted to as low as $1.60-something a gallon in my neck of the woods, but had had a couple of decent price increases since then.

Well, today, in May 2019, I am now wondering if the days of $5 a gallon are not too far away.

Gas is now pushing $3 a gallon at most stations that I pass by, and some stations have even exceeded the $3 plateau.

And it isn't just happening in the northeast. Gas prices have risen all over the country, and in California, prices are hitting the dreaded $5 level.

The gas companies and other pundits claim that at least in the northeast, the drastic leaps in price have to do with "the summer gas," which is different than "winter gas," I guess, because the mixture is different and more expensive to make.

We are also over-taxed on our gas here, so that adds a lot to the price too.

But with the different mixtures, are we talking about wine here or gas?

Gas has gotten a lot like wine, hasn't it?

Anyway, the most important thing is that gas prices are rising, but funny, I don't see my paycheck rising to cover the cost--my paycheck hasn't risen in years, so no surprise here.

But what is also happening is that everything has gone up, and that relates to what we buy in the supermarket, too.

It has to do with fuel costs.

If it takes more money to fuel up the trucks to bring your bread and eggs and pasta sauce and cereal to the stores, the manufacturers are not going to absorb the cost--you are.

So I have noticed some great leaps in prices in the supermarket in recent weeks.

Of course, this is a problem in itself, but the manufacturers have a habit of keeping prices at these levels even when the price of gas settles down.

And again, I don't see my paycheck rising to counter these price hikes.

We have been told that the price of gas is going to rise for at least until the summer, so yes, we are looking in the northeast at, if not $5 a gallon, certain closer to $4 a gallon.

In California, who knows what they are going to experience?

It just makes you want to get an electric car, doesn't it--or at least a hybrid.

Right now, that is not doable for me, so I will just have to grind it out with what I have, my 2014 Kia Optima, a car which I got under trying circumstances, but one which I have grown to love.

Searching around for gas--and the best price--is an option, but my weekends are so filled up, as are the weekdays, that I don't have the time nor the patience to be looking for cheaper gas, if it even exists anymore.

So I generally fill up pretty local to where I live. I found a station that you pay the same price whether you use cash or debit card--but not credit card--which I think is something of a novelty, so I filled up yesterday at that station.

The price was commensurate with the "cheap gas" around me--$2.89 a gallon--so I felt I did a good job, and yes, for the past three weeks, I have put more than $30 in my car's tank at each fill up, a dollar figure I hadn't exceeded for months.

But that is the way it is now.

And yes, the situation does give me gas, figuratively and literally.