Unique Mileage Tips - Plus Gas Stations short on 2s

Here are some we haven't seen before.

http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,14...2178070,00.html

Smile as you pump your money away
High gas prices inspire helpful 'tips'

By Angela Hill, STAFF WRITER

YOU KNOW IT'S BAD when gas prices are so high that station owners have run out of 2s and have had to use upside-down 5s and sometimes even small garden snakes for their price signs.

OK, the snake thing is a lie. But the rest is true!

"What are they gonna do when it hits $3 and 30-some cents? They'll have to start cutting up 8s," said a joking fueler at a Shell station in Alameda on Thursday. The clerk didn't find this terribly funny.

The really funny thing (and not in the funny-ha-ha sense) is the 3s have already arrived, people! Check out the Chevron over by the Claremont Hotel in Oakland. Top price is $3.03!!! Granted, that's for full-serve and premium. But $3?!

And 3 cents!!!

Soon people will start walking to the gas station to get gas for the car they weren't able to drive to the gas station because they couldn't afford the gas for the extra trip.

Even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has come out with a conservation campaign: Terminate your car!

No, no. Actually the Gov wants us all to do smart stuff -- however boring and non-Hollywood-mega-robot-movie it may be -- like keeping tires properly inflated (yawn). Don't turn your car into a freezer with the A/C (zzzz). And for heaven's sake, drive the posted speed limit (you mad dog Speed Racer, you, and your little Chim Chim, too).

He didn't happen to say anything about getting rid of his Hummer(s). The governor, that is. Not Chim Chim.

All well and good. But here are some even more useful, scientific and highly practical tips -- some from Bay Area residents and some just plain out of the ether -- on how to avoid using excess gas.

1. Find a way to run cars on ether.

2. Make a bigger, taller person give you piggyback rides. Not a good idea the other way around, though, because then an ambulance will have to be called, resulting in excess gas usage and bruising barbs from the responding paramedics.

3. Rickshaws.

4. Get other people to do things for you. "Hey, Mom. While you and Dad are at the store, can you swing by Nipomo, which is only, like, 15 little miles south of San Luis Obispo, which, you know, is only, like, three little hours from here, and pick up my car there from the last time I drove through and ran out of gas and had to hitch it home? Thanks. You're, like, a peach."

5. Combine errands. But combine wisely. Not good to pick up the wife on the way to see the mistress.

6. Avoid numerous short trips. If you have legs, and they work, don't take your car this summer to go light the backyard Smokey Joe.

7. Go back in time. Pretend you are in the dark ages before cars were invented. (See No. 6 re: legs.) Put on some pedal pushers -- even though some insist on calling them capris or now even cropped pants -- take your bicycle down from the rafters in the garage and remove all the cobwebs. Leave the spiders, as they may be able to assist with pedaling. Proceed to pedal. Invest in training wheels if necessary.

8. Carpool to the pool.

9. Motorist Gail Watts, 42, of Hayward, drives locally but thinks in a globally positioned fashion. "How about marrying off the two Bush daughters to strategic Arab princes in exchange for reduced oil prices? Isn't that what rulers of empires used to do?"

10. Speaking of empires, walk to Starbucks. (There go the legs again.) Because, really, there has to be one within two blocks of your currently globally positioned self.

11. Don't be a high-octane idiot. Most cars don't need premium, and yet tons of people buy it anyway, says AAA spokesman Sean Comey, who says this is his biggest automotive pet peeve of all time. It drives him crazy.

Comey says, if your owner's manual says high-octane "required," well, there you go. But if it says high-octane "recommended," that's code for "your car doesn't really need it."

Hello? Dude. Premium is 20 cents a gallon more, so that's $30 to fill up on regular, $40 on premium. "You'd get more value throwing the $10 bill out the window," the peeved Comey said. "Some needy person might find the $10. Otherwise it's just going to the oil companies."

12. Consider alternative automotive systems. For instance, elastic expansion technology (rub-ber bands). Or rodent exertion engines (hamsters). And if a car running on 60-hamster power isn't enough, supercharge it with a couple of possums.

13. Consider alternative fuels -- something that's an existing and abundant source of potential energy. How about junk mail? Or socks that have lost their mates. Or the cardboard thingies around hot coffee cups. (The hamsters might really dig those.)

14. Sick day.

15. Avoid trips to the grocery store. Instead, work your way through the miscellaneous items in the pantry. Ooh, cream of tartar!

16. For those who must commute long distances because they live in, like, Topeka, Kan., and drive daily to the Ferragamo store in San Francisco, trade in your Escalade on, say, a hot air balloon.

17. Better yet, get a 60-miles-to-the-gallon hybrid car like a Toyota Prius and be popular like Cameron Diaz and Leonardo DiCaprio. Buying one may actually be the key to becoming an environmentally and trendily responsible movie star. Then you can make movies like the second Charlie's Angels and nobody cares.

18. Or ... now, this one's pretty radical, so brace yourself: Ride the bus. You know, those big things you typically attempt to swerve around in your car so as not to wait the interminable 30 seconds for people with bikes to put them on the giant front bumper? No, not Hummers.

19. Another clever fueler suggested truck and tractor pulls, using only muscle strength. Or banning pulls entirely. But then where would the announcer guy go who says "Trucks, trucks, trucks!" on "Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!"

"Maybe he can say, 'Bicycles, bicycles, bicycles!'" he said.

The best part of this whole gas-price thing is, if we all work together, real hard, we can complain so much more than we ever thought imaginable.

Note: No small garden snakes were used in the writing of this story