Something else for me to worry about.

We were about an hour outside of Raleigh on Friday afternoon when my sister called and told me “Get gas now!”. Apparently the threat of Hurricane Ike had sent North Carolinians scrambling to the pump and some gas station owners were taking full advantage of the situation. Gas in Raleigh was hovering between $4.69 and $4.99 a gallon for regular unleaded. The jump seemed to have occurred after lunchtime and by 5 pm there were lines of cars coming out of the gas stations and into the road. Lucky for us we’d filled up an hour previous for the slightly less unreasonable rate of $3.89.

The gouging continued into the evening and as we returned from dinner out with my sister’s friends we saw more and more gas stations with plastic bags over their pumps. The few stations that had not raised their prices above $4 were shuttered. Lines continued to spill into the street at the open stations. I started to think we might be spending more than the weekend in North Carolina.

I was both relieved and disgusted to hear that the gas prices had returned to normal Saturday AM. Apparently the panic was largely based in North Carolina and multiple stations were cited for price gouging. While the price per barrel for gas did jump on Friday, it didn’t go up enough to necessitate a dollar increase per gallon, particularly since that gas was already in the tanks and had been purchased at the lower per barrel rate. Of course, having every Tom, Dick and Harry who drives an SUV jump into line as soon as the prices started to increase didn’t help either.

What really scares me is that I think this is just a sign of what we can expect in the future. Just how far away are we from another 70’s like gas crisis? Thank goodness the motorcycle can go 200+ miles between fill-ups and I only drive an average of 2 miles a day.

Vote Obama/Biden.