Originally Posted by
staehpj1
I know folks who say they just used what they could dribble out of the hoses after the station was unattended. Also why go in and ask to buy? I haven't gone inside a gas station to buy gas in years. A credit card at the pump works when filling the car why not when buying a few ounces? likely if they objected you'd be done before they realized you were there. They might if your container wasn't gasoline rated. A red MSR bottle might help there.
Also, when I have opened a conversation with "I am riding my bike coast to coast and" (or some other impressive to non cyclist distance) folks are almost universally helpful and more likely to help refusing to take any payment than to suspect a scam or charge me a few bucks for enough for a bottle. Heck they are likely to want to buy me lunch or something.
We were Canadians in the US and it wasnt always straight forward to use a credit card at the pump. Often you had to go inside and get them to authorize it. Although I don 't know why you couldn't get it authorized and just pump a couple of bucks worth.
In Montana a dollars worth of gas seemed like a lot to some people. If you offered them two bucks for a dollars worth of gas, they looked at you funny and figured you were up to something.
Don't get me wrong the people there were great, they just couldn't figure out what we were doing.
We ended up switching to those isobutane canisters, which were quite readily available, but then you have all the issues with canisters.