Once again tomorrow I'm going to embark on another trip out of town for the second of two very important weddings that I am participating in at the end of this summer.   As most of you who read my blog on a regular basis know, my brother and sister-in-law got married about two weeks ago, and now this coming weekend my best friend is getting married.  Matthew and I have been best friends since the sixth grade, and even though we don't get to see each other as often as we'd like, we have a really strong bond after about seventeen years (wow!) of friendship.  Back when we were in high school, we were pretty much inseparable, so when we both decided to leave home for college, it was rough right off the bat.  We got to see each other on holiday break and summer break, but as the years went on and we both moved to new schools in new states, it got tougher and tougher.  We actually both ended up in Florida for awhile, but we were about nine hours from one another, so that didn't work too well.  Now that his mom and dad have moved to Florida, I don't even get the benefit of seeing him at holidays, etc., so this trip up for his wedding is an extra special one since I haven't seen him in over two years.  Having just gone up to New York a couple of weeks ago and having traveled by air, I wasn't exactly in a situation were I felt that I should go ahead and purchase another nearly four hundred dollar airline ticket to get up home for this wedding.  As a result, as you already know from my post a few days ago about coupon codes, I decided to rent a nice car to travel up the eleven hours from central Indiana to central New York.  It's definitely saving me some money, and I really do enjoy road trips.  Although I'm procrastinating (very unusual for me) about packing and getting ready to leave for my trip, I was very encouraged about the trip when I read the news headline this morning that reported that gasoline prices nationwide have hit a four-month average low.  This is exactly the news that a money-saving traveler wants to hear before embarking on about twenty-four hours worth of driving in under a week's time.  I almost wish that I was driving south, because it appears that the gasoline prices are lower on the average towards the southern and middle parts of the country, whereas the northeast and southwestern parts of the country have the more expensive per gallon prices.  Still, with prices in my town here at just about two dollars and sixty cents per gallon, I'm not going to complain, since they will only be about ten to fifteen cents more per gallon by the time that I get into New York.  For some reason, I seem to remember that the price per gallon in Ohio was less than I had anticipated the last time I made the drive home, so that will also be something to look forward, not to mention the apparent decrease in the amount of construction throughout that particular state.  After all these months of gasoline price rollercoaster rides, I will gladly smile at this report of the two dollar and eighty-four cent national average and take advantage of it.

With my luck, by the time that I leave central New York five days from now there could potentially be another gasoline crisis and all of the sudden I'll end up paying record high prices on the way home.  That's just the way the cookie crumbles, as the saying goes.  Either way, like I always say, no matter what the price of gasoline ends of being, people are going to pay for it.  Americans need gasoline to get where they are going, and even at five dollars per gallon, I'm sure that Americans would pay to fill up their cars.  It's just the like the same thing as I said not too long ago about necessity items like milk and cereal.  No matter how high the supply and demand curve pushes the prices for some products, people will continue to purchase them.  That's what being a necessity item is all about, right?!