What a weekend - The Conclusion
For those looking for the update I never posted, the problem was, in fact, a timing gear that had had all of the teeth chewed off. The guy in Benton wanted $1500 to fix it. Remember, this is the same guy who TRIPPLED his tow bill when he found out he wasn’t going to be fixing the car. Mom’s mechanic fixed it for about $600 for parts and labor and $600 to tow the car 175 miles home. Even with the extra $600 tow bill, it was still $300 cheaper!
I just got back from returning the car we rented while Mom’s was being repaired. The guy who runs the rental place makes it crystal clear that he wants the gas tank full when he gets the car back. He informs all renters about his policy of charging $10/gallon if he has to fill the car himself when it’s returned.
I almost had a heart attack when I saw the gas price today. In this one-horse town there are exactly three gas stations. One is full-service and, therefore, always the most expensive of the three. Yesterday afternoon, both of the other two were at $3.45/gallon. This morning, when I had to buy gas 
they had both gone up 14ยข!
Around the time gas first broke the $2/gallon mark, someone emailed me a list of things that would be more expensive than gasoline to run a car on. For example, Vicks Nyquil worked out to something like $17.50/gallon. What brought this to mind is the fact that the first thing on the list was milk. At $3.49 a gallon, it deserved a place on the “more expensive than gasoline” list.
I realize that since I live in the middle of nowhere, I’m probably one of the last people to reach this point, but I’ve not heard anyone else say it, so I will:
It is now actually cheaper to buy milk than gasoline!
Given that the list of items cheaper than gasoline in increasing at a phenomenal rate, why doesn’t somebody find a way to use something on that list to replace gasoline? I kind’a like the idea of pulling up to a fuel pump and telling the attendant, “Fill’er up with LowFat, please”.
Technorati Tags: gripes, gas+prices
