Fuel!

I was really going to rant about fuel costs, so I waited a couple of days and decided to tone it down.

We filled up the coach with diesel prior to leaving Coral Springs. The next fuel stop was in Wytheville, VA, 986 miles later. The cost, $543 for 119 gallons of fuel! That's $4.65 per gallon and the price is still rising. I remenber the days when diesel was only... well it doesn't matter now.

Everybody wants to blame somebody for the current fuel situation. But us Americans can only really blame ourselves. How's that you may ask? Well we let Congress get away with listening to the wacko leftwing enviro-terrorists....oops, sorry, I said I wasn't going to get carried away. Congress and former President Clinton refused and Congress currently refuses to do what is needed to be done. We need to drill in Alaska, drill off the west coast of the US (thats right, near the wacko republic of California) and drill off the coast of Florida (thanks alot Gov. Bush) and any other place we may find oil.

When the enviro- extremists start screaming about the caribou, polar bears, or the endangered trowser lice, we have to be aware that they are complaining about the oil industry drilling practices of 50 years ago. Modern drilling techniques are vastly improved and can be done with very little impact to the animals or their enviroment. Somehow Congress just can't get that.

We need to drill, drill, and then drill some more. Yes it will take several years to get things going, but there's no better time to get started than right now. While we are drilling, we should build 3 or 4 more refineries. Everything could come together in 5 to 9 years and reduce our dependancy on foregn oil. If Pres. Clinton had done the right thing 10 years ago, we might not be in this current situation.

Speaking of refineries did you see where the govenor of Kansas just stopped two gaint construction projects in Kansas., one of which was a 15 billion dollar refinery. She did a double wammy on her state- a loss of $25 billion in construction and the loss of employment for the people of Kansas. Not to mention a swift kick to the rest of us in the loss of future refining capacity.

Well, all of this has caused us to alter our travel plans. We originally were going to travel to PA and MI for the months of June and July. Then we were going out west to Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, etc. We would have returned home early November. Traveling out west would, at the current price of nearly $5 per gallon of diesel, would have cost us $3000 in diesel fuel alone. We have decided to eliminate the western part of the trip, stay east, and pocket the $3000. We still plan on returning home November 1.

I hate the enviro-wackos, I hope they get a bad case of trowser lice!