JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

Went to fill up the gas tank today…I’d been avoiding it for a while, trying to see if prices would drop after Labor Day, but after the gas alert icon lit up yellow and sounded an alarm a few times today, I knew I needed to go…

Ouch! – $30 to fill up the tank of our minivan. Guess that’s what we get for driving a Large Vehicle but at $2 a gallon, not even a little hatchback would be a cheap fill. Time to think about staying home more – fits well with the start of school anyway – or maybe buying a bicycle-powered bus for our family!

Looking on the web for more info (my husband had a hard time believing I was paying 1.959 for 87 octane!) I discovered How Gas Prices Work (part of How Stuff Works ). Reading an explanation of Where Your Money Goes (nice color graph) helped me understand gas prices better. And some scary statistics – such as we consume 360 million gallons of gas a day as a country!

From a link at How Gas Works I arrived at Gas Buddy . I had not heard of the nonprofit Gas Buddy but the idea is simple: motorists share with each other the current gas prices they see at the pumps. “Informed Consumers are Wise Consumers”. The site does the rest, making a chart of comparison, highest and lowest prices for the day and letting you know where to find them. There are charts of gas prices (wow – look at the slope for August!). There’s even a feature to help you chart your mpg for your car.

Here’s an article in the August 29 Toronto Star
Motorists Turn to Internet to Fight High Gas Prices
On the island, there’s only three stations, about a mile from each other, so no real purpose for Gas Buddy here – but a good idea nonetheless.

While at the station, I spied a Toyota MR2 Spyder : red, top down. Looks fun and cute, especially on a sunny September afternoon!
When we lived in Silicon Valley, we’d see all kinds of cars on the road, the latest from Lexus, Mercedes SUVs and brand new Beamers (I remember those Z3s): people cared a lot about the kind of car they drove and keeping up with nouveau autos was companion to the other passions for the latest innovations, machines and technologies. I actually enjoyed seeing what I could spy as I was driving, peering through parking lots, hoping for a glimpse of something I’d not yet seen. It was educational and fun, like a game for me. Here though on the island it’s a rare day to see a red Spyder.

Abigail said: I can show you another spider…in the back yard…..