Sunday, April 17, 2011

How are you dealing with the rising gas prices?

A loaded question I am sure.
But as most of us know as time marches on we all seem resigned to the higher prices and forget our pledges to only go here or there when absolutely necessary.
Drive higher mileage per gallon cars, or hybrids or crossovers or what-have-you to try to be more green and then all of a sudden prices at the pumps drop a bit and we go berserk with the possibility that wow, all that worry for nothing…
When will we ever learn, huh?

I suppose we are a few of the lucky ones our older car still gets not too bad mileage per gallon, less than fifteen MPG that is, and it still has less than thirty-six thousand miles on it, and it will be ten years old this August and we bought it new, but it is paid for.
At the time it was quite expensive nearly twenty-seven thousand dollars, which we though was ridiculous but that’s what most SUV’s were and ours was not a big model, one of the smaller ones and not even four wheel drive. But in Florida there is little use for them unless you like off-roading or you go back up north where mountains and ice is during the winter.
But for us it was needed to tow our boat, which in the long run we hardly ever did.
Now it is just roomier for my scooter that has its home in the back inside of it, since it breaks down to four manageable pieces that Hubby puts together within minutes wherever we go and I need it, and that’s nearly everywhere.

Ironically, I can remember in the early 1980’s when our neighbor in NJ told us about his new Toyota Camry costing him ten thousand dollars, we thought he was crazy to spend that much on a vehicle! Funny how things change that’s what I am reflecting on.
Same with gas I suspect that will happen too.
With us since we are both retired and don’t go too many places even with that not optimum MPG for some peoples' idea, we are still not gas guzzlers since we are extremely frugal with how we choose to go from point A to point B. Logically, we go to the furthest location and work our way back, but we also are fortunate that most everything we need is within a five mile radius of our home.

When I had the good fortune to go to Europe while in college back in 1969 the gas/petrol over there was, if I recall, what we are paying now or even more so; I believe we at the time we were paying less than a dollar a gallon in NJ, but that is why Europeans caught onto the smaller more economical autos years ago. PS When I got home from Europe I only had enough money left to fill my gas tank and I believe it was about five bucks!
We keep forgetting when our prices fluctuate so often, could we be in denial?

Out of all the problems out in the world today this one is the least of all the other evils, except for the need to hunt for a job via auto, but most I understand do it online, true?
I see in our futures that perhaps we will all live within walking or bicycling distance to our jobs or at least not hour long or more commutes, and of course public transportation should become more accessible to us all and that would be a tremendous aid, you betcha!
We should address these possibilities, because until we seriously find a greener way for fuel we must improvise in smart ways not to be so dependant on foreign oil, since it appears that is one of the reasons for our involvement in some of the wars, of course I know injustices of freedoms of peoples’ rights is our first priority but that is also another underlying cause, we all realize that; for I am very sure!

On that heavy thought of reasoning let me please be the first to wish you all a very happy good night and ask you to kindly count all your blessings and share those overages and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?

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