Here in Arlington, today's gas prices at the QuikTrip are $0.05 higher than yesterday for all grades. This morning, the BoB (Bucket of Bolts) gathered 16.2 gallons of high test for $1.24 per gallon. The BoB, which is a 1988 MB 560SL roadster - lots of fun, completely impractical - gets a reasonable 20 miles per gallon or so around town (thankfully Arlington is flat).

I fill up my tank about once a month, which is one of the benefits of the five mile commute to school. The long time between fillups gives price a lot of time to fluctuate. My records indicate that on Feb. 22, the last time I filled the BoB, premium was running $1.94 per gallon here in Arlington.

Ouch. Thirty cents in a month? Yesterday's spike (added to others in the recent weeks) is ostensibly because of the non-terrorist related BP-Amoco refinery that suddenly went missing the other day in Texas City. I wonder if the rest of the country has felt the same spike. I know we can look at formal data, but why not do our own gas-price survey - especially through the summer months.

I volunteer to receive gas-price updates from around the country from DOL contributors and regular readers, collate them and keep them in a handy spreadsheet. Each week, I will post a time-series graph of the major cities - or of all the series if I can. I figure the regular contributors range from St. Louis, to Dallas, to the Atlanta "area" - okay, Rome, GA is not really Atlanta - North Carolina, and up to Ohio. That's a pretty good swath, although we need some help from the West.

To make the information somewhat more useful, send e-mails to depken at gmail.com every Thursday and Friday with the following information: City, State, Gas Price, Gas Grade (Regular, Premium, etc), Brand (Exxon, QuikTrip, etc).