On the one hand, yeah, this is a surprise for many people who did not expect it and aren’t prepared for it and I do have some sympathy for that, but on the other hand, this is a good time to figure out how to not get caught like this again, instead of complaining about it. This is shades of things to come. Easily accessible oil WILL run out, and we WILL all be facing this - if the oil doesn’t run out in our lifetimes, it could easily get so high-priced that a lifestyle dependent on your car just isn’t feasible any longer. We can make choices right now that can help cushion that transition (like choosing to live closer to work and shopping, or choosing to live in a suburb where the developers were smarter about putting services in the community). Everybody always wants to give reasons why they have to do what they’re doing, but it always boils down to choices.
When I was in good shape and biking to work all the time I didn’t get sweaty. There was always a breeze! The last few blocks before work I slowed down and did a kind of cool-down, and working normal business hours, it was morning so it was cool anyway.
I did learn to wear different shoes, because bike pedals are hell on high heels.
I did not wear a helmet because that screwed with my hair.
On the way home, the trick was–since I lived on top of a hill-- to get home and get my work clothes off before they got sweaty, which didn’t happen until I stopped. I had a couple of minutes once I got inside to strip off any drycleanable outerwear. Frankly, the worse problem was that lots of my clothes (and my hair) tended to smell like bus fumes.
No, that is my brothers college (lucky bastard). I go to Blueridge. It seems that they will be sympathetic, even though I still am supposed to be there. This is the great thing about online classes. I have two and I have not missed one!
And, it’s not the distance or my health that keeps me from biking. It’s the fact that there is only one route to campus, and some people still have gas left, or have managed to find it. Nothing is more dangerous than being passed by a car going 40 MPH, down curvy-ass and narrow Greenville highway, while your riding a bike.
Well, no we weren’t forced to live here. My dad was transferred and the only house we could afford was one well outside of the crushing taxes of the city of Brevard. If you want to live close to the library, you are going to pay out the ass for it. Back in those days it was considered cheaper to commute than to pay the city taxes. I’m most pissed off at the people who thought that would never change and so never took any steps to get a bus, bike lane, or conserve gas before they ran out of it.
Here is my morning gas saga: The phone rang at 6:20. It was my mom’s co-worker. She said the Ingles station had started pumping and that there was no line. So, I ran to the car and flew down the mountain. I arrived at 6:38 and there was a line of 26 cars at my pump. I actually managed to get a full tank at $4.20 a gallon. A huge improvement since $4.70, the day after Ike.
My understanding is that most of the stations around here are privately owned. They don’t actually take out delivery contracts with suppliers, they buy each individual shipment. When things go bad, there isn’t any legal mandate to get gas up here. Gouging is a non-issue. Any gas station selling at above $5.50 will be hit with a gouging investigation really quick and in our podunk town, it’ll make the front page. You do see plenty of dumbasses topping off, when they’re sitting at 3/4 of a tank. I honestly don’t think were seeing a supply issue, as much as a panic issue.
How about ending the patchwork system of fuel requirements that we have now - that have to be lifted anytime there is an emergency to ensure gas gets to where it is needed.
That seems like a no-brainer right off the bat.
Can someone explain the patchwork fuel requirement thing? This is new information to me.
Question first: I thought “suffocating” in English means “slowly dying because of lack of air (to be exact, oxygen) to breathe, literaly or figurativly”. How does “no gas” come into this? I could understand if you’d said you were hamstrung or stranded on dry land or similar metaphors, but suffocating?
Secondly, a suggestion more long-term than biking with its problems, and individually implementable (unlike public transport, which you would have to get your legislators to implement):
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Buy some solar panels, put on the roof of your house facing south/south-east/south-west, not in the shade. (Alternativly: buy wind wheel. Alternativly: buy water wheel for your stream).
Arrange to sell excess electricity to your local power net provider. -
Buy an electric car.
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Load electric car with free electric energy from your solar cells.
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Using the money saved from the rising gas prices, plus the money from the power company, pay off the credits used to buy items 1 and 2.
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Never pay for electricity or gas ever again in your life.
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Profit!
If you don’t have enough money for that - move to Europe, we have public transport, plus commuter-friendly cities (and things are closer together), plus laws in favour of purchasing renewable energy like solar panels.
I agree with you to a certain extent. I hope that the silver lining to this is that people do become more thoughtful about their lifestyles–buying smaller cars instead of pick-ups and SUVs, encouraging local officials to improve public transportation, walking and biking when possible. However, in this part of the U.S., the ability to live close to work is a luxury in many cases. It’s not a choice that many middle and working-class families can make. As I wrote earlier, health care and tourism are the biggest industries in the region. Doctors can choose to live close to the hospital. The lab techs, CNAs, and janitors who work at the hospital can’t afford the real estate or the property taxes in the city, so they live out in the county and drive to work. The people who work at the Biltmore Estate, a huge local employer, damn sure can’t afford to buy houses in that area. I am all for ride shares, more energy-efficient vehicles, and improving public transportation, but it’s not fair to assume that everyone has the privilege of choosing to live and work in close proximity.
I live in Athens, GA, and work in Winder. There were 3 gas stations open in Winder today, and they all had $20 limits. When I left work this evening, 2 of those had closed. There is a home game at UGA Saturday- we’re playing Alabama. There will be a lot of people here over the weekend, and if things keep going the way they are now, there won’t be any gas for them to get back home. My office is closed tomorrow because of the gas situation.
I’ve heard that this is only going to last the weekend, and we’ll have gas on Monday. Sure will be an interesting weekend, though.
I think part of the problem is the ideal of suburban living, which seems to kick in when a young couple has children. My parents moved shortly after my older brother was born, not to the suburbs, but to a single zoned neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills. Bicycling was impractical so walking or being driven were our only choice, as kids, for getting around. When we were kids it wasn’t too much of a problem, because we’d get to know the other kids on our school bus and make friends with some of those living nearby. My parents also house-hunted over the hill in Sherman Oaks, which was considered far out at that time (mid 1950s). Now of course, a similarly situated couple that wanted a house would have to go a lot farther to afford one, and that’s what people still do. There’s no law that says you have to move to the suburbs when you have a baby, but it’s almost like a cultural imperative. Along with that has come the increasing expectation of personal space; it’s a little startling to learn that the small tract houses in towns like Gardena, Torrance, and El Segundo, where “even teachers and staff engineers could once afford to buy houses” are really small by today’s standards, on the order of 1200 or 1300sf.
I would gladly trade a little space to remain in town, or near town, if possible, but most people choose differently.
Here’s what else is going on in my area:
All of the inexpensive office space is close to the high-crime areas. So, if your company isn’t huge, the only place to get office space you can afford is close to the bad areas of town. That means that you tend to live out further, where the crime is lower; but out there the commercial space is either extremely expensive or nonexistent.
The newer residential areas further out are also freakishly expensive. The only reason we can stay here is that my husband inherited the place. If not for that we’d be forced to live in a higher crime area. At least we could bike to work then.
I’m sorry, but this must be said. Why “suffocates”? I can see your region ,suffering, but suffocating? That makes no sense.
I also don’t think 5 miles is anything much, unless you’re in mountainous terrain and in not so great shape. Now would be a good time to get in shape.*
Carry on.
*not meant snarkily at all. I admit freely that it sucks and no matter what choices you have made, past or present, you certainly should have a reliable supply of fuel. But needs must when the devil drives and all that…
First, it’s not that I disagree with you on your ideas, I agree that we need to start really enacting new energy systems to maintain a sustainable lifestyle. However, your alternative (moving to Europe) is awfully simplistic, not to mention impossible/highly improbable for most random Americans. By the way, depending on where you live in the US, you can get a lot of benefits for greening your life. California gives quite a bit of tax incentive, I believe, for making your house more energy efficient, and they let hybrids drive in the carpool lane, even if there aren’t any passengers.
The truth is, the US and Canada are laid out quite differently from your average European city and it’s difficult to compare them. What works in Europe won’t necessarily work in the US or Canada, and vise versa. It’s going to be a lot of difficult work and we’re probably going to have to radically rethink how we live, but right now, I don’t think you can blame your average American for living a car-based life. In ten or twenty years, maybe someone outside of a large city who can’t get around with a car will be seen as selfish and wasteful, but we’re not there yet.
Well, there is the summer/winter fuel thing - everyone knows about that one, and since we are right at the time when the turnover usually happens and the disruption occurred now, this threw a big monkey wrench into the works. That’s why this requirement has been waived in many areas.
In addition, reformulated gasoline is required in several areas by federal law to reduce smog - and several states have their own requirements, including California.
These are the big ones - I’m sure an expert in the field could offer others.
I would think moving to a larger city in the US that has public transport would be more realistic than moving to Europe. Saying “just move!” is pretty naive and doesn’t show much understanding of real life anyway, but moving within the country would at least be possible for more than a tiny percentage of people. It’s not like foreign countries that you would want to live in are clamoring for immigrants, even assuming you could get past the other difficulties involved in such a relocation.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. This is not the last time there will be a problem with gas. Think about what you are going to do in these situations. Demand that your local government think about these situations. This will happen again, and you have it in your power to make sure you will be okay.
Um. Presumably you have a fridge with a freezer at home, right?
You plan ahead and keep a stock of staples, move to a location that is near necessities, make close friends with someone more able bodied in your neighborhood or suck it up and hit the road in your wheelchair.
In Cameroon people would budget a good amount of time for travel. School children would often walk more than 5-10 miles from their villages. On market day people would stream in from distant villages with their pushcarts full of goods. In town, often your fields would be a good ways out. Even fetching water could be a mile or two hike. The 100+ degree heat made this worse, but somehow pregnant mothers, old people, the handicapped, young children and everyone else managed. Sometimes it wasn’t fun and you did have to plan things a little more careful, but God doesn’t owe us a life that is fun and easy at all times.
Part of why they managed this is that life there was set up for it – as in, no one really had fast ways to travel, so people probably weren’t as exacting about arrival times or scheduling. For example, I live about a mile from work, and 1/4 mile from a grocery store and a KMart. Seems like I’m in accordance with your philosophy, right? Except that I’m a fat ball of cookie dough and have arthritis in my knee and ankle, so if I tried to walk to work, I would be sweaty, breathless and in pain all day. (Not to mention the four to five months a year when it’s too cold or icy or snowy to walk or ride a bike anywhere.) And I work at night, and those nearby stores, and the stores near my work, are not open when I get out of work – only a store all the way across town is. Most people in the U.S. live lives that are only possible if travel times are comparatively short and easy – much different from a poor country where expectations are different.
I don’t think any non-existent Gods owe me an easy life, but I don’t think I or any one else deserves an impossible life because of town planning and business decisions that I had no part in.
(Luckily, we have gas here for now.)
I honestly feel for those caught up in the no gas mess. How people plan and conduct themselves may fortell worse things to come.
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Went to the store after work to pick up a few items (it’s on the way home).
They haven’t had computer access since midday. The place was tense. (This is a food store with 24 checkouts, about the size of a football field, and always busy.) With no computer access, that means cash or approved check. No debit cards. The front wall past the checkout counter was lined with full shopping carts of food from folks who only had debit cards. When they return with cash, they can pick up their cart of groceries.
Despite big signs on the front doors, people still went shopping, proceeded to checkout only to find they couldn’t pay. The looks on face was individual and collective bewilderment. (You didn’t see the signs on the front doors?)
I paid cash and left. But it got me thinking. So if the economic crisis turns into a meltdown, what will happen first? Stores not accepting debit and credit cards. Gas stations accepting cash only. Bank ATMs starting to fail.
At one level, there is little to nothing I can do about it. But on another level, there are things I can do. Making sure the gas tank never drops below two-thirds full. A bit of cash at home. Full charged cell phones. Stocking up on staples such as canned goods and other long-term goods. Chicken Little attitude? Perhaps. But if people are coming to fisticuffs over no gas, what will they do if the gas shortages contine? Or if the economy really tanks?
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It still comes down to choice. If you make a choice to have certain priorities in your life, it is up to (generic) you to make choices that allow those priorities to be realized, not make excuses for why they can’t be done. It is probably worth pointing out here that the concept of making choices for your life is relatively simple, but not always easy.
Most people put having a job and a home they can afford at a high priority. If this is only possible in this region by living far from home, what other choice can they reasonably be expected to make?
A lot of people had trouble with this. I was saying that if a geographical region could breathe, then gasoline would be it’s oxygen. I suppose blood would have worked better and in retrospect I wish I had said my region has thrombosis.
Yes, choice is a problem, but it does not come down to the choices of an individual, a family or even many families. It is the choice of a whole generation of people, who chose comfort over practicality and moved into the mountains. These are the choices that I’m paying for now.