Not long ago I worked at a restaurant that charged $1.69 for a half liter (16.9 oz.) of water. (Read: Two Liberal Arts degrees from a "Land Grant" (Read: aka agricultural) university = “Job at Restaurant.”)

Doing quick math (because I do have two degrees,) that works out to $12.80 per gallon... or, 10 cents per ounce.

This means that if we eventually could get cars to run on water (ie: scientific advances that separate the H from the O in the carburetor) the fuel would be too expensive to use!

Of course, bottled water would be the "premium," whereas tap water would be the same as the kind you get at the unaffiliated (AKA: “Big (local community name) Gas and Food Mart”) gas station down the street.

About fourteen years ago, we were traveling through Eastern Washington.

Note: You may notice by now: we liked to travel a lot. (This meant that, when choosing a vehicle, things like "can it seat seven, plus a dog?" took precedence over things like, "does the radio fuzz out when you turn the windshield wipers on 'hi'?")
Another factor in our decision is "does it have cargo space for the "Free" stuff from yard sales?")

Speaking of free stuff, as I said, we were driving in Eastern Washington. Specifically, we traveled often between Western and Eastern Washington. (So much so that residents of the fair hamlet of Othello, Wash. (about halfway between destinations) actually thought we were locals.)

For those of you who don't know or care about Washington, the state is pretty much divided by the Cascade Mountain Range. The western part is where all the population (and subsequently pollution) is. The eastern part is where all the agriculture (including a region called "the Palouse," whose residents are Palousion) is. So we have pollution out west, Palousions in the east. If you look at Washington on a map, the same is true for its politics. The West side of the state is definitely the “left” side of the state. The East side of the state is definitely the “Tea Party” side of the state.

Are you with me here?

Anyway, we were driving westbound on Highway 26 near Othello — I'll wait while you check MapQuest...yeah... like I said, middle of nowhere — passing a truck heading in the opposite direction, when suddenly a very large Walla Walla Sweet onion flew from the truck and slammed into the grille of the van.

Grilled onion.

So now Julie and I are crying, and we have to pull over. (Not crying because our precious van is damaged, but because we have onions in our air intake!)

At first I was kind of frosted about the thought that a truck was hauling an uncovered load.

I was ready to draft a particularly stern letter to the company hauling the onions, but then I noticed something interesting: Aside from the onion lodged in our grille, there was a ridiculously large amount of corn and potatoes and more onions on the highway.

Not smothering the road, but a few here and there along the way.

BONUS! Just there for the taking! No lines at the checkstand, no irate clerks, no CFCs or anything, just slightly asphalty vegetables!

We weren't in a particular hurry, so we stocked up, stopping every few hundred yards to collect more! We had a huge haul of veggies.

And it went perfectly with the venison that we ... ahem … acquired later in the day. (read: Very tender.)

All that meat and veggies made us a little less bitter about paying $12.80 per gallon for water that night.