Jeremy Herndon

I’ve seen pictures of the Smart car on the Internet, and on television, but not “for real” until today.  I was waiting to pull out of a parking lot and a large tractor trailer passed me by, followed by a Smart car.  What a huge difference in size that was!  It was a cute little thing, a bright red, but it brought back memories of many years ago when I saw the results of a little car being in an accident with a tractor trailer and it made me shudder.  I don’t know how safe I would feel in such a little car!

I was really pushing my luck today.  I just got a Texaco gas credit card that gives me a 25 cent discount for every gallon of Texaco gas that I buy for the first three months that I have the card.  Some of the Texaco gas stations are higher than the rest of the pack; some are running at a dead heat.  Today I had to run some errands and I knew that I was going to need to buy gas.  I also knew that I’d be driving past a Texaco but not sure what their price was going to be like, compared to the rest.  On my way into town I saw their price was pretty good, so I decided that I’d fill up on the way home unless I drove past a station with a better price.  Well, there WERE some that were 4 cents cheaper, but I wouldn’t get that discount from the Texaco gas card.  So I just drove right past them.  Well, let me tell you that by the time I reached that Texaco on the return trip I only had one gallon of gas left in the tank!  Now THAT is cutting it close!

I was watching the news and they were talking about how the cost of gasoline is going to keep going up, and how the price of corn is going to go up (because of the floods) and how the price of milk is going to go up (and the stores are going to be switching to funny shaped milk jugs to save money) and it just makes me shake my head and wonder how we are going to survive!  Our economy is in serious trouble, and I don’t know very many people who say that they are NOT having trouble making ends meet!  I’m hearing stories about people who are renting their homes are moving closer to their jobs, taking smaller apartments simply because they can’t afford the gasoline to drive to work.  I’m hearing about people who are trying to take public transportation but can’t get on the train or the bus because it’s already full.  I’m hearing about people driving to the commuter lots and not finding places to park.

We need some serious re-vamping of the public transportation system, and we need to find alternate sources of fuel, to get away from fossil fuel dependency!  If we don’t act fast, we are going to be in deep trouble!

Well, today’s news was about the price of crude oil reaching a new, record-breaking high of $124 per barrel. I’ve been very good (I think) about not using this blog to complain about the price of fuel, but now I am breaking my silence. I am frustrated and discouraged about how expensive it is to buy gasoline nowadays! I don’t make a lot of money at my job, and have been struggling to make ends meet as it is. With the price of gas going up almost on a daily basis it is getting to the point where I just don’t know HOW we are going to make ends meet. We don’t use the car to go anywhere we don’t HAVE to go, we do every “conserve” gas trick in the book, and yet it gets harder every week to find enough money to buy groceries because we are spending so much on gasoline!

I sure hope that they find the answer to our problem quickly. We need to cut our dependence on fossil fuels and start using renewable resources to make biodiesel fuels instead. I’ve seen television shows about some people who have converted their cars to run on used french fry oil! I think that with all of the very smart brainiacs we have in this country, we should be able to come up with a viable solution to this energy crises!