A quick check of the news is unnecessary.\u00c2\u00a0 Every time I stop at a gas station, I know the top story of the day.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve never paid so much for the privilege of driving.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfortunately, for my day job, it’s a requirement, so I’ll continue to cry as I fill the tank and I’ll continue to fill the tank.<\/p>\n
But it got me thinking about joyriding.<\/p>\n
There are two types of joyriding, and I imagine the current climate has had an impact on both.<\/p>\n
Firstly, there’s the illegal kind, where someone hitches a ride in your car, without you present, and burns around town, wastes all your fuel, and drops off your car in the parking lot of some supermarket you would never, ever, in your worst nightmares, have considered shopping.<\/p>\n
Instances of this, I imagine, have risen, as the joyriders don’t want to fuel their own high horsepower, madly tricked out sex machines.<\/p>\n
The other kind is when you get in the car and drive.\u00c2\u00a0 For the pleasure of it.\u00c2\u00a0 “Where you going?”\u00c2\u00a0 “Oh, I don’t know, out<\/em>.”\u00c2\u00a0 And then you drive, aimlessly, sometimes for hours, up and down highways and byways, avenues and country lanes.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s something of an exploration, whether of the town\/city in which you live or the stuff within your head\/body\/soul.<\/p>\n This kind of joyriding, I fear, may be quickly becoming a thing of the past.<\/p>\n There’s a restaurant on the water, about an hour’s drive from me, which serves this incredible alfredo seafood nacho thing, but it’s so far away I doubt I’ll make the journey, not if it’s costing four bucks a gallon.\u00c2\u00a0 That becomes one expensive plate of nachos, eh?<\/p>\n I drove to the beach last weekend.\u00c2\u00a0 Cost over a hundred bucks in gas.\u00c2\u00a0 (The beach is question is not close, but it’s a whole other world, and well worth the trip.)\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know what it used to cost, not exactly, because it never really mattered.\u00c2\u00a0 Used to be, it wasn’t an issue to get in your car and go somewhere.<\/p>\n I’m not advocating joyrides of either type.\u00c2\u00a0 Nor am I advocating random and pointless waste of fuel and\/or resources.\u00c2\u00a0 However, I am lamenting how much it’s costing me to do my day job, and how much more out of reach the little pleasures of life are becoming as gas prices rise.<\/p>\n When I lived in Sydney, I didn’t need a car to get from here to there.\u00c2\u00a0 I walked to work, and to any shops I needed, and to many places of play.\u00c2\u00a0 I hopped the bus or train if I needed to go further.\u00c2\u00a0 On rare occasions, I called a taxi, and twice (both times for long distance journeys beyond the reach of Sydney’s rail system), I rented a car.\u00c2\u00a0 In some places, it’s impossible to accomplish anything without a car; it’d be over an hour worth of walking for me to get to the nearest grocer.\u00c2\u00a0 Each way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"