Look around. We're tired, running out of gas. Samantha Hawkins is moving to be closer to her job in Tilton.

Pam Courounis is bringing her job home to Alton.

Brittany Christensen rarely visits her boyfriend's family in Rochester anymore.

Francisca Rodriguez can't afford to visit her boyfriend in Rhode Island.

And Walter Morrison can't afford a PlayStation 3. Not now, anyway.

Gas prices are more than just a distraction and an inconvenience and an issue high on the ladder during the current race for the White House.

Short of our foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, gas prices have evolved into the most important issue we face. They affect us every day, affect where we go, what we think, how we plan, how much we spend on other items.

"Sometimes I want to go some places, and I really can't because I want to save my gas for getting to school," said Rodriguez, a 20-year-old student at New Hampshire

Technical Institute. "I have to go to classes every day. It's a pain in the butt, to say the least."

Rodriguez, a full-time student, lives with her parents in Concord. She lives paycheck to paycheck and adds a few drops of gas to her tank whenever she can.

On this day, warm and clear, Rodriguez isn't at the Irving station on Loudon Road for long.

The pump read 10 bucks, and she was finished, ready to go. At $3.41 for regular, that's a whopping 2.92 gallons.

"I won't get far," Rodriguez said. "I'm pretty much penny pinching because gas prices went up so high."

Our stories of readjustment are the stories of our country, flowing like the money from our pockets into our gas tanks.

The average price for a gallon of regular gas in New Hampshire yesterday was $3.414. We don't dare venture into prices on premium and diesel. Too painful to go there.

Brittany Christensen, a senior at Concord High, pumped gas at the Hess station on North Main Street this week. She works at the Dunkin' Donuts on Loudon Road. She's 18, a time to get your motor running, to get out on the highway.

"Usually, every weekend we would go to Rochester to visit with family, and now I can't do that," Christensen said. "My boyfriend's mom is there. I was going every other weekend. Now we haven't been there in about a month. It's far, about an hour."

She sings the same tune about local driving.

"I spend more money on gas, and I can't even do anything else," Christensen said. "I can't go to the movies or go shopping because the gas prices are too high. Even going back and forth to school and work is ridiculous."

Head over to Shell on Loudon Road and there's 32-year-old Walter Morrison of Chichester, filling his four-wheel drive Ford Ranger and feeling guilty about the 20 miles per gallon he gets with it.

Morrison manages the Sunglass Hut at the mall in Concord. He wears mental blinders at work, trying to ignore the items to his left and right.

"I don't spend as much frivolously; I'm more frugal about incidental shopping," Morrison said. "You walk through the mall and you see something you would be inspired to buy, and you think twice about it just because gas prices have gone up the way they have."

Then Morrison switched gears, slightly. He said food prices bug him, too, a reminder that paying at the pump is the lead domino in a trail of economic worries.

"Throw those two, gas and food, in coordination with each other," he said, "and it's not that it's difficult to live; it's just not as much fun anymore."

Pam Courounis drives a Mercedes, meaning it's supreme gas in the tank and nothing else. "It says so in the manual," Courounis said, pump in hand at the Irving on Loudon Road.

She leads Weight Watchers meetings in Concord, driving from her home in Alton three times a week. She wants to set up shop at home soon.

"When I don't have to go to work, I don't go anywhere," Courounis said. "I try to do all my errands when I'm here in Concord, and otherwise, when I get to Alton, I stay there. Concord doesn't get as much business from me as it used to."

Ouch. Yet another consumer reminding us that shipping costs and food prices and retail businesses and restaurants all feel the current crunch because of gas.

John French, father of three, stood nearby and tossed in his $3.41, err, two cents worth. "We'll be doing a lot less traveling to the beach this summer," said French, 35.

Oops. Almost forgot that one. There's the vacation industry, too. Four bucks per gallon is coming to a Fourth of July party near you.

Meanwhile, 21-year-old Samantha Hawkins says she needs to move from Hill to Tilton, near her employer, Lowe's.

"I just moved here," Hawkins said from a gas station in Franklin "All my friends live at the beach in Amesbury (Mass.), and I can't go visit them, and nobody wants to come visit me. I get no visits."

The stories of lifestyle changes never changed. Ask someone about their budget while the numbers on a pump's meter whiz by, and listen to the frustration, see the concern.

We'll leave it there, however, after a long afternoon of traveling.

I've run out of gas too.

Ray Duckler can be reached at rduckler@cmonitor.com.