Some people slow down to smell the roses. Others slow down to avoid hitting skunks. I slow down because speed consumes gasoline and gasoline stinks. It also costs money. . The faster I drive my '56 Ford, the more malodorous fumes escape from my tailpipe. Why does gasoline smell? I pondered for ages before being able to answer that question. My final conclusion led to another moot question. How bad would my dresser drawer smell if I filled it with twenty-five pounds of raw meat and left it to sit for twenty-nine milleniums or so? Gasoline comes from the meat of critters that roamed this planet many eons ago. With that background, would you expect petroleum to smell like perfume? [My Car] The term "refined petroleum products" is quite a misnomer. Gasoline normally smells as bad as the crude oil from which it was made. Of course, there are some exceptions. Ecologically favorable refining operations extract smelly sulfur. Sulfur compounds are known for their smells. If you don't believe it, ask my ex-wife. When finishing college, the professor gave me an organic unknown to identify. It smelled worse than the sewer. Yes, it was a mercaptan and created a stench. To make matters worse, my spouse was six months pregnant. As a consequence, I had to strip to my skin and take a shower in the sprinklers before entering my home. I left my school clothes in a diaper bucket outside of the house. Fortunately, I returned from school after dark so that the neighbors wouldn't notice the changing of clothes and my taking a shower out on the lawn. If the smell of gasoline fumes doesn't make you want to slow down, consider the countries that supply us with fuel. A fair amount comes from dictatorships bent on cutting our throats. My throat is tender and I might not survive. For the last sixty years, I've been trying to develop independence from gasoline products. My first effort was a velocipede driven by wind. My designs were flawless but big-city traffic doomed it to failure. My wind-blown skateboard peaked out at 25 mph when I had a good breeze, and the flow of traffic on Interstate 70 averaged at least 95. In addition, passing cars kept hitting my sail and then blaming me because they were totaled. When wind power failed me, I resorted to dog power. It worked in Alaska -- therefore, it ought to work here. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any budget-priced huskies. I eventually made do by forming a team of sixteen chihuahuas. That option, however, also collapsed. Interstate traffic kept running over my dogs to the point where the SPCA was about to step in. In addition, my source of locomotion kept leaving deposits on too many sidewalks. In time, their lack of consideration for people brought them to the attention of the pooper-scooper patrol. When I tried to follow pooper-scooper regulations, my doggy-do bag quickly developed an odor that was out of this world -- or should have been..
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