Got Gas?

I was finally able to get gas this morning, just in time (the fuel light came on this morning). Getting gas is not as difficult as it was last week, but it is still significantly more complicated than it used to be. To be sure I would not drive around wasting gas while looking for gas, I consulted a map on the Charlotte Observer's web site, which has handy pushpins marking all the area gas stations. Purple pushpins are stations that had gas as of a reported time, and blue pushpins are ones that did not. It seems as though about half the gas stations in Charlotte have gas at the moment, which is a drastic improvement from a week ago, when about 1 in 6 stations had gas. So you check the map for the closest station with gas, call them up to make sure they still have it and find out how long the wait is, and off you go! I was lucky -- the station about a mile from here had gas this morning and virtually no wait. Never thought I'd be so happy to spend $69 on a tank of gas... which by the way was selling for $3.89 a gallon this morning... though I haven't heard anyone complain about the price, which I understand is about 30 cents higher than the national average.