Last night I fired off an email to friends and family in various parts of the country that gas in Louisville hit $3.999 per gallon and asked what it was in their area. The front page photo of this morning’s Courier-Journal has a gas sign with $3.999 price and a story about the impact of rising gas prices.
Now, a few minutes ago neighbor Tom calls. Tom is 50 and lives more cheaply than anyone I know. He drives a diesel that gets 40+ miles per gallon, does his own auto maintenance including ordering tires on-line. Buys much of his food and home supplies at salvage stores and flea markets. Tom reminds me of my late Aunt Bee in that his basement, extra rooms, closets, and under beds are filled with canned food and toilet paper.
Tom called to tell me he is going to start making his own diesel fuel. He has been reading about it on the web. The receipt includes oil (he has stockpiles of this too), something I don’t remember, and the cooking oil (must be vegetable) from restaurants. He says it will cost him about $1 per gallon and was headed out to local Asian and Middle Eastern restaurants (they are largely vegetarian) to see if he could get their waste oil.
So, what brought this on? Tom has a good friend who works at CarMax, a local company that deals in used cars. The local newspaper (or maybe TV) was out there last night doing a story on the impact of higher gas prices. Some guy had just driven in one of those large gas hogs with a "book value" of $14,000. He was offered $3,000 by the dealer.
Also turns out there was a Marathon distributor there. The distributor gave some neutral comments to the press. Out of earshot of the reporter, the distributor told Tom’s friend to expect gas prices in the $7 per gallon range by Labor Day.
If that is true my school enrollment might go down. For the first time, we will have some dorms by Fall and part of their promotional material stresses reduced transportation costs. But even we fill the dorms, a full 96% of our students will be commuters. Enrollments are down (7%) this summer for the first time in years. I suspect this is at least in part due to the rising gas prices and poor fuel mileage of U.S. vehicles - due largely to Congress not raising CAFE standards since the Reagan and his Republican Congress took over. They also shut down research on alternative fuels and ripped out the solar panels on the White House.
We are keeping our gasoline consumption down this summer. I’m not teaching summer school so I’m avoiding going to campus (40 miles round trip). I’ll probably go once every two weeks or maybe less just to check my mail. Fortunately most stuff comes via email. Sheila has started riding the bus when possible. She said it is much more crowded than a couple of years ago when she could ride it virtually every day. Her director commented yesterday that they might be installing new bicycle banks for health department employees. If she could find a "safe" bike route, she would do it this summer.
One final comment. Neighbor Tom said that on his way home yesterday he stopped at two salvage grocery stores. The large one was almost too full of people to even walk through. The small one had no open parking places.
Time to check on my garden and plant a few beans.