Saturday, May 17, 2008

Sick Fascination

Is it just me or does anyone else get physically ill every time they drive by a gas station these days and look at the price of gas?

Sometimes I try to fake excitement about it: "Okay, we're coming up on a gas station-- have we hit four dollars yet? c'mon, c'mon, we're almost there, let's go! Higher! Higher! Higher!"

Other times I just want to throw up.

I found an interesting web site this morning that I found fascinating: Gasbuddy.com. They track nationwide gas prices. You can see where the cheapest gas is in your neighborhood. You can also see a national map of who's paying what. It's even sicker than a horror movie.

It's the uncertainty I hate: how high is it going to go? At what point do we cancel our planned trip to Utah because the price is too high? They keep giving us these predictions, but then someone sneezes wrong in the Middle East and investors go nuts and set a new record high and everyone says "we didn't think that was going to happen!"

Here's an interesting question: half the experts say it's going to keep going up at least through the end of the year. The other half say it's going to go way down. If you could choose, would you rather have it freeze where it's at right now, knowing it would stay there for several years, or keep it unfrozen, knowing it has an even chance of going way up or way down?

2 comments:

Hill said...

We're coming up on $4 and I can't stand it! We are planning on San Diego this summer...it actually might be really good that we moved into a cheaper place, just so we can afford gas!

jbstanford said...

Hey, look happy :) I got off the plane here and say the price $1.91 and thought... heyyyy.... that's cheap.. and that's NZD too (current exchange rate is about 0.8USD to 1 NZD)... but then I realized that's per litre.. so do the math :)