No wonder folks are confused! Following, some snapshots from my recent road trip from Kansas City to Chicago. Certainly, more information is better than less but I REALLY want to know…WHO, for example, would fill their water bottles from an oil and gas-splattered spigot at a fuel pump?

We spotted this at a gas station in Don’t-Know-Where, Missouri. In this town I concede that if you are parched, it is OK to bend the rules a little and head inside the C-Store for some bottled water.

Similarly, travelers are advised not to quench their thirst from a crumbling island in a remote Iowa rest stop. (I think the top sign must mean that RV’s should sink their lines and extract some fresh ground water instead. Oops, I meant groundwater.)

At another Iowa rest stop, though, this helpful signage points thirsty people to the bathrooms. (I might add that there were NO helpful signs on the toilets, like these, to dissuade people who might confuse the loos with the promised fountains.)

And at the Chicago IKEA (Bolingbrook, IL), helpful instructions in this bathroom floor display. This sent my imagination flying – there must be experiential reasons for this sign to exist, and I’ll bet some IKEA employees have some troubling stories to tell on why the sign is critical. (The stiffer acetate sheet used here has given me an idea on how to implement a 2010 technical improvement on the April Fools Day Toilet trick!)