Unraveling the mystery of gas prices

www.ohio.com Posted on Thu, Mar. 06, 2003

Last time I checked, the highest gasoline price in the country was in Kailua Kona, Hawaii.

The lowest price was in Tacoma, Wash.

The average across the United States was $1.71.

Our local price is hovering around a buck-sixty, and this is one instance when I'm perfectly fine with Akron being slightly below average.

Now, I have never been to Kailua Kona, but I imagine it is a very sunny place.

I have been to Tacoma and Akron, and both are very cloudy places.

So, based on this admittedly incomplete research, I'm proposing a trend: You live in a place with nice weather, you pay more for gas. You live in a place with lousy weather, you pay less.

I would like to prove this theory, but my request for a fact-finding mission to Kailua Kona was denied.

And of course I realize it doesn't hold any water. Logic says that the quality of the weather has nothing at all to do with the price of a gallon of regular.

But when you're talking about gas prices, logic doesn't seem to be part of the equation.

Depending on whom you ask, the spike is the result of the political unrest in Venezuela. Or it's the prospect of war with Iraq. Or it's the unusually harsh winter. Or it's good old-fashioned gouging.

If it were summer, they'd say it's the vacation driving season. When it's winter, they blame the cold.

The fact that there are so many different answers suggests that there is no real answer. Gasoline is a mystery to most of us, falling into that category of Mysteries We Can't Control that also includes long- distance rates, telemarketers and the kid in second grade who ate paste.

I don't know how to fight back, but I also know I don't have the stomach to pay $30 for a tank of gas. So I just keep buying half tanks twice as often, on the theory that some other mystery will sweep in and bring the prices back down before my next fill-up.

This theory has thus far proved unsatisfying.

I keep getting the little orange gas pump-shaped light on the instrument panel, taunting me like the Venus flytrap in Little Shop of Horrors: ``Feed me.''

So I pull into the station, swipe my card and stand there in that oily slush, my collar turned up against the cold, watching the dollar numbers on the pump run laps around the gallons numbers. When I get to half a tank, I quit, fooling myself that I have beaten the system.

It's an old story that we are victims of our own progress. Automobiles have made vast improvements in our lives, but they also have made themselves indispensable. Same goes for the Internet, cell phones and premium cable channels.

Every month we get bills for these things, reminding us that we are in a vicious cycle. We have to work harder to pay for all the things that were supposed to give us easier lives.

Slowly, they whittle away at us. Collectively, they're like the tiny orange gas pump on the dashboard. We try to ignore them, but at some point, we have to cave in and pay the price or we're not going anywhere.

I have heard people say that the minute we start dropping bombs on Iraq, gasoline prices will fall. I have heard others say just the opposite. Neither prospect makes me feel very good about dropping bombs on Iraq.

But something will happen, and the world will settle down. And when it does, gasoline prices will follow.

Then we'll be left with a new set of questions:

Do we quit worrying and go back about our business?

Or do we realize for once that we have gotten too comfortable with lives that are dangerously complicated by ``mysteries''?

I'm not sure I want to know the answer. But I wouldn't mind a few weeks in Kailua Kona to figure it out.

David Giffels' column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. He can be reached at 330-996-3572 or at dgiffels@thebeaconjournal.com.