I’m not sure when I began dabbling in the game, but ever since gas hit $4 a gallon I’ve been playing like a fanatic — albeit in a fanatically slow, idling, dream-sequency way.
The object of the Gas Game is to drive apparently normally, while deploying innumerable cunning tricks that allow you to exult secretly that you are using less gasoline than everyone else.
There are so many ways to win! You win every time you cut the gas and coast toward a stoplight using only your car’s momentum. If you time it correctly, and if the light changes while you’re still in motion, you get bonus points for reducing the amount of fuel you need to rev up again. Doesn’t that sound fun?
You win if on the highway you can keep your car’s “eco” light on continuously. This is harder than it sounds, because of the constant temptation to overtake at wasteful speeds those smug little hybrids or any vehicle with an irritatingly self-satisfied TerraPass bumper sticker.
But the Gas Game is all about control and inner calmness — and less-frequent refuelings — so, when you’ve been playing for a while, this impulse diminishes.
My latest tactic is to go neutral. On flat terrain this means pumping the gas pedal just the tiniest bit, then disengaging the engine — and keeping an alert hand on the stick shift. It’s amazing how far a fully laden minivan will glide at 25 mph once the thing is moving. Switching an automatic transmission from Drive to Neutral and back again also gives an agreeable NASCAR frisson. Turning the car off entirely at long lights wins bonus points, but it’s risky.
Remember: You only win if no one notices. So if a fellow motorist zooms past waving his fist, or your children ask if you’ve joined AARP, you lose.
The great thing about this game, apart from the money it saves, is the feelings of tranquility it engenders. Instead of competing fighter-pilot-style with sedans, or racing to get ahead of that truck before the exit, you have serene time to think about the wonders of the combustion engine and the fluid that makes it go.
You have time to wonder why, given the massive proportions of the Alaskan wilderness, Congress has for years blocked drilling a tiny portion — 0.01 percent of its 19 million acres! — beneath which lies more than 10 billion gallons of oil.
You might ask why it’s been 30 years since the United States built a new gasoline refinery. You might ponder the outrageous fact that China and Cuba are drilling for oil closer to our shores than American companies are permitted.
These thoughts do not, alas, fuel the Zenlike pacified state I mentioned earlier. These thoughts should make us furious. While Americans try to eke a few extra miles from our tanks, and while environmentalists congratulate themselves for disciplining the profligate American consumer by restricting our access to inexpensive oil, foreign suppliers grow ever richer.
Now it appears that investors from Abu Dhabi are negotiating to buy the Chrysler Building. If there is more painfully perfect symbolism of our predicament, I wouldn’t like to see it.
The fact is, playing the Gas Game only goes so far. If you drive at all, the outlook is grim no matter which party wins in November. Both Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain oppose drilling for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s riches. Both seem to think American oil companies should to be punished for charging what the market now bears.
The head of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said Wednesday a meeting is planned in Saudi Arabia on June 22 between major oil producers and consumers to “discuss why we have high energy prices.”
Here’s a wild idea: Instead of Americans talking about oil with people overseas whose national interests are not coincidental with our own, let’s drill for the stuff here. It’s going to happen, eventually. Must we play the Gas Game until the pump price goes to $10 a gallon?
Examiner columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon is a former foreign correspondent and a regular contributor to the books pages of the Wall Street Journal. Her Examiner column appears on Thursdays.
