For weeks, if not months, you couldn't hear a report on the rise of gasoline prices without the assurance that prices—high as they were—were not at their all-time high. Well, our news media may drop that clause from their government contracts. The highest gasoline prices ever are now official.

The St. Pete Times reports,

Damage to Gulf Coast refineries and pipelines by Hurricane Katrina pushed retail gas prices to historic highs in the past two weeks, with self-serve regular averaging more than $3 a gallon for the first time ever, according to a nationwide survey released Sunday.

The weighted average price for all three grades surged more than 38 cents to nearly $3.04 a gallon between Aug. 26 and Friday, said Trilby Lundberg, who publishes the semimonthly Lundberg Survey of 7,000 gas stations around the country. Adjusted for inflation, the nation's previous high weighted average for all three grades was $1.38 a gallon in March 1981. That would be $3.03 in current dollars.

Most bicycles of course are made abroad. Hurry to get one before the dollar collapses.