CNN readers email: Spend $3 in gas to buy $6 beef jerky

[sabra]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/04/19/feedback.gasprices/index.html

CNN.com asked for readers' opinions on how rising gas prices affect their daily routines, how much gas costs in their area and how concerned they are about overall trends in energy pricing. Here is a sampling of responses, some of which have been edited:


I fill my car with 50 dollars worth of gas. I drive to the store to buy a 6 dollar bag of beef jerky. It takes me 3 dollars to go 14 miles to buy the jerky. I eat it all before I get home so I must go back to the store to buy more jerky for 6 dollars. Again it costs me 3 dollars in gas. I finish the jerky just as I arrive at home only to get an upset stomach from 1/2 pound of dried beef swelling in my stomach. I now have to spend another 3 dollars in gas to buy a 7 dollar bottle of Rolaids. This 1 hour of my life cost me 28 dollars. With the price of gas these days I think its time to give up on beef jerky. Another pleasure gone due to gas prices.


Joe Stain, Atlanta, Georgia



I'm one of the many people that have to drive to work each day, my trip is 128 miles each day, I stop for gas every two days so it never gets too low. At this writing I'm paying $2.69 a gallon. The trouble is that price goes up every day. The Exxon 3 blocks from my home went from $2.59 to $2.73 in one night. I'm now going for $80.00 to $85.00 a week just for five days. I don't use the car on weekends if I don't have to. When is GEORGE going to do something about it????


Bill, Clifton, New Jersey



$3.18 for premium gas this morning in Irvine, California. Just wondering what lame excuse the oil companies and our government are thinking up to keep the price rising. Hurricane Katrina still impacting supply? Our government officials and oil barons are lining their pockets because we have failed as a society to curtail our dependency on foreign oil. We only have ourselves to blame.


Dan Nott, Long Beach, California



Rising gasoline prices have caused me to drive faster, so I can arrive at my destination before I run out of gas! Seriously, I work out of the immediate area, so my fuel consumption won't be affected by rising prices for quite a while. I DO shop around, and try to schedule my fill-ups to previously-known cheaper fuel sites (Costco off route 30 in Lancaster, Giant on Route 15 near Harrisburg, Hess on Route 422 in Douglasville, and Getty on Route 15 just south of Point Of Rocks). My favorite (and best-mileage) car requires premium (92+ octane) fuel, and I last paid $3.039/gallon in Chester County (less in Berks County). Lorton, Virginia, wanted $3.139 per gallon (for premium) last night (they didn't get it!). I decry the use of ethanol or other non efficiency (oxygenating) additives to my motor fuel, long for a return to tetraethyl lead, and see electric cars recharged by nuclear power plants as a long-term solution for the upcoming oil availability crisis (we need oil more for plastics and medicines). I also foresee our retaking, probably militarily, of the nationalized oil facilities we developed in the Middle East and 'lost' in the sixties and seventies to increasingly-nationalistic indigenous peoples (this may be offset in time into the future) by appropriate occupation and control of the Iranian oil fields. But that's just me! Nobody writes songs about cars anymore (e.g. - "Little GTO", "409" "In My Merry Oldsmobile," "Mustang Sally," "Dead Man's Curve," etc. - aren't Lexis and Beamers emotion-inspiring, or has the 'sameness" of design removed the "mystique" of driving 'good' iron?


Larry Schear, East Coventry, Pennsylvania

[phantom power]

1. I think Jerky-Boy should consider buying in bulk.

[Inland]

5. Mail order beef jerky. It's a natural. nt

[fooj]

6. BWAHAHAHA!

Grab a clue, eh?:spray:

[phantom power]

8. No doubt. He doesn't have a jerky problem, he's got an IQ problem.

[rkc3]

17. I thought that was good sarcasm - pointing out the needless trips

a lot of people take each day. Like owning a Ford Expedition to drive little Billy to soccer practice or to get a manicure.

[htuttle]

2. The guy drives 14 miles to get beef jerky?

He's got a problem bigger than the gas price. He's just living in the wrong place.

[phantom power]

7. He drove twice in an evening. He just needs to think harder.

[Inland]

9. My neighborhood hardware store has SEVEN TYPES of Beef jerky!

Four types by one maker, three by another. Slim Jim is beef jerky, right? Every gas station has it.

I never seen anyone actually BUY it, so where could this guy live where there's no jerky?

[Inland]

3. Those are the responses AFTER editing? Wow.

My suggestion is to drive less and edit more.

[DBoon]

4. I bet the beef jerky guy generates plenty of gas

If he could harness it to use in his car, his problem would be solved!

[Cassandra]

13. When you're driving...

you are already in a sitting position.......hmmmm........with your ass in the direction of the gas tank.....hmmmmm.........

[Selatius]

10. America's love affair with the car is costing...America

Did the general populace bothered asking why all the street trolleys and light rail systems were being bought out by car manufacturers and junked all over America's cities and towns in the 1940s and 1950s? Did anybody?

Did anybody ask in the 1950s and 1960s why we were spending billions of dollars building an interstate highway system for cars but relatively little to upgrade the heavy rail systems for bullet trains and modern train stations?

Have the American people, as a whole, wondered why our European neighbors and our Japanese neighbors have bullet trains and the most advanced mass transit systems in the world while we don't???

[Strelnikov_]

11. Larry Schear, Dumber Than A Box O' Hammers

I also foresee our retaking, probably militarily, of the nationalized oil facilities we developed in the Middle East and 'lost' in the sixties and seventies to increasingly-nationalistic indigenous peoples (this may be offset in time into the future) by appropriate occupation and control of the Iranian oil fields.

So to a freeper, citizens of another country are 'indigenous peoples'.

[TexasLawyer]

18. But Larry's dumbest sentence has to be the first one:

"Rising gasoline prices have caused me to drive faster, so I can arrive at my destination before I run out of gas!"

Whaaaa?

:rofl:

[xultar]

12. Jerky Boy you is got to be the stoopidest bubba I've eber seent.

[undergroundpanther]

14. Beefy jackass

Should get a food dehydrator and learn to make his own beef /meat jerky . It tastes way better than the bagged shit that is way too expensive. Plus you can spice it up yourself and you KNOW exactly what is in it,and if you can afford it what the state of the cows went into it are..
Buying raw steak drying it out is like 5 times cheaper than buying jerky pre made.

[DBoon]

15. I wouldn't be surprised if the jerky guy was a put on

He's probably exaggerating just to make a point, and to be a bit humorous

[DS1]

16. Joe Stain has to be satire

Please, let it be fake

[Divernan]

19. Hey Larry, "we" didn't develop Mideast oil facilities, private corps. did

And "they" have been gorging themselves on the profits lo these many years. So why should "we" (the U.S.) continue to bankrupt future generations, and sacrifice our young men and women to continue the obscene profits of Big Oil. And here's a clue. According to the principles on which the U.S. was founded and which are enshrined in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, those peoples you scathingly refer to as "increasingly-nationalistic indigenous peoples" have every right to profit from the natural resources of their own countries.