Part 1 (Mallorca) or the Spain Journey here which explains why are there no good pictures of this event.

Also, Spain: the beginning, for a taste of the planning of our trip here

“FUUUUUUCK!”  The gas cylinder didn’t fit my backpacking stove.  Let me rephrase that: the only gas cylinder within 100 miles which we had just spent almost two hours ransacking every shop in Montenejos searching for didn’t fit my backpacking stove.

We were starving, and really looking forward to to the pasta we planned on cooking.  More than that, I’m pretty sure someone would have ended up in the river if we had to eat another mustard, cabbage, cheese, and some strange processed meat sandwich for dinner.  Not that the sandwiches were bad… they were actually quite delicious, but between the three of us we’d eaten well over 726 of them in the last week, and truly the line had been drawn.  No more sandwiches.

There was nothing left but to MacGyver the shit out of my backpacking stove and/or gas cylinder.

The problem: My stove was threaded that gas cylinder wasn’t.  Also, the pin in my stove wasn’t long enough to depress the check valve of the gas cylinder, so there was no way to get gas out of the cylinder into the stove.

Plan A: The stove should have just worked with the cylinder.
Result: FAIL, no gas made it out of the cylinder

Plan B: I chopped the tip off a ball point pen we had borrowed from the Hilton in Valencia to extend the stove pin.  I carefully placed it in the gas cylinder with my Leathermann and attached the stove.
Result: FAIL, the pen tip lodged itself in the gas cylinder successfully creating a steady high flow of gas, but the gas wouldn’t stop flowing when the stove was removed.

Plan C: super glue applied to the stove/cylinder interface to seal it.
Result: FAIL, the super glue did not harden on the metal to metal interface and did nothing to decrease the flow.

Plan D: medical bandage wrap used as an external gasket to seal the gas leak
Result: FAIL, the medical bandage did not apply enough force to stop the gas leaking from the cylinder. This was the first time we attempted to light the stove.  The heat from the flame melted to the bandage in place helping with the seal, but was still not enough.

Plan E: Chewing gum (3 sticks that each of us hastily chewed) applied to the stove/cylinder interface (after the medical tape was removed).
Result: FAIL, the internal pressure of the cylinder was too great to be stopped the the viscosity of the chewing gum.

Plan F: A baby wipe (still saturated with alcohol) was added around the chewing gum to chill and apply pressure to it.  Nylon thread was then added tightly wrapped and tied around the baby wipe to hold it in place.
Result: Temporary success followed by almost catastrophic failure.  We lit the stove again at this level, and it did quite well.  We actually started boiling the water at one point before the interface caught on fire.

See Video for initial results!

Plan G: At this point we were ready to give up, but one more idea struck.  I took the cardboard tray from our breakfast bread and poked a small hole in it.  This tray was then inserted between the stove and the gas cylinder effectively isolating the ignition source from the fuel source.  It allowed the leaking gas to flow down and away from the stove without being ignited, while keeping the flame isolated to above the tray.
Result: SUCCESS!

A little boy’s dream to fix something with chewing gum realized AND a delicious dinner cooked   What a night!