[caption id="attachment_1123" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Wow"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/20110429_5.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1123" title="20110429_5" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/20110429_5-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" /></a>[/caption]

When I first moved to California in 1990, I spent the spring, summer and fall putting miles on my car. I was covering professional and college sports, often two events a day, and I'm pretty sure I was putting gas in my car two or three times a week.

I honestly don't remember what we paid for gas then. I know when I got my license in the spring of 1967, regular was about 35 cents a gallon, and the price shocks of '73 and '74 bumped it up, first to 55-60 cents and then to about a dollar. Ever since then, gas goes up a lot, down a little, up a lot, down a little and the oil companies get rich.

The first cars I ever owned were a Ford Pinto and a Chevy Camaro. I loved the Camaro. It was a '73, one of the last of the real "muscle" models, with a V-8 engine and a 350 under the hood. It got 10 miles to the gallon, 12-13 in highway driving. Filling the tank usually cost me $10-12.

By 1990 in California, I was driving a Pontiac Fiero. It was the first new car I ever bought myself, an '87 that I got at Weld County Motors in Greeley, Colorado, and I drove it all over Colorado, all over Nevada when I lived in Reno and by the time I got to Los Angeles, it already had about 80,000 miles on it.