It's the second of a new month. An update of gas prices and walking efforts is to be posted on the 1st of each month. I'm late, as usual.

Walking has been super, warm weather encouraging me to walk more. Flip that over, though, since we have warm weather, sunshine and the growing season, yard and garden work time must be factored into my day's. I shorten walks some days to take care of those chores. Corvallis helped offset yard work. I walked a great deal while on my retreat. Net result, walking average per day is up to 3.20 miles for the year. Should be able to boost that with our Santa Fe vacation.

Gas prices continue to be high in southern Oregon. My benchmark Shell station charges $4.67 per gallon. It was $4.74 on the 31st, then dropped on the first. This is premium. It's not the highest price for premium in town. The downtown Union 76 list $4.89 per gallon for premium.

We use regular and paid $4.39 on the last fill up, at Costco. 

In context, my baseline price is more than it was the first of the year, when the Shell's premium gas price was $3.83 per gallon. Back at the beginning of the year, I predicted the Shell price would be $4.53 so I was optimisitc. We didn't see the Memorial Day dip and avoided the national trend of lowering gas prices in time for travel and vacation season. This is blamed on a fire at one gasoline refinery and unexplained maintenance shutting down several other west coast refineries. Now BP has successfully restarted its site and they expect prices to start dropping on the west coast as inventory grows. It'll be interesting to see if inventory can outpace demand at the travel season's start. 

Still could be much, much worse. Counting the blessings, we  have cars, gas and oil, and the freedom to drive around. Travel and Leisure lists twelve countries where gas runs more than $8.00 per gallon. There are many places where gas is $6 per gallon or more.

We're not the lowest, either, though, as Venezuela continues around $.20 per gallon. So for low and high gas prices, America is not number one. We're just somewhere in the middle.