So, here it is, Labor Day, a day in which we Americans celebrate the awesomeness of our nation much as our forefathers did, by driving all over the country in ridiculous urban assault vehicles named after endangered trees and vanquished Spanish naval forces (Abraham Lincoln himself was a big fan of this, and often could be seen cruising around Illinois in his Eponymous towncar, which, being as how dinosaurs still roamed the Earth instead of turning into oil as they all did in later years, actually ran by burning squirrels, which were at the time our nation’s leading export). But hark, with gas prices way totally high, this great American tradition is in great and sucky peril as never before. What made gas prices go up so much anyways? While most of the folks on TV say it has something to do with China using it all to build Robeasts and Coldstone Creameries, the truth is that Spanky and the Mole People have been stealing it all from underground pipelines as they foolishly pursue their mad scheme to build a chain of subterranean gas stations thus cornering the global Shmuffin market and bring the world to its knees. Also, the Amish are buying it all just to mess with us. Whatever the case may be, its certain that until Dick Cheney finally finds a way to turn his idea for flying monkey chariots into a marketable product, we all need to be looking at ways to conserve gas and save money (not carpooling though, that’s how Satan gets to work in the morning). Without further ado (there having been quite enough ado already here), let’s take a look at a few of the options available to the traveler on a budget.
Get a Conestoga wagon. Now, that might not seem terribly efficient, seeing as how your average ox, even on the best of days, can rarely travel at highway speeds. But think about it for a second, Conestoga wagons are what people took on the Oregon Trail, which was really the ultimate road trip of all time (okay, maybe the penultimate road trip of all time, if you want to go way back in the day and count the Exodus, though that’s a story for another blog altogether). I mean, if someone can take a wagon all the way across the country, don’t go and act like you’re all of a sudden too good to drive one to work everyday. Just make sure that you bring plenty of wagon tongues (I don’t even know what those are for, but trust me, you’ll need ‘em) and whenever you get to a river, just hire an Indian to take you across, unless you want to sink and lose all your ammunition and family members.
Go with the Mad Max method, and start living like you’re in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. How do you do this? Simple, first get a sweet looking leather jacket and a crossbow (if, like myself, you’ve already got this equipment, you might want to go ahead and try this on your way to work tomorrow), then get a bunch of crazy stuff like cowcatchers and harpoon guns and stick them in your car. Then just run any mutants you see off the road and after delivering them to a swift and fiery death, take the gas from their car. While some might criticize this method owing to its horrible ruthlessness/total awesomeness, just remember, Mel Gibson did it first, and he’s fought the British, space aliens, and Pontius Pilate, so anything he came up with can’t be but so bad.
Get a hover conversion done on your car. Now, I’m not sure if this would actually help you to save gas, but it would be pretty cool. Also, as long as you go all the way and get a Mr. Fusion and a couple of flux capacitors installed, all you have to do is go back in time to when gas was cheaper and buy some then. Just make sure you don’t change history by making out with Leah Thomson or stepping on any butterflies, that can be trouble. Though on the other hand, 1980s Leah Thompson was pretty makeoutable, and butterflies are so much fun to stomp on, don’t feel too bad if you end up doing either of these things.
Get a Segway. No, I’m lying, Segways are one of those things like eugenics, Communism, and the Metric System, where they seemed like a good idea once, but after they killed 20 million people they didn’t seem quite so cool after all. Besides, George Bush the Elder fell off of one once, and that’s just not cool.
Switch you car over to steam power. Why? Well, because if you do, your car can burn anything to go. Wood, coal, propane, kittens, emo kids, whatever’s cheapest that day, just throw a heap of ‘em in the hopper and light it up. Also, your call will make that cool chugga chugga sound like a train, and if you plan ahead, you can even get one of those totally sweet whistles installed.
Get some of those Russian-made power boots. Never heard of such a thing? Oh, they’re all too real, believe you me. You see, after the fall of the Soviet Union, all the Russian scientists who’d spent all their careers working on ways to kill us capitalist pig-dogs were unemployed. Some of them got jobs working at the Food Lion in the Outer Banks, but most of them either went rogue and started building killer robots or decided to make cool stuff. One of them made the gasoline-powered boots that can make a man run 25 mph. Think about that for a minute, the way you’d look as you leapt through traffic like a briefcase-toting gazelle, while all those other chumps sat stuck in traffic. And should you get to work only to find that the city is in peril and you need to rush off somewhere, you’ve still got the boots to give you awesomely superhuman jumping powers, so you could become some jumpy thing-themed superhero, like Toad Boy, or Kangalad, or Goofy Looking Cracker with Some Boots On. Whatever, the point is that you should get some of these boots.
So there you have it, all the answers to all your gasoline woes. Now just go out and try a few of these handy methods and be amazed at the results. Happy Trails.
