I was in an RV sales place a couple of years ago and I saw a sign/chart that
attempted to put some 'perspective' on what the price of gas really does to
your road trip plans, if you're getting to think that a vacation in the
vehicle is too expensive.

Say you're going to make a trip of 3500 miles over 21 days, and you average
15 mpg on long trips, mostly 'highway' driving (the numbers don't really
matter, plug in what you want). If gas cost $2.50/gallon when you planned
for the trip last year, you were planning on spending about $585. Now that
gas is $3 per gallon, it's gonna cost you $700, or $115 more- ouch. No road
trip... but; their spin went like this:

If you look at that in terms of extra cost per day, it's $5.48- the price of
a combo meal, dessert in a restaurant, a couple of beers in same, that
Starbucks run you make every morning.... you get the idea. So the idea was
that if you drive sensibly and tune your vehicle to its best condition you
might get a mile or two per gallon out of that and then you just 'sacrifice'
some small thing each day (not even necessarily on the trip) and you've
covered the extra cost of the gas easily, maybe even lost some weight in the
bargain, etc. Contrast that to changing your vacation plans to something
that includes lodging or maybe even airfare and you're easily still way
ahead.

Like I said, it's 'perspective' (read: spin designed to sell RVs), but it
still may be a useful way of looking at things when trying to decide if you
can still 'afford the gas' to take a trip or not.

Cya,
Robert

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Honan" <cartruckbus@GMAIL.COM>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2006 9:26 AM
Subject: Re: Gas price war ~ way off topic (NVC)

Thanks for the links Brian, it inspires my interest in math. This is not
IMHO not nearly off topic. I just did a upper rebuilt to my Vanagon and I
know it is not for the next 30 years but I am thinking, I did all that work
and now gas is so exspensive I can't aford to take the road trips in it that
I want. I am not proud of the gas miliage of the vanagon. Most of us seem to
be doing all this work ourselves maybe we ned to figure out a decent
afordable deisel convertion. so we are ready for the next wave of fuel if
bio fuel is the answer. I love the van but somtimes I think my energy should
be going into the next whatever....

  I am just frustrated at this situation I think I need to go ride my bike.