Results tagged “gas”

• Today is 4/20, so you know what that means, 53 days left till TV goes digital and it's National Lima Bean Day too. And you thought we were going to go there. For shame.
• Capitol Hill wants to know, has anyone seen Kiwi?
• Gas is up 17 cents, but transportation luck is on our side, first the ORCA card, now the debut of Sound Transit light rail on July 18.

Sightline's Alan Durning has a good post on the connection between spikes in gas prices and recessions. It's very topical on a day that the Dow exhibited tremendous volatility, gaining 936 points. Our economic pulse is shocky, and Durning argues that at least in part its because high oil prices "sucked hundreds of billions of dollars out of the US economy" the last five years. It's this economic suffocation--not just from gas at the pump, but from jumps in manufacturing and shipping costs--that's led people to fail to pay all those mortgages they could barely afford. Meet the pit bull of vicious circles.

It figures that on the same day the Dow sank below 10,000--its worst decline since...uh...last week--we'd also read that gas scooters and motorcycles are worse polluters than cars and SUVs. Thanks, Alan Durning! Sure, they're gas-sippers, but since you can't fit emissions equipment on the tiny little suckers, they're essentially like driving around a high-mpg leaf-blower. The EPA says driving some motorcycles 10 miles is as bad emissions-wise as driving a car 850 miles. We're going back to bed.

Travis Arket, one of the three founding members of Seattle-based Team Robot House to take part in a Himalayan rickshaw race to raise money for Mercy Corps earlier this summer, hardly knows how to begin to describe their adventure. "It was so surreal, so condensed. Think Indiana Jones meets Commando meets Ghandi meets Hotel Rwanda, mashed up into a ball and forced down your throat. Luckily we have most of it on video," he says. "Absolute insanity. Overwhelming," his teammate Matt Crabtree agrees. The team raised thousands of dollars for charity, and the donations are still rolling in.

While it is no angry doctor with a tire-iron, we expect to see a lot more reports like this in the coming months and years. From the Seattle P-I: "Woman responds to expensive gas with her fists."

Welcome to our world, rest of the country...

The average cost of gas in Washington State has hit another record high. According to AAA, the average cost for a gallon of gas in Washington is $3.64.

The good news? Washington State has drastically cut back on its consumption of fuel, returning to consumption rates last seen when LBJ was in the White House. The bad news? The gas we do use costs a hell of a lot, and that's not going to change any time soon.

We wonder if saving on fuel and repairs also means busses run less frequently and commuters with abnormal hours wind up waiting in the rain longer than their 8-5 peers. On the other hand, the view from the top floor of the bus will be stunning during that long ride home.