Wednesday, May 05, 2004

Smugly my tank sits full

Every once and a while I'll catch a break, it doesn't happen often mind you, but on the odd occasion my planets will align and fortune shall smile. Tuesday was one of those times. While returning home from dropping the young one off at school I pulled into the ole Petro Canada to fill up the A-B transporter.

Much clunking of gas as my near empty tank replenished itself to a full capacity, separating me and my wallet from close to fourty dollars, my tank gobbling up litre after litre of regular Petro Can fuel at the rate of 83.9 a litre. Little did I know that my timely arrival at the station would let me sit smug by the end of the day.

Flash forward to 7:30 pm and the trip to the soccer field, same Petro Canada station, same gas in the pumps now ringing in at 91.9 on the big board in front of the station. Whew, close call that was, normally I'm the guy that pulls in just as the register is going ca ching ca ching with a spiraling upward change of price per litre. So to whatever Gas God smiled down on my poor little car today, thank you. I'm going to milk this full tank as long as possible, though by all accounts things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

I'll never figure out how a country that is a net exporter of gas, ends up paying more for gas than the country that imports our product. Something just doesn't make sense. All that tax collected where does it go? Talk about the house always winning. The Gov't has no incentive to bring our gas prices down, as they receive such massive injections of cash for their spendthrift ways. One wonders why the gov't is such a fiscal mess, when the big board in your neighbourhood just keeps going up and up and up. With our contribution to the treasury simply by filling up, we should truly expect a better return for our investment. I see King Ralph of Alberta is toying with the idea of gas rebates for those subjects of his realm, the downtrodden of the rest of the land can only dream of such a benevolent ruler.

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