Here we go again
Just over a year ago, I wrote a sloppy rambling rant of an email about having waited in a long line to buy gasoline. It was an email best read aloud while pacing about, gesturing and/or frothing at the mouth.
This morning, I rushed out to fill my tank…..
1 gasoline supply line to Valley shut down: Derailment imperils supply
The Arizona Republic
Oct. 21, 2004 12:00 AM
One of two gasoline-supply lines into metro Phoenix has been shut down while workers examine and repair possible damage caused by a train derailment on Wednesday morning near Fontana, Calif.
Immediate shortages are not expected, and pipeline operator Kinder Morgan Energy Partners has a plan to reopen the pipeline by Friday night.
But company officials caution it could take longer.
A pipeline coming into the Valley from Texas continues to operate, and there is a six-day supply of gasoline stored at Kinder Morgan’s west Phoenix tank farm. There is about a three-day reserve of diesel.
‘There’s plenty of fuel if everyone doesn’t rush out to fill their tanks,’ Thorne said. ”
That’s what they said last year
August 20, 2003
NAPOLITANO, PIPELINE COMPANY POINTING FINGERS
Max Jarman and Robbie Sherwood, The Arizona Republic;
Private and government officials said they did not foresee the public’s panic-buying spree, which would have drained supplies even without a pipeline break. They also said they failed to anticipate the inability of gasoline trucks to get supplies to stations in time to avert shortages.
AAA Arizona, the first organization to alert the public to the pipeline closure and the possibility of shortages, warned consumers Aug. 11 not to rush out to buy gas.
“The shortest way to shortages is panic buying,” the organization said.
Some excerpts from last year’s froth:
I have, in the last 2 days, spent just under an hour waiting in gas lines. Not “Gas lines” in the way we normally use that phrase, an ordinary American thinks that a Gas Line is a little tube from the Gas tank to the fuel injectors by way of the fuel filter. But an actual honest-to-God Gas Line, like where you sit in your car behind 25 cars and trucks and dwell on the fact that there are actual physical largish metal tanks underneath that concrete slab that are by their very nature heading for empty and simultaneously try to ease your grip on the steering wheel, take your eyes off the dim glow of the fuel low light, remind yourself that the fuel-low-indicator-light gives you a fair amount of time to get gas and be home before the A/C quits even if the pump quits before you get your fix, all while you prepare to beat the daylights out of anyone who cuts in line.
This is the 1973 use of the phrase “Gas Line”.
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A squawk radio program caller suggested that she’d ram the next alt. fuel car she saw. Yeah, “ram” as in “Battering…” smite with rage, that kind of thing. I have to admit that I don’t know where the propane filling stations are, but I doubt there are angry mobs lining the streets to get in. The tax subsidized alt. fuel vehicle owners know they got away with murder once already, I bet they’re out there painting over their fancy blue sky license plates right now.
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We drove by no fewer than a dozen stations each with its own means of communicating that they had no gas. “No gas” is not a message that America’s gas stations are equipped to broadcast like they are equipped to broadcast “Diesel : $1.699″ or “Fresh Coffee” (which it usually ain’t). A Hotel manager has frequent-enough experience with sell-outs to hang a neon “NO” in front of the neon “VACANCY” sign by the roadside. Instead, the gas stations of Phoenix are taped up like crime scenes (which they may in fact be). That they cannot proclaim “I have no gas” is a problem quickly overcome. The masses, more on opiates later, queue up around the block and announce by their willingness to idle in hundred plus degree temps that there IS GAS HERE.
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The economic elasticity in this market are the number of miles we choose to drive and how low we let the gas gauge get before we freak out.
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The line was 4 lanes of 5 or 6 cars converging to a center point. I could go into detail about the flow of traffic to a central point with no way out, but remember that aneurysm I’m working so diligently to avoid. There was no Super or Premium for sale, but I didn’t care, the rich stuff makes Hondas cough anyway. A jerk in a sports car cut ahead of another jerk in a truck and they had a loud shouting match, if it came to blows I was gonna root for the truck driving jerk. I paid $1.99/ gal to put 14.2 gallons into a 14 gallon tank and was happy to do it. My pumping neighbor put some 35 gallons into his Mazda 626, hint: his trunk was open.
Sunday night I put the last half gallon from the lawn mower’s secret stash into the Accord. I never liked mowing.
