Gas Pains

Okay, so when was the last time you filled up at the pump and went inside to pay and the nice lady said "That'll be $2500.00 and some odd, please." ? It might be enough to have you clasp your hand over your heart and reel backwards like Fred Sanford working on 'the big one'.

For us, it seemed like just last week. Come to think of it, it was just last week. After over a year and a half of trying to set up fuel delivery to the ranch, it finally happened. Both a good and bad aspect of New Mexico is that a lot of people and businesses don't get strokes over 'minor' details. If you go along with that new mindset, you will be fine and probably live longer in the end. If you haven't quite managed the full transition, you might die that much sooner out of frustration. We are somewhere in between at the moment. We have been laid back enough to not follow-up even weekly on events that just aren't happening as promised. BUT, we are still up north or back east enough to eventually get tired of drumming our fingers and waiting, especially when something brings a premium with it when it does finally happen.

For instance, imagine what that same load of gas would have cost well over one year ago. The irony was that we only found out later, unofficially, that we could have locked in a price per gallon at the time we first committed to ordering it. And, much more ironically, that a locked-in price might have had that fuel out here much sooner as gas prices started to rise.

The upside of having fuel delivered out here to the back yard is that we no longer have to bring several 5 gallon gas cans into town each week to feed the generator, the skid steer and other thirsty beasts around here (To Be Announced!). Our biggest disaster in personal fuel transport just had to occur right after Mark's new big Dodge got the new spray-in bed liner. Of course. The shop sent him away with the warning to not spill fuel on the liner - that this was one thing guaranteed to eat it up. So, you guessed it .... five gallons dump over onto the liner, a load of building supplies, etc., despite the load lock bar, wishes, prayers and santos. Well, maybe we weren't using the santos (those charming rustically carved saint statues - largely of Hispanic Catholic origin) but I think I might track some down after the events of this last month and tack them to the cab roof.

To take a minor amount of sting out of the delay, the company did give us tanks and the spill detention tanks at a reasonably reduced rate though. They give you a discount for bulk quantity purchase but the delivery price curiously offsets that savings, i.e. you still pay pump prices. Like I said, the main benefit is that we no longer have to transport fuel in ourselves. Now ... all we have to do is use it up before it deteriorates or find some way to stabilize it. As I have found out from vehicle restorations and running older, more finicky engines, the new gas formulations just don't have the shelf life they once did. Those little, itty bitty, pricey cans of Stabil were not going to cut it at our volume so we started looking for it in quantity. In the process, buddy John E from Phoenix noted that Stabil itself does not necessarily have a stable shelf life. Is it just me or is there some grand irony involved here? Well, we did some more technical info digging after that revelation and it turns out that it is okay if you add it all to your fuel immediately or leave it unopened. Once opened, however, that tiny can will start to go down hill unless you use it up. How many of you, myself included, have had partial cans of that stuff hanging around forever on the shop shelf? Something to think about before pouring it down the gullet of your favorite old GTO.