Well I spent a $100 dollars on a canoe, because i still have a strong back, which is stronger than the dollars in my pocket, if that answers your question. YOu don't need to go 80 mph to get to a fishing hole, so if you want to be able to afford to go fishing break out the paddles!

I'm with you Jim. My 2 deer rifles are a Rem 742 (don't make em anymore and a Mod. 700. Both are '06 and bought in 1976. I can shoot them in my sleep.

I am all about my little 12-foot jon boat. Never saw the need for anything bigger or faster.

In a word; Canoe! Mine can be rigged with a sail or even a motor if I so choose but at the moment I power it with my own back!

Gonna be a lot quieter on the lakes this year! There is good and bad to that; instead of hearing goons on personal watercraft speeding across the surface we can enjoy hearing loons again! We will also see tourist driven local economies and businesses hurt, badly, by the high fuel prices and the credit crisis.
SA

to mr. love............
i do not believe in hubbert's peak, nor do i believe in global warming. i do believe, however, that a "paradigm societal shift" is going to happen.....it's driven by greed. oil, no matter how plentiful under our earth's surface, is trying to replace the gold standard.

I'd like a little more boat, but I'm getting by with my 12 foot V. I am very happy that it's not worth enough to bother selling. Every third lawn for miles around has a boat, snowmobile, quad, bike, or even light truck for sale. It's getting rough out there.

Andrew, if you think ANWR is the answer to our woes, then try this math exercise.
Take the average daily consumption (in barrels of oil) of the United States. I believe it's a little over 21 million barrels a day (out of around 85 million BPD worldwide. Think about that...)
Now take even the most optimistic estimates of ANWR oil reserves (I believe around 11 billion barrels of "technically recoverable" oil).
Divide.
I'm a pragmatist. I think eventually we wil be forced to drill in ANWR. But I also think it's far too valuable a resource to squander on our current consumption level.
Of course it's a moot point. Even if it were greenlighted tomorrow I think the earliest estimates I've read for oil actually reaching market were in the neighborhood of eight-10 years. By that time we will have been forced to begin some hard-core conservation measures.

Andrew
The answer is not attempting to find more and more places to drill for what will always be a limited resource, an environmental disaster and dangerous work to boot. The answer is blowing in the wind, shining from above, flowing down the mountains and going in and out of the harbors. The answer, my friend, is using the constant energies provided for us. Augment if we must with bio-derived fuels and nuclear power.

Another part of the answer is to live simpler, 'greener,' lives! In the US we generate a collosal amount of waste every day; disposing of said waste is very energy intensive and expensive. Buy a bare minimum of packaged goods, buy right from the farm whenever possible, use reusable grocery bags not the disposables. It may sound simple but just buy what you need at a given time not a lot of extra which will end up in the garbage. Walk as much as possible for your errands; if you live outside of town park in a central spot and walk to the different stores. Lean living is green living.
SA

Luckily I didn't get heavily invested in a boat and got all other vehicles and mortgages paid off when I retired. If I had to commute with todays gas prices soaring higher every week, it would be like getting a cut in salary every week. I did notice the last time my neighbor invited me to go kokanee fishing with him that there were not near as many boats on the lake as there used to be. Thankfully I haven't been that badly effected yet.

I bought an 08 16 ft V boat with a 40hp. I can only make 25mph, but it only takes a few gallons a trip. It is very affortable and fully equipt. We don't need a 50k boat with a 50 gallon tank. I have lots of fun with my kids on a low budget.

cc: mr. love
while i am respectful of what you have accomplished as an author, i have to strongly disagree with the fact that we are running out of oil. c'mon, did that many dinosaurs really exist at one time? (i know, i know, the credit of oil formation isn't only dinosaurs, but plants too.)
check out worldnetdaily.com. i am not sure where on that site, but if you do a search, an individual down in the southern part of the country claims (i have not seen any photo proof of production as of yet) that he is able to produce oil from just about anything. yep, i'm skeptical about it, but if this individual is indeed correct, his magical process is going to change the face of the petroleum industry.
now, for production of said petroleum........
my brother-in-law lives in alaska (lucky bastard) and works on the north slope. on a recent trip home (last weekend, as a point of fact) he was grilled by the family and i about our current "problem" with oil production. interestingly enough, most of alaska's oil is being shipped abroad, due to the fact that our current refineries (cat cracker) are unable to refine this crude. our refineries, for whatever reason, (environmental regs, politics, greed, etc.) are simply not up to date with the current crude that is being pulled out of the ground on our own soil. so we sell our sour crude to other countries with the refining capabilities, and buy the sweet, easily refinable crude from other countries. a bit of a conundrum, eh?
i have several possible solutions to this dilemma, but the cramping of my traumatized digits curtails massive amounts of typing at this time. i look forward to reading your postings in the future, mr love.
p.s. please, please, don't group me into those with cognitive dissonance. i get my info from many, many different sources, (wnd, fnc, the maja rushie, ((who?)) glen beck, cnn, pmsnbc, to name a few) and try to formulate an informed, objective view of my surroundings. a certain political faction in washington likes to group people, please don't subscribe to that kind of action. look forward to hearing more on this.
NONEYA

Technically, no, we're not running out of oil. A poor choice of words on my part. Rather, we're running out of easy oil and are increasingly having to turn to sources considered impractical just a few years ago. That's why you now hear so much about tar sands, shale oil, Bakkan, ANWR, etc.
Again, I'm quoting from memory here, but I think worldwide daily crude production peaked at around 87 million barrels per day back in 2005. We're now at around 85 mbpd and demand is still hovering in the high 80s, so there's already a shortfall. Demand is projected to keep rising as production continues to decline. It's as simple as that. It's not an oil company conspiracy. Oil is priced on the international market, there's simply no way an oil company can manipulate the spot price of crude. OPEC could, but OPEC is pumping flat out and they still can't keep up with demand.
There's simply no slack left in the system, and any negative price swings we see from now on out will be due to demand destruction rather than production increases.
The IEA just yesterday sharply downgraded its worldwide crude supply forecast. A lot of countries and a lot of oil companies have been fudging and playing Enron with the their stated "proven" reserves. The world is just now beginning to figure out that maybe just because a country or an oil company says it has X amount of proven reserves doesn't make it so.
There's more oil coming online everyday, that's true. But it's not enough to make up for the steep declines being experienced in the world's aging supergiant oil fields like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia.
Another factor that a lot of people fail to consider is drilling activity. For example in the US we're drilling teice as many holes as we did in the sixties and seventies to extract less and less oil and gas.
I live in NW Oklahoma, which is a major player in domestic NG production. You wouldn't believe the amount of activity in this area. They're drilling as fast as they can wherever they can, and yet we're still on that gradual production downslope.
And when those middle eastern supergiants like Ghawar start watering out things will get interesting quickly.
And i haven't even mentioned what's going to happen when the exporting countries that supply us start cutting back on exports to feed their own domestic demand.
Google Export Land Model and read some about that. We're seeing that begin to happen right now with major exporters like Russia
I could sit here and talk about the oil situation for hours, but I'd like to direct you to a website called the oil drum. It's the single best source for objective, scientific discussion of wordwide energy issues. Like any website it has its share of doomers and fringers, but the majority of the posters are oil insiders: geologists, scientists, engineers, etc.
I'm a skeptic, and a natural born cynic. It took me a while to become convinced we have a problem.
But when I saw oil people like Boone Pickens saying "we're never going to see 87 MPBD again" I started paying attention.
I've been following energy issues for about three years now, and I don't need convincing any more, but I think a lot of people still do.
I'd like nothing better than to have a new Ranger sitting in my driveway and to able to pull it to the lake with a nice, big truck. I've never been able to afford either (I have a big truck, but it's far from nice...) and it's looking increasingly like I never will.
Take a look at www.theoildrum.com and then poke around and do your own due diligence. You may just change your mind, too.