Dan Robinson
I've been crunching some numbers and found that chasing in the Plains this year will likely cost me roughly $200 per day. This is based on the few chases I've been on already this year. That's $115 in gas (a little over 2 fillups per day at $45 each), $75 for hotels, $10 for videotapes. A two week trip is going to run $2800. In 2004 I chased for a month and spent that much. That's if gas prices stay the way they are now. If we go over $3.20 or so, my season will consist of only two or three chases.
The Tennessee chase last week cost me almost $400 from start to finish, including gas, hotels and food.
I'm looking at the budget and thinking to myself, as much as I love this, this is getting harder and harder to justify.
Of course I know all of the cost-cutting tricks - you can carpool, find cheap lodging and split hotel rooms, but realistically, most of the time that's hard to do especially if you're coming from the east coast. Hotels are booked a lot of the time and you have to get the higher end rooms. It's hard to sleep in the car most times, impossible if you have passengers - and you can't chase very many days on 1 or 2 hours of sleep.
If this keeps up, I might have to start skipping one or two seasons at a time just to have one good year. Even this year is going to be a stretch.
The Tennessee chase last week cost me almost $400 from start to finish, including gas, hotels and food.
I'm looking at the budget and thinking to myself, as much as I love this, this is getting harder and harder to justify.
Of course I know all of the cost-cutting tricks - you can carpool, find cheap lodging and split hotel rooms, but realistically, most of the time that's hard to do especially if you're coming from the east coast. Hotels are booked a lot of the time and you have to get the higher end rooms. It's hard to sleep in the car most times, impossible if you have passengers - and you can't chase very many days on 1 or 2 hours of sleep.
If this keeps up, I might have to start skipping one or two seasons at a time just to have one good year. Even this year is going to be a stretch.