[Eric in the Ozarks]

Seen any gas lines lately ?

[imskylark]

"Seen any gas lines lately ?"

Yes. We had a gas shortage down here. Hard to find gas and if a station had gas, the lines were long. Dennis cut off our supplies. Last week stations started to get gas again.

[lasisra]

"Seen any gas lines lately ?"

Actually, yes.

But that was in the panicked "everybody gas up your car" run-up to Hurricane Dennis. The night before the storm arrived you couldn't find gas on Panama City Beach, FL for love or money, and there was not much across the bay in Panama City proper, either.

We've had frequent supply disruptions since. We actually still had some gas stations running out of regular and mid-grade gas as late as last week. (Despite the fact that the Panama City area didn't have any serious damage from the storm.)

Hopefully it's all worked out now.

We've also seen supply disruptions for other things - the baby food sections of the grocery stores kept going almost empty during the 3 weeks following the storm, and stocks of lots of other items (especially dairy products and breads) were frequently low.

Many times I'd go into a normally well-stocked store and see sections of empty shelves scattered throughout.

AFAIK no one here really had to do without anything important, though many of us couldn't find our usual brands/flavors/sizes. I'm sure it was worse farther west (closer to the storm's path), and I know the places that were hard hit by the 4 hurricanes last season had things MUCH worse.

But seeing those "out of gas" signs on the pumps and those empty shelves in the stores does viscerally remind you how dependent you are on the rest of the world for the necessities of daily life.

[kcvl]

Seen any gas lines lately?

No, and we filled our cars up on Saturday at $2.05 a gallon. It has been as low as $l.99 a gallon at some places.

[Finalapproach29er]

I don't find paying $2.39 acceptable.

He hasn't lifted a finger to try reducing the price- to the best of my knowledge (please don't cite ANWR,1 mil./bbl per day is not even 5%).