Sunday, September 21, 2008

Gas Me Up

This morning I got up at 6am to find gas for our car. Seriously... 6am. This is the sight that greeted me.



So I left my beautiful wife asleep and embarked on a perilous journey to find gasoline in Spring Hill, Tennessee... all the while preserving the highest possible Miles Per Gallon. I figured I could drive about 15 miles on the gas I had left.

These were the sights that greeted me.








A few stations had Premium only.




Finally, some luck.






I filled up the tank, and the spare 2 gallon jug we use to fill up our lawn mower... I've never appreciated a full tank of gas as much as I did right then!

This is something I've never really experienced before. It reminds me just how dependent we are on readily available refined fossil fuels. We're so helpless without gasoline. People stop going out. People stop spending money at the mall. People start stockpiling. I'm no different... Jess and I did our biggest grocery shop ever, just in case things get crazy over the next week.




A couple days ago I read that this problem was isolated to the Nashville and Middle Tennessee region. Now I'm reading stories of empty pumps in Georgia, Alabama, and various other places in the South.

In some ways, this reminds me of the East Coast blackout of 2004... In Barrie where I lived at the time, power was out for 2 days. It fundamentally changed the lives of everyone in the city. I met some of my neighbours for the first time... we all sat out on our front lawns and interacted. It was a fascinating couple of days to watch peoples' reactions. From panic and fear to excitement and adventure.... Everyone had their own take on it.

I hear that it could be more than a few days before gas becomes more available in our area... So it's going to be an interesting week!

j.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

"It's the end of the world as we know it."
David & Charmaine

Been fun tracking with your goings-on from a distance...

Anonymous said...

oh my goodness!!
I read in the paper that Ike is causing some bad gasoline shortage in the good ol' south. You're more than welcome to come to PA to use out gas! lol! Hope you get through it alive!
God Bless:)

Jenny said...

well good thing you found some for now.

silk! in your fridge! haha.
haha "our fridge has a full tummy" didn't know your fridge has a tummy in the first place. haha.

Anonymous said...

Im glad you finally found some gas!! Gas has already ran out here(south Georgia) a few weeks ago then we got more. Now it is running out again in cities around here.

I hope it gets better up there.
:)

Unknown said...

I don't understand how a whole state can actually run out of gas?? Is that seriously possible?

Anonymous said...

Lucky you found gas, in my part of nashville theres pretty much none. Fun stuff. Its quite creepy...but lets not forget why. A major part of the issue is damage in Houston from hurricane Ike, and as soon as things pick up there it will turn more normal.

Anonymous said...

...with or without the media, Houston really did get hit hard, so lack of gas was definitely inevitable.

Anonymous said...

Oh yeah, The Afters were telling us about it when they played here on the 19th...we got to trade stories though, because almost all of Ohio, and parts of Indiana and Kentucky were without power. My friend was out for a week...she got power back last night; however a few hours later, there was a car crash and it wiped out their power again.

I hope everything works out for you guys!