Monday, June 02, 2008

Rant: Gas-way-too-fucking-expensive-oline

I filled up my Pathfinder today. It wasn’t quite empty; it only needed 16.512 gallons to fill the 18 gallon tank. I always put the cheap, regular gas in. Do you know how much gas was per gallon today by my house? $4.279. Yeah. It cost $70.65 to fill my tank and it wasn’t even totally empty.

When I started driving, gas was $0.99 per gallon. You could fill up an 18 gallon tank for the price of dinner for two at subway. For the same price as the gas I bought this morning, I could have gone to the Met and ordered a calamari appetizer, an iceberg wedge salad with Rogue River blue cheese, a petite prime filet mignon dinner with a baked potato and a beer. Not that I would eat a steak or squid, I just wanted to make that startling comparison.

The good news is I got a much needed tune up last month for my poor, neglected Pathfinder and it now gets almost 50 miles more to the tank than before! That is an extra 2.75 miles per gallon.

4 comments:

NuclearToast said...

I am =so= happy that I ride the bus every day!

CJ said...

I know, it sucks! But I think we better get used to it. I've been considering taking the bus to work, but check this out. To get to work I would drive to the Northgate park & ride, then it would take 1 hour 10 minutes and cost 2.25 each way. If I drive, it takes 25 minutes and I only use about 1 or 1.25 gallons of gas, so no real savings. How come we're always encouraged to take public transit, but the routes are rarely convenient?

Bri said...

Gas is way out of control. Thank God for the bus. CJ, you should check with your work to see if they can get you a discount pass. I get a flex pass from work. I pay $6.46 every two weeks for my pass pre-tax. If I couldnt do that it wouldnt be worth it. The bus for me to go from Redmond to Seattle is $2.50 each way.

Shannon Perry said...

I agree that the buses are really pretty awful: dirty, expensive, overcrowded and rarely on schedule, at least in the city. I just mapped the distance to work for me, and it's 3.82 miles. I can get there by bike in 25 minutes. I can get there by bus for $1.75 in AN HOUR. At least the massive time difference makes me feel like Lance Armstrong!