Send a Compliment
the first month on the road (FINALLY!!!)Redding, United Statesyes, yes i know.... all the build up about our upcoming travels only to leave you with NOTHING for the past month. hopefully, this has served to build up your anticipation. we are still in the exparimental stage of our vegimatic travels with our living quarters in a relatively primative state. hence the dilema: when we are camped at a friends home, we have access to electricity and clean running water (hallelujah!) but we are also busy catching up with those friends as well as cleaning clothes, dishes and bodies. conversely, when we are camped in the woods, more down time but no electricity. what to do? my short term plan is scheduling writing times in town where i can get wi-fi. (i am NOT a scheduler by nature, but i am learning to acquiesce when important things are not flowing.) the longer term plan is investing in a solar panel so i can write under the canopies of pine trees. ok business meeting over, thanks for indulging me. my plan for bringing you up to speed on our travels is to give you an overview followed by some story telling just down the road. buckle your seatbelt, here we go! just kidding, if you know me at all you know i like to take my time with details. this will be more of a country drive rather than a roller coaster ride. another major surprise for me was how s-l-o-w veggie travels can be. i understood that traveling on a bus means going slower. this i gladly embraced. however, up to this point our travels on the bus had been fueled by diesel. when we moved onto our bus and started this trip, it would be our maiden voyage running on recycled veggie. some people would do trial runs when doing something they have never done before. we are just not those those people, whoever they are. it does sound responsible. maybe i will give it a try some day. veggie oil may be free, but you will work hard for it in most cases. for those who may not be familiar with the process it looks something like this: step 1. drive in alleys behind resturants and locate the recipticle that used oil is disposed in. 2. check it out--it must be a fairly full vat that is not overly junky you will typically spend most of the morning oil dumpster crusing to find a good supply. in some small towns you may find nothing. 3. once good looking oil is found you pump it into your 50 galon drum holding tank. 4. trasport tank to bus and send it through the filtering system in the bus' fuel tank. 5. heat up the oil and test drive your new supply. 5. if your enginine is running rough,(you might have water in your supply ) pull over and drain veg oil from tank, properly dispose, and start the process over. sometimes you may spend days in one town unexpectedly to filter oil. other times, you may need to really step on it to get some where and decide to bite the bullet and use diesel instead. i hope you'll travel along with me the next several days and weeks as i revisit seattle, portland, eugene, grants pass and redding. i will share more pictures and tell some outrageous stories you wont want to miss! |
No comments:
Post a Comment