Do you remember when it cost $60 to fill up instead of $90? It wasn't all that long ago, was it? If you go through a tank per week, that's an extra $120 to $150 per month.
I'm sure each of you has a story to tell about how the price of gas has cut into the essentials, perhaps even your food and housing budget.
Most people simply shrug and say, "there's nothing we can do about it" or put their faith in some unknown and unseen group (commonly referred to as "they") who will eventually act on their behalf to lower the tariff being charged to fill 'er up.
Maybe we should be concerned with what's there in front of us: what we drive and how we drive it.
Nowhere in the great gas-price debate do we dare accept or attach any responsibility for our fossil-fuel woes.
We've all been bombarded about the measures we should undertake to save this precious commodity, but many people still steadfastly refuse to adjust their habits.
On cold mornings we remotely start our vehicles and let them warm up so we'll be nice and toasty when we're darned good and ready to leave for work.
We then motor past the public transit shelter, most of us alone in our seven-passenger sport-utility vehicle or minivan, without a care in the world.
On the freeway, we drive in a state of perpetual hurry, which usually means well over the speed limit. We'll sit in stop-and-go traffic with the air conditioning on full blast. And, of course, our cars are such fail-safe appliances that we rarely, if ever, bother to check such mundane things as tire inflation or adhere to the tune-up schedule in the owner's manual that we've never read from cover to cover like we should.
In the evenings or on weekends, we drive our families everywhere they need, or want, to go (usually no farther than our own neighbourhoods) and pick them up again when it's time to come home.
What's my point? The cost of topping up the family sled still has had little impact on what, how or where we drive.
It might be our inalienable right to own the biggest four-wheel-drive on the block, but, for some reason we don't think we should have to pay when sky-high-octane threatens our wallets.
We're the victims and "they" had better do something, we loudly proclaim.
And when was the last time we actually got out of our cars and checked the air in the tires?
Aside from taking it easy on the gas pedal, doing a tire-pressure check once a month is one of the simplest and most effective things we can do to make sure we're getting good fuel economy.
Likewise, other modes of transportation - in the form of the bicycles in our multi-car garages - sit, forlorn and abandoned.
Those two-wheeled wonders are perfectly capable of running errands, going to soccer practice or handling a myriad of other short trips. What's more, they're cheap to buy, create zero emissions (if you discount the grunts and groans from out-of-shape-owners) and are actually - heaven forbid - good for us.
Instead of a two-hour pleasure drive, how about one hour in the car and one hour on a bike? How much gas (and money and carbon dioxide emissions) would you save?
Then there's walking. People used to do it all the time. You might be surprised how many kilometres per insole your barely used cross-trainers will get you.
Until some of these apparently radical alternatives are tried, we don't have a right to complain.
It's not the price of the gas that's the big problem, it's our ability to use it at such an alarming rate that we actually do care when the price goes up.
The price of our consumer-based lifestyle is worked into everything from transporting the goods we so desperately crave to our taxes for road maintenance. Would that not all be cheaper if we didn't choose to drive absolutely everywhere and anywhere?
People used to hike in the woods. Now they take their sport-utility vehicles and their cell phones.
Clearly, the gasoline issue is as much a price issue as it is a lifestyle issue.
It's a shame to think price would be the driving force, but in a competitive and capitalist world, that's the way it works. The fact is, the price will likely continue to rise. If not now, then maybe in six months or in a few years.
History has shown we can't control the pump prices. It's a matter of supply and demand; the latter of which is within our power to change.
Perhaps it's time to take charge of what's really within our control: the way we live as well as our outdated, wasteful habits.
Who knows, we might even literally feel better for it.
Courtney Hansen is the author of The Garage Girl's Guide to Everything You Need to Know About Your Car.
