Lee Special - A Trip to the Gas Station

On our trip, we filled up with petrol (gas) over 80 times, so we got the hang of the various idiosyncrasies of US gas stations. Here are just a few things we learnt or noticed:

Pocnozopam

A lot of places allow you to pay at the pump, but more often than not I went and pre-paid inside the gas station. This was partly because we'd be heading inside to use the restroom and/or fill up with coffee anyway, and partly due to Zipcode Anxiety. This is a condition whereby UK residents don't know what to do when prompted for a 5-digit postal (zip) code when paying with a credit card at the pump. We have had rental cars in the US many times before, and this always stumped me.

However, at some point during the road-trip we found out a remedy for Zipcode Anxiety. This is known as the UK Postal Code Numerics Only Zero Padding Manoeuvre - or Pocnozopam. It goes like this:

• take your UK postcode (RG22 4XD)
• remove all non-numerics (224)
• add zeros onto the end until you arrive at 5 digit (22400)
• use this as the zip code

This worked like a treat. 22400 isn't even a valid US zipcode, so some magic must be going on behind the scenes when processing a foreign card. Neat!

Enjoy this handy tip - and let me know if you've successfully used Pocnozopam on your travels - or simply just knew about it all along!

Pump Jockeys

In the vast majority of the states, you pump your own gas. We had been alerted to the fact that, when we reached Oregon, we should stay in our car and let an attendant - or pump jockey - do this for us, as self-service gas is banned by state law. Lo and behold: upon arriving at a gas station in Oregon I was about to get out of Fin when I was startled to find a guy waiting at the driver's window. He did the business, swiped my card, and I was off on the road again.

Apparently New Jersey has pump jockeys too, but I don't think we had to fill up in NJ.

This is another example of state laws giving the impression that the United States are a collection of autonomous countries rather than states. Why one state would deem self-service gas dangerous and the one next door not is baffling.

Hands-free Pumping

A common feature of US gas pumps is a small clip that allows you to wedge the pump lever open and thus lets you let go of the pump. The pump still has the automatic cut-off that we're used to in the UK.

Although this is very marginally controversial, due to a small number of cases where this has caused a fire, I think this is a great idea and would love to see it introduced back in the UK. In a distant corner of my memory, I swear I've seen one of these clips in the UK, but can't remember when or where.

Price Variations

Over the course of the road trip, average gas prices varied by only about 5%, but we saw a massive variation in the price we paid as we headed around the country. Generally-speaking, the further West you travelled, the more expensive gas became. There is also supposed to be a bit of a spike as you hit the North-East, but we didn't really experience that.

I put together a little graph of the prices we paid at the pump:

You can see that the difference between the least and most we paid was $2.00 - this is an 84% difference! But just to put things in perspective, you can see how much we have to pay back in the UK, so quit moaning Californians :)

Estimating the Pre-Pay

As previously discussed, most of the time we pre-paid for fuel and I got quite good at estimating how much to pay. A glance at Fin's fuel gauge and another one up at the price board and I quickly came to a value between $30 and $50.

Only a couple of times did I over-estimate. The first of these I went back to the till to ask about a refund, and was told that it would automatically be credited back onto my card. Making a note of this, I checked on my next statement and this all worked as promised, so no problems there.

Services

We saw very, very few equivalents of what we would call motorway services - areas with not only gas stations but also fast food outlets, shops, local information and public toilets - in the US. Because of this, it seemed, most gas stations didn't give two hoots if you popped in just to use the toilets. After being a bit sheepish doing this the first time, we soon became more brazen.

Having said this, most of the times we did use the loos we also picked up snacks or drinks - just to make sure it wasn't long until Sam needed to make another emergency gas station stop!

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