Canisters are for blowing up.

Zowie zapping crappo, there are e-mails just a'piling up in my box for posting, so I had better get on my own stick with the next installment of Service American Style, so I will have space and time for the Economic Rebellion.

Where are we now? Torrey, UT, a small town near Capitol Reef National Park. I realize we may be running out of fuel for my camp stove, so late one morning we head on into the local gear shop. At least, it purports to be a gear shop from outside, and sho'nuf, inside there is gear, with price tags attached. The girl behind the counter asks if she can help us. (Let me stop here for a moment to assuage the ire of those of you who are saying, "girl? girl? why 'girl?'" why not WOMAN?" Look, I like to be called a "girl" way more than "ma'am." So, it's not a slight. Don't get me going on misplaced feminist righteous anger.)

I spy the fuel canisters immediately so say, "No thanks, got what I need." I bring a can to the counter, where I place it for scanning and payment. The girl remains seated behind the counter, extends the scanner in her hand, and guess what? It barely reaches the canister of fuel, so she is having one hell of a time scanning. Well, peeps, what is the answer to this dilemma? She could stand up, right? And look like a store clerk who gives at least one crap about her customers and her job. Nope. She stretches, in a slow, put-out way, across the counter until her pudgy hand can touch the can enough to pull it lamely toward where the scanner can do its job, scans the item, and then proceeds to howl about how Gentle Tommy isn't likely to find the memory stick he seeks for his camera at the store next-door where he plans to look, and that the only place that might possibly carry one is...

Well, he's gone by now, so I listen enough to gather the information I need to make myself even more annoyed with this employee than I was at her lazy attention to my attempt to purchase a can of stove fuel.

Two years previous, Mark and Mark and I spent a night in a motel in Torrey. There were bedbugs.

p.s. I swear I found this pic on the web, and I swear it is the tree my brother and I sat next to in the car in a downpour for lunch, eating olive loaf boloney sandwiches and drinking the PBR. I swear.