This rant has been building for 60 plus days, starting with our first gas purchase in the good old USA. Firstly some background, to save us hassles we went to the trouble of getting US dollar VISA cards before the trip, which also avoided the incremental surcharge from VISA on every purchase. So at our first stop for gas at those attractive lower taxed American prices, I punch ‘pay at pump’ option and slip my shiny new credit card into the gaping yaw of the pump. The pump pauses for a second and then queries me ‘credit or debit’, I’m on a roll as I hit the credit option. Again, another pause and then I am challenged for a verifying zip code. It’s like playing Who Wants to be a Millionaire with Chevron, each question gets harder. Ever try entering a Canadian postal code into a numerical keypad?

No combination of pushing buttons was going to get me past this point so I yank the card out of the pump and head inside, I’m exercising the ‘call a friend’ option, where I find out a couple of things. Firstly America has not yet endorsed that new fangled chip and pin credit card technology. You know the one where the card owner has a 4 digit pin code (known only to them) uniquely attached to a chip imbedded right before your eyes, there in the card, the technology us back-water Canadians have been using for nigh on to a decade now. Oh no, down here its tight security – zip codes (you know the ones listed on line) and signatures (which are never checked) all the way, probably on the insistence of Homeland Security. I’ve never felt so secure as when I bought gas. Secondly it appears that gas and run must be the number one crime in America if the level of security associated with a gas purchase is any measure.

So now here is where it gets interesting, depending on the gas chain, the proprietor, phase of the moon, I could never break the code, a patron having a credit card but no zip code was confronted with one of several options:

-Lets call this one the Texas Hold’em option. You leave your credit card with the clerk, tell them what pump you are at (after your first round trip to the pump and back you learned to check that before going inside) the attendant turns on the pump, whose natural state is in the off position, and you pump gas, after which you return inside the station for the requisite signature ceremony. A variation of this, discovered by Sean, was to leave your wife, who happened to be in the washroom at the time, hostage until you return from the pump. Upon exiting the washroom Carla was told she couldn’t leave the building until Sean paid for the gas. BTW that variant of the Texas Hold’em scenario was only executed once.

-Let’s call this one the Bob Barker option. You guess how much gas you are going to need and the attendant rings it in, prints a receipt, which again you perfunctorily sign. From this point there are two variants. One is you pump your gas (if you happened to guess right the pump stops at the pre approved amount and you are done) . If you guessed high, the preferred outcome, after filling up you go back inside to get a new receipt for the credit you will get for the difference between your guess and the actual amount pumped. Confused yet?Other variants on the credit option is the attendants ‘promise’ that the credit will automatically be posted to your account and there is no need to go back into the station. That is the ‘trust me I am a professional’ variant on the Bob Barker option. The second variant is that they give you the credit back in cash – the pay me now variant of the Bob Barker option.

My worst experience with the Bob Barker option was in Washington State where a new attendant pre-approved a too small amount before noticing that I was driving a vehicle that had a gas tank with the capacity of the Exxon Valdez. That visit required that I pump his guess and then return to reset the pump for my guess to top off the tank and then go out and pump again. So in one stop I got the Bob Barker twice with a ‘trust me I am a professional’ closer – nice. I counted six round trips between pump and station – a personal best. I have entered hostile foreign countries faster and with less hassle.

It should also be understood that these options are sometimes delivered in person, face to face, over a counter while at other times by the Great Oz through a speaker from somewhere behind three feet of cruise missile proof glass. I knew my credit card was always safe when I slipped it into the stainless steel tray that served as the Great Oz’s hand.

Now I can’t finish the rant without talking about my favourite place to buy gas, Oregon. In its wisdom Oregon still requires that gas gets pumped by attendants, there is no self serve in the state. So you drive up to the pump, roll down your window and a fluorescent vest clad gas gnome appears. You pass the gnome your US Dollar credit card, tell them fill it up, they swipe your card and then they pump your gas. Servicing three to four cars at a time they return, when your tank is full, with a slip for you to sign. That’s it, no retinal scan, no cavity search, no spousal hostage, they just pump your gas. How can it be that simple. I hated to leave Oregon.

Back to my rant. Gas prices. Gas prices in the states are like Russian Roulette. We saw as much as a $1.00 per gallon difference over the 60 days. Aside from the understandable state variations that are tax driven (I think California is trying to dig its way out of Arnie’s deficit on the back of gas tax alone) there is a shocking station to station variation. The biggest difference I saw was in Oregon where there was a 25 cent per gallon difference between stations across the street from one another. Typically however prices dropped as you got into a town or city and then climbed as you left. The game was to find the sweet spot right in the middle. Hitting or missing the sweet spot was generally signalled respectively by the armadillo over the walkie talkies by yahoos or damns.

As we approach Canada I am looking forward to getting predictably and uniformly screwed with gas tax while being able to use my good old Canadian chip pin VISA card at the pumps.

Lessons learned :

-just because you can send little cars to Mars doesn’t mean as a nation you know Jack about how to sell and pump gas.

-it shouldn’t be easier for someone with a mental disorder to buy a hand gun than it is for a tourist to buy gas. Just saying.

I feel better now.