It's a little bit like asking the pope

On Friday, the low fuel light came on as I was heading back to the Dad's, so I was forced to fill up a couple days before I had planned to. I ended up stopping at the J&H Family Stores Marathon in East Lansing, MI's Carriage Hills to get fuel.

And WOW, that pump was slow! It took me over ten minutes to put 18 gallons of E85 into my Dodge Charger's tank. Initially, I wasn't paying attention. You get easily distracted when you have a new 128 GB 4G iPad. While I was waiting for the fuel to pump, four kids in a Chevy Impala came up to the other side of the pump. Not upsetting me in the least, they put the yellow nozzle in their car's tank. Before long, they started talking to each other about how slow it was. Then they started chatting me up, wondering if mine was going slow as well. One of them then asked me about my Charger, and asked me if I knew where else to find E85 in the Lansing area. I've memorized nearly every E85 station in the state, so I have no excuse when I run out and am forced to put in gasoline. This thankfully has not happened since November, and I am making sure that it doesn't. But any rate, I even know the phone numbers to all the stations in the Lansing metro. This was where my boy scout experience came in handy. They always teach you to "be prepared". I always have on hand in my car, at any one time, E85 flyers for Lansing, Grand Rapids, and Flint. These flyers describe why ethanol is important to use over oil, and each market's flyer shows all of the stations in that area on a map, with each station listed above - showing the address, name of the station, and the phone number to confirm E85 availability.

That evening when I went to spend some time with the dad, I told him about this, and he phrased it in a way that I don't think can be topped. No matter what your religious views or how passionate you are (or are not) about religion, this one was great. He said, "it's like asking the pope if he knows anything about being catholic".

I'll delve into how the demographics associated with E85 are changing on my next post. For now, here are screenshots of my Lansing, MI flyers. Please, by all means let me know if you'd like to use them for your area. I do not have any desire to copyright them. But yes, I came up with these templates on my own.