I'll say it before it happens, but let's keep politics out of this completely. Facts and theory welcome. There. Preemptive comment done. Ha.
Airline tickets, I've noticed, have already crept up as they do as soon a all forms of fuel prices go up. Still, we are pretty spoiled by extremely low fuel prices, and have always been compared to most parts of the world. Since it's always been that way, we've based all travel (both us and our goods) costs and even business value (think stock evaluations) on doing business with a constant cheap fuel supply. Every time there is a spike, it cripples us in many ways. Not saying that is good or bad or that there was any other way to be. Just the way it turned out. I agree the public's memory is short. One year, 1 year old SUV were going for 1/2 of MSRP and Prius, if you could get one, were going for 20% over MSRP. As mentioned, motorcycle sales had a little spike, too. One year later, everything went back to how it was before. One nice side effect is there have been quite a few newer versions of engines released that have considerably higher fuel economy ratings. Happy to see it because I'd prefer to give as little of my money to the middle east as possible (yes, I know we get petroleum from many non-middle eastern sources, but it's a global commodity and if we get some from Canada, it means that another country can't buy that Canadian barrel of oil and buys it from the Middle East).
That being said, I just read a very interesting article on gasoline consumption in the U.S. stating that peak usage occurred in 2006 and would never reach that number of gallons again. The near term reasons are obvious (the gas price spike and the economic slow down), but the claim that the U.S. would never again use that many gallons of gasoline annually sounded unbelievable, until I read further and realized all the things that will mean less gasoline burned. That ranged from increased mixing of ethanol (booo!), increased overall fuel efficiency of autos (Yea!), drivers putting on less miles on average (for a variety of reasons), higher gas prices triggering less usage, etc. The various articles said the consumption decrease would happen even though the number of autos on the road will continue to increase. They also said the overall price trend would continue to go up since it's a global commodity and the world's consumption continues to grow. It all made sense and I found it interesting, so thought I'd share. We'll see if it holds true.
For me, I ride motorcycles so much that I often put my truck on a battery tender in spring, summer, and fall months. I only put about 13,000 miles on it a year and many of those are from road trips to MN to visit family (2,000 mile round trip) and trips to the ski mountain every other weekend in the winter (280 mile round trip). Our drive to town is 32 miles round trip. Even with all that, I put on so few miles that changing from driving this 18mpg truck to a 36mpg car would only save me $120 a month if gas is at $4.00/gallon. Not enough to cover the insurance increase on a newer vehicle and/or a car payment. My 6 year old truck will last a long time and though I would love if it got better mileage, it's not a big deal. If someone puts on 25,000 miles a year, I can see how it would be a pinch, though. The big 3 manufactures all had 1/2 ton trucks with small diesels in the works a few years ago but they stopped development. That's a shame because I can't imagine a better engine for a truck, SUV, or even small cars if you drive mostly rural like I do.
The Super Tenere doesn't get really great gas mileage, but gets pretty good for what it is and will carry a lot of groceries! Ha. I could fit a fair amount on my WRR, and the ST will be even more (I ordered the 45L micatech V2).
Here is a shot from back when I still had the dirtbagz brand saddlebags on my WRR. Since then, I have the wolfman dry bags and a lot of other changes. This was about 9 bags of groceries packed in two saddelbags and a box on the tail rack.