Driving to Manhattan from New Paltz affords us the opportunity to benefit from the cheaper (no wait -- "less expensive") gasoline in New Jersey. Even tho Joisey is one of only two states that doesn't allow customers to pump their own gas (which amounts to about 6 extra cents per gallon), it's still about 20-30 cents cheaper per gallon than anything in NY State. So on our trips back from the City, I always fill up the tank, saving about $4 or $5 each time.
Apparently my thrift has boundaries. And these boundaries seem to be located just short of 88th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. That's where our car suddenly came to a stop as I was driving Emmett and Fiona to the unicycle club. And I'd forgotten since the last time my car ran out of gas (college, 1986), that when a car runs out of gas, the power steering stops working. With Fiona pushing the brake when necessary, I steered and pushed the car into a parking space that happened to be right next to us. A passing Samaritan helped out, too, and within minutes, the car was safely parked in a legal spot. [Chances of having a car run out of gas exactly next to a legal spot in NYC: one in a thousand].
Counting my atheist blessings -- this could have happened on the highway, this could have happened on the George Washington Bridge -- I quickly realized that I had two options. The obvious one was to call Triple-A. They would send a towtruck operator with a gallon of gas, but it was already 12:45, and I didn't want to be late for the 1 pm unicycle club. Triple-A usually arrives within an hour, but Single-U is much faster. Single-U is me on a unicycle, riding to the nearby garage. I figured they'd have a gas can, and I was right. It cost more than I expected ($11), and the gas was $3.50 a gallon rather than the $2.80 it would have been in New Jersey, so that one gallon ended up costing about $12 more than it should have and nearly caused an accident.
I put another gallon in the tank before we headed home, just in case we got stuck in some traffic jelly, but it was smooth sailing the rest of the way.
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