Gwinnett columnist Rick Badie wrote this week about how the higher cost of gasoline is altering our driving habits.

Here are a few of the comments online readers posted on Badie's blog. The names listed are ones the respondents chose to use on ajc.com.

> Last year when my husband worked in Norcross, just 17 miles from our house, his commute was an hour one way! The mileage of the commute wasn't the killer. Sitting in stop-and-go-traffic was. At the same time, I worked in Lawrenceville, 15 miles from home with a 45-minute, one-way commute. Now we are fortunate enough to work from home.

We fuel our vehicles every two to three weeks, shop locally rather than running all over the place, and plan ahead to combine trips. We have an SUV (Nissan Xterra) and a small car (VW Jetta) and tend to use the car for local travel and the SUV for long road trips.

—- MELISSA

> My poor truck only gets out every few weeks for a short trip to BJ's [wholesale club] and Lowe's; otherwise it sits remembering its glory days. The only reason we take it out is to keep the fluids moving and charge the battery. I'll never get rid of the truck; it is handy and I like to do projects that require the space to transport materials.

We have a compact car that's great on gas. It is the main transport now. The only problem is there isn't a lot of room to carry items.

Can you imagine if we listened to Al Gore back in the early '90s when he wanted to add a dollar to the gasoline tax just for research. We might have kicked the oil habit by now.

—- BRUCE WILCOX

> It cost me more to mow my lawn than it did 10 years ago to drive my car for a week.

—- JC

> Names are those chosen by blog participants for their e-mail accounts.