A ripple in The Force?
To borrow a line from the USGS (United States Geological Survey) pages, “Did you feel it?” 
And then I remembered that “Reversal is the movement of the Tao.”
I picked up my son from the Dublin-Pleasanton BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station this afternoon and told him that I needed to get gas from Costco, since tomorrow is a holiday. As is my custom, I once again drove my half-full (not half-empty) 1996 Toyota T-100 (155,000+ miles) to Costco, one of the least expensive places to fill up around here.
However, I was not mentally prepared for what I found there! When I looked at the pump, the price was $4.369/gallon, DOWN 4 cents/gallon from what I paid on June 28! I took off my glasses, doubting my vision, but the numbers would not change – $4.369! I looked at my watch to make sure that time was still running forward, not backward!
The space-time continuum appears to be just fine!
I am at a loss to explain what happened. Sometime, between June 28 and July 3, something happened that resulted in a decrease of 4 cents at the pump for regular gasoline at Costco. Was this an isolated incident? Did other gas stations show a decrease? Was this localized to Livermore, to the Bay Area, to California? Was this part of a general phenomenon nationwide?
Or was this merely a statistical aberration, a blip on the chart…?
I looked at CNN, but I still did not see an explanation! As far as I could tell, the headline over their map was about $1/gallon BEHIND!
If anyone out there can explain what happened, please write to let me know. Otherwise, for those of you in the United States, have a great Independence Day holiday tomorrow!
(Update on July 10, 2008: Regular gas at Costco has dropped ANOTHER 3 cents/gallon to $4.339/gallon. I am not an economist (I do know a thing or two about “ripples,” though.) but it seems very hard to explain, by “supply and demand” in the market, how very recent decreases in the price of crude oil become so rapidly reflected in the price of refined gasoline, but as I said, I am not an economist. I will leave “the dismal science” to others more suited to it.
-Bill at Cheshire Cat Photo™
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