Gas Pains by Buster McNutt Two bucks for a gallon of gasoline. (How do you double the value of a 1986 Estate Wagon? Fill up its gas tank!) Gizmo has started riding a bike to work. That wouldn’t be all that unusual, except that it’s his old stationary exercise bike with a skateboard bolted to the rear. Latrell got into a car pool with a licensed masseuse, an exotic dancer, and the lady who does the body doubling for the Watson’s pool commercials. And Latrell doesn’t even have a job to go to. These gas prices are making every- body crazy. Yesterday I saw Lady M’s hairdresser standing on the side of the road by her SUV with a sign that said, “Will Exfoliate for Unleaded.” If this keeps up, gasoline will soon be more expensive than a 12-ounce bottle of yuppie drinking water, a traveler size bottle of Old Spice, or a six pack of Rolling Rock. Asking if the oil companies are price gouging right now is about like asking if Mike Tyson needs to get back on Ritalin. Duh! Oil is $30 a barrel. Each barrel makes a couple hundred gallons of gas, an acre of Styrofoam, and a dozen or so wonder bras. That’s about $700 worth of stuff from each barrel, and that’s if the gasoline is the cheap grade, the Styrofoam is pre-McDonald’s cups, and the wonder bras are BB cups or under. They’re making more on each barrel of oil than Bill Gates makes on each new Microsoft Virus (a.k.a. “operating system’). How much can it cost to “refine” the oil to make gasoline? What, we’re talking really expensive coffee filters here? You can only do so much to conserve gasoline. The Buick gets 11.5 miles to a gallon of premium unleaded no matter how it is driven. Five miles an hour in bumper to bumper traffic? 11.5 mpg. Seventy miles an hour on the Interstate drafting a UPS trailer? 11.5 mpg. Drop it off the top of the Empire State Building with the windows rolled up and the a/c turned off? 11.5 mpg. It doesn’t matter. Strap a piano, an anvil, and the high school chess team to the luggage rack? 11.5 mpg. Take off all the body panels and put helium balloons under all the seats? 11.5 mpg. So what are my options? I could drive less. I could cut my daily trips to Alexander’s Tavern and Nerf Dart Emporium down to every-other-daily trips. Or, get the same effect by sleeping on the bar every other night (oh right, like you’ve never done that…). And with the Buick’s carrying capacity, I could cut trips to the grocery store to once every Halley’s Comet sighting or so. ?m not that big on fresh food, I won’t drink any- thing that’s been inside a cow, and as for beer, I saw on the History Channel that archeologists recently opened a six jar of Egyptian Pale Ale from Tut’s tomb and found it to be “robust if a little gritty.’ So I could lay in a pallet of Sam Adams and be good to not go anywhere till gas prices drop, or Lady M’s sister comes to visit, whichever comes first. The other option is to buy a less thirsty vehicle and park the Estate Wagon. But where to find an affordable, fuel efficient clunker? Given the pro- jected gas savings, and the savings from the pallet priced beer, I figure I have an easy $500 to $1,000 to spend. Maybe more if I can get a volume price deal on Slim Jims, Cocoa Puffs, and those little blue pills that Lady M. says makes me a more entertaining person. I checked out the Traders Posts and shopping rags for a deal. There were quite a lot of choices, especially if you bottom fish in the “Runs But Needs Help” section. I don’t care if it won’t pass an emissions test. I can use Latrell’s ex-wife’s address three coun- ties over where everybody is so poor that, not only do they not have emis- sions testing, but they have to depend on neighboring counties and prevailing winds to have any emissions at all. The number one industry in (can’t tell you) County is car registrations. According to county records, the average household in (oops, almost said it) County has 23.7 registered vehicles. And looks aren’t an issue. All I need is four wheels, a drivetrain, and at least one window that rolls most of the way down. (Hmmm. If a window is stuck halfway, is it stuck halfway up or halfway down? If a tire goes flat in a parking lot and no one is around, does it still make a hissing sound?) We’re talk- ing low expectations here. And at least 20 miles per gallon on anything that remotely smells like gasoline. I don’t even need that good of tires, since it’s a known fact that excess tread wastes gas. It should have decent brakes, although stopping a lot also wastes fuel. This is why in times of high fuel prices stop signs and red lights should be able to be ignored by everybody, not just cell-headed, cigarette smoking, pre- menopausal face painting soccer moms in SUVs. But I don’t think I really want a sec- ond car. Maybe there are fuel saving tips for the Estate Wagon that I haven’t tried yet. I could make it lighter by taking off that last body molding, every other lug nut, and on sunny days, leaving the hood in the garage. Or, I could join Latrell’