We intended to do a bit of shopping and banking today but the oppressive weather continued and we were not interested in any forays into the furnace until the evening. We left after 7:00 PM for Trader Joe’s about 20 miles away and were successful there. On the way back to our trailer, however, things started to get weird.
As we approached Trader Joe’s, we were at the culmination of a long uphill run and at the very top of the run, we got a message on the dashboard that warned us we only had 50 miles left before we needed to get fuel. On the return trip, the roads incline slightly downhill for a few miles and it didn’t take long before the message changed to 25 miles, then 15, then 8 then 0. We had only gone about 5 miles when we went from 40 to 0. Probably due to a quirk in how the warning system is configured, we may have been getting bogus results but the freeway is a crummy spot to run our truck out of diesel. Peggy tried to get us off at one of the far-flung exits but the police and a tow truck had the exit bollixed up and we ended up idling for some time before Peg zipped into a moving lane and politely cut off a unsuspecting motorist and got us off the freeway.
I carry a fuel can of diesel but bungled some attempts to get fuel from the can to the tank. I put in about 2 gallons, only spilling some on my shoes and hands, but the message on the dash still indicated we had no fuel. Peggy looked under the truck but didn’t spot any fuel running out on the ground. We rolled to a nearby flat parking lot that actually had lighting and put another 3 gallons of fuel into the tank. The message still said we were empty but we knew there was fuel in the tank. We were then on our way, headed for a gas station.
We soon pulled into a gas station and I got out and pumped some fuel. However, based on the amount of fuel we purchased, the warning message was bogus and unreliable when driving downhill. As I was filling the tank, a very weird individual pulled up on the other side of the pump playing loud music. He had a full complement of tattoos covering all his visible skin except some unembellished sections on his face. Over the racket of his crummy music, he started hollering some things and I bravely ignored him and continued pumping. I was worried that he was attempting to speak with me and I saw scant reason to conform with his desires. Soon he hollered at me inquiring about whether I knew about Jesus Christ and I indicated that I had heard the name before. Then the guy took off.
We finally ended up finishing up our one hour shopping trip in about 3 hours. It was only 85 degrees when we climbed back into the trailer at about 10:30. The humidity had dropped to 79 percent. The weather, during this time in St. Louis, has been awful and if I lived here, I’d move.