Hola. Thanks for stopping by again. I know I haven’t been here in a while. Just got back in town from a 1,200-mile road trip to South Carolina with the wife and 4-year-old girl. All in all, we had a good time, thanks for asking. Yes, everything seems 10 times more expensive now than it was a year ago. But we had nothing but sunshine and stinkin’ hot weather — high 90s, even up to 102 one day — at the beach, so it was well worth it. No newspapers. No TV. No blah blah blah of the punditocracy. Just the sound of waves lapping at the shore.

Allow me to pause here, though, to get something off my chest, to tell you what really chapped my hide. I just can’t seem to get past it. No, it’s not the $3.99 for a gallon of gas we paid up and down Interstate 95. That’s pretty bad. We’re getting hosed, for sure. We’ll have to take out a second mortgage to pay off the roughly $225 we charged at the pump. But I figure if you’re dumb enough to drive a gas hog — and I think I’ve already told you what a fool I was/am — then you probably don’t have the right to complain too much. So I won’t. At least not about that.

Here’s what I think really stinks: I’m on I-95, somewhere near East Armpit, N.C., a gallon away from an empty tank and two hours to go to Pedro and South of the Border (I just love the billboards every mile or two, particularly the one with the big kielbasa over the phrases, “You never sausage a place! You’re always a wiener at Pedro’s!” How funny is that?) and our exit ramp to Vacation Land, and I see one of those roadside signs telling me there’s a gas station in the next town. I pull off the highway and into a dusty little crossroad — to call it a town would be to grossly overstate this particular hole in the ground — where there in fact does sit a beaten down shack with a couple of gas pumps rusting away out front. The sign says $3.99 a gallon for regular unleaded. OK, I’m thinking. I can deal with that.

Now this gas pump, it had been stripped of all of its stickers. Its paint — a weird shade of mustard — was flaking away. The markings you’d find on a normal gas pump didn’t exist. But the gas was a major brand, one you’d all recognize, so we’re still OK, right? I slid my credit card into the reader, punched the regular unleaded button and began filling up the tank when I noticed the price listed in that little digital window: $4.09.

$4.09?

So I stop pumping. I stare. I wonder if seven hours of nonstop driving has made me a little funny in the head. I check again. Yep. $4.09. I walk into the store. It’s empty, barely lit, and three shady looking kids are sitting in a circle behind the counter smoking cigarettes. “Hey. What’s the price of gas here?” I point up to the sign. The clerk, a 20-something with bad teeth and a dirty cutoff T-shirt, giggles and says, “$3.99 … if you’re paying cash. It’s more if you’re using a credit card.” She points to the sign, and sure enough, now I notice the small word “cash” stamped next to the $3.99. But nowhere does that sign or pump say there’s an extra charge for using a credit card. So I storm out and get in the Jeep and take off, spitting mad and vowing to fire off a nasty letter to the head of this particular chain.

I didn’t write it because it’s pointless, obviously. Why waste the effort? I’m just one in a long line of suckers who have been taken, right? Right. I mean, today I find that this kind of thing is going on everywhere (if you don’t believe me, see here, here and here). It’s called dual pricing, and the worst part is gas stations in most states don’t have to advertise the “credit price” prominently. They can just slip it onto one of their pumps, in 6-point type, and that’s good enough, apparently. Surprise!

Bottom line: Pay attention at the pump. It’s bad enough you have to pay $4 cash per gallon. You don’t want to get hosed twice.