For a few of the TIME correspondents who contributed to this week's cover story on the energy mess, the assignment was about as exasperating as sitting in a gas line. Washington Energy Correspondent Richard Hornik, who interviewed federal officials trying to manage the crisis, found that hard facts were in shorter supply than unleaded regular. Said Hornik: "This is a story of hunches and viscera. The numbers change daily. This week's clarification becomes next week's obfuscation. The only constant seems to be panic psychology."

Another element of the story, the strike of independent truckers, proved equally elusive. Washington Correspondent Jonathan Beaty knew enough of the arcane ICC regulations to know that, say, raisins are exempt from regulation and any trucker is perfectly free to carry them, unless they happen to be covered with chocolate. Such knowledge helped, but Beaty found that the old rules and conventions are under serious attack. Says he: "The independent truckers are trying to blow apart a time-honored system, and that drives the Teamsters, the trucking industry and various politicians and lobbyists right up the wall--all for different reasons." Atlanta's Marc Levinson found himself being driven right up the wall by the independent truckers for another reason. He was twice given wrong directions to a picketing site by truckers who, he concluded, "didn't know where they were striking."

Besides reporting the gas crunch and truckers' revolt, TIME correspondents, like other citizens, also had to find ways to live with those crises. Levinson says he had to wait three weeks for his building's management to find a parking space for his personal solution to the gas crunch, a bicycle. Beaty got so tired of feeding his gas-guzzling (10 m.p.g.) truck, he now plans to "leave it forever" at his ranch in New Mexico. Then there is the plight of Atlanta Bureau Chief Joe Boyce, who was recently transferred from San Francisco. Recounts Boyce: "The moving team that picked up my furniture in San Francisco decided to sit out the truckers' strike in Arkansas. Meanwhile, my wife, three kids and I are sleeping in Atlanta on rented rollaway beds. If worse comes to worst, we may move to Arkansas to be with our furniture."

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