fuel price in the US

I was filling the rental car at the gas station the other day here in the US and, as usual, I was swearing at the really low price of the fuel: I could fill this big useless rental car with more than 1/3 less money that I need for my little tiny Jean Jacques, who, poor kid, has a tank as big as a chestnut. At a certain point, though, I noticed that the octane number is very low as well: they sell fuel of 3 grades, 87, 91 and 93 octane vs. the 95, 98 and 99 that we have in Europe. Is it possible, I thought, that the price is so low because the fuel they sell is a piece of crap? I was already savouring the moment when I would have written this post claiming that "uuuuaaaahahahahhh (satanic laugh), they think they are paying less but actually they are pumping all sort of junk in their cars!" when I decided to check on Wikipedia, just in case. This is what I found:
- octane number in Europe is determined by the RON number.
- there is also another way of measuring the octane number and that is the MON, which is a more precise calculation based on how the fuel behaves under load. This number is more conservative, therefore it usually is 8 to 10 points less than the RON number for the same fuel.
- in the US they use the "(R+M)/2" number, which is the average between RON and MON. As a consequence, when I see "87" here, this corresponds to a 91-95 in Europe.
So, basically, I have now a further proof of the fact that we nice eco-friendly Europeans are simply being ripped off. Ma vaffanculo.
That said, yesterday we had a really good dinner at Randy and Heather's house, aka "The German Ambassy", just before verifying that their hot tub can manage to hold 7 people inside without cracking down.
And today I was supposed to go apple picking with Patricia and her friends (braccia rubate all'agricoltura - arms stolen from agriculture), but when we got to the place we found out that the farmers pick their apples on their own and sell them, thus avoiding having a chaos of urban morons devastating their apple trees. Well, actually we couldn't see any apple tree, so we were wondering whether they don't import them from Indiana... Anyway, since we had nothing to pick, we decided to go to the maize maze (which basically is a labyrinth made out of corn plants) and then went back to town to go eat and chat in this really cool tea house, "Essencha". I ate this smoked salmon sandwich with avocado and wasabi mayo, which is definitely going to be the appetizers of my first dinner when I come back to Frankfurt. Hmmm, buonooooooo.....