The Gas Man

This is the gas man--the bottled gas man. He comes riding along on his motorcycle, which has been modified to carry all those cans of bottled gas. He can carry 7 cans. You can count 6 cans in the picture ; two on each side and the 2 on top but he can carry one more on top of the two horizontal ones. It seems a little ungainly to me, but this fellow manages.

He stops at the corner, near his customers. and begins banging on the gas can with a wrench to get their attention. He waits patiently for people signal him from their balconies, that they either need more gas or not, as the case may be. He then parks his cycle, unloads a can, hoists it on his back and carries it up to the apartment and brings down the empty. He saw me taking his picture and kindly stopped so I could get a really good view of him.

Lots of goods are sold and delivered this way. It seems simple enough.

I have natural gas piped into my apartment. Natural gas is incredibly inexpensive here. The only thing that uses gas is the stove. It costs me about 5LE a month. That converts to a little under a dollar for my cooking gas. Cheap enough. I wish the hot water heaters were gas as well. Mine are electric and electricity is expensive here. But that is another story.