A Tale of Two Trips, Some Fantastic Gasoline Facts

"It was so cold in Europe this winter that one environmentalist was seen with his hands in his own pockets." To save gas, plan your next trip in kilometers. Kilometers are shorter than miles."The Worst Job in the world: White House Press Secretary. For every WH 'joinder' these days there are ten conservative rejoinders. Jimmy Carter all over again. Our leaders wanted to make our interstate highway signs "look more like Europe" so they had them converted to kilometers, and bank thermometers changed to Centigrade. Energy Secretary Chu is willing to let us keep measuring our gasoline in gallons as long as we pay as much as the Europeans pay. Oh, and you have to buy a $43,000 electric car. In the UP of Michigan, our answer to climate change is "throw another log on the fire and kwitcherbellyachin. Stop the whining and start the mining. Drill, Barry, drill." And stop calling us "folks." We are not "folks", that is an F-word. The only people who say "folks" are clowns, as in "seriously, folks."So, seriously, I want to tell you a true tale of a trip I made in 1963 from Wisconsin to Jekyll Island, Georgia. I got over 40 mpg in my Renault 4CV, so with gas around 25 cents a gallon, I could go 160 miles on a buck's worth of gas, or 1,600 miles on ten dollars' worth. I made that round trip for $14 worth of gas, or 1,600 miles on ten dollars' worth. I made that round trip for $14 worth of gas and one quart of oil. Another buck's worth of gas would have taken me well to Florida and back. The cost of gasoline per mile on that 1963 trip was about half a penny. It currently costs me about 20 cents per mile for gasoline alone, and that's 40 times as much per mile.