I am not about to start asking people how the price of gas and the job and wage crunch is effecting their daily lives. It isn't too hard to figure what it is doing for our hobbies, either. Face it when times are rough and money is scarce, it really puts a damper on wandering around the countryside.

As depressing as the situation is, I thought it was about time to point out that something very good is going on for rockhounds around the world. That something good is the Internet. It used to take much time, effort, and money to do anything related to our hobbies. It took tons of gas other than that used just to get to a site. Finding information could sometimes be a major effort.

Meeting people who were not local to share information with to save gas and time on trips was practically impossible even if you contacted local clubs elsewhere. If your travel schedule didn't coincide with theirs, you were still pretty much on your own. Finding equipment could sometimes be a total nightmare, as could trying to get a specimen identified. Clubs had to do some major advertising just to let people know that they had something interesting going on and had to spend on mailing newsletters, too. The list is endless.

But here we are in 2005 and we have the Internet. Now you can find rockhounds anywhere in the world to communicate with. No more guess work on trips. There are online merchants. No more days of hunting down your needed equipment. You can find pictures to help you learn about what things look like, and put up pictures to have others help identify your finds. You can have information of anything going on at your local clubs with the click of a button. Local clubs can post activities and email newsletters. This list, too, is endless.

So, you can see that while times are tough, they could be one heck of a lot tougher than they are. I am not sure exactly how thrilled we can be about the ridiculous greed that is causing us the financial hardships we are experiencing, but we can feel a bit better about not being as cut off from our hobbies and recreations as we could be.