On Sun, 06 May 2001 20:25:46 +0000, Mel Evans, Registered Arachne User wrote:
> Spain was lovely. Mild spring weather, all around 19 to 20 degrees, very
> pleasant to sit with a San Miguel (or two, or three *>} ) and watch the
> world go by.
19 to 20 degrees? Don't tell me us Yanks are the only ones still
using the Farenheit temperature scale?
> was moaning about the $2 gallon of gas. Phew, I thought, if only. We are
> paying around 3.90 UKp per gallon here for both gas (petrol) and diesel
> oil. That equates to around $5.20 per gallon at current exchange rates.
Caravaning at $5.20 a gallon seems an expensive proposistion. Americans
routinely drive thousands of miles on vacation, even as much as
four hundred miles for a weekend excursion. Lots of people commute
forty to fifty miles to work. We are addicted to cheap gasoline. We
like to see it around $1.50 a gallon. The price tends to go up
during the summer when people drive more, but most people think the
price is being manipulated by the oil companies, as the price swings
wildly up and down for little apparent reason.
It was over two dollars a gallon for awhile last summer, but the price
drifted back down in the fall. It was down to under $1.40 a gallon
by late winter, but has shot up in the last month. Nobody seems to
be able to explain the price fluctuations adequately.
Most Americans love to drive. We love the wide open spaces and don't
want to slow down if we can help it. Go, baby, go.
Sam Ewalt
Croswell, Michigan, USA
-- Arachne V1.70;rev.3, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/
