a preponderance of punctuation marks (reedrover) wrote,
a preponderance of punctuation marks
reedrover

And now my hands stink of gasoline

I earned some karma points today, though I'm not sure that I really wanted that much work for them. On my way home from Berryville, I saw an SUV pulled off of the road into a corn field, and a dejected girl walking away from it. I stopped and asked what was wrong, and if she needed a ride. She had run out of gas. Oh, no problem, I'm not in a hurry. I took her over to the Liberty station in Boyce, where she purchased a gas can and filled it. We went back to her SUV. At this point, I discovered that she had made a serious tactical error: her gas cap was on the down-slope side of the car. The modern, too-short, government knows better than you* gas can nozzles will not allow the user to pour gas into a tipped-down gasoline line.

We flagged down a guy in a big, heavy-duty truck who had a tow strap. He pulled her car up onto the road (i.e. level), where we managed to fill it up to the point that it would start. Her boyfriend arrived at that point, and so I thanked the truck guy, and went back to my own truck. Even if she runs out of gas again from all the gas that we spilled on the slope, she's his problem now.

Lesson of the story #1 - I need to put the tow chain back in the truck.
Lesson of the story #2 - If I ever run out of gas on a slope, tip the tank side up.
Lesson of the story #3 - If I ever see a car out of gas on a slope, look first to see which side the tank is on before going to buy gas. And hey, maybe just buy a funnel when we buy the gas can.

ETA: Yes, the rain had stopped. We were not acting out a country song, at least. Thank the gods for small favors.


*insert your own expletives here, in gerund format
Tags: commute, learning
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