We needed to leave around 1:00 p.m. from his house to easily have time to get to the rehearsal - which was around 3:30 p.m. (Actually, we arrived early enough so as to be able to check the town's pawn shops for deals, but both of them were "dry", this time.)
I had repairs to return to a university and a high school - which were both within ten miles or so of my friend's house. I actually hadn't repaired the university's instruments yet, so I got up early and got those knocked out.
I left home around 11:00 a.m., dropped off those repairs at those two schools, and then headed for my friend's house. I put my change of clothes and instrument in his car and we took off. His gas tank had been topped off before we left, and - after we played the job - we found a place a few blocks from where we played our Christmas show that was open with $2.60/gal. gas. I topped his tank back off in - to cover my half of his gasoline, and my half was only about $10.50.
I've always tried to be frugal with fuel and home utilities, but - over the years, and particularly since I moved out to the woods and with this top-down imposed hyperinflation - I've come up with strategies to be able to rarely leave here, and to combine errands so as to use very little fuel, when divided between a bunch of errands.
Hand ringers - who believe what they are told about oil, coal, natural gas, etc. - can't see that EV's, solar panels, windmills, etc., use just as much of that stuff as anything else (not to mention the non-biodegradable stuff that those things contribute to landfills - or are stacked up in piles and not even buried, after they fail in a few years) - if not more, and all that jazz.. it's okay for them to believe all that stuff (other than the fact that those sorts of mandates are at the expense of all the rest of us). I am an "environmentalist", in that am against making messes or being wasteful. As just one example, I believe that more and more intermodal use of trains and more efficient/quick-distributing intermodal use of trains should be encouraged (vs. more-than-necessary 18-wheelers carrying only about 1/2 of a boxcar of stuff each, while wearing out highways), I'd actually be fine with using (high-speed) passenger trains a good bit, if we actually had a decent system of those here, and my observations are that - when I drive through voting districts - which support the political forces that shake their fingers at all of the rest us regarding the-sky-is-falling-in stuff, it is those voting districts where I see horrible messes, filth, and waste, including a whole bunch of buildings rotting away - which are giving off tons of atmospheric CO² as they rot (and it's not as if atmospheric CO² is actually a threat, but just sayin'). As far as fuel consumption is concerned, my only concern is > me < avoiding buying any more than I need to buy, because my concern - regarding wasting of these sorts of resources - is > me < avoiding wasting more of > my < money on them than is absolutely necessary.
Merry Christmas to all !
