Sunday afternoon I dropped by the Costco near M’hijito’s house. The lines at the gas pumps backed up almost to the entrance—a half-dozen waiting customers at every single pump. Sat around for 15 minutes or so (why do I always pick the guy with a megamonster truck who has to refill two extra-large tanks or the old lady who, after pumping gas and paying, has to replace every single item in her capacious purse with engineering precision before she can drive away?), I couldn’t get the damn pump to work, so left without gas.
This didn’t bother me much, because there’s a Costco on the way home from the community college. I figured to fill up on the way home yesterday.
Apparently the reason for the feeding frenzy at the downtown store was the $2.53/gallon price. At the 101 and Cave Creek, Costco was selling gas for $2.59…and that was a dime a gallon below the going price at surrounding gas stations.
Welp. In the new $800/month budget regime, gas purchases are limited to $60 a month, and we’ve seen that can be tight. So instead of filling up, I cut off the pump flow at $30.
Thirty bucks bought exactly one-half tank of gas. The gauge was at 1/4 tank when I pulled up to the pumps. Thirty dollars worth of gasoline filled it to the 3/4 mark.
So, I guess it’s back to hypermiling for moi.
I’m going to try to keep the gasoline expenditures to no more than sixty bucks, which at current prices is one, count it, (1) tankful of gas. This month it ought to be doable, since last week I spent almost all of my Costco budget in restocking my hoard and so I won’t be making any more trips to that place for the next three or four weeks. Still, teaching at Paradise Valley requires three 24-mile round trips a week—almost 75 miles!—and there are no affordable grocery stores on the direct route. To get to a Safeway or a Food City, I have to go a mile out of the way, adding two miles to the homeward trip.
Contemplated whether I could bicycle to Safeway. That would be a six-mile round trip, most of it across hectic main drags populated by homicidal drivers. And I couldn’t carry any more than I could stuff in a backpack. I certainly could walk or bicycle to the Albertson’s or Sprouts, but I don’t feel safe in those stores’ parking lots when I have a layer of steel between me and the aggressive panhandlers and the young thugs with their pants down around their crotches, their gang colors shining loud and clear. The nearest Food City is populated by families, but it also requires four miles of navigating dangerous streets through questionable neighborhoods.
{sigh} Conserving gas ain’t easy when the nearest subsistence shopping isn’t safe for old ladies.
I’m lucky to live within a short walk of one grocery and a mile drive of another (right next door to Big Lots).
Could you maybe walk with your little dog to Albertsons or Sprouts? I see lots of people with dogs in their grocery carts nowadays.
In Arizona it’s illegal to take a dog into anyplace that serves or sells food. Small dogs are very popular here, both as highly salable pets and as bait for training pit bulls for the fight rink; if she were left outside the stores here, she’d be stolen in an instant.
Besids…LOL! I wouldn’t stand around outside one of those stores myself — in this neighborhood, it’s not safe. Don’t think I’d make the dog do something I wouldn’t do myself. 😉
This brings back awful memories of walking to Safeway in Tempe. That was the choice as I didn’t have a car.
I had pretty good luck getting Albertson’s to delivery groceries once that program started. I’d do it for the “big shop” once a month or so. They were always really prompt, good about the delivery times, and I never had any odd substitutions. The biggest thing was that they tend to choose unripe produce so you have to wait a while to eat it.
Gas prices these days are just getting higher, i think the government should focus more on alternative energy.’~;