I was JUST thinking about this on the ride in this morning when I passed the Shell station at the corner of Platt and Ellsworth when I saw regular fuel at $4.25 a gallon: "Man, I wish I could buy gas at today's price tomorrow".

That's basically what oil futures are: speculators decide that they think the price of oil is going to rise, invest in futures and watch their money go through the roof. More people make money, more speculate and the price goes up. It's the phenomenon that many economists think is leading the surge in oil prices today, beating out real market supply and demand economics and essentially crushing our transportation infrastructure.

The theory is identical to what Southwest Airlines did. Back when oil was at believable prices, that airline decided to hedge their oil purchases and lock in prices at the past rate of $51/barrel. Now that fuel is at over $140, they're making a killing over other airlines.

Now, with gasoline at $4.25 a gallon, you can purchase as many gallons as you want at that price with MyGallons.com and watch the market fluctuate independent of your fuel consumption. If gas keeps surging to $5.00 a gallon? You've just saved a bunch of money. If it drops to $2.50 again? You're out.

Based on how many gallons you buy, the service sends you a "debit" card that lets you purchase as much fuel (per gallon, not dollar) as you have stored up.

The crux of your investment is on where you think the price of the oil is going to head. If you, like many others, think that the price will keep going up, now might be a good time to buy your MyGallons card before your summer road trip.

Subscription to the MyGallons service ranges from $30-$40 per year, but if gas keeps going up that will be a drop in the bucket compared to what you could save.

My mom just arrived back in Columbus this morning at 7 a.m. from her trip to New York City on a Greyhound bus. The bus was one minute early. Wow! I thought that she'd be late due to the wicked thunderstorm that tore through here all last night.

When I pulled into a non-parking space in front of the station (there was just enough room to maneuver behind another car actually parked at a meter), there she was with her small pull behind that she was allowed to carry-on. If she had checked it there would have been no charge.

One more point for Greyhound.

As I posted previously, my mom took the Greyhound because it was cheaper and easier than flying at the time she found out she needed to get to New York. That still seems to be the case.

Unless, you are the woman my mother told me about who got on in Newark, New Jersey.

"Where are you going?" My mother asked her.

"Los Angeles," the woman said.

"My!" said my mother. "When will you get there?"

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?!" My mom wondered how that could be.

That couldn't be. When they changed buses in Pittsburgh, the woman found out she didn't have a clue. She won't arrive in Los Angeles until Saturday.

My mom said she had an accent, so perhaps when someone explained the trip details, she missed something. Obviously.

I hope she didn't have much planned for the next couple of days and thought to bring a good book with her--or several. If nothing else, she snagged the best travel mistake story I've heard in awhile.

(In case you're wondering. If you go from New York to Los Angeles, it will take 2 days, 12 hours and 25 minutes minimum and you would have had to make one bus change. Some schedules take longer with two transfers.You will have traveled 3072 miles. It costs $192 if you don't want a refundable ticket or $215 if you do. There is one ticket left for today's bus that leaves at 11 a.m.)

Perusing your favorite airline's frequent flyer web pages, you may have noticed that many of them offer a service to sell and transfer miles among friends. Points.com is a website that specializes in this task, and many programs from Jetblue to Delta to American Airlines participate in their miles purchasing programs.

Take heed before you get your wallet out and buy miles though: it's a horrible horrible deal. Take a look a these prices for buying miles taken from the Northwest Airlines website:

2,500 = $95
25,000 = $725
30,000 = $865

Now, if you recall from your frequent flyer mile handbook, a domestic ticket costs 25,000 miles -- so this basically equates to buying a ticket for $725. Any ticket, domestically in the US, whether this is between New York and San Francisco or New York and Detroit even if you're having the worst day of your life, shouldn't cost $725. And if it does, you can pretty well be sure that the flight isn't going to have award availability either.

Similarly transferring miles is also expensive:

5,000 = $75
25,000 = $300

With a $25 transaction fee. And the airline isn't even selling miles -- it's just moving them from column A to B in their spreadsheet.

Why would anyone take up this deal? Well, the least irresponsible excuse for buying or transferring miles is because you need to top up your account. You're just short of that 25k or 50k award and need another 5k miles to book your ticket as soon as possible. But it's important to remember the amount of cash you're dumping into your miles just to make them work. If you're dumping $100 dollars into a ticket to get it over 25k and your miles are valued at $0.02/mile (a common market ratio), you've just lost $600 in equity on a ticket. Was the market value of the itinerary that much? Could you have bought the ticket for $200 cash?

If you do find yourself in the above situation, try the following solution: take a deep breath, take your wallet out, hide it under the couch and take a good sharp look at your travel plans and finances for the next six months. There may be a time that you're traveling in the near future during which you can accrue a few more miles and balance out that account.

Or you're short on time and out of money, consider checking Gadlings guide to topping off your frequent flyer account.

After 17 long years of flying America's skies, you've done it. You've almost saved up enough frequent flyer miles for a free ticket to anywhere you want to go in the United States. Nice work. Most people who remember to put their frequent flyer number into the box before departure forget about their miles and let them expire.

But you're just a couple of miles short. And you really really want to go see Aunt Ximena in Palm Springs over Labor Day. Distressed, you check the airline website and see that you can buy two thousand miles for sixty bucks. And you're so excited about In-n-Out and Aunt Ximena's Uruguyan Barbeque that you're just about to cough it up. But you shouldn't.

Hold on fellow passenger! There are ways to accrue those miles without wasting money straight from your pocketbook. At the very least you can use your money practically and earn the miles on the side. Here are a few great ways to do that.

• Check the website for promotions. Several carriers host small promos for new program members to indoctronate educate newbies on the advantages of their specific product. These change every so often, so it's helpful to go back and make sure that you've qualified for all of your excitement.
• Go shopping. Many airline programs have deals with an online (or in air) mall that let you purchase goods from a regular retailer (GAP, Home Depot, etc) and earn miles per each dollar spent. So if you needed to buy dog food for Fido or flowers for your mother anyway, you can get 5 miles / dollar online at petsmart or 10 miles / dollar at FTD.com. Not all of them mark up goods either -- most gateways go directly to the vendor website.
  
• Go out to eat. Sites like Dining for Miles let you enroll your favorite credit card or visa/MC debit card in a program that earns miles per dollar spent at a restaurant. You can peruse about to see if any of the restaurants are near you, then next time you're out to lunch with co-workers, pick up the bill and take cash from everyone else.
• Transfer miles from another program. Points.com gives you a pretty serious shaft when transferring miles among programs (I equate them to the TravelEx money exchange in the airport), but they're good if you're in a pinch and haven't got a ton of spare cash. There are too many participants to list them all, so check the website and see if your favorite points program is listed.

Even though I'm disappointed that the Electric Map is gone, the new National Park Service's 's visitor center in Gettysburg where the map used to be does sound wonderful.

Called Gettysburg Museum of the American Civil War, it is filled with artifacts, interactive displays, a gift shop and a place to buy Civil War era food like hardtack, a type of biscuit that keeps forever.

As mentioned in a previous post, the Electric Map has been traded for a movie, A New Birth of Freedom. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, it outlines the importance of the Battle at Gettysburg and pertinent details about the Civil War. The rest of the museum is made up of galleries with different themes.

The Voices of the Campaign Theater in Gallery 5 seems like a section not to miss. This is where you can hear audio versions of letters, diaries and newspaper articles from the time period. Artifacts of note in this gallery are Robert E. Lee's stove and other items of an officer's field camp. The display is made to look like what a field camp would actually look like. The field desk that Lee might have used at Gettysburg is also here.

The 11 other galleries are as detailed, and each have a theme inspired by Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. For those of you watching your dollars this summer, a stop here has a price that's right. The museum is free. The movie costs $8 for adults and $6.50 for children. If you can swing it, spring for the movie because I imagine it will help highlight the sites that you'll see when you tour the actual battleground. Plus, Morgan Freeman has such a lovely voice.

From June 29 until July 6 is Heritage Days which commemorates Gettysburg's history. This year the museum is playing host. Here's a link to the schedule of events.

Gas prices aren't the only expense of a vacation that pinch the finances. Admission fees can be a real downer. If one is traveling with young children, huge, expensive museums can be overwhelming.

These are two reasons why the National Aquarium in Washington, D.C. sounds appealing to me.

At $5 for adults, and $2.50 for children, the admission is not even close to the $18.75 amount for adults to the Newport Aquarium in Newport, Kentucky. The Newport Aquarium, the last one I visited, is quite impressive, but sometimes I'd rather opt for a simpler venue for less money.

Last year, when we went to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, much of our time was spent finding a bathroom and each other. Due to time constraints, we hurried through sections where I wanted to linger. When mixing children with large museums, it's often necessary to leave out entire exhibits in order to not have a kid meltdown halfway through.

With a smaller museum, like the National Aquarium that claims you can see the whole thing in 45 minutes, you don't have to pick and chose among options. At the end of an hour you can end up at the gift shop satisfied and have time and energy left to take in something else close by. I'd head to the outdoor sculpture garden at the National Gallery of Art for starters.

Along with the aquarium's renovations that include new signage, carpeting and exhibits is a new theme--"America's Aquatic Treasures." Look for alligators, eels, sea horses, a baby loggerhead turtle and more. [see Washington Post article]

If you can make here on August 9, it's Shark Day. There are several activities geared towards kids and talks adults would enjoy.

Every beach boardwalk with amusement park rides has some attraction that one wonders, is this worth it? The Marvelous Mirror Maze at Myrtle Beach in South Carolina might be worth it simply because the money you fork over for a ticket pays for an all-day experience.

This doesn't mean you go all day, but that you can make repeat visits all day. Seems like this might be one method to not have to pay out money all day long for various attractions.

As a parent of a 6 year-old, I'd say this is a bonus. One trip through an inflatable obstacle course is never not quite enough. Almost as soon as the money is paid, the trip through is finished.

According to the description, the Marvelous Mirror Maze is a series of hallways made out of mirrors that are configured to be complicated enough to appeal to adults. Here's a video link that highlights the experience. I noticed someone pushing a stroller through. Anyone 3 and under doesn't pay.

There is also a mirror maze like this one in San Antonio, Texas. The one in San Antonio is across from The Alamo. One could think this is a case of where history meets kitsch. I wonder what Davy Crockett would think about that?

Another maze is in Frankenmuth, Michigan.

If you do decide to go, print off the coupon on a particular Maze's Website. You get $1 off per person. With a family of four, that's a gallon of gas.

By this point you've probably heard the buzz about Open Skies airlines, British Airways' new daughter airline that is flying a new business-class-only type of service between New York City and Paris. They just started operating yesterday and are slowly starting to build their reputation and customer base.

Outside of the internet and this blog though, most people are out in the ether. I've mentioned the airline to a few people and they didn't know what I was talking about, let alone what the Open Skies Agreement, proper, was.

Open Skies knows this, which is why they're starting to prod some of the frequent flyers and attention-payers out in the market. They're now offering members of Flyertalk, the local airline and mileage forum free companion tickets on fares booked through the end of the summer -- yes, that's high season.

And yes, you can join Flyertalk too.

Tickets have to be booked in at least biz, their second tier of service, but adding up the numbers, I got round trip prices in late August for about 830$ per passenger. That's 40$ less than an economy ticket on the competition. That's a good price.

If you want to check out the offer and join Flyertalk, check their website here or bounce over to Open Skies for their official page and booking instructions.

See you in Paris.

With apologies, I'm a day behind on this fare alert because I didn't have access to Blogsmith over the weekend. I was surprised to find the fare still in tact when I returned from traveling though, so thought I would pass around the good news.

United is having a crazy sale to Buenos Aires that went into effect yesterday. From destinations all over the country including the Washington DC area, Los Angeles, New York City and even Detroit, travelers can book round trip tickets into Argentina for well under 650$, with some tickets as low as 599$. Travel dates appear to be valid through the end of June, with even some availability over the Fourth of July.

Book an extra long weekend over the Fourth and take some time to visit Mendoza, Argentina's famous wine country, Patagonia, the huge nature preserve after which the outdoor clothing company is named or Montevideo, Uruguay's Capital city that's only a short boat ride away. I'm already jealous.

Mind you, it is winter time in Buenos Aires, so you'll be experiencing weather in the mid 50's while you're down there. But the country is beautiful, the dollar is strong and the culture is rich. You can handle it.

Use Kayak's flexible three day search around your target dates to find availbility. As of 2230 EST on June 15th, I'm still finding plenty of availability.

Summer fares can be a killer, especially in this new world of cost-cutting airlines and ultra sensitive passengers. So I suppose its worth mentioning the recent Amex/Jetblue promotion that's running where you can save 20$ per flight over this summer.

No, not a ridiculous fare sale or wonderful revelation. But a few extra bucks in your pocket for your summertime flight never hurts. Maybe you can use it for four extra shots of tequila at JFK airport before you get on your transcontinental flight and realize that you just spent a month's rent on the ticket. It might help soften the blow (Tip: any tequila with red plastic hat on the bottle is a good call).

To book your ticket, use your American Express card on the Myvacation page to book your ticket. Itineraries must be booked before July 31 for travel up to August 28th.