On the horizon is vacation, which means loading the diesel wagon with all the junk required for 10 days or so at the Atlantic Ocean, everything, basically, but bait and relatives, which we get in abundance when we arrive.
Don’t be deceived. This is not one of those “Oh-I’m-soooo-much-happier-than-you …” columns. It’s not. I too, have flaws. I have issues.
It’s actually about revolution. The vacation thing is just a trick to lure you into an assault on the oil barons.
Vacation is an annual ritual, a family reunion fueled by sunscreen, salt water, sand, encounters with ocean beasts and whatever unknown development presents itself. Something always does. Perhaps there will be so much sunburn my dermatologist will call!
Who can know?
What I do know is that each year the question arises: drive or fly? Flying is easy, either into Baltimore or Harrisburg, Pa., then rent a car, hang out with some inland in-laws for a bit and then head to the shore (with a ritual annual stop in Delaware for a good lunch).
But it’s pretty pricey.
Even if I use frequent-flier miles to get to Baltimore or Harrisburg, renting cars is no bargain. (It’s always cheap on the Web sites and then additional charges make it hundreds and hundreds of dollars in real life.) Then there are the fuel costs.
Of late, I have become convinced that the friendly people who control the world’s oil supply conspire to make certain we are shafted on at least one aspect of our vacation: fuel prices.
Even before the cherry tree blossomed in the yard, fuel prices were climbing in my suburb. At last check, a gallon of diesel at my favorite spot, Sam’s Club, was $3.14, way below the price of a gallon of high-test gasoline, which makes me feel like a winner, at least a little bit.
I’m figuring 40 miles per gallon. (If you drive in 5th gear and zoom across Ohio, which is highly recommended, it’s very efficient.) So fuel is going to cost somewhere between $77 and $93 one way depending on how much fooling around we do.
For reasons having to do with local taxation, only Indiana makes me feel like I am not being shafted by oil barons, so I fuel up at either end, even though a well-kept diesel can make it from here to Pittsburgh on less than two tanks of diesel.
More Top Picks Neuro Optometric Rehabilitation What It Is And Who Needs It
Then we will be back into the high gas cost state of Pennsylvania and on to Maryland and Delaware, which are no bargains, either.
So what I want to know is, why aren’t we all revolting against the fact that gas prices go up as we are going on vacation?
They charge these prices because we are willing to pay them.
I simply won’t accept the supply argument. How is it that supplies should just happen to dwindle so much by late May that 20 percent price increases are called for?
They can’t, unless someone is manipulating them. Someone, someplace says, “Well, they are off to have a good time, let’s shaft them again!”
What?
Of course they manipulate supplies.
You would too.
If you were selling pudding to the masses and knew that October was National Pudding Month when everyone will be eating pudding each day, you would do your best to make that pudding supply as valuable as possible.
So the fuel/pudding people do the same thing.
How to respond? There is no adequate response because vacation is vacation and the parasitic thieves are going to get my fuel money anyhow.
But my long-term plan includes shedding one of the cars (there are two diesels). Then maybe going to a diesel hybrid, if someone invents a good one. My objective will be to shrink the fuel cost of that annual trip as much as I can, and shrink the use of fuel in the rest of my life too.
I wish I could say this was because former veep Al Gore convinced me I am the personal cause of global warming. It is not.
I am not addicted to anything, and fuel is not going to be the place I start. I think we can have cheaper fuel. All we have to do is stop using so much of it. Supplies increase, prices go down. You know how it goes.
Start a revolution.
Figure out a way to cut fuel use as deeply as possible this summer just to send an important message to the eager little piggies who are fleecing us on fuel prices.
My next target: the blood worm barons and climbing beach bait prices! (Just kidding, although blood worms … never mind.)
———–
Charles M. Madigan is a Tribune senior correspondent, editor and columnist. E-mail: [email protected]