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Mathematical GasOctober 03, 2005 Today was a round-the-island-swing day -- I like to gang my errands so that I can do a half dozen at once instead of darting here, there, and everywhere over the course of a week. It's to save time more than anything, though when I gassed up at $3.46/gallon in West Tisbury I felt doubly virtuous. Today my bill broke the big 5-0 for the first time: it was $50 on the nose. Maybe someone can explain why, editor though I am, I only see the big figures in the gas prices? I know it's actually $3.469 a gallon, and since the U.S. Mint doesn't issue decipennies, I'd pay $3.47 for a gallon if I were only buying one, but still I say $3.46. Before I got that far, I dropped my black show jacket off for its annual cleaning, picked up mail, cashed a check at the bank (Rhodry scored two biscuits), drove on to Campbell & Douglas for a bag of oats to tide us over till the next grain order, hit the gas station on the way back (Rhodry scored two more biscuits), and then gassed myself up with a slice of pepperoni pizza from Back Alley's. This I enjoyed even more than usual because there's an ongoing thread on a horse-training e-list I'm on about diets, exercise plans, personal trainers; some women vowing to get down to 140 by New Year's, others managing to work in that they're 5-foot-8 and weigh 130. Women beating their bodies into submission is old, but it's still depressing. Eating happily is the best revenge. I got to the barn after 1 p.m., a little later than usual. The horses ate happily too. I did chores, cleaned tack, and tried to decide if I should immensely complicate my life by taking on a second copyediting project in addition to the 2,000-page monster I just committed myself to. No clear answer has yet appeared in the Eight Ball. I don't mind paying $3.46/gallon (OK, make that $3.469) for gas. Guess that makes me even more un-Amurrican than I already was. Didn't we learn in elementary school that the founding fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor for life, liberty, and cheap gas? Commuting is another bizarre national custom. My longest commute was about an hour, from Washington, D.C., to Alexandria, Virginia; I usually biked it, but when I used public transportation (bus to subway to bus) it took about the same time. My average is more like 15 minutes. Now I don't commute at all, at least not to work. It's three miles to the barn and three miles back. Six miles on some days; twelve on others. Uhura Mazda gets about 24 miles per gallon. I get four round-trips to the barn for every $3.469 -- about 87 cents per round-trip. Money well spent, sez I. Allie and Rhodry agree. So there.
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