"No," I said, "we've got about three quarters of a tank," and before the next question hit my lap I added, "when the tab hit 60 pounds [$120+ dollars), I decided that was enough and shut that puppy down."
As it stands, for all our moaning about the price of automobile fuel, we're still paying about forty per cent of what our friends in Great Britain are. The conclusion is inevitable...we just need to shut our pie holes about fuel costs (to quote the unbeloved Donald Rumsfeld, "It is what it is") and concentrate on driving both less and more efficiently.
Our UPS driver said that his wife drives by five WalMarts on her way home and, shortly after her return, gets in the car and goes back to one of them. "That's gonna change," he concluded.
I read somewhere that SUVs (the aircraft carriers of the highway) and large pick-up trucks are getting more difficult to trade in...sounds like the same sort of negative equity problem with which our housing market has been wrestling of late.
But most of the vehicles whipping by me on the freeway are - guess what - SUVs and pick-up trucks. Conclusion: Intelligence may be normally distributed in the population, but - statisticians to the contrary, stupidity may not.
OK, so I've been driving a hybrid for the last three and a half-years. DO YOU THINK I LIKE PAYING FORTY BUCKS EVERY TIME I FILL IT UP?
Well, under the current circumsances, yes I do......
