Air Should Be Free, Dammit!

I should have talked about this sooner: Finding places where you can put air in your tires without paying anything is an outrageous adventure.  We have been told constantly that it is important, if not imperative, to make sure you have the right pressure in your car's tires.  After all, so much is riding on your tires.

   

But if that's the case, then why do I see nearly every single damn gas station make you put in quarters in some infernal machine so some hose starts blowing air?  It's all around us.  Breathe in -- that's air!  It's free, or at least it should be.  But I'll be damned if I have to go hunting for gas stations where you can park next to a hose and, even if you're penniless, properly put air in your tires so you don't have a blowout on the highway, for God's sake.  Fuckin' stupid ripoff.

Once I realized how important it was to keep the right pressure in your tires, I have occasionally looked out for gas stations around the area that have a free air hose.  And I swear to God and Buddha and all the gods above that there are only two gas stations in the entire fucking Twin Cities that offer free air, and gloriously, they are both close to me.  Now, sometimes the hoses don't work, but sometimes they do, and besides, hey, free air, like it's supposed to be.

That has changed.  The closest gas station to me with a free hose changed companies last week.  Overnight they put a new paint job on the building and replaced both the signage on the storefront and the huge standalone tower sign at the corner.  The new gas station company appears to have also yanked the free air hose out of the hole that came out of the automated car wash and as of now, I don't see anything replacing it.  Fuck.

If that's the case, I have to go to the second one, a couple miles further down.  It's been reliable, although, like the one that was closer to me, not 100% reliable.  The problem is that the hose is off to the side of the closest parking spot with several feet of sidewalk between the hose and that spot.  I can park there, but the hose only stretches far enough for me to pump air into the two tires closest to the hose, so if you drive straight into the parking spot, that's the driver-side two.  If I want to properly pump up all four, I'll have to park, put air in both driver-side tires, start the car, pull out, reverse back into the parking spot, and turn off the car again so I can put air in both passenger-side tires.  Of course it's a pain in the ass.  And I have at least once put air in one side of my car and just drove off because I don't have the fucking time and I don't want to look like a dumbass.

But now I might not have a choice.  If these new people force me to use the pay hose, forget it.  So just now I Googled "gas stations with free air near me," and I found this website called freeairpump.com.  I appreciate that someone put in the effort to start this, but I don't think it's quite accurate because the gas station with the janky air hose spot isn't on there.  The closest ones are several miles away.  I might have to check them out just out of principle.

But why doesn't every damn gas station have a free air hose?  I don't fucking get it.