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About Old(er) Men
There is something odd about men. Especially as we age. For some unexplained reason, some mysterious ailment causes us to become inordinately obsessed with the price of gas. If it were a mathematical equation, it would probably look something like this: 4*((a+b)/c) = y, where 'a' is our age, 'b' is the price of gas, 'c' is the decreasing value of our logic, and 'y' is our desire to find the cheapest price of gas within 50 miles of where ever we are. In this case, 'y' seems a perfect delineator for this desire.
I actually know people (thankfully, I'm not one of them -- yet) who will drive miles and miles out of their way to save a few pennies per gallon of gas. And most of these people -- I'm not making this up -- drive SUV's. In fact, some of them will actually cite their poor gas mileage as the primary reason for their endless searching. Now, obviously, this flies in the face of logic. If you're driving a vehicle that gets 15 miles per gallon (and gas costs $2 a gallon) then driving just 15 miles costs you $2 for the gas. If you drive this 15 miles to save five cents per gallon, then you'd have to buy 40 gallons of gas just to break even. Obviously, all of this gets further distorted by either driving more than 15 miles or saving less than five cents per gallon. Incidentally, don't bother trying to explain any of this to anyone who has that gas-price lust look in his eye. The actual price of gas has an inverse relationship to logic: the higher the prices, the less the logic.
On the other hand, these people will respond, if you can actually drive less than 15 miles and save more than five cents a gallon, you could actually come out ahead -- maybe even save almost a quarter when you fill your tank! And this quarter is like gold. (Never mind that it won't pay for even 10% of your Grande Mocha Frappuccino. It's the hunt that counts.) Lest you think this was a math review article, I do have a solution for all of you out there suffering from these strange desires: Gas Price Watch. The premise of GPW is amazingly simple: rope all of these price-obsessed men into volunteering their time learning and reporting on the price of gas where ever they happen to be. They're a perfect force for this, by the way. In case you're wondering who remembers or cares what the price of gas is in any given place, I can tell you that my Dad can recite most of the pricing information from here to North Carolina (and back), regardless of where he actually buys the stuff. It's amazing.
Anyway, I don't even pretend to know how they do this. Which is why I (and people like me) rely on sites like GPW. Essentially, you enter your zip code and the site will retrieve all of the gas prices, ranked from lowest to highest, and list the stations for you. You can also choose a radius up to 20 miles for your search, but we've already covered that ground, right? Gas prices fluctuate wildly (which is something else that I don't even begin to understand), so the site relies on its spotters to keep things updated. If you see a price that's incorrect, you can update it. The site does offer some other interesting features, like fuel tax information, but it's primary purpose is to help you find the lowest gas price and, generally speaking, it works pretty well. What you'll find is that the station in your area with the lowest price is almost always the same. Which means that in the long run you can employ dollar cost averaging and forget all of the searching and driving and just go to the station that's normally the cheapest. (At least, I think so.) Did I mention we just got an SUV?
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