We were more prepared for our trip south. We used our smart phones to watch the traffic patterns on Monday and Tuesday; we decided that leaving at 9am again would be the best. Any earlier would put us into commuter traffic and any later was only worse. So, off we go expecting a little slow down south of Santa Barbara before we left CA 101 to CA 126 heading east. Surprise! surprise! we had no delays to speak of and could see that NB was as slow as it had been for us 2 weeks prior.
We made good progress to our usual pit stop for diesel before parking for the night. This particular station has regular pumps for cars and non-towing trucks and 3 large lanes for the semis and RVs. While we could get into the smaller lanes, we try to always pick those with enough space for easy maneuvering. The only open spot was in the middle of 3. The left one was occupied by a Coke delivery truck off-loading pallet after pallet of goods for the associated store. And, the right one had a semi waiting for its owner to return. The middle one it is - our tank is on the driver’s side. The pump on that side did not have a number, hmmm. Ruthi went in to make a questimate deposit on how much fuel we’d get. The clerk said that we were at pump “14”. When Ruthi returned she could see that the pump on the other side of the truck’s tank was labeled “14”.
She removed the handle from the pump and raised the switch and tried to start pumping. Nothing happened – after 2 more tries, Ruthi returned to the clerk to find a solution. The clerk explained that she would need to remove the handle from the pump labeled “14”, lay it on the ground, and flip the switch. Then she should return to the pump on the tank side of the truck, pickup its handle and flip the switch. Tada – diesel flowed into our tank and did not flow out of the handle sitting on the ground on the other side. Seems a little weird, don’t ya think?
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