Gas Prices

Now it has been a couple of days since that "gas scare" that had everybody running out to buy gas before it was supposed to go up to $5 per gallon the next day. The $5 price didn't quite happen around here, even though there was a noticeable jump in the prices. Yesterday, I encountered prices ranging from blank (station just didn't have numbers listed up on the board) to $3.79 / gallon to $4.45 / gallon.

To be fair, these are prices I saw while driving past as opposed to actually going to the gas stations. So that doesn't account for any restrictions that may or may not have been in place at the stations. I've had friends encounter places that had 10 gallons per purchase limits. And also a $20 per purchase limit (practically a 5 gallon limit, that one just seems crazy to me).

Now that Hurricane Ike has made its landfall, hopefully the cleanup process can get started. People can get moved back in and begin to rebuild and get back into the groove of normal life. Hopefully refineries will get opened back up and get back up to capacity and prices can begin to decline without us hitting that $5 mark.

How bout that gas...

So, as Hurricane Ike is approaching, it seems that everybody in my town is fighting to get gas while the gettin is good. I don't know if this is happening all over the country or if it's just us southern states or what.

I visited 5 gas stations before I successfully got gas. 3 were actually sold out of unleaded gas! This is a first in my lifetime. I'm not arguing whether or not it has happened in my 25 years of life, but this is the first time in my memory.

I saw signs claiming as low as $3.45 a gallon and as high as $3.81. Lines at literally every gas station I went to until I came across the BP station where I actually bought gas. It was a pretty wild sight. I'm quite curious to see what is gonna be goin on tomorrow. Am I really gonna leave my apartment and see $5 a gallon gas? Just the thought of that sounds insane.

One of my friends and I occasionally reminisce about the days when gas was about $1 a gallon so you could estimate at a glance how much you'd be paying if you knew the size of your tank. But now there's math involved. You're adding and multiplying and carrying the 1 and evaluating the limit as it approaches infinity and yeah whateva...