64-Cent Gas!
From race car drivers doing-their-thing less in Kansas to encouraging bicycling over driving in St. Louis, the times, they are a-continuing to change due to the stratospheric price of gas -- as Jeff Glor and Nancy Cordes keep finding out, driving toward each other from opposite coasts in the CBS News series, "Eye on the Road."
On Friday, Glor checked in from the Whiskey Lake Raceway in Junction City, Kan.
He told Early Show viewers, "There's a car culture in many parts of this country, and it's changing.
"Race cars, racing -- people love it. A team that was with me used to be out six nights-a-week. Now, it's only one night-a-week. They used to go as far away as Florida to race these vehicles. Now, it's only 15 miles away from home. And the reason is the prices. It just costs too much to get here and to fill up these vehicles -- $6.50 a gallon for racing fuel."
Doug Thompson, who runs the Kansas Auto Racing Museum, told Glor, "It's not the same as it used to be. The gas prices have just caused a great deal of those problems. But we have as much fun when we go on the one night. We don't have six nights worth of fun on one night."
Thompson says he can remember when gas -- when he was a youngster -- was 17 cents a gallon.
Cordes reported from St. Louis.
She noted that it's National "Ride Your Bike to Work Day."
Across the country, only about a half-of-one-percent of all commuters take their bikes to work, even though it's one of the healthiest and cheapest ways to get around, especially in this time of rising gas prices.
But, in St. Louis, Cordes pointed out, they're trying to change that. They've just added 57 miles of bike lanes in the city, so they've now got 77 miles overall.
Cordes and Glor compared notes on their cars' gas consumption as they approach their meeting point in Independence, Mo.
In her Ford Fusion, Cordes has driven 1,220 miles and shelled out $195 for 51 gallons of gas in all. That works out to 26 miles-per-gallon, and about 16 cents-per mile. Glor has gone 1,834 miles in his Toyota Prius, a hybrid, and bought 179 gallons of gas, 46 gallons all-told, getting 39 mpg. That comes to 10.2 cents-per-mile.
But Glor and Cordes were blown away when they got hooked up with CBS News Senior White House correspondent Bill Plante, who's traveling with President Bush and was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He says the average price for a gallon of gas in the oil-rich kingdom is -- 64 cents -- and that's DOWN about a-third in the last year!