Margret Sloan

Gas prices have kept going up and are over $4.00 a gallon now in the Franklin gas stations. Closer to my house it hovers around $3.89 per gallon. This is a huge increase over last year’s prices of around $2.39 - I remember freaking out that it was over $2.50 in San Francisco. Now I hear that is around $4.50 after just one year since I was last out there.

My sister was sweet enough to suggest that we get a cash back or gas rebate type of credit cards to help save a few extra cents off each gallon of gas that we buy. I hadn’t really thought of that and decided to look into it. I used the credit cards club website to read up on the gas rebate programs and find a good card to apply for online. Their top four card recommendations for gas rewards programs are all types of Discover Cards. The one that caught my eye says that you get a 5% rebate on all gasoline and auto maintenance purchases. If you paid for an oil change lately you will know that the cost of an oil change has gone up about the same rate as the cost of gasoline these past several months. So you save on oil changes and other auto related things beside just gas, and 5% is a nice little sum to put back into your wallet at the end of the day.

My brother called on Friday to tell me that he’d be riding in the Rolling Thunder this weekend. I saw last night on the news that they had a great turnout of motorcycles and parade viewers along the procession route in Washington DC, and that they even had the pleasure of President Bush come to the event. He was presented with an honorary leather jacket and although this is WAAAAAY out of his league, Bush seemed to be a good sport about the whole thing.

I have a girlfriend who decided to ride in Rolling Thunder this year, too. She has become quite the patriot since 9/11 and I hope she met some guys on the ride that opened her eyes and her mind to a totally different lifestyle from her little cocoon of a teacher’s life in suburbia that she’s enjoyed all these years. I can’t wait for her to call and tell me all about her biker experience.

So many people drive to work as a mindless exercise every day. They back out of their driveway and take the same route to work, sitting in rush hour traffic and stressing until they get to their office. The drive to work is a dull, boring routine.

I can’t do that. I’ll drive to work a different way at least 2 or 3 times each week. I really don’t like to do the same thing over and over. I like variety and I like to enjoy my drive to work - not just endure it. Every morning I see new flowers blooming, new pets in the yards, and new cars sharing the road with me. I love starting each day as a new adventure!

When I was a girl, my father would drive to the service station and an attendant would come out to the pump, fill up the car for you, wash the windshield and offer to check the oil for you while the gas was flowing into the car. If your tires needed air, he would refill the tires. All of these services were free with the price of the gas. If you needed the oil changed, a flat tire fixed, or a new headlight, the mechanic in the service bay would take care of it for you and not charge much for the little bit of time it took to put in the new parts as long as you bought the parts from the station.

Nowadays you do all of that yourself. Which is fine if you are handy with tools and have someplace like a covered and lit garage to work on your car. The rest of us have to resort to our own devices. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can’t afford to take my car to Firestone every time a little happens to my car when they are going to charge $100 for every little maintenance job. Last week I took in the car and asked for an oil change and a new air filter. The bill was $100. That’s absurd - I was expected to pay $35, tops.

I’ll have to find someplace else to take care of these routine maintenance issues for me, because I can’t afford the excessive Firestone charges.

A friend of mine is a convenience store manager, on the morning shift. I see her once a week or so, and I try to make a point to buy a few things from inside the store in addition to buying my gas there, as she gets bonuses based on the sales from sodas, candy bars, potato chips, and the other things they sell inside.

I was distressed to find that someone robbed her store last week. Thank goodness she was not working that night and the person running the store was not hurt, but it is disconcerting to think they my friend is truly in danger of being robbed or shot at any time. The thieves took a van and rammed the front doors with the van, then hauled the ATM machine and cash register into the back of the van and drove off.

This morning they are traffic bollards across the front of the store to prevent anyone from ramming the front doors again. Bollards are the tall round posts that re installed in the pavement and spaced a few feet apart to restrict traffic.

It’s a shame we have to resort to obvious crime deterrents like bollards in front of your place of business, even in the nicer neighborhoods. When I mentioned this to my boss, he thought getting bollards would be a good idea for our own building. With a little surfing we were able to find a website that provides all kinds of bollards - I never knew there were so many different types and uses - and we found exactly what we want to order. We will need movable bollard because of our landlord and the lease restrictions. That’s no problem, the same website carried movable and temporary bollards, too.

We used the website www.trafficguard.net because their site has color photos of the different types of bollards and clear, easy to read and understand descriptions of their products. You don’t have to be in the construction business to figure out which ones will meet your needs, and if you have any questions you can call their tool free number and talk to a customer service representative before placing your order.