With prices rising, Americans shift gear

Americans are driving less, trimming vacations, and cutting back on heating and air conditioning as gasoline prices continue to surge.

Seven in 10 people surveyed in an AP-Ipsos poll Monday through Wednesday said gas prices are causing a financial pinch. And that pressure is being felt increasingly by middle-income and higher-income families.

The price of a gallon of regular-grade gas is now almost what it was soon after Hurricane Katrina battered domestic refineries along the Gulf Coast in August. The average price was $2.92 on Friday, according to the American Automobile Association. The all-time high occurred last year on Labor Day, when that same gallon cost $3.05.

When asked what would be a fair price for gasoline, many of those surveyed in the poll said $2-a-gallon on average -- a price not seen consistently in the country for more than a year.

''Now, I'm just going to work and coming home, not doing anything else," said Kathleen Roberts, who makes a daily, 100-mile round trip from York, Pa., to her teaching job in Baltimore.

''Instead of going to the market as often, if I don't have it, I just make do," Roberts said. ''In our neighborhood, we just borrow from each other."

Max Paredes, an engineer in Rogers, Ark., said he can't run his family taxi service anymore. ''I used to pick up my kids from football," he said. ''Now they need to get rides from other people."

Many Americans say they have trimmed their vacation plans.

Hearing talk about summer cutbacks upsets Susan Morang, a psychiatric counselor from Washington, Maine. She helps some of her clients deliver antiques for sale during the summer tourism season. Each summer, many Maine residents have to make most of their money to live on for the year," said Morang, who has cut her own driving to the minimum.

Morang's GMC truck guzzles gas, but she said she needs it to help clients haul their belongings. ''A lady paid me 40 dollars yesterday," she said. ''I used it to fill my gas tank halfway."

Authorities in West Bend, Wis., said a man came up with an unusual way to combat high gasoline prices: Filling about a dozen containers with gas from his former workplace after hours.

Andrew Otten, 44, was charged with misdemeanor theft. A sheriff's deputy said he found containers with about 56 gallons of gas in Otten's sport utility vehicle.

Auto industry watcher Erich Merkle said gas prices would have to top $4 a gallon in the next six to nine months to significantly affect sales of SUVs and light trucks.

Jerry Taylor, an energy analyst at the Cato Institute, which favors limited government and free markets, said the price of gasoline as a share of a worker's earnings is not that high when compared with the share of earnings 50 years ago.

But reports about ''skyrocketing gas prices" have an influence because ''there's a big market for fist-shaking and red-faced conniption in the media," he said.

Because Canadian currency has a higher value in the United States than in the past, more Canadians are crossing the border to shop in Maine, according to Canadian consumers and American merchants. Among the reasons: less expensive gasoline.

''The gas is so much cheaper," Moira McCarville of Quispamsis, New Brunswick, said Friday at Bangor Mall. The price is more than $1 a gallon higher in Canada than in the United States.

ASSOCIATED PRESS