<snip of excellent story ideas . . . which sound as if they may have been inspired by a certain East Tennessee businessman recently embroiled in a kickback scheme involving fleet fuel purchases . . . >

 

And then there's how my trainer was grousing about how more and more manuevering/parking space at truck stops is being lost to the installation of natural gas stations and their required stand-off distances. Paraphrased from memory: "I've never seen anybody actually *use* those f***ink monstrosities, as there's maybe two or three trucks out there that run on it. But the Feds says it's the comin' thing, so everybody has to put one in or get fined. Just another reason I'm a Libertarian."

OB TRAV: A court lobbyist persuades the Imperial Starport Authority that a particular fuel additive has been statistically proven to lower the chances of a misjump for jump drives which have been less than perfectly maintained. After some years of consideration (and payment of the requisite bribes), a ruling comes down that every starport of any size has to install equipment for adding this material to jump fuel. But only to jump fuel, *not* to manuever fuel . . . which it can cause a slightly-inconvenient explosion. And may the merry mishaps begin!