Anybody notice lately how much gasoline costs?

I needed gasoline the other day. Gasoline for travel for work or for family visits is on my list of necessary and allowable expenditures during my 21-day money fast. I'd had a meeting out of town that day and had another meeting out of town scheduled for the next day and did not have enough gas left in the tank to make it to my meeting the next day. So I needed gas.

Since I am not using credit or debit cards, I needed to use cash to pay for the gas. It has been years and years since I have paid for gasoline with cash. I can't remeber the last time I used cash to buy gasoline.

I looked at how much cash I had in my wallet. I am trying to be a little careful not to run out of cash since I am carrying no plastic in my wallet and don't want to be out of money altogether, just in case. Without using my debit card, I can get cash only when my bank is open.

Heck, I thought, I guess I have enough cash so I'll just go ahead and get $25 worth while I'm here.

Twenty-five dollars bought me 6.65 gallons of gasoline! My gas meter registered just a hair over half full. What??!! When did gasoline get this expensive??!!

I sat in my car trying to figure out whether there was some way I could get to my meeting the next day by public transportation? Was there someone else going to the meeting I could share a ride with?

I confess that I have the capacity to be a little oblivious when it comes to the practicalities of life. When I am filling up the tank of my car with gasoline, my mind is likely to be thinking about the theological implications of the discovery that the universe is expanding faster than scientists had previously thought or what it means that the country seems to be going through an unusually wacky season. I guess I usually hardly even notice how much I am paying for a tank of gasoline.

The most interesting thing to me is that, when I used cash to buy gas, I had a new appreciation of how much gasoline actually costs. And my mind immediately went to alternative possibilities for transportation ... which is a good thing for other reasons as well.

I guess the money fast was working.