$4 a gallon!?

Several months ago someone I was talking with predicted gas would be $4 a gallon by the summer, and I was skeptical. Today, almost out of gas, I paid $3.99 (basically $4) a gallon at the Shell station on downtown 1st Street between my work and Vincent's school (and the Seelbach Hilton). Vincent and his friends/classmates sometimes stop there to buy snacks. After buying gas there for my first month in Louisville (it was half way between my work and my old apartment and the only gas station downtown), I quit going there because I like to pay by cash and go to the bathroom after gassing up, and this station was particularly smoky always (partly from the employees smoking). Of course, now it's been illegal to smoke indoors in Louisville for the past couple of years, so I've started to go back to the Shell station (to get gas or use the bank machine or buy snacks), even though it's relatively expensive (presumably because of the downtown location). I actually don't approve of what Congress did to stop adding oil to the strategic petroleum reserve, and I know that high gas prices have benefits for the environment. But it's now become commonplace to cost more than $40 to fill up a tank of gas. This discourages us from going places like Ohio for the weekend, and, with both of us usually driving to work, eats up a decent amount of money each week.