The Big Push

We left Chicago early. Our plan was to drive 950+ miles to Montpelier in two days (probably the most driving we have done between destinations). We left at the perfect time, missed Chicago morning traffic, and by the evening rush we had already passed through Cleveland, OH. Driving a little further thru Pennsylvania in the north-west town of Erie, we made our way into New York and spent the night in a motel. We cooked dinner in the room, watched some tube and fell asleep. We got another early start in the morning and made our way across the state.

Moses Lake

Before slowing our pace in Missoula for three days, we treated ourselves halfway there to a night at a trucker’s motel in a faithful town called Moses Lake. Here, aside from stepping out for a short walk to see the nearby lake reflecting the setting sun, we needed to give some attention to the Truck. Actually, it was the veggie oil system that was out of order. We were continuously blowing out fuses in the pump that we use to pull oil from restaurant bins and then to fill our tank with. Jon went to work as Inspector Gadget, and after blowing about three additional fuses he found some crossed wires! Picking up another fuse, the pump was working again and more oil was filtered into the tank for tomorrow’s drive.

Eugene, Oregon

Totally last minute, we wrote to couchsurfers in Eugene, OR the day we were leaving Melissa’s. On our way there, we received a phone call from one of the couchsurfers girlfriend saying his place was full, but she could host us still. We got there late, which she had generously said would be fine with her, and met up at her place. We hung out chatting for a bit with Holly and Richey, and they were rad.

The Beast Needs Grease

Ironocally when we arrived in Athens, our host Abby had been working on this great drawling of Kali and her roomate John was writing a report on her… Anyway, the black beast has been running pretty well. We seemed to be loosing a little coolant somewhere so a rather easy DIY gasket placement in the thermostat housing seemed to do the trick (thanks Kearin for spotting that for us). We have been running on grease from Philadelphia to Charlottesville to Asheville, Athens and about halfway to the meditation center in Jesup, GA. Unfortunately in Asheville, Blue Ridge Bio-Diesel has the waste veggie oil market monopolized, so no luck collecting there, and only a few gallons discovered in Athens. Luckily diesel prices seemed to have dropped to about 2.25 a gallon down here. I think our best luck is going to be in more populated suburban areas and hopefully we can stock up in Florida.

Cubies!

Found these 2 cubies of oil on our way home the other night on out way home. Turn out they are about 1/4 filled with food chunks and sludge. No good, refund please.

We Struck Gold! (eh, sort-of)

After a day or two of me hitting up a few places around the neighborhood and having no luck, I took Amy out with me to see if she could do some smoothing to get us some fuel. We hit up all Asian restaurant, most of them told us that they have a person that picks up their oil already. We explained that we we’re looking to take just a little to use in our truck and that we would take it for free, whatever they could offer. Still no luck, just confused faces when explaining that our truck runs on their used, dirty kitchen grease. So just as were heading back home, we decide to check out a place that I asked a couple of days before. This time we went out back, there were some folks from the kitchen hanging around. When we inquired about there grease they said “Go right ahead!” So… we’re like “awesome!”

Now again this is our first time collecting and using the filtration system so we had a couple of slight set backs…

Converted!

Just got our truck back from our good friend Pat who helped us out bigtime with installing our greasecar kit. As you can see we added the greasecar on-board filtration pump. Now all we need is some GREASE! See more photos HERE.