Chinese Fire-Drills
Fire-Drill #1
We have come to call our fuel stops Chinese Fire-Drills due to the crazy nature of some of our experiences. It all began back on our journey from Jasper to Dawson Creek when we were trying to find a Flying J. According to the material that Tam Murley had, there was a Flying J in Hinton which was just up the road a little ways from Jasper. Since we are all Flying J "rewards" folks, we decided to fuel in Hinton before turning north to go to Dawson Creek. We went right on passed the turnoff for the highway north and kept on going into Hinton, looking for the familiar Flying J sign and logo. The GPS took us off the highway and up an avenue that didn't look like a place where there would be a large, commercial truck stop and fueling station. Then we turned again and headed up a street that began to look more like an industrial park. Suddenly, there it was: a small station that we could barely squeeze all three coaches into--and it was a non-attendant station: all automatic "card lock" pumps which wouldn't take our credit cards. We apparently needed a special permit card that truckers who stopped at this station--there were a lot of trucking type industries right around there--would use to get their gas tax rebates! The station was just across a set of railroad tracks that serviced the industries located in the immediate area--one of which was a big lumber tree processing yard. Sure enough, trying to find our way back to the main roads, we wound up driving into the tree yard! Thankfully, an employee in a pickup truck came by to ask me, "Are you lost?". I told him that we had our GPS equipment but it had led us astray, so we were turning around and heading back the way we had come! He was polite enough, but his big grin told me he would have fun telling his co-workers how 3 big rigs towing cars had come through the yard looking for a campground!Fire-Drill #2
But it didn't end there that morning! We were successful in back-tracking to the main highway and just a bit on down the road was a Petro station which was a big truck stop! Hurrah, time for fuel! So we pulled in and headed for the large islands where the truckers fueled--in big bright letters up on the "roof" over the islands it read, it said "Petro Pass". It was just like the Flying J: our credit cards wouldn't work without their "Petro Pass" cards being inserted first!! We didn't have one of those! So we had to go into the store, get a little oriental guy who worked there, go back out to the pumps so he could insert the station's authorization card to allow the pump to work, and get a receipt to take back into the station to then use our credit cards to pay for the fuel. Well, he only did one coach at a time, so we stood around waiting while each coach was fueled and he could key in the correct instructions to the pump. All told, we spent a good chunk of the morning just getting fuel into our rigs!Fire-Drill #3
The next morning, we experienced our third Chinese Fire-Drill--this one occurred at Fort St. John, British Columbia. Jack and I pulled into a Husky station--it was another of those unattended "card-lock" facilities. A "card-lock" facility in Canada means that you can get fuel by using a credit card to unlock the pump. But apparently, in the ones we have frequented, you also need a card from the brand of station you are using. Jack and I pulled up to the card-lock pumps, tried our cards--I used both American Express and VISA--to no avail. Jack walked around to the Husky store which was in front of the card-lock facility and was told, "Oh, we don't have anything to do with that Husky card-lock place back there." Huh? Both Husky facilities, but the service station attendant couldn't help us out even though the self-serve, card-lock pumps were right behind the store!!Ray had driven on past the Husky place to find a Flying J which Tam's information said was just down the highway a ways. Turns out it was a "card-lock" station, too!! Nothing worked for Ray's credit cards, so he turned around to get into a Shell station which was right across the highway from the Husky station. He had to do some maneuvering to get positioned at the diesel pump--when Jack and I cut across the highway with our rigs, Ray was sitting in the big shopping mall lot which was directly adjacent to the gas station waiting to get to the pump. Seeing Ray's coach in the parking lot, I pulled around to the mall entrance to circle around up beside Ray. Jack, on the other hand, pulled into the line for the pump on the right side--Ray and I were pointed head-on to Jack's direction waiting for the other side to clear. Eventually, Ray pulled ahead and fueled up beside Jack, and when Jack was fueled, he pulled forward into the parking lot while Tam stood in the aisle guarding it for me to pull up beside Ray.
Now then, as if this wasn't enough fire-drill goings on, there was a complicating factor. The Shell station was not right on the corner of the highway: there was a Tim Horton's on the corner. The Shell station was behind it with a side road entrance that served both the back of Tim Horton's where the drive-through lane was located and the entrance into the gas station. That side road was full of cars and pickemups lining up for access to Tim Horton's drive through! In fact, at one point, there were probably 5 or more cars lined up back down the main street connecting to the highway waiting to go into the side road and then into Tim Horton's! Ray and I were going to have to crowd through that crush of waiting cars to get to the main street and then to the highway.
About the time we were ready to pull out, a double bottomed fuel truck came to the gas station to reload their tanks. He couldn't turn into the station because the entrance was blocked by the line of cars/pickemups going into Tim Horton's. A blast of his air horns did nothing...the people sitting in the side road waiting to go into Tim Horton's weren't about to give up their place in line--heck, they had been waiting for too many minutes just to turn into Horton's! Frustrated, the truck started his turn anyway, thereby entirely blocking the main street. Another toot or two from his air horns still didn't cause any motion, so he just had to wait until the folks in Tim Horton's processed enough drive thru orders to move the line ahead and clear the side road.
Once he could move into the station, the trucker pulled right in front of Ray and me and I figured we were going to be stuck behind him! He had judged it right: he had enough room to pull way forward and that gave Ray just enough room to squeeze by, get to the side road, bully a couple of cars, and we got to the highway!! Getting fuel into our rigs was becoming a dreaded activity!!
Fire-Drill #4
After we left Tok, we were headed towards Valdez down the Tok Cut-Off Highway . One reason for our stops is that Jack's fuel tank is smaller than Ray's and mine: Ray's is 150 gallon and mine is 130. Jack's is quite a bit smaller. We believe in the advice we have been given: always keep 1/2 a tank of fuel. So, when Jack gets down towards that level, we all refuel even though Ray and I have a lot of miles to go before a necessary fuel stop. It just keeps us all in sync.It was going to be necessary for Jack to reload before we got to Valdez, so we elected to stop at the junction of Alaska Highway 1--the Tok Cut-off which runs from Tok to Anchorage--and Alaska Highway 4--the Richardson Highway which runs from Valdez to Fairbanks and intersects Highway 1 about halfway both ways. Major intersection connecting two important routes in Alaska, right? Of course, everyone driving either highway uses this halfway stop to fuel. We pull in to a long line of waiting vehicles--some coming from the left, some from the right, with about 17 motorcycles either fueling or waiting: they didn't take long to fuel individually but there were a lot of them! Pick a line, any line, just not one coming from the opposite direction! Sit and wait, and then creep forward as the line moves on out! Three big rigs clogging up the driveways of this gas station--although there was plenty of room for long lines.
Jack had been leading our mini-caravan, so he pulled into a lane towards the outside of the aisles. Ray lined up behind a more interior pump aisle and so did I--I was closest to the building and got to my pumps first. Stuck in my credit card, got approval, pumped away until it stopped at $125. OK! Well, try shutting it off, and restarting on a new transaction--worked! Stopped again at $125, stop, restart, refuel!! Thankfully, I was in Alaska, so unlike the Canadian experience of a similar fashion, I didn't have to pay a "foreign transaction fee" on each card insertion!
Other than the dollar limit, there were no other real issues: we all fueled without further incident and headed on south to Valdez!!
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