Camping Gaz: We Don't Really Know Dick ('s)

January 24, 2015

Ah, Camping Gaz, almost as big and frustrating a story for us when cycling in America as trying to find bike paths. Camping Gaz is the butane/propane mixture burned in ultralight stoves, usually from MSR, but also including Jet Boil, Bluet, Primus, and many other European makes. We call it "gaz" because of what we consider the "original" version, that looks like this:

MSR, Primus, Jetboil, and many others all now have their own branded variants of the cannisters.

Shockingly, though originally a French company, Campingaz is now owned by Coleman. Coleman is the American company we love to hate, for their almost universally cycle/backpacking unfriendly heavy car camping and RV stuff.

Last year, we did a lot of crying and complaining about the lack of gaz for our Southern Tier start, in Key West. Finally, we did find some - at the Dick's Sporting Goods near Tallahassee. Boy were we happy to find it!:

Dodie is happy with her treasure! (p.s. The white goo is zinc sun screen)

The story continued, though. We tracked down gaz in Hawaii for our circle of the Island, but in the lead up to the trip people on the guestbook suggested we try alcohol stoves and even wood stoves. You can imagine our reaction when Hawaiian Air tried to confiscate our little MSR stove before we even reached Hawaii. We smuggled it through, got the gaz at Sports Authority, and all was well.

Hawaiian Air tried to put us out of our misery about Gaz by confiscating our stove. But, we outfoxed them.

So here we are, ready for another spin through Florida, and we are not even going near the known gaz supply in Tallahassee. No problem, though, since we already knew (or thought we knew) that Dick's has it, and there are 31 Dick's around the state. Sure, right.

Since we are starting in Fort Lauderdale, we phoned Dick's in Miami just to confirm what we knew - that there would be no problem. Well, not quite, Dick's in Miami does not carry gaz. So we got back on the phone. Aha, Dick's in Plantation has it. So we could load up with enough to make us a rolling bomb, head to Key West (notorious no gaz territory), then into the Everglades (no gaz), traverse the Tamiami Trail and detour into the Dick's in Naples.

But, a call to Naples revealed they have none. Still, they said, if we would phone ahead, they could order some in. Hmmm. Sounds like a strategy. But let's check Dick's in Fort Meyers. Those folks said they could order it, but we would have to come in and pay up front. Or, we could pay in some other Dick's. Well, yes, maybe we could do that.

But, a call to Dick's further down the line in Lakeland revealed that because of the dangerous nature of gaz, they could not order it. And they could not transfer it from one of their "300 other stores" (actually they have 558 - they are the largest sporting goods retailer in the world) and the central warehouse only sends what they feel like, when they feel like it.

So, today was supposed to be my day for disassembling the bikes, ready for them to go into the suitcases. (Only Dodie can actually get them in - because they are three dimensional, which is two dimensions too many for me!). But in the end I made at least 20 long distance phone calls, and finally lined up 11 possible locations - a mixture of Dick's, Bass Pro, and Gander Mountain - that admitted to having gaz in some form or size. (Thanks to my brother, Harold, for suggesting Bass Pro as a good bet. They have relatively few stores, but all with gaz in some form.)

The first Dick's location on our list got a "tick", but things deteriorated rapidly after that, with various "x's" and provisos!

Grampies can make quite heavy weather of things that ought to be simple. But now, at least, we know Dick ('s).

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