Man, once upon a time gas was almost $5 a gallon in Iowa. Oooh, that was rough. There, that's a sentence I hope to one day tell my kids. Why? Because that would mean we never get there again.

Right now, gas in eastern Iowa ranges from $3.15/gallon to the mid-$3 range. Seems in and around Cedar Rapids and Iowa City it's a tad less than the Waterloo/Cedar Falls are. That said, mercifully it's not around $5.

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Here's another piece of... um, good-ish news: according to CNN, gas has dropped for a historic 70-straight days. This streak is the second longest, going all the way back to 2005.

So here's my question... why do gas prices still really suck? Seriously? Are we supposed to be thrilled that gas is just not 5-bucks? One year ago, according to AAA, gas was under $3 in Iowa on average, hovering around $2.96.

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Pain at the pump is still a real thing -- via Google
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I suppose the days of $.99/gallon gas are gone. Fabled, my dad still tells me that's what the costs were when I was a kid. That's great... at least he got to pay that once upon a time, it's been well over a buck since I was of driving age.

Then there was 2020. COVID. When the country, including Iowa, essentially shut down, gas plummeted on a lack of demand. If you were still driving daily, you paid as little as $1.69 a gallon. WOW. Just typing that feels eerie. That was just two years ago.

So what drove (pun intended) up the cost of gas in the first place? A combo of things includes the Russian war on Ukraine, recession fears, people driving less (lack of demand) when costs got too high, and concerns about China's economy, according to CNN.

What would it take for gas to get back to $.99? Well, given it took a pandemic to get us under two bucks, maybe I don't want to know...

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