Get thee behind me.
Behold! The Fourth of July Holiday Travel Extravaganza is upon us, and gas prices are … falling?
Hee, and also haw.
You know what this means, right? If the prices had stayed high, why, you’d stay home, roast your weenies in the back yard. But they’ve dipped a few pennies, so fill ’er up, pard’, we’re gonna go visit grandma back at The Old Home Place, burn some of this discount dinosaur wine.
’Course, soon as you get there, boom! Up shoots the price at the pump. And son, you got to pay it to get home. A whole bunch of you.
Car travel volume … will break previous records as 42 million opt to drive this Independence Day. Recent issues with air travel and ongoing concerns of cancellations and delays may be driving this increase.
I hope to leave old Sue Baroo the Fearsome Furster in the garage through Monday. My idea of a real good time on a holiday weekend is not driving anywhere, even in The Duck! City.
Especially in The Duck! City. Herself recently told me a tale of some poor commuter who had a dope fiend jump on her car and beat in the windshield. Apparently some passing hardhats had to sedate him with a shovel. I’d rather hitch a ride on a flaming garbage truck.
Tags: Fourth of July, gasoline prices
Mad Blog Media 
June 30, 2022 at 5:30 pm |
They’re predicting heavy travel, which sorta makes the complaining about gas prices ring a bit hollow. We have a handful of new cars on our block, all 5,000+ pound behemoths. You can make gas $10/gallon and folks won’t stop using their F350 to make a coffee run.
June 30, 2022 at 5:35 pm |
For every Prius I see — and I see a lot more of them lately — I see a half-dozen big black Escalades, Yukons, or whatever other monstrosities drug lords and DEA agents motor around in. The heavily tinted windows make it impossible to tell if you’re getting mirror-tagged by good guys or bad guys.
June 30, 2022 at 5:32 pm |
The second I hit “post,” a truck pulled up next door. Monster Tundra that can pull the space shuttle. What’s his precious cargo? A dude with a clipboard, checking on his crew that’s doing the actual work. And sure bet he’s claiming the truck and the mileage on his taxes.
June 30, 2022 at 7:10 pm |
Remember when Toyota trucks used to be reasonably sized?
• Click here to embiggen.
June 30, 2022 at 8:17 pm |
Americans like big shit and more of it! And Toyota obliged, in spades. I wanted to buy a Yaris Hatchback this year. Sorry, no can do.
We ain’t going anywhere on the 4th. We can now leave the house, masked up of course, for essential shopping. No travel or being around vulnerable people for 4 more days.
July 1, 2022 at 7:02 am |
Are you two feeling better finally? We’ve still got Condition Red here in Bernalillo County, and I’m thinking I’d best get that second booster rather than wait for the New and Improved Version to come along whenever. If they roll that sumbitch out by fall, well, I’ll get it too.
Meanwhile, the monsoons have been ramping up the allergens. Swear to God, it seems like pollen “season” is year round now.
July 1, 2022 at 11:06 am |
Both of us are feeling much better and over with the worst of it save an occasional cough and mild fatigue. Like you we were going to wait for the bivalent booster. We will not wait now. You do not want the shit and the case counts continue to grow in all of AZ. Went to grocery today, Fry’s, and 46 store employees were out with COVID. It rained hard this morning courtesy of a storm Mexico sent us, completely unpredicted. Thanks, mi amigos! Rain total is 0.6 inches so far and a light rain still falling. We got a 1/4 inch last night. So, closing in on an inch plus in the last 24 hours.
July 1, 2022 at 5:04 pm
PO’B: So glad to hear you and yours are better!
I suspect, as a lay medical guru, that all of us will live with COVID in varying mutations for the next several homo sapiens generations.
Fortunately the med world is doing its best to address that (a la the flu viruses (what is the plural of virus??) and we can rejoice in enduring aches and sprains vs. croaking! 🙂
June 30, 2022 at 8:38 pm |
I had a ’96 Tacoma. Great little truck. Wish I had not sold it. Now they are monsters meant to, as SAO said, haul the Space Shuttle. When someone, I think it was Paul Krugman, pissed and moaned on Twitter about the Supremes decision on the EPA, I had to laugh out loud. Americans don’t want no goddamn regulation. We want our McMansions, our Big Trucks, and all that shit built elsewhere and delivered to our doors.
My understanding is U.S. emissions have been on a downward trend. Of course some/most of that is due to the fact that we outsource our emissions to places like China, which manufactures so many of our consumer goods using coal and HC (hydrocarbon) power. So every time someone clicks on that Amazon “buy me” box for something made overseas using coal/HC power, shipped halfway around the world using HC power, put on a train and then a UPS or Fedex truck and delivered to your doorstep, you are bypassing anything the EPA could do to save us from the “climate crisis”. Maybe instead of all this wailing and gnashing of teeth about SCOTUS, how about replacing an income tax with a carbon tax on each product, foreign and domestic, after calculating its cradle to grave CO2, methane, etc. emission burden. Any takers?
Oh, and that issue about the dope fiend? We were leaving the Duck! City once about a decade ago. I slowed to let a pedestrian cross in front of me on Zuni. Not a good move. He started screaming and almost jumped on my hood. Too many folks down there who are drugged out or batshit crazy or all of the above. Its sad, and one wants to help, but one has to look out for #1.
July 1, 2022 at 9:50 am |
Khal, having once been employed tangentially in the nuclear power industry, I retain a recreational interest in what’s going on with nukes and China. China has been on a building spree for nukes, driven by a number of factors. 1. They mostly mine their own coal, but have been having to import more and more, and they don’t want to be at anyone’s mercy for energy (think Germany and Russia and natural gas right now). 2. They want to pursue the same source diversity that Obama’s “all of the above” approach was. 3. It gives them points in the “who’s doing the most for global warming” contest on the world stage. From a global warming perspective, nukes are really good, one of the best ways to generate power. Of course, having said all that, yep, at the moment coal accounts for the large majority of power generation in China, so buying that Chinese-made whatever is just exporting the pollution.
July 1, 2022 at 10:44 am |
Yep, I know. They are not stoopid. But China has also been building coal plants. All to keep its economy humming. At our expense.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2317274-china-is-building-more-than-half-of-the-worlds-new-coal-power-plants/
July 1, 2022 at 5:40 pm
khal: All I remember from my very limited poli-sci courses (I was an engineer) is that one does what is in its best national/personal self-interests!
Real-politik!
July 1, 2022 at 11:12 am |
The big question remains. What to do with radioactive waste? And, I do not trust China to store or dispose of nuclear waste.
July 1, 2022 at 12:53 pm
Closed cycle reprocessing. Sequester and isolate the fission products. Sure takes up a lot less space than coal fly ash.
July 1, 2022 at 3:47 pm
Isn’t there a salt dome cavern under Mira Lago that orange head has stuffed various presidential communications, crayola drawings, fried chicken bones & blowup sex dolls? Perhaps disposal (sequestration) could be made there via a new tunnel access called the 19th hole. How about “Glow-A-Lago”. I’m sure Duhsantis wouldn’t mind so long as he had a lifetime golf membership and free milk shakes from the course refreshment stand.
POB: It’s great to hear that you and your spouse are feeling better. I’ve taken your synopsis to heart and continue to mask up in public I hope that when you get re-boosted, your new anti-bodies will minimize any side effects.
July 1, 2022 at 6:54 am |
This ’ere makes a big Toyota look like a flea fart. Gulfstreams, golf, and babysitters with NDAs:
July 1, 2022 at 11:10 pm |
Friedman Memorial Airport has one of the longer runways/landing strips in the country (1.43 miles long). You could land Saudi 747-800’s on it. Heck, I’d even bet NASA could have landed a Shuttle on it had they need to. I remember driving the highway next to the thing and wondering if it would ever end.
July 2, 2022 at 10:03 am |
That’s a nice area – Hailey. I’d sure like to land my space shuttle on the runway it but I believe it just isn’t long enough:
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/43756/how-much-runway-does-the-space-shuttle-need-to-land
I was going to say something about the runway length being long enough for a Saudi 747 loaded with snooty sheiks and a bunch of captive skinny sex models, but I realized that the supreme court may find my speech inflammatory, derogatory and biased against those from a country with such a fine human rights record.
July 1, 2022 at 10:43 am |
BTW, Patrick. Steve Terrell says hello. Or more precisely, “Tell that maniac O’Grady I said hi. I haven’t seen him in years.”
July 2, 2022 at 8:40 am |
Hi back to Steve, who knows a maniac when he sees one, even if it’s only the dude in the mirror. Ho, ho, etc. Many frosty glasses did we hoist at Evangelo’s Back in the Day®. I hope he’s enjoying retirement as much as I am.
July 4, 2022 at 6:56 am |
Yep, sent him a tweet. Small world.
July 3, 2022 at 2:54 pm |
Speaking of “Its a Gas”: 36,000 HP and he won the Darwin Award.
July 4, 2022 at 12:08 pm |
Here we go again. This time in a wealthy suburb of Chicago.
https://www.npr.org/2022/07/04/1109700508/shooting-july-fourth-parade-chicago-suburb
July 4, 2022 at 2:58 pm |
Seems we are in a cycle of “my mass shooting is better than yours”