Illinois Gas Buddies meeting #4

It looks like it's going to be Sept 13, 2008 at Avanti's in East Peoria. For updates see the thread in the forums here. Looks like a very nice venue. Hope to see you there.

Meanwhile, here in Springfield today, the pre-weekend price spike is taking place. $3.87 up to $4.05 or so. Spike up and trickle down. Same old thing.

What the ??? The Springfieldgas web site was down.

It's not clear to me what happened there at http://springfieldgas.googlepages.com , but google took that site down, stating that it violated their policy. I wrote them using the contact form that the message linked to and within 10 minutes the site was back up. I wonder what happened?

Anyway Animenut was kind enough to let me know so I could try to do something about it. Animenut also asked about another Springfield Gas Buddies meeting. It sounds like a good idea to me, although it hasn't been too long, but I think some folks who would have liked to be here couldn't make it. What do you all think? Comments?

I don't know about you, but our Summer yard work is in full swing and we're having a Father's Day cook out here tomorrow. Hope everyone's Summer is off to a good start.

I know I've mentioned it before, but I finally opted out of the Meijer's text alerts. It just got to be worthless, in my opinion. Thoughts?

Rajah

Happy Memorial Day Weekend to all my Gas Buds..

I guess that with oil over $130 a barrel and the holiday weekend impending, it's no big surprise that gas is now over $4.00 for regular here in Springfield. The Meijer's text alert was actually timely for a change.

Our plans haven't changed as we'll be enjoying the long weekend in our favorite place... our home. We might burn a little local gas and go see the new Indiana Jones movie, but nothing planned out of town.

Stay in touch! Drive carefully .... if you can actually afford to drive.

The latest spike..

I guess we're now seeing the time-delayed price increase that Meijer's text messages predicted yesterday. I see that they were reported as $3.85 at 8:00 this morning, so the text message was bogus again.

I understand that the Chatham BP jumped to $4.11 last night! In Springfield this morning, I'm now seeing $3.97 at multiple stations being reported. My wife managed to top-up one of our cars at the Wabash Road Ranger which was getting $3.85 for regular. The Shell on Wabash a few blocks West had already jumped to the new $3.97 for regular price.

Breaking (broken) news...

I just got a Meijer's gas price text alert! Wait a minute... Oil is down, so is this just another bad message from them, or are we looking at $4+ gas later today? See my other blog posts about the unreliability of these text alerts.

Letter to SJ-R about posting gas prices..

I think it's a great idea for the consumer to have current gas prices available to them. Since, as we've already seen so many time, gas prices fluctuate rapidly sometimes, the immediacy of online makes the most sense, in my opinion. Well, I guess I should say that the prices fluctuate rapidly when the prices are going up, but are sloooow when trickling back down.

Channel 20?? Give me a break. From a convenience stand point, that doesn't work as the consumer has to be watching/listening when the prices are being presented. That doesn't work nearly as well as having prices available when you want to look. That's part of the power of the Internet. What you want, when you want it.

I don't know about you all, but I get the vast majority of my news online now. I can get exactly the stories I want without having to watch/listen to other stories waiting to get to what I'm interested in and, online, I can get much more detail if that's what I want. TV/Radio news is 20th Century.

Anyway, this blog is here for you folks in Springfield, Illinois to use. Feel free to comment.

"Rajah"

Spike and trickle all over again..

This was a strange one, though. I don't think all the stations got on the same page at the same time, which is a bit unusual. When the $3.58 spike hit, not all the stations went clear up there and some only went to $3.49, but today all the stations I went by on the way to work were at $3.59. Now this evening the long slow trickle part of the cycle has already started. {{sigh}}

Happy Tax day.. and happy gas spike day, too ...

Here's the latest spike clear up to $3.59 at some stations, but others seem to have only gone up to $3.49. Do you think the former stations will get a clue and drop back?

The spike and trickle cycle has another noticeable characteristic in that the trickle doesn't get down quite as far before the next spike to a higher peak price.

Meijer's has let me down three times now by texting me that gas prices are going up after 1:30. What they haven't said is that it's the next day and not the day of the alert. I'm losing patience with it.... or should I just assume from now on that it'll be the next day?

What's with the Miejer's text alerts ??

I got another one this morning saying that prices were going to go up after 1:30, Thankfully, nothing happened. I'm about ready to turn them off.  Anyone got some info on it?

Saturday meeting and false alarm from Meijers..

I got a gas price warning text message from Meijers this morning saying that gas prices were going to increase after 1:30. I'm not seeing any jump in prices yet. Not that I'm disappointed, of course. Wonder what happened?

We're expecting 7 at the Saturday, April 4th. meeting including my wife and I. It's not too late to make plans to join us.

Springfield Gas Buddies Meeting..

Looks like we're thinking pretty seriously about Saturday April 5th. I have a location available with pizza and soda provided. Those who are interested should contact me at springfieldgas@gmail.com for more details.