Tuesday, September 13, 2005

$3 gas?? Naaaah!

I am pleased to report that I have yet to pay $3 for gas. On Thursday, September 1, just after Katrina hit, I filled my gas tank with gas that had already crept up to $2.79. Since then, I've been a miser. We drove to Jaffrey, NH and back over Labor Day weekend, crawling along at 55mph and watching the rest of the world fly past us in the left lane. Actually, that's not totally true ... there were a few fellow gas savers on the road. Some of them barely passed us going 60 or so.

Since returning, I've taken absolutely no road trips unless I had an appointment somewhere. When I did have an appointment, I made sure to optimize my route so I could do all my errands with no backtracking, no extra miles. My gas tank is nearly empty, but I haven't had to fill it yet, and the price of gas is dropping!

With careful driving, I can get 450 miles out of our 16-gallon gas tank.

Yes, I'm a cheapskate, but more than that, I really believe in conserving gas. Our next car will be a hybrid or some similar gas-saving technology ... and it's not this gas crisis that is impelling us to say that. I told the salesman who sold us our current Subaru in 2001, Alfie, that our next car would be a hybrid, and I hoped it would be a Subaru hybrid, but our brand loyalty was not so strong that we would buy a Subaru if they didn't make hybrids when it came time to buy. We intend to buy an all-wheel-drive hybrid, and hopefully not an SUV but a truly conservative car.

I will say, though, that these gas prices have led Todd to consider whether he should be driving something to work that gets better gas mileage than his 1979 Ford F150!

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