Road-Trip: Concluding Remarks

Trip Stats:

Total mileage: 4505 mi.

Total Fuel Consumption: 193.58 Gallons

- 5 Gallons of B100
- 90.78 Gallons of petro-diesel
- 97.8 Gallons of WVO
Overall Fuel Economy: 23.3 MPG
Average price per gallon (petro-diesel): $3.32
Cost of WVO purchased in Berkeley: $14

Bottom Line: $310.70 in fuel savings

While WVO conversions can't provide everyone in America with a completely sustainable solution for fueling thier vehicles, the technology itself is a product of innovative, forward-looking thought with sustainability in mind. Global warming is the most obvious reason why we need to encourage such thought, however, the concept behind renewable energy can make sense to anyone.

Hurricane Katrina provided us with a wake up call, and political unrest and events such as the pipeline shutdown at Prudhoe Bay continue to pose risks and play a role in price changes for petroleum products. Shortages caused by resource depletion loom and continue to threaten price stability and our nation’s energy security even further - so it is not a bad idea to learn more about alternative forms of energy as more options are becoming readily available.

There’s a reason we all pay for petroleum at the pump right now – it is the most affordable and convenient energy source for the combustion engine. However, consumers have the ability to empower themselves, to make responsible purchasing decisions. A greater number of consumers are starting to think about the fate of oil in the long term, and are empowering themselves to find alternatives. It’s a resonating message.

A critical consumer mentality can influence markets. For example, organics have spread so rapidly that one of the largest retail corporations of all time, Wal-Mart, is bowing to demand. Our trip demonstrated this critical mentality in practice, as it enabled us to explore and test the limits of an alternative fuel technology.

We hope that our efforts provided our readers with an inside look into the WVO system. We also hope that it inspires others to take on the responsibility of making choices that are better for more than just their wallets. After taking this trip, and meeting many thoughtful young people, I feel confident that future generations will be making smarter buying decisions with sustainability in mind.


Special Thanks to: Mike, for letting us stay with him in Boulder and in Portland, and everyone in Berkeley, (including the Soy Gnome), for letting us stay there and entertaining us. Thanks to Dez at Greens and Beans for the good food and hospitality, and thank you to Vegpower.com!

Berkeley, CA, 4:35 pm

Bob and I left Berkeley at around 2:30 p.m. on Sunday afternoon. We had stayed for two nights with our friend Jessie, whom Bob had originally met when they worked together for an improvisational acting company that performs for children in the Ithaca area called the Tin Can Fantasy Factory. Since she was from the Ithaca area, and she had also been on several cross-country road trips herself, I think it was easy for her to make us feel comfortable and at home, pretty much right from the start. She introduced us to her roomates and friends - all very cool people and most of them students – and then she showed us around the town.

We found the west-coast urbania that is Berkeley to be an amazing place – a melting pot of collegiate energy, curiosity and enlightened idealism, topped off with the amazing weather of Northern California.

Bob, Jessie, and I met up for dinner with some more friends who live in the Bay Area. We ate at a place called Jupiter, and we sat in an outdoor seating area next to a live band performing on a pretty large stage. We later went out to San Francisco to a couple bars including one with a huge patio rooftop, providing us with a great panorama of bay city lights.

The next day we obtained oil for the ride to Portland and Bob picked up a new pair of sandals because he broke his way back in Utah. He went with a pair of Reefs purchased from REI – not the ones that have a bottle-opener on the sole, but a stylish pair nonetheless.

We also ate Jamaican cuisine at Jamaican Soul, on San Pablo Ave. They had excellent service, and the food was wonderful. Lots of vegetarian and vegan options, which made Bob happy, and I enjoyed the shrimp curry quite a bit.

Bob had met a San Francisco resident while traveling in South America two years ago, and he contacted him earlier in the trip about obtaining WVO when we got to Berkeley. He had given Bob contact information for a friend in Berkeley that was running a van off of WVO, and we called him once we got to town. He took us to a place that was selling filtered waste olive oil at 85 cents a gallon. We were asked a few questions about the mileage that Bob’s particular set up gets him. We explained that so far we had been getting around 15 – 23 mpg but that it was due to the load we are carrying and the wind resistance created by the large trunk and other items strapped to the roof-rack. We filled the fuel tank and an extra five-gallon jug with the clean, pre-filtered oil.

The non-descript van, which our “contact” actually lived in, had a hardwood floor and a bunk bed. The WVO set-up, largely designed by his father, included a monster on-board filtering system attached to a 55-gallon drum (veg-oil tank #1) installed, and a 35 gallon veg-oil tank added in the rear (veg-oil tank #2) in addition to the petro-diesel tank.

Later we went to a pot luck dinner with Jessie. This involved shopping at the notorious local organic market, the Berkeley Bowl. Let me tell you, going shopping sounds like a standard chore, but this was no picnic. While it has an amazing selection of organic produce - and that's a good thing - the Berkeley Bowl is a microcosm of the New York City Subway, filled with organic shoppers rather than commuters, yet they know exactly what they want and will stop at nothing to get it. I was litterally growled at for being "in the way" and an old lady tried to cut ahead of me in the checkout line. Nonetheless, we exibited unpparalled efficiency by splitting the team up to cut through the rabid mob, then Bob made his famous peanut curry sauce over noodles and tofu, and we actually set off making remarkable time. We got a bit lost on the way, but strangely we were lost in the right section of the city, and we arrived before everyone else. The people were fun, the food was fantastic, and later we went to a Berkely area bar to see some live music.

Today, we ate a Thai brunch a few blocks away from Jessie’s apartment. The food was excellent – and incredibly affordable. To show you how cool Berkeley is – I will tell you more about Thai brunch. This particular Berkeley tradition exists on a donation system, requiring you to exchange (donate) dollars for tokens. Several food stations are set up around a couple dozen cafeteria sized tables, and you then trade your tokens for a wide variety of food items. Everyone eats either at the tables, or if it’s crowded, (as it was when we went rather late, at 11:30 am), people congregate on the grass lawn at the library next door. For those who know me – when my forehead is sweating from mowing on good Thai food, I’m a happy camper!

We packed up our things shortly after brunch, somewhat eager to get to our final destination in Portland, because life on the road has been getting to us. Nonetheless, I was sad to go because we had such a good time in the Bay Area. We met some great people, got to absorb some of the vibrant culture there, and caught up with an old friend. And when you can get awesome Thai food for around 5 dollars, all while avoiding the threat of being eaten by a bear in your sleep, what else could you ask for? Thank you Berkeley!

Spending Some Time in America’s National Parks

Bob got a 2006 National Parks Pass so that after Durango we could hit Zion National Park in Utah, then go down to the Grand Canyon, and finish our park tour at Sequoia National Forest. You can purchase the pass for only $50, and you can visit any national park as many times as you want during a year long period starting from the first time you use it.

Zion National Park is in Utah. The landscape in this section of the state is characterized by wide expanses of gigantic, bright orange rock formations.

240 million years ago Zion was pretty much a flat basin near sea level. Sediments such as sand, gravel and mud eroded from nearby mountains, and streams deposited them into the Zion basin in a series of layers. Over 10,000 feet of sediment accumulated, solidified into different types of stone, and in time were uplifted as the whole region of Earth’s crust stretching from Zion to the Rocky Mountains slowly rose. Zion is about 10,000 feet above sea level at the highest point.

The canyon was established as a National Park in 1919. There are varied hiking trails in Zion, some taking much longer and going much higher than others. Mike from Boulder recommended the Angel’s Landing trail – a four hour round trip hike that warns of narrow and steep areas near the top.

Mike hadn’t steered us wrong yet, so we figured we should go with his recommendation. We immediately noticed that the trail was paved and clear of rocks, unlike the Sugarbush Mountain trail.

While I was enjoying the relatively flat incline at the start of the trail, Bob said it was making him uneasy as if it were a sign that things would be getting more difficult up ahead.

He turned out to be right, as it quickly got ugly for us and we could be seen taking frequent breaks along the back and forth winding trail (called switchbacks in hiking speak) that brought us up the canyon wall.

The switchbacks end a half a mile from the top, which is where the 25 minute long steep and narrow part of the “trail” takes over. To help navigate the rocky climb, there are steel posts sunk into the canyon walls about 8 feet apart, with a thick chain threading them the whole way up to the top.

Depending on both natural and unnatural stepping stones, and the trees and metal post/chain fence sticking out of the canyon walls, we climbed up the rest of the trail – at times consisting of a ridge about six-feet wide before dropping steeply to the canyon floor about 1488 feet below.

We got to the top, and once again we were surrounded by a grand expanse of sky and mountain.

I couldn’t believe that I kept going when confronted by the last portion of the trail, but I did, and I’m happy for it. I’m happy because I saw schoolgirls less than half my age filled with energy telling their parents that it was time to go back down the crazy thing, and I felt humbled that people of all ages could enjoy such a beautiful part of the country in their own way.

The hike down turned out to be a bit more difficult, because you want to run, but you can’t really because you pick up speed REAL fast. Once at “The Grotto,” this trail’s starting point, the shuttle bus came to pick us up, exhausted, and take us to the main visitor area and parking lot. Our driver informed us that the Cottonwood trees in the park are dying from lack of water.

After Zion, I must say that the Grand Canyon wasn’t as spectacular. We went to Point Imperial at the North Rim, and while the expanse of sky and canyon was humongous, I can’t say that I touched the canyon walls. Perhaps one of the more interactive trails could have changed my perception, but we were pretty "canyoned-out" at this point.

We headed out of Arizona to Barstow, CA, a town 138 miles from Los Angeles, where we sang karaoke with the locals and enjoyed a night in a hotel complete with laundry facilities and a pool.

Then it was off to Sequoia National Forest, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We flashed the pass, amped some DJ Shadow for the soundtrack and rallied up the winding roads surrounded by rock and giant tree- covered mountains in the sleek black Jetta.

We saw The General Sherman Tree, which is the largest tree on Earth, at 274.9 feet tall and 36.5 feet in diameter. Photo-ops with the Big Sherm’ weren’t easy.

Nonetheless, we did get a few good shots in.

It was time to set up camp again, where there was apparently a “high” alert for bears. I was a bit spooked, and Bob said that they have these Bear-proof containers that we had to store our food and scented items in – which included our veg-oil in the trunk. Feeling that I would have preferred another night at the Comfort Inn, I shoved half of my life in the bear-container, and got a terrible night’s rest.

While it was great seeing the Giant Forest, I’m glad we got out of there alive, and now are just entering Berkeley, CA, where we will stay with a friend as we near the close of our trip to Portland.

Durango, CO

The first blog I wrote was titled “Runnin’ on Veggie oil" and it was posted on 4/29/06. The blog entry was perhaps a little incomplete as I didn’t really know as much about the system as I do now. As far as doing this trip on WVO I had hoped that it would be easier but I really should have known better.

My first mistake was not correctly estimating how many miles I would get for each gallon of WVO. Although I had heard and read that the Jetta TDI gets 37-47 MPG (and I knew that it gets just about the same when running on WVO), I’d never calculated it myself. I knew I would be carrying a lot of weight in and on top of the car but I foolishly figured on 37 MPG as the average for the trip. In the first couple of days we soon found out that our fuel economy was well below that estimated average of 37 MPG (we have been keeping a fuel log and plan on posting that at the conclusion of the trip). I thought that with a full tank of WVO and 6 – 5 gallon containers in the trunk that we would be able to make it roughly 1700 miles (which would have taken us to Boulder, CO).

My second mistake was not researching enough into biodiesel retailers (I have since found a good website - www.biodiesel.org/buyingbiodiesel/retailfuelingsites ) and co-ops prior to the trip. I was hoping that I wouldn’t need to buy any biodiesel as I am accustomed to getting WVO for free from restaurants. Buying biodiesel would have been better than petro-diesel, which we have had to resort to for portions of this trip.

In Boulder, my friend Mike was able to find us a commercial B100 retailer (Boulder Gas) which was great except that it cost $3.60 per gallon. I decided to buy a 5 gallon jug. Using Commercial B100 is different from WVO because it can go straight into the petro-diesel tank. There is a growing number of people driving normal diesel cars (and by normal I mean that they haven't had the veg-oil conversion done) who use some kind of biodiesel blend. The percentage of biofuel in a biodiesel blend is represented by the number that follows the B. Low percentage blends such as B20 are more common because high percentage blends can coagulate in cold temperatures. This is why my car must be started on petro-diesel until the engine is warm enough to switch over to WVO. So by purchasing the 5 gallon jug of B100 I could funnel it into my petro-diesel tank, creating my own B33 blend.



















In Durango this afternoon we happened to walk by a restaurant with two jugs sitting outside. I asked one of the kitchen staff about getting some of their WVO but they said there is a woman in a Durango biodiesel co-op who usually picks it up. I got her number and gave her a call. She wouldn’t be able to sell us any B100 due to the fact that her partner was away for the week and his locked garage contains the B100. I asked her if I could take some WVO from one of the restaurants that she collects from. She was reluctant to give away WVO from one of her hard-earned accounts but she was feeling generous so she directed me to Steamworks Brewing Co. on 2nd Ave in Durango. The staff was very helpful and we had access to eight jugs of WVO. We pumped one along with some we had left-over and took 3 more for the road. Yeah Durango. The oil from Steamworks has been slow to pump in my on-board filtration system and I’m not sure why that is. It looks like a great color from the outside and doesn’t seem too dirty. Either way it the car is running on it just fine.

Boulder, CO

Our stop in Boulder, CO woke me up to the grandeur of the west. This was my personal highlight during the trip as I was immersed in the Rockies for the first time. I also got to meet some outstanding individuals who should be working on renewable energy projects in the near future.

We stayed with Bob’s friend Mike, an engineering major who was interning at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). We met several other friends of Mike’s over dinner, also interns at NREL. Each intern was working on a different project and was extremely well-versed in their field of study. Conversations would easily zoom over my head as explanations of chemical and physical processes would casually bounce back and forth as if we were standing around the watercooler.

Mike was kind enough to offer us a place to stay and show us the Boulder he knows the following day before we headed to Durango. His tour turned out to be one of the high-points of the trip – literally – as he drove us up the rockies in his VW Vanagon (which he usually runs on biodiesel) and we hiked to the top of Sugarloaf Mountain.































I couldn’t believe my eyes the whole way up, and I felt amazing when we reached the top and the widest expanse of mountains that I had ever seen surrounded us.
















Mike directed us to a gas station selling B100 (that’s biodiesel processed to run in a standard diesel tank – requiring no conversion or separate fuel tank). We bought a five gallon jug, and headed south towards Durango.

Monday August 14th, 7:55 pm MT

From 8/27/05 to 7/21/06 I worked at the Frost Valley YMCA in Claryville, NY in the Catskills. I primarily worked as a Program Instructor, teaching various environmental education classes and facilitating various recreational activities. Although I had the opportunity to plant the seed of environmental awareness into the minds of hundreds of people, I’m not sure how successful I was. I feel that my skills would best be utilized elsewhere to help make a positive change for the environment. There were other reasons too (the low quality, non-organic , processed food at the dining hall … the institution not doing enough to move towards sustainability … very few like-minded coworkers).

However, I don’t want to make it seem like it was all bad. Frost Valley has a wonderful facility and it was great to work outside all of the time. I learned quite a lot there as they provide many trainings and in-services. They do provide great benefits and there are a lot of people there who do care a great deal about making a difference. That being said, it was time for me to move on.

I had heard a lot of good things about Portland (in terms of sustainability, renewable energies, co-ops, green space, outdoor activities, etc.) and I have a few friends living out there so I decided that this would be the next destination of my nomadic existence. I finished my tenure at Frost Valley, spent a couple of weeks seeing friends and family on the East Coast, packed the car up with a good chunk of my earthly possessions (I’m a little disappointed in myself for the amount of stuff that I have and can’t bring myself to get rid of) and left my mom’s house in Lake Grove, NY early on the morning of August 8th.

I’ve wanted to do the cross-country road-trip for quite awhile but this is the first time that it has worked out for me. Although I would love to ramble around the country for a couple of months I’ve limited this trip to a pretty tight schedule of 2 weeks for two reasons - limiting my expenses and really wanting to get out to Portland (I’ve been talking about it for months now). It would be nice to stay in some of these places for more than one night because it is difficult to really get a feel for a place and to really let the natural beauty sink in. I suppose I could have elected to make fewer stops but there are so many places I want to see in this big, beautiful country.

Hunting for Oil in Chicago, on the Road to Lincoln, NE

We leave the hostel after planning our next steps, and playing a game of chess with the board in the hostel lobby. We head to the Japanese restaurants that Bob researched yesterday; to try our luck acquiring some waste veggie oil (WVO) so that we can once again free ourselves from the grip of fossil fuel. We are also hoping to see a commercial ethanol pump that Bob had read about.

The sun is bright and the air is crisp and breezy as we drive slowly down North Clark Street, a bustling strip in the Andersonville neighborhood lined with diverse restaurants and shops. First we try Hama Matsu. It turns out to be closed, so we hit another Japanese restaurant that we spotted across the corner. As we walk to the back of the establishment to scope the oil situation, we find a narrow alleyway leading to the restaurant’s grease barrel – too narrow to get Bob’s car close enough to pump it. We go to Lee’s Kitchen, next on the list. Lee’s Wok’s grease dumpster is less than clean and I see floating garbage in there, so we move on.

We spot Gas City, the station with the ethanol pump. The fuel turns out to be E85, supplied by VeraSun (an ethanol producer that just recently offered their shares publicly). I’m somewhat excited, but also a bit shocked to see it being sold for over $3. While I understand that ethanol is liberating us from middle-east oil, where is the market-based incentive for consumers when the price approaches that of standard gas?

We leave Andersonville, and drive to find another restaurant on our list. We try Chen’s, which has another grease dumpster. Gregg at Vegpower told Bob how to get the grease out of these dumpsters when there is a metal grate over the opening, and Bob implements the advice so we can remove the lid completely.

The oil looks good color-wise, but there is a pretty gross-looking foam on top. We decide to pump the oil from under the surface in hopes that we won’t suck in the foamy consistency. We see the true quality of the oil right away as it circulates through the pump hosing – it is incredibly cloudy. Dejected, and getting pressured by the clock, we decide to resort to the remaining reserves we have in the trunk, and resolve to find new oil sources along the way.

We find a suitable spot to refuel, and we start the process of untying Bob’s bike from the rack on the back of the car, opening the trunk, and removing the spare tire, jack, rags, and semi-filled veg oil jugs. We remove the trunk lining next, which is still a bit saturated on the left side since we had an oil spill of our own in the trunk when a jug fell sideways and was left there unnoticed for a leg of our trip.

We funnel most of our remaining oil into one jug, place the hose in, and start the pump. We wait, but nothing happens. Of course we shut the pump down, and try again. After the same thing happens, we discover that the oil we tried pumping out of the dumpster had clogged the first stage filter completely.

Luckily, Bob has two of these washable filters, and he had just switched his old one with a newer filter before we started the trip. We wrap the clogged filter in a rag, put on the clean filter, and start the pump. The rich, dark amber fills the hosing. We watch the level of the oil in the tank as it fills, and make sure we aren’t spilling anything. The pump then starts making noise as though it is stopping and turning on again. Bob says the second stage filter needs to be changed, because when it is clogged the pump can’t continue to push more oil through it. This makes sense, and we replace the filter with one of the four extras that Bob bought from Veg power in March. He also drains the front filter, as we are supposed to once a day.

We fill up on oil, but leave Chicago hungry at 1:39 pm CT. I call two locations selling B100 from the road, but unfortunately, one location was 80 miles away and the other no longer sold the fuel. We hope to find quality oil at establishments along the way, and I theorize that smaller restaurants in rural communities may not use dumpsters as much because either the service is not available to them or it is more convenient for them to fill the 5 gallon jugs that their vegetable oil is bought in (the same jugs we have in our trunk, and the type commonly used by WVO motorists). Bob theorizes that as the vegetable oil sits in the large dumpster for long periods of time before getting full enough to empty, bacteria grows in the oil and it becomes rancid. This may be why we had no luck with the dumpsters in Chicago. Even if our theories are wrong, we are hoping to find a restaurant with a clean jug filled with dark brown oil waiting out back just for us.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of establishing a relationship with a restaurant ahead of time to ensure that they leave their waste oil in jugs for us. The veggie-oil conversion is much more practical when you are using the vehicle in your hometown or city, and you have established a connection with several restaurants and perhaps even a bio-diesel co-op.

We are learning that on-the-fly pick-ups are challenging at best. At this point, I feel like a second-class citizen, operating outside the standard fossil-fuel based energy system. The trial and error associated with finding quality waste oil makes me rethink how “convenient” our petro-based infrastructure really is.

Running off of waste oil means that we are left to forage for our energy source, which in the oil industry is called exploration. Gasoline consumers do not have to deal with this stage – it is done by the oil companies, and as oil fields are depleting, oil company budgets are pouring $$$ into new exploration techniques and technologies so that we can get at every last drop of oil.

However, as we have harvested increasing amounts of oil out of the Earth’s crust for decades, some believe we have passed the point of “peak-oil.” This term usually refers to the Hubbert Peak theory which can be illustrated by a bell curve representing the amount of oil production in a given oilfield - or the entire planet - over time.

Production increases at first as infrastructure is added to, then peaks, only to decline as oil resources are depleted. Some experts believe we have already hit the peak, while others feel we have not yet hit it. Some also believe that we will see oil top $100 a barrel. At prices like that, I don't see global warming getting in the way of the oil industry's pursuit of supplying the world's growing energy needs. Nonetheless, experts are divided on the price issue as well.

However, with the year 2006 on its way to topping 2005 as the hottest year on record, we currently risk melting the North Pole and major ice shelves in Greeland and Antartica, raising global sea levels and flooding low-lying coastal properties as the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere increases. So if you are a "peakist" or not, consumers and oil-dependent industrial sectors really should make efforts to use oil as efficiently as possible, and find alternatives to oil.

The Rocky Mountain Institute published a report, called Winning the Oil Endgame, which delivers a roadmap to enabling industry and society to move away from this finite resource. The report discusses some potential ideas for changing the auto industry, such as using lighter materials to decrease the weight of autos and improving fuel efficiency. If you watched An Inconvenient Truth, you know that vehicles produced by the major US auto companies do not sell well outside of the US, and cars produced by foriegn companies dominate the US auto market. We should take this as a cue to increase efficiencies.

We stop at the Iowa Welcome Center on the border on route 80 at around 4:45, which happens to have free coffee and free Wi-Fi. We make some PB & J’s, post a blog entry, get some caffeine, and I take the wheel.

I drive towards Lincoln, for another long leg of the journey. We were running pretty low on the veg-oil so we pull off at Grinnell, a college town in Iowa that Bob had heard about, so that we could get some dinner and hopefully find some oil. The town was much smaller than we thought, and we ate at a Chinese food restaurant but couldn’t score their oil. An English speaking employee told us that they were already giving their oil to someone else, which surprised us due to the size of the town. We tried another restaurant close by, and with no luck once again, we took to the road, continuing to ride on petro-based fuel.

I proceed to take care of the state of Iowa as I drive us across the Nebraska border at 11:05 pm and pull us into a campground in Lincoln at around 12:30 am. Exhausted, we quickly set up our tent and get some much needed rest.

Thursday August 10th: The Quest for Deep-Dish Pizza & a Dip in Lake Michigan

After our sweet sweet nap, basking in the breeze of a 48” diameter standing fan, we got showered and organized ourselves so we could explore Chicago. Our first stop was at the Black Koffee internet cafe. We looked into finding some Japanese restaurants in Chicago for free veg-oil, B100 retailers, and ethanol plants that might be on our way to Lincoln, NE. We then hopped on the “El” and headed downtown.

The Chicago International Hostel is located right next to Loyola University about 8-10 stops from the downtown area. With a growling in our stomachs and visions of deep-dish pizzas dancing in our heads we went in search of the best Chicago has to offer.

The Chicago Transit map highlights one area of the downtown as the “Rush Nightlife Area”. That sounded intriguing but we discovered that it was nothing more than a row of high-priced restaurants and swanky lounges. No deep-dish pizzas to be found. I had imagined pizza joints every two blocks with neon signs making grandiose claims such as “Best Deep-Dish Pizza in Chicago ... the U.S ... the World ... the Universe”. No such luck. We passed a few establishments where either we could see the non-deep-dish pizza or the menu's pizza section gave us no indication that their pizza would be anything close to our dreams of a cheesy, delicious, 4” deep pie.

...And then I saw him – the 10 foot neon visage of Pizano, the pizza-twirling chef. We crossed the street and checked the menu. Pizano would indeed serve us a deep-dish pizza. We sat down and quickly ordered a round of beers and a 14” vegetarian deep-dish. To out chagrin, we were asked to allow 30 minutes for it to cook. I ordered a house salad to appease my angry stomach and we had some time to reflect on the previous night's drive. Neither of us could say that we slept much but still seemed to be missing significant blocks of time.

The pizza arrived a little too hot and sloppy at first but cooled quickly enough to allow for eating by hand. I was surprised to see that the sauce was on top of the cheese but the oddity of this discovery was easily surpassed by the taste of the pizza. Much to my delight, the crust of the pizza tasted like biscuits. I ate three three slices and was “supersatiated”.

We paid the bill and headed for Lake Michigan to see what was so “Great” about it.

Unfortunately, while walking on a landscaped median on Lake Shore Drive I stubbed my toe on the stump of a metal fence post. Ripped it open pretty good, spilling my blood on the soil of the great state of Illinois. Instead of crossing over Lake Shore Drive and back (in a section where there was no crosswalk) we opted to bee-line it to a pharmacy and get me something to clean and dress my wound. We took care of my toe and rode the “El” back to the hostel amongst tired commuters and Thursday night bar-hoppers.

Wed. August 9th. Mansfield, PA to Chicago, IL:

Scott:
We arrived at Desiree's cafe, Greens & Beans, at 5:45 pm. We filled up on some good healthy food and some coffee as well, got to use their wireless internet, and then went to Des' house for a bit. We were both pretty amazed to see each other after such a long time, and we remarked about the fact that MySpace had got us in touch and talking again only a few months before.












Bob: At 8:30 pm we said our goodbyes and took our leave from Mansfield. We expected to take roughly 10 hours and 20 minutes to get to the Chicago International Hostel. Little did we know that it would be 17 ½ hours before we would reach our destination.



At the outset I was all gung-ho about our all-night driving excursion (Scott seemed to be considerably less than). Maybe this is because I wasn't really taking into account the added time for veg-oil refueling (which were much more frequent then usual due to the wind resistance created by the cargo on the roof rack) nor was I being realistic about driving so many miles without sleep.

The grueling 17 ½ hour journey took us through part of Pennsylvania, all of Ohio and Indiana, and part of Illinois (including 550 miles on Route 80 W - perhaps some of the most repetitive scenery I have ever seen).

Scott:
I picked up a Plain Dealer (Newspaper for Cleveland, Ohio) for Thursday, Aug 10th on the way through Ohio and found a piece on BP’s plans for repairing their pipeline in Alaska. It reports that BP is purchasing pipeline repair fittings from a family owned company called The Pipeline Development Co. (PLIDCO), located in Westlake, Ohio.

The fittings will temporarily enable BP to keep half of the pipeline operating while it shuts down the other half. 16 miles of pipe needs to be replaced, and BP repair crews are putting in two shifts totaling 20-22 hours a day.

The paper posted a job ad next to the article, highlighting the need for skilled machinists and welders. It said applications were available at the PLIDCO front desk from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Bob:
Coffee and passenger seat naps proved to be insufficient for curbing drowsiness so we did wind up sleeping (for an hour?) at a rest area in Indiana (or was it Ohio?). Clearly, we were suffering from delirium. Crankiness was also a factor we were battling. Scott became irritated with my post-nap clapping and singing (Matisyahu was running through my head for a good portion of the night) while any amount of traffic or construction brought me dangerously close to becoming the next road-rage poster-boy.

Our extended stops along the way proved to be our saving grace as we talked to locals about the veg-oil system, took a bike ride around a parking lot, and refueled with 100% recycled vegetable oil. In the end, at 2:00 pm (1 pm CT, our new time zone), we were relieved to check in at the hostel and take a much-needed nap.

3:00 pm – Center Ithaca Parking Garage

We went back to the WiFi spot that we originally used, and grabbed a late lunch. On the table we chose to sit at there was an Ithaca area newspaper, with a front page article about a man who died in a gorge, the second death in an Ithaca area gorge in 5 days. It seems that one of the deaths was due to drowning in the rough, “rain swollen” waters of the gorges. That explained the unusual strength of the current and volume of water coming over the falls at the gorge we went to yesterday.

We just picked up a new tarp to reduce drag because the existing one is ripped to shreds, and we are planning to leave by 4:30 to get to my friend Desiree’s café, Greens and Beans, in Mansfield, PA by 6:00 pm. Then it’s off to Chicago – an overnight drive which should last about 10 hours and 20 minutes, according to Mapquest.

We ate, posted an entry, and headed back to the car. Bob turned the key, and the engine would not turn over. He tried again and again with no success. We switched the fuel intake switch to start the car off of standard diesel fuel to eliminate any bio-diesel related problems, yet the engine does not start. We had no choice. Bob yelled out an expletive, and proceeded to call Vegpower.

Gregg said he would come out to Ithaca, and so we ate some more snacks while we waited. Honestly, I was having some doubts about the trip at this point. Two separate malfunctions and two service calls in two days. At least both had occurred in Ithaca, and I think it’s strange that they happen in parking garages. In any event, Gregg arrived with toolbox in hand and he took off the engine cover, loosened some of the fuel injector lines and let some air out. After that, the car started purring like the four year old kitten it should sound like. It seems that air got into the system, and we were told to buy the proper tools to loosen the lines should this problem arise again. He said that should be all we needed to know, and we were good to go.

We said goodbye as he wished us luck, and we headed out to Mansfield.

3rd Entry - We Arrive at Vegpower at Noon

We pulled up to Vegpower on Teeter road, which overlooks a pond sitting in a sprawling green field. Bob had advised Vegpower earlier over the phone about the jerky acceleration we were experiencing on the road.

Gregg greeted us, provided us with extra filters for the trip, and he inspected our oil because he suspected that there may be water in it. On his first check under the hood, he said that it was a miracle that the engine was even working. The oil was cloudy from a watery mix, and it needed to come out of the tank, the engine, and the all of the hoses. Gregg joked that running the engine on oil that
contains water in it is a $5000 mistake.

He also noticed a faulty gauge on the biodiesel water filter under the hood. The gauge is supposed to tell you when to change the filter, which is the final filter in a series of three that the veggie oil passes through before heading to the engine. This filter is the equivalent of a normal fuel filter which one changes every 3,000 miles. As the gauge wasn’t working, Gregg took a look at the filter as well, and thought it was an amazing enough sight to show to Lucas. Apparently, you should change them every 2000-3000 miles, and Bob had his on for around 9000 mi. The filter was replaced, and it was explained to us that you need to drain it each day. Easy enough.

Bob backed the car into the garage so that they could pump the oil out of Bob’s veg-oil tank. They then turned the car around and parked it on the inclined driveway to ensure we got all of the oil as it collected in the corner of the tank. The oil that came out of Bob’s tank looked like old honey. It was a light, creamy brown color (jug at far left). The color you want is a dark amber, with no cloudiness at all.

It was determined that Bob had collected some bad batches of oil with high water content. We filled the tank with the oil that Vegpower filters on-site, and filled two 5 gallon jugs with it for the road.

With new filters, a new gauge, and a better understanding of the quality of oil that should and should not be used, we left.

2nd Entry – Ithaca 9 Story Parking Garage

We arrived in Ithaca around 12:45, and the weather was promising for a good day at a gorge. Bob took the car to get the oil changed while I spent some time at a wi-fi spot. Some time took longer than expected, as I had to interact with and pay the local wireless service provider, and so Bob went straight to pick up our friend Chris.

After we reunited with Chris, who once created a life-sized plaster and wire sculpture with a computer monitor for a head, we all hit the gorge under the Johnson Art Museum at Cornell University together. There’s a long winding path descending down several hundred stone steps to the waterfall. The waterfall consists of multiple tiers totalling roughly 40 feet. The bottom tier also features a natural rock slide on which you can lay down in and let it take you into the
swimming hole.

The current created by the waterfalls was stronger than I have ever felt. It pulled me toward the base of the falls, rolled me under the whitewater surface, and pushed me back out into the center of the swimming hole. I got exausted after trying to get out of the tugging current to reach the side of the falls to climb them. We left after 45 minutes, and I realized I was lightheaded and should probably exercise more. On the way out of the gorge, I stubbed my toe on a sharp rock, and it bled quite a bit. Bob got to the top of the gorge where the car is parked first, with Chris a close second, and I arrived at the car minutes later, exausted.

Bob made a call to Vegpower to make an appointment for later in the day. I also suddenly realized that I left the digital camera’s battery charger plugged at the wifi location we went to earlier! We decided to go back there and get the batteries, post an entry, and head to Vegpower afterwards. After Bob started the car, for some reason the shifter would not put the Jetta in gear. After some fiddling with things that really wouldn’t help anyway, Bob restarted the engine, and the shifter worked perfectly fine. Phew!

We acquired the charger easily, as it was sitting in the same exact outlet at a food court in Center Ithaca for about an hour. That’s upstate New York for you. After placing the batteries in the camera, I realized the charger wasn’t working the whole time. Things could be worse.

We headed back to the car, which we had parked in a garage by the Ithaca Commons, only to find that the shifter just wouldn't move again. Bob quickly restarted the car, but, still there was no movement. We then joked about the cost of repairing a transmission, in a 2002 Jetta no less, which at the time we found funny. The jokes quickly faded to silence however, as Bob tried again to no avail. We were officially stuck.

Our visit to Vegpower was scratched for the day, and had to be rescheduled for Wednesday. Bob called GEICO roadside service to arrange for a wrecker to take the VW to be repaired at a dealership. After the truck arrives, Chris and I grabbed our things and headed back to the commons to a café to get another post up on the blog, and Bob rode with the tow-truck. Luckily, Chris got a call from Bob shortly afterward, telling us that the dealership would fix the problem before they close and it would be covered under the warranty. As it turns out, the problem was just a simple brake light indicator replacement.

We headed back to Chris' apartment, and relaxed for a bit. Bob had to fill up on veggie, and this was the first time I saw the system and watched the actual refueling process.

We proceeded to enjoy the night in Ithaca, going to my favorite Ithaca restaurant, Viva Taqueria. Our old college town was somewhat quiet with school not starting again for weeks. Our day is cut out for us tomorrow, as we will need to go to Vegpower, drive to Mansfield for some food, and then drive through the night on our to way to Chicago.

9:30 am, 1st Entry – LI and Queens, NY, to Ithaca, NY

So we have been on the road for a couple of hours, after missing our 6:45 departure time by over an hour due to some alarm mishaps, but all is well when running on the “vege”. The tunes are loaded. Food is plentiful. Space in the front of the cabin is not incredibly compromised – but I need some support for my lower back already since Bob’s life is in the back seat making my chair completely vertical. The day is underway, and our first stop is Ithaca, NY.

The folks at Vegpower.com converted the Jetta, and they are based out of Ithaca, more specifically Enfield, a small village just 10 minutes outside of “I-town’s” city limits. Once we arrive, our plan is to get the car’s oil changed, explore the gorges of Ithaca, and then take the car in to Vegpower’s garage for a diagnostic once over and to get the tank topped off.

We started to experience some jerky acceleration when running on the veg-oil tank. The problem is possibly the result of water getting into one of the onboard filters. This was diagnosed and supposedly fixed by a standard garage on Tuesday in Centereach, NY. However, wind resistance created by a tarp and non-standard cargo on the roof may be to blame.

Vegpower’s systems designer, Gregg Wicken, drove to Las Vegas using only one tank of petro-diesel. Of course, he was relying primarily on free veggie oil along the way. Bob expects to get to Boulder, Colorado with the 13.7 gallons of veg-oil held in the tank, and the 30 gallons stored in plastic jugs in the trunk, leaving us to find our oil at restaurants to complete the journey to Portland.

The benefits of veggie oil are plain to see. I can’t help but feel our trip is representing these benefits in a timely fashion, considering the recent shutdown of America’s largest domestic oil reserve in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.

BP shut down the oil field due to the discovery of 16 anomalies found in the 29 year-old pipeline in 12 locations. Seventy percent of the pipeline’s integrity was corroded away, making it unable to meet safety standards. Five barrels of oil finally leaked out along the pipeline, which caused BP to quickly shut down to avoid any potential environmental catastrophe. As a result, the price of oil shot up two dollars per barrel, with gas prices sure to follow suit. The price increases will be felt by the west coast particularly hard, as the Alaskan supply provided a primary feed at relatively inexpensive cost.

Nightline featured a story about the pipeline shutdown on Monday night just before we left, which further solidified, for me, the need for our country to find alternative sources of fuel. These are clearly tough times for oil. According to Bloomberg News, oil prices have risen by 26 percent this year due to militant activities in Nigeria, Middle East tensions concerning Iran, as well as dwindling oil field supplies.

Driving Toward the Future

Readers may have noticed that the site has had page errors on it for a couple days - our apologies as I accidentally erased the Blogger template by trying to post changes with a faulty internet connection. As I'm still working on getting all of the links in the sidebar back up - I ask you not to leave us because on Tuesday Bob and I are hitting the road to drive across country to Portland Oregon in nothing other than his waste vegetable oil (WVO)-converted Jetta.

As Bob is moving there, I am going for the ride and we will be blogging from the road and promise to post some interesting pictures and content. As we pass through the mid-west, I hope to hit "ethanol country," see it first hand, and perhaps get an inside look at this growing mid-west industry.

As we will be hunting for wi-fi spots along our route, and of course laptop batteries are limited, posts may not appear in real-time. However with a journal in the car we will be documenting our experiences in real-time, which will be reflected in our posts, which we will try to get up as frequently as possible without compromising our basic needs to eat, sleep, and get from point A to point B on schedule.

Interesting content to come will be fuel mileage data which we will be keeping track of throughout the trip, places we visited that were open to donating their oil, and the basic receptiveness and popularity of this alternate fuel technology and the culture associated with it along our route. We hope this will be informational and inspiring to many, as we will be tackling one of the most classic American journeys with a concern for the future of alternative fuels and energy security as our momentum.