$66.35

That’s how much it cost me to fill my gas tank this morning. That was for 23 gallons of regular unleaded gasoline at the Arco station by my house. $2.899 a gallon. Isn’t that amazing? And when we first got the Expedition gas prices were around $.89/gallon. I could fill my tank for less than $25. I could go hog wild and fill it with the expensive stuff and still barely break $30. That was only 5½ years ago. How things change. Gas prices have more than tripled in that time. I don’t think my paycheck has kept up. Okay, I just looked it up and I was making about $17/hour then. I can tell you for sure that my salary has not tripled. But if you want to pay me $51/hour, feel free! I won’t complain about that.

Guess we aren’t going to go to the race meet this weekend in Mollala with those gas prices. Let’s see, it’s about 42 miles to Jeff & Ramona’s in Beavercreek, then another 42 miles to Clark Park in Molalla, plus the trips home again. So I’d travel about 170 miles to race the dogs both days. Say I get 15 miles to the gallon and my tank holds 25 gallons (I don’t know the exact figures, but those are close). That works out to 375 miles per tank. So, 25 gallons times $2.90/gallon is $72.50. To make life easy let’s say I drive 187 miles to the race meet (got to figure in that one letterbox I have to stop and get). I would use about 12 gallons of gas for taking my dogs to the race meets, which would cost me about $35. Just in gas. Then we have to put in the admission fee for the meet, which is $9 first dog, $8 second dog each day, that’s $34. Then I would probably stop to get breakfast and lunch each day. Say that’s $5 per meal, that $20 bucks.

So what do we have?

Gas $35
Admission $34
Food $20

Even if my math is a little faulty (which it probably is, math not being my strong point) it would cost me about $90 bucks to take my dogs racing this weekend! $45 per dog. Sheesh. I didn’t think I spent that much doing this sport. And that’s assuming I don’t buy some cool whippet gadget thing from someone at the meet. Like my dogs need another leash, collar, gew gaw, or whatever.

I think for that much money I can just stay home and work on the house like a good girl.