Gas

Time for a non-Brantley related post. Because of hurricane Ike, our area is suffering a gas shortage. I've never seen anything like it. I went Thursday evening to the Eagles concert with a friend. He needed gas in his car so we drove up through Green Hills. (As a side note, it's a G35 and I have to have one!) I guess he remembers when this happened in the 70s. Every station was empty and his fuel warning said 17 miles remaining. I just knew we would be walking. We must have gone by 15 stations, all empty but finally found one. We had to wait for a while, but finally got a full tank. Because every pump was going, the pumps were extremely slow. I called and told Lawson he needed to go up to the station I saw earlier and get gas, but he didn't listen. He passed up 3 chances on Friday to get gas and got home on fumes. Yesterday, Lawson's tank was empty and I only had half a tank, so we drove my car to baseball and had the gas can in the car in case we saw some gas available. After we got home, Carson's mom called and was in line at a gas station and said Lawson should get there quick before the line got worse. He actually listened this time and went. An hour later she called and said she finally got gas and Lawson was about 4 cars behind her. Sounds like they only had a couple pumps going and it was taking 20 minutes to fill up one vehicle. I'm glad I got gas last Sunday, but now I have a little under a half tank. It should get me to Wednesday or Thursday and hopefully the problem will be resolved by then. The biggest problem is people are hoarding gas. They are taking gas cans a filling them, or getting gas when they still have 3/4 tank. Come on people. You are the reason why this is happening. Everyone panicked last weekend and thought they had to get gas and the stations ran out. If they had just followed their normal need, this would not have been so bad. I got gas last Sunday, but I was almost on E.
All this crisis makes you think about the things you can do differently. Now, I kinda wish I had gotten the Prius instead of the Accord. But, as I have learned recently, a Prius might not be a good choice for me because I'm not in the car very long with my commute, usually only 10 or 15 minutes. It seems that if you don't drive very far, your battery never really gets a full charge and it shortens the life of your battery. Kinda like how you are supposed to let your cell phone battery go all the way down and charge it all the way at one time to extend the life. Hence, my 2 1/2 year old car had to be towed because the battery wouldn't even jump. I'm guessing I wouldn't get the full benefit of a Prius because it would be running on gas most of the time since it wouldn't have time to charge the batteries and it would also hurt the battery life. Oh well, I'm not giving up that short commute any time soon.