Two exciting pieces of news.
I finally got through to Marty Borruso, the man at the biodiesel plant in Staten Island, after two weeks of leaving messages. He was extremely friendly and enthusiastic on the phone, so I guess it was worth the wait. They are having some meetings with the IRS regarding clarifications to the new Biodiesel tax incentive (hard to believe the government is doing anything positive, but this is a decent step in the right direction...more on this later) which would make the fuel up to $1.00 cheaper per gallon, finally pricing it below petro-diesel.
He was also sympathetic to the idea of partnering up with other groups to promote biodiesel, and was trying to establish a presence at the Coney Island Mermaid Parade and Bonnaroo Festivals, but I don't know how that worked out for him. There are a ton of music groups and festivals that could easily go on tour and promote biodiesel to thousands upon thousands of people, and both sides need to reach out to each other more to make these collaborations happen.
2) I got an email from Arrow aka DJ Chrome the other day. I was just about to look him up because I heard through the grapevine that he was involved in a Brooklyn-based initiative to do a biodiesel recycling plant. This is on the heels of the BioTour, of which he was an organizer and performer. We were able to speak today, and it's all true. In addition, Antibalas have been invited to the Tompkins Square Mayday Concert. I hope we can make it happen. Go Arrow!
Conclusions
One of the things I gleaned from both conversations is that large agribusiness is finally seeing biodiesel as a growth industry and is trying to corner the market by lobbying Congress for agri-biodiesel tax incentives. This is cool in the sense that hopefully some poor farmers will benefit, but as we all know big agri-business will stand to profit far more. Equally bad is that people making biodiesel from recycled oils, doing equally valuable work, will not get the same degree of support from the government.
Meanwhile I've had to run petrodiesel in the car (this one is not yet converted to run on the raw recycled grease), and I feel rotten about it. It does get over 40 mpg in the city, and 50 on the highway, so it is at least efficient. I may finally have to get dirty in the kitchen and make my own biodiesel!
peace and french fry grease.
ps I saw Beyondo last night at the C-Note, one of the best shows I've ever seen in my life.
Meanwhile the Just a Plant reading at Columbia University was an excellent symposium on drug policy reform and reality-based education.
What is more patriotic and sensible:
1. To support Saudi sheiks, corrupt military dictatorships and multinational oil polluters?
or
2. Supporting America's farmers and improving the quality of life through cleaner air?
Somebody tell me.
So, the new future-biodiesel machine is down from Massachusetts. I decided to get it even though I don't drive stick shift very well. It's something that I need to learn in my life sooner rather than later, and it's not fair to mess up somebody else's car learning. Thanks again to Nick for the lesson.
As I rode the Amtrak up to upstate New York, the weather got nastier, changing from hard rain to snow. We were going to meet up near the train station (and NY Thruway), but he didn't have a ride back to his house, 30 miles off the highway. I began to imagine the worst, me by myself, stalled out in a snowbank, unable to get the car into first gear. To make things worse, the snow tires that he was including happened to be in the trunk, not on the car.
Fortunately, everything worked out well. I shifted fine in the snow, but stalled out a few embarrasing times at the toll-booths. I need some more practice before I take it into the city:
I also started shopping around for biodiesel.
There is a company in Newark, NJ that sells B100 biodiesel at $2.73/gal plus tax, while a Brooklyn/Staten Islan based company is selling it at $2.50/gal. Curiously enough, one of the people told me that the IRS is out to get people making their own fuel. Of all the people to chase down...
More later...
Just when you thought I had given up. Benevolent winds have blown my way and I have the funds to get a 2000 Volkswagen Golf TDI (turbo diesel) and the next round of biodiesel is on.
I am planning on converting it to run on SVO (Straight Vegetable Oil) and WVO (Waste Vegetable Oil) sometime soon, but in the meantime I will be buying B100 (100 % refined vegetable oil that can go straight into an unmodified diesel tank) now available in New York!!
The rub? The car is a manual-transmission aka stick shift and I don't drive stick very well. Thanks to my friend and musical collaborator, Nick Movshon, I had a great lesson today around the industrial blocks of North Williamsburg and Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
The car is officially sold, to an activist, veggie oil enthusiast whose plan is to drive it cross country. Good luck, Rupert! Make sure to change the oil a few times and get AAA or some other emergency road service, just in case.
I am taking a little time off from having a car, recently sold all furniture, moved stuff into storage, and will be nomadic for the next two months, on tour with Antibalas.
The plan then is to find a Dodge diesel pickup and see if I can't find a better, cheaper way of doing the conversion. The Greasecar system was okay, but knowing what I know now I think I can assemble and install a conversion system myself or with a little remote help.
So I've decided to sell the car, and find another one, a pickup truck. The person set to buy the car is dedicated to keeping it running on veg. (We cleaned out the tank together, a nasty but necessary bonding experience.)
I go on tour till mid November, and am hoping to look for a diesel truck to convert in Texas, put a camper on it, and create a veggie powered mobile living unit.
In the meantime I will be getting around on a supersonic hoyakuza transport system, invented by my friend Yoshi Takemasa:
Stay tuned for more adventures.
NEWS
The car is still up and running, in its new home in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I just ordered a new fuel prefilter to put in, as the screw in the middle had stripped on the old one. This is the first filter that the veggie oil passes through before it goes into the real fuel filter (the cylindrical cartridge-looking one.)
This prefilter was added to the system by Mark Penta, who did the installation. I have found it bo be good, especially if you are on the road and using nasty oil that can't always be filtered well. This is easy to remove and clean out, and the replacement filter elements are cheap ($5 each).
VEGGIE CAR VISITS EAST NEW YORK
On a visit to some friends at the Crystal Street house, I was able to share the veggie oil technology with some kids on the block, including Justin and Venus. Here are some pictures of them was pouring some oil from popcorn and fish frying.
A NEW OIL SOURCE IN BUSHWICK, BROOKLYN
While the leaders of petroleum industry scratches their heads as the wells dry up, veggie oil wells abound. Last week, I hooked up with a Mexican restaurant right around the corner from Antibalas (my musical groups) headquarters in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Ofelia, the proprietor, has begun to set aside their fryer oil and I will be collecting it, filtering it, and storing it in the space behind the studio. They are on the corner of Central and Troutman in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The chilaquiles are delicious. My meat-eating friends swear by the tacos al pastor.
QUESTIONS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY
Several people have been emailing me with questions about veggie oil lately. Perhaps this is due to the rise in oil prices and the predictions of the immenent demise of the petroleum industry.
PRESS
I just did an interview with journalist Matthew Nestel to come out later in Black Book magazine.
That's all for now. Peace
So I'm back in New York City, and there are now too many options. I spoke to a few restaurants, in Manhattan and Brooklyn and all of them want me to take their oil from them. (At a savings of over $1000 year to them). The problem is, I don't have the storage space for it and I don't drive that often. We need more diesel drivers to convert, then we would be set.
In the meantime I just burned up the last of a jug of kitchen grease from GO! Catering on Little West 12th St. in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan.
Last week's forum on 4/20 at the Sun Factory was nice. It was attended by mostly friends and acquaintances eager to hear and see stories from the Mexico trip, plus some people who had found out via the Internet and WBAI 99.5 FM radio, plus a few more curious people who walked in off the street.
We parked the car right out front on Broadway in the Soho/Chinatown section of New York City.
I drew a few rough diagrams on the sidewalk in chalk to illustrate the veggie-oil system to passersby. Thanks to the NYPD for not ticketing us, like they have ticketed other chalk artists. (Rains came later to wash away all traces of us.)
Path of the veggie oil and coolant.
Pandora drew a yellow brick path on the sidewalk leading up to the doorway. A few curious people followed it in.
so the car is up and running full-speed on vegetable oil once again. this weekend, we took it up to Vermont to Mark Penta's shop and he reconnected and recalibrated the veggie oil system. It took us problem free to Northampton Mass, then down to Brooklyn where I am now. Next Wednesday, April 20 I will be hosting a forum/question and answer session followed by a fundraiser/dance party. At midnight, we will be celebrating my 29th birthday. Please come, and spread the word. Here is the flyer:
So I made it back to Brooklyn last week. It was 38 hours in total, with a few pee / refueling stops, and naps in Arkansas and Tennessee.
I left Austin in the afternoon, and got deep into Arkansas. Around 2:30 I pulled into a rest stop, parked, and promptly fell asleep in the drivers seat. It was freezing...I had myself wrapped up in a table cloth, towels, all sorts of stuff to keep warm. At one point, I had to pee so I got out, slammed the door, and in that tiny sliver of time as the door was closing I had realized the key was still in the ignition. I was locked out.
Keeping a straight head is important in these situations. I called AAA (a plus membership is worth every penny) and told them where I was. They sent a lockout specialist out who came through in about 45 minutes. He had a rough time at first, but then got me in. No charge.
At a truck stop, I met a man who rides all across the country on his bike and washes truck gas tanks for a living. He has a small camping setup, a trailer, and a cb radio with which he communicates to the truckers on the road and in the lot as he advertises his services. He has a website.
Two transportation misfits in the same parking lot in Arkansas. Go figure.
I drove into the morning, getting into Memphis and crossing the Mississippi River as the sun rose in the east. As I got deeper into the pine forests of Western Tennessee, I got tired again, and pulled into a park to sleep a bit more.
Tennessee is a very very long state. It was cold there. I got to Virginia around 6 PM. I was hoping to see some of the prettier parts of the Smoky Mountains, but it was already dark. More driving. It was getting noticeably colder. I had found a little chemical hand warmer pak and opened it and stuck it in my shoe...the driving foot. The other foot I wrapped in a towel, and covered my legs with a thin mantel (cotton tablecloth). Around West Virginia, it started snowing, and as we entered Pennsylvania, the snow flurries got thicker. It wasn't sticking, but it was coming down hard and the roads were wet. Trucks roared by me as I stayed to the far right doing 50. A few cars flew by, but mostly trucks. It was intense and not seomthing I'd like to repeat anytime soon.
Snow was equally bad in New Jersey, but passing Newark, things had mellowed down so that by the time I rolled into New York--to a beautiful sythetic red dawn, the sky had cleared. I could smell the air, and my stomach turned. I flipped on the radio to 89.9 WKCR. It was the John Coltrane festival. As I write this four days later, the festival continues, 24/7 for two weeks in total.
So the car is rolling, albeit on diesel. There are a few small leaks which I need to look at. I fixed the coolant leak which happened where the servo (the thing that sends heat into the cabin of the car) was bypassed. It is also leaking a little diesel from the gas tank, especially when over 1/2 full. It is also dripping a little motor oil. Ugh! Fortunately the transmission fluid is full and clean. Yee haw.
I feel like a hypocrite for driving this think...spitting diesel and dripping nasty fluids everywhere. It is getting worked out, but it's frustrating as hell. What I am learning is that whatever car gets converted: make sure that everything that normally wears out regardless of the fuel (radiator, shocks, muffler, starter, etc.) is in good shape. Also, make sure you have a good, cheap source for parts, should you need them.
The future of the car...we shall see.
Without getting too deep into auto jargon, the fuel system (the injectors to the injection pump, to all the fuel lines) has been checked out in great detail, and to great expense.
The veggie oil mechanic hasn't heard of anything like this ever happening so fortunately for other veggie oil drivers, this is not something normal to expect.
The mechanic is setting up the car to run on diesel so I can drive it back up to NYC and get it checked out by the veggie oil specialist.
It will hopefully be ready by the end of today. Otherwise, I'm here in Texas through the weekend.
And I'm considering going to auto repair school..!!
SAVE THE DATE: 4/20/04 An info-session / birthday party / benefit concert for Vegetable oil fuel research and community outreach in New York City. Stay tuned or click on the link at the left to email me for more details.
Also, if you'd like to contribute money to the project, you can do so securely online by clicking the PayPal link on the lower left of this page.
So I got the car back, from the first mechanic who replaced the fuel pump and it runs just as bad as before. The one thing that's better is that the horn works! (It mysteriously stopped one day, a few weeks back).
The car is a now at a proper shop. The owner of the shop was very apprehensive, and may want to reset the car to run on diesel, which is better than nothing. I can drive it back to NYC on diesel and then reconnect the veggie oil system.
Frustration! Austin is a beautiful place to be shipwrecked, however.
Greetings from Austin. I came down this morning to a muggy, rainy, but still charming Austin, TX. The new fuel injection pump has been put on but not fully tightened and timed. Could tomorrow be the day that the car will be up and running?
Regardless, this is a fact-finding mission here in the Texas capital and I plan to be here for a few days.
saturday afternoon, driving up highway 57 outside of matehuala, san luis potosi, mexico, 35 mph. a slight but long grade of highway is in front of us.
halfway up the car stalls...i conclude that it is not going to make us much further through any mountains...
we get a tow from the mechanic across the road to the border through 600 KM, five military checkpoints including one thorough revision of my car and its contents.
meanwhile, i am in the front seat of a newer Chevy pickup with the mechanic and his wife, packed three across. Nicole is lying like a pretzel in the back seat, reeling from stomach cramps, and a throbbing headache. It is 15 degrees out and there is no heat.
we make it to the border and pay Waldemar 6000 pesos...just under six hundred dollars.
On the flat ground of the S. Texas desert, the car runs a little better, sometimes up to 50 mph on flat highway, spewing embarrassing black smoke. I feel like shit for polluting so much but have to get it to the mechanic in Austin.
On the way, we find 15 acres of Mercedes parts and buy a used fuel injection pump and 5 injectors from a Tejana named Claire Rodriguez who is running the show like a drill instructor.
We get up to Austin and the mechanics at German Automotive are afraid to touch it, so back to square one to find a repair shop...
Elijah, a mechanic and Austin-based greasecar specialist, is getting in tonight around midnight and will be coming right over for a prognosis.
The Antibalas photo shoot is Thursday morning at 10 am. I feel like shit for letting them down and hope I can get there on time.
Meanwhile the trip is starting to get very expensive after being extremely cheap...
The good side is that we are in Austin with beautiful sunny weather, in the hospitality of Adrian and Celeste who have received us into their beautiful home...
so it's the fuel pump and/or the injectors that have been causing us to roll at between 25 and 50 mph for most of the trip.
it seems that the first tank of mexican diesel fuel was lethal and may have started to wreck the fuel pump.
now the mission is to get to texas as fast as possible to repair it because there are no parts here and nobody wants to touch it.
to top it off, i have some sort of weird intestinal problem.
burp.
First, the good news. Over the past 2 days, I gathered 40 liters of recycled oil from the enramadas (beachside fish restaurants) in Caleta de Campos, La Soledad, and Las Peņas. People were a little tripped out, but amused and very cooperative. We found that some of the cooks use it for lumbre (cooking fuel) along with wood.
The bad news...
After changing the diesel prefilter, the diesel filter, the veggie oil filter, and cleaning the veggie prefilter, the car stops dead once I switch over to veggie.
Plus, while running on diesel, the engine suffers from a severe lack of power and pick-up.
My guess: 1) clogged or dirty injectors AND 2) a dirty veg. tank with a clogged line running out from it.
The good news: Richard, the mechanic, is on the case and will be picking up where I left off tomorrow morning.
Keep your fingers crossed...we have six days to make it back to NYC!
The car is running now, but some recent WVO oil that I got from the enramadas (beachside seafood restaurants) has given me some trouble.
I cleaned the prefilter but may have put in on backwards (have to check this afternoon).
The trip to the coconut oil plant is on hold because it's about 6 hours away and I want to make sure the car is right and tight before making such a big road trip.
The salty air is taking its toll, enlarging the once-little spots of rust. I hope to nip that in the bud this week.
Upon arriving in Mexico in the veggie car, I learned a few things
1: the diesel fuel here (at nearly $2 a gallon) is often really dirty or has water in it. i messed up my fuel system and had to empty out the tank
The infamous PEMEX diesel...is it diesel fuel or water???
2: veggie oil, like soy, canola, and corn is as expensive or more expensive here than in the US. One liter is between 9 and 11 pesos (85 cents to $1.05)
Alejandro filling up on new canola oil in Nueva Italia
3: Few restaurants here throw out their oil. In this area anyway, there are very few frying machines, and a lot more open pots where the cooks keep adding oil as it is absorbed by the food
Here on the coast, the cooks in the beachfront fish restaurants do save their oil after they fry fish in it...I am going to collect some and try it out once the car is out of the shop.
Alejandro and I went to a few coconut groves and talked to the encargados (people in charge) who sent us to a lady (La Paisana) in Playa Azul, who told us that there is a big aceitera (oil pressing plant) in Atoyac, Guerrero, a bit north of Acapulco (5-6 hours from here).
That's a trip for sometime next week.
After a couple of amazing scores in Nashville and Hot Springs, it has been impossible to find WVO (Waste Veggie Oil). Wherever I stopped in Texas, the grease was stored in large, locked bins behind the restaurants with ominous warning stickers saying THIS CONTAINER AND ITS CONTENTS ARE PROPERTY OF BLAH BLAH BLAH WASTE COMPANY. ANYONE CAUGHT TAMPERING WILL BE PROSECUTED BLAH BLAH BLAH. Besides that, it was raining the whole time in Texas and any sort of capers would be messy in addition to dangerous...
Getting into Mexico, I found that everybody I met just keeps cooking and cooking with the oil. At fancier chain restaurants, like the Sanborn's in Queretaro, I was informed that their waste oil is sold to a recycler along with their cardboard and cans, and that they couldn't help me.
I broke down and bought 20 1.5 liter bottles, at a cost of about 95 cents a liter--four times as much as diesel in the US and twice as much as diesel here.
The regular diesel fuel has also been a mess. A lot of gas stations, even though they're run by the same government monopoly PEMEX, mix in water and other junk with their diesel and as a result it runs very poorly.
Since my 2nd tank of PEMEX diesel the car has been slow to accelerate and run up hills, and shoots a lot of smoke.
Now that I am down here on the coast, one of my projects is to find where I can get coconut oil...there are hundreds of thousands of coconut palms here and there must be an oil processing plant somewhere...
Everyone that I've met, from mechanics to gas station attendants to soldiers at the roadblocks have been surprised but enthusiastic and supportive.
Greetings to everyone keeping tabs on me on this weblog.
It's Tuesday afternoon, and I just made it to La Mira, Michoacan, the closest town with internet.
The trip has been going well. After a very long wait in line just past the Mexican border Entering Mexico(where i had to secure a temporary vehicle import permit), I was on my way. It was pretty dark and very rainy, but I drove through till about 4 am and then parked in a gas station parking lot south of Saltillo and slept for a few hours.
The next morning I woke up and drove further south down highway 57, which is a straight line in the wide valley between two massive mountain ranges. I turned off just before Matehuala (state of San Luis Potosi) and drove for about 1.5 hours into the desert, to the town of Estacion Catorce, where I was hoping to meet up with my friend and superadobe partner Alejandro. We had been planning a camping trip in the desert for a long time, and I was hoping it would happen.
We had been trading emails for a few days prior but hadn't been able to speak or confirm by phone, but we found each other anyway. It is pretty easy in small towns in Mexico where there is only one long distance phone station, bus station, etc.
Soon after arriving, we caught a ride 40 minutes deeper into the desert in a pickup truck, and were dropped off at a small village. From there, we hiked into the brush on some small paths, to a small clearing called Cascabel. The desert was full of cactuses of all different kinds, most of which I had never seen before, including the specific one we were seeking: lophophora williamsii, also known as hikuli, or by the police as peyote.
Yesterday I made my first WVO (Waste Vegetable Oil) score, at a chinese buffet restaurant in Nashville. The oil was clean, a maple-syrup color and consistency. It took me all the way to Little Rock.
Pulling out of a parking lot, I saw a young man driving an Mercedes diesel. At the stop light, I hollered to him to pull over so I could show him the conversion setup. He dug it.
Along the way, while running on WVO, the engine started to stutter. I pulled over and checked the veggie-oil prefilter, and lo and behold, it was clogged. Apparently I hadn't filtered the stuff well enough. I detached the filter, took it into the bathroom at the rest stop and cleaned it out. I put it back in and everything ran fine.
I drove late into the night to Little Rock and spent the night sitting uncomfortably in the drivers seat at a WAL MART parking lot, getting about 4 hours of sleep before a little detour to Hot Springs.
I woke up around 11:00 in Nashville, very well-rested.
Morning In Nashville: Debra and Michael invited Steven, a friend and carpenter, musician and handy man over to check out the car and hang out. We ended up talking about the diesel engine and superadobe and other architecture for hours, until I pryed myself away to get here and bang out this log before I get lazy. They are taking good care of me here, but I need to get on the road!
I am going to check out a few restaurants in town to check out their grease supplies. The weather seems warm enough that the grease won't be too solid, but I may be wrong, and I still don't have a proper pumping mechanism to make the whole filling up process less of a pain.
The actual mechanics of the veggie oil system are great. The problem so far has been finding grease that I can access and put into my tank. I hope this resolves as I get further south into warmer climates, and the waste oil vats behind each restaurant are filled with liquidy grease.
I hope to get as far as Hot Springs, AR, or maybe even Austin, TX today.
I am so grateful and hope to continuing to meet wonderful people along the way.
A few friends stopped by last night to check the technology, including the dog artist Tillamook Cheddar.
We drank a little champagne (my pay from a New Year's eve musical show) and spun around the block. As the engine warmed up, Mary Jordan hit the switches and we began cruising on pure vegetable oil down Fulton Street. It was a magical moment.
it's now 6:40 am. i decided to spend another night here rather than leaving in the PM. I'm a little better off for it...more rest, a little more time to spend tightening everything up. It's a lot easier to do certain things from home than from on the road, like make silly entries like this and get travel insurance over the internet.
the prayer calls from the mosque are about the only sounds I heard, along with the occasional bus grinding down Fulton St.
in a few days it will be roosters crowing in the dawn.
The car ready to go in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn
Today I took MetroNorth up to New Haven to meet up with the mechanic Mark Penta (aka Mr. Amazing Genius) and drove back down I-95 through Connecticut and Westchester on pure canola oil.
The joy of breezing past gas stations, knowing that if I do my homework, I will never have to go to one again, except for a quart of oil or to take a leak...
