Trip to the Propane Store

Hello again.  I find myself again amazingly behind on my postings.  Rather than try to explain or excuse myself, I'll just dive right back in.  This is an old one; I wrote it several weeks ago when the internet was flaky, but it's better now so I can post the pictures.  It's funny.  You'll like it. 



This post is about our trip to the propane store.  Well, "store" is a stretch.  It's more like a dingy corner in between buildings with only three walls and no roof where some guy who doesn't speak any English happens to have a lot of propane tanks for sale.  But "Our Trip To The Dingy Corner In Between Buildings With Only Three Walls And No Roof Where Some Guy Who Doesn't Speak Any English Happens To Have a Lot Of Propane Tanks For Sale" has too many characters for the blogger title line.  So "Propane Store" it is.

Let me give you some background here.  When our stuff got packed up in Charlotte, naturally we chose to have our grill packed too.  It didn't even occur to us not to bring it.  It was just part of our patio furniture.  Of course, when your household belongings are being shipped overseas, you are not supposed to bring anything flammable, so the tank had to be disconnected.  (I'm still not sure what happened to it.  Is it still in our little outside closet in our house?  Did we give it to one of our neighbors?  The move was so overwhelming and we were so sick by the end that I have no memory at all of what we did with it.)

When our shipment arrived here more than a year ago, here was our tankless grill out on our new patio.  We took a month or two to deal with getting all our worldly possessions unpacked, and having my parents come for a visit from the States, and having a baby, and whatnot - you know, regular old boring stuff that doesn't take all of your attention or anything - and eventually we looked around and said, wow, our grill is a big paperweight.  But getting stuff over here is not easy, whether it's paper towels or cottage cheese or silver polish, and finding a place that sold propane tanks seemed like a daunting task.  Especially since it took us 5 1/2 weeks to find somewhere to buy doormats.  We asked all around and eventually somebody said that there was a place in Khobar near the Hardees that sold propane tanks.  Mike finally got to go there one day in the afternoon, and he found the place, but they only sell the Saudi kind that have the wrong kind of adapter on the hose.  And that was it.  No solution.  Our grill became a real paperweight - Everett used it to hold his artwork on the ground and that was about all it was good for, besides being a shelter for the brown widow spiders that have invaded our yard, which is the subject of another post.

Fourteen months later, here we are still, no tank.  Until somebody mentioned to us that there is a new grill and patio furniture store that just opened that sells American style tanks.  It only took us 3 weeks to get there this time, and - you will never believe this - they DID have American style tanks, and they WERE in stock and they WILLING to sell us one RIGHT THEN.  WOW!!!  Success!!  (You people in America will not be able to appreciate this, but the fact that we went to a store and got what we wanted the first time was utterly euphoric.)

Of course, it came empty. 

But that's no big deal right?  We know where that Saudi propane store is, you know, the one in Khobar by the Hardees?  We can get propane there!  This time, a couple of weeks later, we all got to go, instead of just Mike.  I am glad I had the experience, but I was so worried that that place was going to explode any second that I don't think I really want to go back any time soon.  Check it out.

(<Whipered:  by the way, just in case you happen to be looking for a way to blow up most of Khobar, all you'd have to do is toss a bottle rocket in here.>)

It's hard to explain, but this place is really just three and a half walls in between buildings in downtown Khobar.  You are supposed to drive in through the opening in the half wall and park in front of this big platform that looks like a stage. The stage has all these orange propane tanks on it. 

The guys in the above picture are on the stage and I am in the car surreptitiously taking pictures.   It is very small - the open part in the right corner is one wall and the other wall is just off the left side of the picture.  If I turn my head left, the below picture is what I see:

This is the side wall, and those are propane tanks (the Saudi kind).   There is a guy driving a fork lift, moving the full tanks from the wall to the stage.  He picks them up <SCRAPE> and drives to the stage, and scrapes them off <SCRAPE>, and all I can think about is how this awful metal scraping can make lots of SPARKS!  Yikes!

It's tight in there - space for three cars - and the forklift did its work about six inches from our car.  Here is a load of tanks it is scraping onto the stage.  

Guys on the stage.  The guy in white seemed to be the owner, and the guy in the yellow was an employee.  That is Mike on the very right.  The whole time we were there, there was a steady stream of people walking in with money, handing the men the money and walking away with a tank.  Nothing was documented and most people had on just dirty thobes and sandals, which made it seem almost like Biblical times.  But with propane tanks instead of, say, frankincense and myrrh. 

Forklift guy backing up toward us.  

 Now he's on my side.  They used this big metal bar to scrape the tanks off the forklift.


Right as we were leaving, the forklift and another car moved away, and I looked over on the side wall.  Apparently, this is where they have their fire suppression system:

Impressive.

So while I was taking all these pictures, Mike was doing charades and getting the guy to fill up our American propane tank.  And he did!  And we got out of there with our lives!  And we hooked up our grill and it worked!  So fifteen total months of trying and failing to solve our problem is over.  Fire up the grill!  It's Benchich Burgers tonight!