You Know You’re in Oregon When…

There are tons of things to love about Oregon.  The great coffee (my bag of Stumptown is on the ground right next to my air matress, making the room smell delicious!).  The gorgeous trees and scenery.  And the people to pump your gas – what a luxury!

Someone pumping our gas?! Must be in Oregon!

It’s pretty awesome having someone pump gas into our truck.  It’s pretty routine, and the pump nearly always shuts off at $75, before the tank is even all the way full.  But I kind of feel bad having someone pump gas into the generator for us.  First, there’s having them wait around while I unlock the back.  Then I have to uncinch the two ties that hold the generator (mostly) stationary in the back of the truck (the legs, the right one in particular, really seem like they want to give out – I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that they hang in there for me just a few weeks longer!).  And then I have to awkwardly roll the thing backwards as close to the edge of the truck as I can get it without pitching out backwards myself!  The pumper then has to climb up on to our bumper and manually hold in the spring around the nozzle to be able to pump into our generator, and inevitably, gas will end up splashing out as it gets close to being full.  That doesn’t actually mean the thing is full, but you can’t pump it at full speed.  I know this, of course, having filled it countless times over the past 2 months.  But for whichever unlucky pumper gets assigned to us at whatever gas station we’ve pulled into in Oregon, well…gas starts splashing, and yet I’m there hovering, and asking them to squeeze in one more gallon cause I know it fits, and I’m trying to minimize the number of refills we have to make.

Every pumper who’s helped us with our generator so far has been a great sport about it, which is really kind of them.  I still feel bad and that I’m an inconvenience, but hopefully we’re an interesting diversion in a mostly routine day.