EW’S
gift
GUIDE
GASSING UP
FOR GIFTS
Fueling up also provides shopping
opportunities for those on the go
by Camilla Mortensen
by Jordan Rich
o you, it’s a gas station. To me, it’s a one-stop
party shop. Between my job as a journalist and
my hobby as an equestrian, I spend a lot of time
on the road.
And because I tend to be really busy, I also
tend to suck at shopping for gifts. One minute
it’s Monday and I’m on the way to work, and the
next it is Christmas or Hanukah or someone’s birthday and I’m in
the car or my nearly 20-year-old truck, speeding down the road,
late and giftless.
That’s where gas stations come in.
First, cheap wine is a decent gift in my world, and your
average truck stop usually has some bottles of wine and bubbly.
Sequential Biofuels on McVay Highway near Lane Community
College, where I often seem to find myself, ups the ante by
having modestly priced Oregon wines and some fine beer and
cider offerings.
Full disclosure: I’m at Sequential so often that a friend once
gave me a Sequential gift card for my birthday — excellent gift
choice for those of us who spend too much time at gas stations
and yet strive to be ecofriendly.
Sequential is also a growler station with plenty of beverages on
tap, and I’ve cheerfully purchased a glass growler or a Hydro Flask
(around $25-$45), filled it with kombucha and given it to a friend.
Because Sequential is more than a gas station it also has
some quirkier offerings: Hats, T-shirts, Monsterparty magnets
made by an employee according to manager Ashley Peterson,
and disc golf supplies are among the last-minute gifts you can
grab as you fuel up with gas, biodiesel or ethanol.
But not everyone lives near a hippie biofuel station, and that’s
where truck stops come in. Flying J, Pilot, Loves: You name it, I’ve
been there to fuel up. And though I’m usually in a hurry, I love
wandering the aisles and looking at the plethora of phone products
and random ways truckers can make their cabs more comfy.
My own truck, a 2000 F250 diesel, is old enough to have a
tape deck. I admit I still have tapes I could put in it, but my
iPhone has more tunes. Truck stops usually sell the gift I love to
give my fellow old car drivers: tape-deck adapters, which go
anywhere from $5 to $15.
Remember when you used to get that doohickey that you
stuck in your tape deck so you could play your portable CD
player in your car? Yep, same thing only it lets you play your
phone’s tunes. If your car is newer than mine, you can also pick
up a similar item, only you pop the adapter into the CD player.
Suddenly you can play the podcasts and songs you love while
driving through those lonely parts of Oregon where you can only
get Christian rock and country. The friends who receive this gift
may not realize at first just how cool it is, but trust me, the first
time they realize there’s nothing on the radio except non-stop
Christmas songs and that they can plug their phone in instead,
they will love you and your last minute gift-shopping ways.
T
10 Eugene Weekly’s GIFT GUIDE 2016
www.eugeneweekly.com