The beatings will continue until morale improves.

Just in time for summer Vacation season, Alot of disappointed destinations with smaller crowds more local ones is my prediction.

I'd advise to fill up before the end of the week, since it's Memorial Day.

Has anyone reconsidered a trip this weekend via automobile due to gas prices?

We're staying at home this year.

We had a trip to Santa Claus, IN planned but decided against it. We've actually cut back two other trips on the calendar later this summer as well.

I don't know if anyone pointed this out before but if they did I apologize. But China and India's respective governments is subsidizing their oil. So their paying at the pump no where near what we do. Probably about 50 cents a gallon. Iran does the same and I read this morning that a gallon of gas in Tehran is 35 cents a gallon.

Yeah. Not going camping at all. We've also parked the SUV indefinitely, (It's not like anyone wants to buy it) and are driving the sedan exclusively. I expect our costs to go down by no less than $300 a month.

2.57 here in Scottsbluff.

A few stray thoughts:

1. The price of oil is outside the control of any one country, or the oil majors. Oil is now an international business. The price of oil is skyrocketing in large part because supply is fixed (OPEC and the other oil producers are at or near production capacity) and demand is rising quickly as a result of the industrial revolution basically reaching China and India (the world's first and second most populous nations) only now.

2. ANWR won't make a significant difference either way, and in any event will take years to get online. For myself, I prefer to leave ANWR untapped not because of caribou or whatever, but rather because it is a FREE emergency petroleum reserve.

3. The only real way to alleviate the price of oil per barrel, and therefore gasoline, is to either INCREASE supply, or REDUCE demand. And by a very signifciant amount. ANWR will not do this. Eliminating the gas tax will not do this. Ethanol is nice, but is only a small piece to a very large puzzle. The real key, unless we discover another Saudi Arabia somewhere, is to find ***ALTERNATIVE*** fuels. The reason why oil is dominant in our economy is because the generation of power relative to cost has been by far the most efficient. It's time to explore other avenues, and quickly.

As for myself, bring on nuclear power, solar and wind power, to the extent possible, and research the hell out of alternatives. It's a national priority.

That only means that the price of gas is cheaper for the citizens. And where does the government get the money to pay to keep the cost artificially low? Right, one way or another it's the citizens.

So gas is expensive everywhere, it's just a function of who is paying the cost -- all the citizens collectively, or the individuals on an as-needed basis.

What road is that? What alternatives do they have at reasonable cost? And what do they care when they are flush with revenues and have a mssive trade surplus, etc.?

And they shouldn't. That's just grabbing a small bucket of drinking water to put out a raging fire. Best to save it for drinking, if there is no other water readily available...

When gas drops below $3.00 a gallon i will consider it. ROFL

Not only that, but I'm seriously considering buying a Prius.

For all the noise about E85, there's only one place near me that sells it, a Gas City station that (because of its location, I guess) charges 20 to 30 cents more a gallon than anything else in the area. Their E85 is about 50 cents a gallon cheaper than that, but because of their exhorbinant prices only about 20 cents cheaper than gas I can buy elsewhere, which doesn't make up for the shitty gas mileage I get with E85.

If another station with normal prices offered it I might buy it (my Impala is designed to use it) but I'm not buying anything from those thieves.