Gas craziness

Gas is still relatively unavailable around here.  It's crazy, its way worse than after Katrina and Rita.  Then the price of gas spiked for a few weeks, and there was an initial surge of high prices and lines, but it seemed like the lines went away after a few days and after about 2 weeks the prices started drifting back down too.

Now, its been over 2 weeks since Ike (and probably a month since Gustav) and we are still paying more for gas than most of the rest of the country.  And, if anything, it seems the gas lines are getting worse.  They really didn't form until after Ike, but the past 2 weeks has been wild.  Today when I went out for groceries, I passed 6 gas stations and only 1 had any gas.  It was at $4.19, had lines, and is a station I hate to use as its almost impossible to get out of coming back my way.  On Saturday when we were out fridge hunting, we saw 2 stations with gas (out of 10 or more) and both had lines out into the street.  The bigger station (a QT, probably has at least a dozen pumps) had a good 20 cars out in the street plus more waiting in the station.  The other station was much smaller, 2-4 pumps and only had about a dozen cars waiting, but if one more car had joined the line in the street, I wouldn't have been able to get past.

We've read that part of the problem is that with all the pumps running at once and not much gas in the underground tanks, that there is very little pressure so that it can take up to 30 minutes to pump 10 gallons.  Yikes!  I don't think this is happening at all the stations, though.

It has gotten to the point that we are not just looking at which car to take because of better gas milage, but also which car has more gas in it currently!  Next week the kids are off school for fall break and we would like to get away for a few days - but it may depend on whether we can fill up cars.  D managed to fill up his car mid week last week without much wait, but by this weekend he will be needing gas again.  I was hoping to get gas today, but it didn't happen.  I don't want to head out hunting for gas, but I'm certainly going to keep looking for it, when I do have to go out.  I wouldn't normally be looking quite yet as I've got about 3/8 of a tank, but... I won't be going anywhere out of town if I don't have more gas than that!