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In the last post, I wrote about a verbal altercation I had with a fellow motorist over the long lines at the pump. At the end of what proved to be an insanely long post, I touched on an issue that I just don’t hear people talking about, and I think they should be.

Doesn’t it bother anyone that the entire gas supply of the Southeast is still held hostage by one storm, a storm that’s long gone? Is anyone concerned that our infrastructure is so delicate that a – with all due respect to those suffering in the aftermath of Ike – relatively weak hurricane is crippling day-to-day activities from Charlotte to Atlanta to Nashville and many points in between?

Granted, I understand that the refineries in the Galveston area were shut down in preparation for Ike. I understand that it takes time to ramp them back up to speed, and that logistically, it takes time to get that gas on the truck and to the pumps here in Waxhaw. But don’t we have a backup plan? We’re the best nation ever, I’m told, so why can’t we re-route gas from another part of the country to help ease the pain? Can’t the government step in and do something? OK, fine, I’m talking about some kind of Petroleum Socialism, but if it’s good enough for Wall Street, it’s good enough for all us taxpayers down here south of the Mason-Dixon.

Failing some kind of bailout, can anyone explain to me, in layman’s terms, why the hell we can’t logistically fix the problem? Yes, I know the symptom is oil addiction, but sometimes the junky needs his fix or he starts to become self-destructive. But explain the problem to me. Please. Why can’t we bring in a Pusher Man from another area code to hook us up?

The whole thing kind of reminds me of Live Free or Die Hard and how close we are to complete collapse because of our Just-in-time society. This time, there are no terrorists at the refineries with outrageous demands of billions of dollars, and John McClean isn’t crawling beaten and battered through an air-conditioning vent to save the day.

No, the bad guy was a storm. A big one, granted, but just a storm. There are still fights at the gas pumps, I’m told, and we may not see relief for a number of weeks.

Anyone else see a big problem with that?

–Ant.

We live in a small town due South of Charlotte, and every gas station in town – a total of four – ran out of gas earlier this week due to the gas shortages caused by Hurricane Ike. No big deal, really; both Sheila and I had filled up before the storm hit, and thought we were able to make it until the crisis passed.

Yesterday, I had a meeting in South Charlotte (near South Park, for those familiar with the area), and I was running on fumes. I have this cool dashboard calculator that tells me how many miles I can travel before my tank runs dry, and today, when I started my 12-mile trip, the gauge read “20″.  Plenty of time to find gas, right? Wrong. Every single pump between here and South Park was dead empty. Every one. But my quest for petrol is not the real reason for my post. It’s what happens when I found a viable filling station that makes things interesting.

Luckily, I found a Shell station near my client’s office. Again, for those familiar with the South Park area, it’s the Shell on Fairview and Sharon, right there at the mall. I came in from the Fairview side, and noticed a woman was pulling out of the pump nearest my entrance. Sweet. I waited for her to pull out of the station (letting her into traffic) and whipped in to the slot, nose-to-nose with a large pickup truck towing a landscape equipment trailer. Peripherally, I noticed that the station was brimming with consumers, but not much more than that. I got out and began the business of buying that precious fuel. Card in, remove swiftly. Debit card? Yes. Key in number. Remove gas cap. Remove nozzle, place “Hey Bud!” nozzle in tank. Turn around to select the grade…

“HEY BUD!”

I looked up, and a professional man in his late 40′s was standing there at the other end of the pumps, arms outstretched in some kind of white-collar Jesus like pose. Only his face was not that of peaceful bliss.

“You’re holdin’ up the whole works here, man!”, he said.

I looked behind him, and sure enough, there was a line of cars three deep headed in the opposite direction my car was facing. Judging from the open door of the empty BMW sitting behind the pickup truck, my guy was next in line and was none too happy about me, some long-haired hippy, snaking the newly vacant slot. His slot. I turns out that everybody’s point of ingress was the cross-street, Sharon Road. Enter on Sharon, exit on Fairview. All of a sudden I felt like Jack in Mr. Mom: “North to drop off, South to pick up”.

Anyway, I apologized profusely. Honestly, from my angle when I entered, I couldn’t really tell that folks were queuing up from the opposite direction. I explained in my best mea culpa vibe how sorry I was, I entered from over here, couldn’t see…

He cut me off. “Well what the fuck, man? What the FUCK!”

And I lost it. I snapped. I completely went off on the guy. Anyone that knows me knows that I’m a pretty laid back guy and roll with the punches. I’m opinionated, sure, but my feathers rarely become ruffled. But then again, I rarely have complete strangers yelling at me across the tarmac of a Shell gas station.

Sitting here, almost 24 hours later, I’m not completely sure what I said to him. I know it was profanity-laden, and I know it was not done with my Inside Voice. I asked him who he thought he was, told him what to do, where he should go do it. Asked him how he though I would know about the line. Something about whether or not he thought me a psychic. That kind of thing. I think I was slowly walking toward him as I verbally assaulted him. It was not pretty.

His Jesus stance slowly went from palm up to palms out. He turned around and got back in his car. Quickly. I guess I didn’t react the way he thought I would.

I think the real point is this: It scares the hell out of me that one storm can cripple our gasoline delivery system to the point of causing a run on the stations that haven’t gone dry, so much so that complete strangers are turning on themselves. Are we that addicted to oil? More to the point, is our infrastructure that delicate? One storm and the Southeast is out of gas for days on end? REALLY?

Sorry, folks, but our Just In Time way of life has us just too close to The Road Warrior for my taste. I have no idea what the solution is, but we need to do something…fast.