bjarvis | Car Woes

Well, they're not really woes, I suppose. More like random, pointless whinings from an overprivileged loser with an hyperactive sense of entitlement. But I digress...

While driving home from work yesterday, a sizable rock came flying at me from the vicinity of a dump truck in the next lane. As near as I could tell in the 0.1 seconds it was in view, it was about the size of my fist and since we were all driving at 70 mph, it carried considerable kinetic energy. Lucky for me, the rock struck the pavement just before my car so it did little more than bounce twice along the bottom of my car very loudly. If it had been a little higher, it would have done considerable damage to the front of the Civic; a little higher yet and I'm sure it would have gone straight through the windshield and possibly me. Very unnerving.

The Civic's maintenance light began blinking this morning, the usual flashing which indicates scheduled maintenance more than any particular problem. It's time for brake fluid replacement and I want to have the rear passenger door lock checked too. I'm not exactly sure when I'll be able to get the car to the garage and the $$$ the work will probably require isn't exactly filling me with enthusiasm.

On Sunday, following our hike in the west end of Virginia, we dropped Mark and

discord35 at the Greenbelt Metro station, then circled into Beltsville to fill up the tank of the minivan. The first gas station was dry. So was the next. And the next. The fourth had only three working pumps and all were running remarkably slowly, 10+ minutes for 15 gallons. Yesterday afternoon, I tried to fill up my Civic before leaving Reston but the station nearest the office had no fuel. The hyper-expensive station in my home neighbourhood had run out of premium & mid grades but I was at least able to get 10 gallons of regular.

I've never witnessed fuel shortages like this. I know this was fairly commonplace in the energy crisis of the 1970s, but I was too young to drive or be more than peripherally aware that something was up. I'm very glad that our vehicles are rather fuel efficient and that I could work remotely from home if necessary. And having to hunt for fuel suddenly gives me a little extra insight to the hoarding mentality: I feel an irrational compulsion so keep my tank topped up constant now, just in case, even though I know intellectually that it's a dumb idea which would only make the more global situation worse.

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I have not heard of stations being low on gas here as of yet but gas prices around Seattle have been hovering $2.85-$2.87 a gallon and some stations, namelyl the Union 76 stations charge as much as $2.97 a gallon. Premium gas now sells for $3.11 or so a gallon.

Thankfullly Boris' mileage, while nothing super could be worse and thankfully it only requires standard 87 octane.

I guess this will mean a little investigation to see if stations here are running out of gas yet. I do the oil shortages to some extent from 1979 but not the 1973 shortage. From what I've heard, I think we still pay less for gas now than we did in '79, and that's accounting for inflation.

Yeah, inflation adjusted, this still pretty cheap gas. I paid $2.979/gallon for regular on Sunday and $3.099 yesterday (different stations in different counties of Maryland which are traditionally 8-10 cents different). Checking the rates posted on the two service stations near my office Urbana, MD, this morning I saw $2.999 at each.

The reports on the radio have said that the regional shortages are due to refineries having to replace MTBE with ethanol as an anti-smog measure but their trucking infrastructure isn't up to the task quite yet. Apparently one can ship MTBE-added fuels much further by pipeline than ethanol because the alcohol mixture absorbs & holds more moisture.

Of course, they could be lying to me and I wouldn't know either way. :-)

Ah yes, the summer time fuels, forgotten that. We have to have that here I think as well.

My car's emissions gets checked every 2 years thankfully and Boris passed with flying colors when I had the title transfered to my name last month.

My brother and sister-in-law are headed to the US from England tomorrow for a three week driving vacation. I warned them a couple of weeks ago that our gas prices were climbing steeply, and to brace themselves for extra fuel costs. My brother replied that since gas in England is now over $8 a gallon, he's not too worried!

No shortages here, and averaging about $2.959 for regular.

My 2nd youngest sister (borg designation "5 of 6"), still a student in Canada, asked me to send up some money this past week as spiking gasoline prices have destroyed her budget. Fortunately, she starts her new job in another week so she just needed a little help to bridge the gap.

It sounds like you fulfill the role of IMF for your family :-)

It's not as bad as it used to be --I put the brakes on that earlier this year. Like the IMF, I'll never see these dollars again. :-^

I was 10 during the first oil crisis. I still remember being in the car with my mother as we passed the cheapest station in town and her exclamation, "I will not pay 50¢ [$2.72 in 2006 dollars] a gallon for gas!" My grandmother would get up at 5 a.m. to wait in line (New Jersey had an odd-even system--even numbered license plates on even numbered days, etc.) She was impressed by the young men who would sell coffee and doughnuts to those waiting. At the time, she was driving a 1969 Mercury Marquis Colony Park station wagon that got 13 mpg on a good day.

That there are shortages now in places makes me wonder what is really going on.

In Montreal, gas is running about $1.20/litre ($1.06 US), but no one is really having a fit. Last summer, it got up to $1.35 ($1.19 US) and then people were in a mood. We buy our gas in Vermont, where it is running between 68-75¢/litre (USD).

We haven't been short on fuel here, yet. At over $3.00 a gallon (I paid $3.29/gallon yesterday) there might as well be shortage. Given the amount I have to drive for work, it's getting costly. Thank goodness it is expensible. Guess the motorcycle will be getting a lot more use these days.

The last time I talked to my parents about gasoline, it was running about $1.04/L in northern Ontario, but that was a while ago... I'll have to ask when we next chat.

Then again, it was still $0.499/L when I last lived in Toronto.

I wish I had a motorcycle... it would be (even more) efficient than my car. Kent freaks out at the idea though, afraid I'll end my days as a red smear on the Capitol Beltway. sigh

Those days are long gone. However, there are rumblings here about why gasoline prices are so high if Canada is an exporter of oil. The response is that because Canada trades its oil on the open market, market prices apply, etc., etc.

Stephen Harper promised at one point during the campaign to eliminate the GST from gasoline (leaving the 10¢/L excise tax). He has backed away from that stance now saying that the 1% GST reduction he is proposing will, of course, apply to gasoline and that is really what he meant, or something to that effect.

The response is that because Canada trades its oil on the open market, market prices apply, etc., etc.

That, and extraction from the tar sands is hideously expensive. In days past, it was cheaper to heat the Maritimes with oil tanked in from Venezuela than it was to bring in oil from Alberta. I have no idea how the Newfoundland and Nova Scotia fields may have changed that particular equation in recent years.

In the brief time I have been here, I have heard nothing about the cost of extracting oil in Alberta. Shell is now running a commercial touting how much oil is there and what a great environmental partner they are going to be. There was commentary last summer about renationalizing Petro-Canada, but that didn't really go further than the news media.

As for Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, all I know is that lots of money is being generated and Ottawa wants a piece of it.

I haven't seen anything about where Canada's domestic fuels come from. We all know that lots of it goes to the U.S.

Car Woes

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