July 23, 2014 at 2:10 p.m.
Our gas prices could be much worse (08/23/06)
Back in the Saddle
By By JACK RONALD-
It could have been worse.
Having come home recently from a - too brief - vacation, I can assure you that it's still possible to fill up the tank without breaking down into tears.
Locally, of course, we've all been enjoying the (probably temporary) price drop that comes with the grand opening of the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Portland.
But clocking something just short of 2,000 miles this month, I'd have to say that we're the pump-price equivalent to lottery winners at the moment. Enjoy it while you can, because the historical evidence warns it can't go on forever.
Heading east on vacation, we saw prices rise steadily, though many were better than we'd expected.
Signs that said $2.87 - which we all would have choked on a few years back but which now represent a deal - were commonplace most of the way across Ohio.
Then we hit New York State.
And taxes.
Prices well over $3 a gallon were the norm. Trouble is, when you're heading from point A to point B for vacation, you can't really shop around.
We filled up in Sherman, N.Y., a little burg where I think one of my wife's ancestors had his appendix removed on a kitchen table, for about $3.10.
And in Oneonta, where we have learned we can get a decent lunch, I paid a bit more than that at a convenience store.
The good news is that, after we got past New York, prices dropped down to the - if not reasonable at least not stratospheric - range.
By Vermont, we were dealing with under $3 again.
Just the same, we had those oddities that drive every motorist crazy these days.
We all know that the price of a gallon of gasoline can vary by several cents between here and Muncie.
In New England, which is much more compact, we ran into similar changes within even tighter distances.
The craziest?
A 14 cent per gallon price variance in half a mile.
All that price-watching proved beneficial for the trip home.
We had a pretty good idea where to stop and fill up.
That translated into under $3 a gallon for full service at a station operated by the folks at Hemmings Motor News in Bennington, Vt., and even less at an Indian reservation in Salamanca, New York.
In fact, the Salamanca fill-up, which was tax-free, was just enough to get us safely back in our own driveway before the near-empty light came on.
We'll chalk that up as a minor victory.[[In-content Ad]]
Having come home recently from a - too brief - vacation, I can assure you that it's still possible to fill up the tank without breaking down into tears.
Locally, of course, we've all been enjoying the (probably temporary) price drop that comes with the grand opening of the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Portland.
But clocking something just short of 2,000 miles this month, I'd have to say that we're the pump-price equivalent to lottery winners at the moment. Enjoy it while you can, because the historical evidence warns it can't go on forever.
Heading east on vacation, we saw prices rise steadily, though many were better than we'd expected.
Signs that said $2.87 - which we all would have choked on a few years back but which now represent a deal - were commonplace most of the way across Ohio.
Then we hit New York State.
And taxes.
Prices well over $3 a gallon were the norm. Trouble is, when you're heading from point A to point B for vacation, you can't really shop around.
We filled up in Sherman, N.Y., a little burg where I think one of my wife's ancestors had his appendix removed on a kitchen table, for about $3.10.
And in Oneonta, where we have learned we can get a decent lunch, I paid a bit more than that at a convenience store.
The good news is that, after we got past New York, prices dropped down to the - if not reasonable at least not stratospheric - range.
By Vermont, we were dealing with under $3 again.
Just the same, we had those oddities that drive every motorist crazy these days.
We all know that the price of a gallon of gasoline can vary by several cents between here and Muncie.
In New England, which is much more compact, we ran into similar changes within even tighter distances.
The craziest?
A 14 cent per gallon price variance in half a mile.
All that price-watching proved beneficial for the trip home.
We had a pretty good idea where to stop and fill up.
That translated into under $3 a gallon for full service at a station operated by the folks at Hemmings Motor News in Bennington, Vt., and even less at an Indian reservation in Salamanca, New York.
In fact, the Salamanca fill-up, which was tax-free, was just enough to get us safely back in our own driveway before the near-empty light came on.
We'll chalk that up as a minor victory.[[In-content Ad]]
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