Getting a little out of hand!

[97BlackBetty]

Im already saving pennies so I can do the TRS 10 year anniversary. I AM GOING WHEELING AND CAMPING. (Next summer)

 

[Will]

I was getting pissed at the $63 I spend every 8 days at the pump. So I researched fuel economy and found, for my passenger needs, the best car I could get would get 27 combined and my truck gets 17 combined. So I figured if I bought this car--18 years old because I have to put a kid in the front of a 5-seater car and can't have airbags--it would save me $800/year. It would take 19.5 months to break even with it if i sold my truck. But, I would not be able to do our combined family bike ride every friday afternoon--4 adults and ten kids and ALL the bikes go in my truck; I would not be able to do our week-end kayaking--you can't put 5 boats on the roof of a Pilot; I would not be able to haul firewood a half cord at a time; I would not be able to help my fried fix his road in Kentucky because a Pilot ain't pulling an excavator and skidsteer and a full load of camping gear and I would not be going all over the place four-wheeling--and I would not be building a 26' boat because I would have nothing to haul it with.

So fuel prices have risen sharply, of course. But if i were to get all weak in the knees about it, what would that do to the way I live? Is my family going to curl up in a ball with a Neon to save $800 a year? Maybe. But not this year. We're going to have the same good-'ol time we always have. That's important to me. But I have changed my driving habits and routes to suit my situation. Instead of 8 days pump-to-pump, I take a different route that is actually 1.4 miles shorter and takes me the same amount of time because the speeds are lower. And I have spread the trips to the pump out to 13 days if I don't have extra bullshit to do--and I combine trips more.

I wish I could drive the 27mpg combined car--but I can't.

 

[97BlackBetty]

Will that was inspirational. *tear* hahahaha.

 

[Maverick]

thats fine and dandy for people like you who can afford it. but what about people like me who are already scraping by? its sad, but the truck spends most of its days parked in the feild next to the house now. i cant afford to take it out but on the weekends and even then i cant go far.

had lots of camping and wheeling trips planned last year that got cancelled due to having to make a choice between buying groceries and going camping.

How do you know what I can and cant afford? The gas prices put just as much strain on me as they do anyone else. I'm just saying fawk it. You gotta pay to play. Also, I really dont have any other hobbies. I dont snowboard, I dont take trips to Mexico, I dont go to casino's. I mess around with trucks, hunting, and the outdoors. All of those things require fuel to do, so that's were all my extra money goes. I'll be damned if I going to let gas prices get in the way of doing the stuff I love to do. Even if I have to cut back on other things. Besides aren't you the one who claims to get constantly 20mpg or better in a 3.0 4wd? If I got that kind of mileage in any 4WD that had a bed I wouldn't be bitching and would drive it everywhere.

 

[Wicked_Sludge]

I'll be damned if I going to let gas prices get in the way of doing the stuff I love to do.

thats how i know...

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

We in this country are really going to have to modify our diving habits and what we dirve, the problem is only to get worse. Do we really need having a truck or could we just buy a trailer if we needed to haul something? Do we need a big lifted truck just to go out and play? Don't blame the countries in the Middle East, we get biggest percentage of oil supply right here from North/South America. Might as well blame China, millions of them now have become affunent enough to buy cars and really driving up the usage of "our" gas.
Dave

I actually got my truck to pull a trailer, but with the price of gas last summer I didn't even bother to hook it up. My Ranger doesn't get driven a whole lot, so it only sees the pump once every 1-2 months, at $30-40 a pop it comes out of my entertainment fund.

The OPEC people do deserve some of the blame, they cut or increase production to keep the price where they want it. If everybody got a Prius they would just cut production (like they did a couple weeks ago and caused a 10 jump) to maintain the pricing that they want.

Another thing that irritates me is the oil speculators, I wish I would get hourly raises due to a projected increase in demand too. They raise prices for any little thing that they think might happen (like the Iran deal) and when nothing becomes of it they move on to something else.

 

[bseamop]

Priorities people,priorities,I,m giving up my poker habit and selling my 20 year old dirt bike this year to make up for wheeling,its like when I used to smoke cigarrettes(which I gave up also to make room in the budget for play money)no matter how much they raise the price you have to have gas so your gonna buy it any way,you just gotta decide how much you love the sport/your truck,myself---I,m willing to sell a kidney if it will fund my wheeling trips this summer

 

[Bill]

A lot of this has to do with the sinking value of the American Dollar.

Anyway, I paid $3.39 yesterday. I've seen a few stations in the $3.6x price range around the metro area here.

 

[thegoat4]

The reason drilling more in the US soil isn't terribly practical is expense. Arab oil is cheap. Cheap to locate, cheap to drill down to, cheap to put well heads on, and cheap to pump out.

ANWR oil is extremely expensive. Instead of drilling through sand, soil, and a little bit of shale, you're drilling through a few thousand feet of bedrock that's been folded over a hundred times. Every drill bit worn out is tens of thousands of dollars, every crack in the substrate is several million dollars to seal off and move through. Every day of drilling is a couple hundred grand. Then, even after the oil is reached, it pumps poorly. You'll need to drill extra wells all over the place simply to pressurize. Oh, yeah, and when it's not horrendously cold, it's mud. Mountains all over the place, earthquakes, mudslides, and pissed off eskimos.

And all taht bedrock and all those fractures make locating oil very hard, which is why the estimates on the amount of oil up there are all over the map. That means lots of dry wells, adding to the cost.

After all that expense, they still need to pay off the fat-assed execs. By the time it gets to the refinery and your pump it's gonna be $8/gallon.

We're never going to run out of oil in the sense that we'll pump the very last drop out of the ground. It'll just keep getting more expensive until nobody wants to buy it anymore.

We didn't get to that point because liberals are evil, or because cars don't have enough batteries. We got there because one, we waste energy all over the place. Why does it take a 5,000lbs vehicle to move a 200lbs person? Ride a damned bike. Second, the dollar is falling. Not just a little either, but huge leaps and bounds. The US economy has been puking out better than $50billion a month for ever, eventually it had to give. Other countries like China have actually been trying to prop us up because it's in their interest to do so, but now they just can't afford it anymore. A buck is less valuable, so it takes more of them to buy anything.

Ride a bike, turn off your AC, kill your TV.

At $5, I'm parking my truck except when I ACTUALLY NEED IT. Until then I'll be as wasteful as anyone else.

 

[mhughes165]

im not talking about alaska onlyfor us oil, taxas and the gulf of mexico have RIDICOULUS amounts of oil, the entire midwest has oil undrneath it, my uncle works for a company that surveys to find oil and he tells me the amount of oil under US soil easily eclipses that of the middle east

 

[reginald fairfield]

Steve Earle sums up how I feel about this country and my standing right now the best.

"I got a job but it ain't nearly enough
A twenty thousand dollar pickup truck
Belongs to me and the bank and some funny talkin' man from Iran
I left the service and got a G.I. loan
I got married bought myself a home
Now I hang around this one horse town and do the best than I can
Gettin' tough
Just my luck
I was born in the land of plenty now there ain't enough
Gettin' cold
I've been told
Nowadays it just don't pay to be a good ol' boy

Been goin' nowhere down a one-way track
I'd kill to leave it but ain't no turnin' back
Got the wife and the kids and what would everybody say
My brother's standin' on a welfare line
And any minute now I might get mine
Meanwhile it's the I.R.S. and the devil to pay

I hit the beer joints every Friday night
Spend a little money lookin' for a fight
It don't matter if I lose or win
'Cause Monday I'm back on the losin' end again"

Steve Earle, Gettin' Tough

 

[skippy]

Steve Earle sums up how I feel about this country and my standing right now the best.

"I got a job but it ain't nearly enough
A twenty thousand dollar pickup truck
Belongs to me and the bank and some funny talkin' man from Iran
I left the service and got a G.I. loan
I got married bought myself a home
Now I hang around this one horse town and do the best than I can
Gettin' tough
Just my luck
I was born in the land of plenty now there ain't enough
Gettin' cold
I've been told
Nowadays it just don't pay to be a good ol' boy

Been goin' nowhere down a one-way track
I'd kill to leave it but ain't no turnin' back
Got the wife and the kids and what would everybody say
My brother's standin' on a welfare line
And any minute now I might get mine
Meanwhile it's the I.R.S. and the devil to pay

I hit the beer joints every Friday night
Spend a little money lookin' for a fight
It don't matter if I lose or win
'Cause Monday I'm back on the losin' end again"

Steve Earle, Gettin' Tough

gas has risen roughly a dollar since the dems took over congress.remember all the campaign promises and rehtoric about getting to work on energy legislation to solve our crisis and ease the sting at the pump.

food has risen roughly 10%.

this week they signed a budget that raises taxes on us by 683 billion dollars.

hello!wtf?as the lady from tennesee said on the floor of the house wednesday,many in tennesee have too much.too much month left over after the money has been spent.suspect that is the case everywhere.

end of rant.

 

[Bent Bolt]

this week they signed a budget that raises taxes on us by 683 billion dollars.

You can't be surprised !!!! You have the president that insisted that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq , what 3 years ago ? 4 ?

That plan worked well, didn't it.

 

[Evan]

A lot of this has to do with the sinking value of the American Dollar.

THANK YOU BILL!!

At least someone on here understands why the prices are high right now.

I'll spell it out for others:

The credit crisis we're experiencing has caused the Fed to lower interest rates substantially. As a result, U.S. currency is less attractive to investors. Demand for our currency falls and the dollar weakens. Not wanting to take a loss, investors move money into oil futures which offer a hedge against falling currency markets. This influx of money into the oil futures market drives up the price of oil.

 

[sbsumerix]

where im at we have gas from $3.38 - $3.50 and with me being 17 i can only work 13 hours a week im scheduled to work about 10 of those hours at $6.25 since if your young you get paid 85% of min. wage but i luckly got the 17 cent raise but making about $55 a week and only getting 18 mpg with my 4x4 3.0 i have to hit the pump the same day every week i fill up costing me $51 and those 4 bucks i have left has to feed me at work the days im there for that week. i think the thing that needs to be done here is all of this food stamp and WIC BS that we pay for all of these lazy people to eat more expensive and better food then most of us buy needs to stop we work to earn the money and why should i pay for someone else to eat when i hardly have food on my plate? i've also heard about the plan of why we are outsourcing jobs at from what a teacher said it is that we are giving other countries the jobs so they can make a better life and raise to our level (which is rapidly falling) so we can make the world equal and then have it balance out to all money is equal and prices will go down but i dont see how this is going to work maybe after another 50 years.