I got back from my cottage in Canada Friday night. Friday morning, I took a picture of a gasoline price sign in Winnipeg. The price: 1.849 per liter in Canadian dollars.

This is the first time in my memory of going between California and Winnipeg over the last 36 years that the market-clearing price of gasoline in Winnipeg was less than the price in Monterey.

Here’s the simple arithmetic.

There are 3.7854 liters in a U.S. gallon.

The Canadian $ is worth 77 U.S. cents.

So $1.849 per liter translates to $1.849 * 3.7854 = $7.00 per U.S. gallon.

That translates to 0.77 * $7.00 = $5.39 per U.S. gallon.

Yesterday I paid $5.69 for gasoline in Pacific Grove.

By contrast, I paid about $4.30 per gallon in Grand Forks, North Dakota on Friday.