Grease Chronicles Vol. 2 This trip from Reno to Savannah was my most successful journey traveling by waste vegetable oil fuel because I didnt destroy my engine or get stranded. I want to share how it works because there are a few issues that make this process a bit challenging. It is important to preference that wvo fuel is not a free lunch. Many of you have heard that the game of collecting grease from restaurants has changed. It used to be that they were whiling to give it to you because it cost them money to have it removed. Now WVO is a very valuable commodity as it is used to make biodiesel and is also sold to the animal feed industry as well as used to make soap, make-up, clothes, rubber and detergents. The industrial name is yellow grease and it has value index commodities markets. I was looking to buy the oil from the rendering companies who collect it from the restaurants in and around Reno but they were asking for 2.50 per gallon. While this is less than diesel fuel by a dollar, I was determined to find it for less. Bill and I had bought a bunch of collection and processing gear from a guy on craigslist. It included barrels, a hand truck, a heavy duty 12 volt collection pump, some one micron sock filters, a hand pump, and a 315 gallon tote. I set the equipment up on his land but I still didnt have the oil. The guy who sold me this stuff called me and said that he knew of a guy who wanted to have a bunch of used oil removed from his back yard so I was on it. I borrowed Bills truck and took the tote and the pump and had most of the oil relocated to my veg processing operation by the end of the day. I posted a ad on craigslist saying that Id buy wvo for 50 cents per gallon. I got a call and ended up getting another 300 gallons of oil and 300 gallons of waste motor oil. The wmo will have to be filtered with a centrifuge and so Im saving that for when I have the resources to buy one. WMO when filtered properly is a very good diesel fuel that is known as black diesel. So Amber Oil was back in my life thankfully. I consolidated all of the wvo into the tote which I situated on top of four steel drums so that i could dispense the oil from it into containers with out having to use a pump. I let the oil settle for a couple weeks while I make a trip up to stay with some friends at lake Tahoe. When I got back, I started the processing by transferring the settled oil from the top of the tote into a open headed 55 gallon barrel that is sitting on top of some cinder blocks with a turkey fryer burner underneath. By using the the clean oil on top, I avoid the water and particulate that settled to the bottom of the tote. Now I just need to heat the oil to help it pass through my sock filters. I needed to carry as many five gallon containers of the filtered oil with me as I could carry because i knew the restaurants wouldnt give me any on the road. I made it all the way through Cali making stops in Mt Shasta, Chico, Stenson Beach, SF, Berkeley, and down to LA and all the way to Arizona before I had to collect oil. I had a nice visit with some old friends in the bay area. I showed up to the Wednesday Food Not Bombs kitchen which was at a church near Peoples Park. Carl was at the helm of the ship and he was alot of fun. It felt great to get back in the saddle and help them process a bunch of produce and fruits. The serving at the park was very nice as the weather was sunny and beautiful. The chili, salad, stir fry and persimmon desert was really delicious. I sat in the field enjoying the communal meal and reflected on the three months Id lived in that park under the redwood trees until I was beat down and arrested by the cops for trespassing. I hooked up with Arthur who was the Friday FNB cookhouse bottom liner and Peoples Park community volunteer coordinator for many years. He gave me the opportunity send words of gratitude to a lady named Julie who had been unbelievably kind when he had called her to help put up bail money for me to get out. Julie sent like 300 bucks which was most of the bail meanwhile another friend Terry Compost borrowed Arthurs truck and drove down to Santa Rita to collect my weary self after a long three days. Ill never forget the hot soup and tea that Terry had waiting for me that night when she picked me up. I was starving because I refused to eat the scary food served in the jail. After that ordeal, I moved to the back yard of a squat house called Hell or Hellarity and stayed there for about a year before my mom bought me a plane ticket to return home to savannah for Christmas that year. This trip was the third time Id return briefly to track down down the few folks who Id stayed in touch with. Each time ive felt a bittersweet feeling in my heart about the couple years Id lived in the east bay. It was by far the most chaotic and most destitute time of my life. Towards the end Id been healed up at knife point and been robbed of my bus and nearly kicked out of the Hell house losing most of my friends. There were also some very magical times too but Im so thankful I was able to get back on my feet and have a second chance at life. If it werent for my mom and and her husband Mike who gave me the benefit of the doubt as most parents trip to I dont know if id would have made it back. I have a dream where I see my self going back for a few months to publish a zine about the whole wild experience at the Bay Area Alternative Press who has old printing presses which are amazing that they are still in use in this digital day in age. Its a very romantic idea for me typing away stories on an old typewriter. I want to thank Arthur, Julie, Kate, Carolina, Bear, Aurora, and Carl for all of your hospitality and Ill look forward to spending some quality time with you guys again in the future. Down in LA I spent time with my brother Clay at his place in Silverlake. He showed some great films in his backyard theater including, Samsara a brilliant cinematic journey shot by Ron Fricke who also shot the revolutionary Koyanakotsi. We cooked some delicious heart earth pizzas in his fancy big green egg bbq. Clay took us to see Interstellar at the Ark Light which was shot on 70MM. It was an impressive visual experience although the ending was a bit anti climatic. We went to the beach and Clay shared one of his bottles of wine he made in France. I was genuinely impressed with the quality of the wine. For his first production, I was really amazed with his viticulture acumen. If your interested in one of his fine bottles of home brew, check out the the Worlds Smallest Winery on the web. I took time to go see Austin who showed me his nearly completed version his film about about Clyde Caseys Another Plant which was very emotionally moving. Congratulations to him for the incredible progress he has made in the editing of a truly powerful story. Ill look forward to working on a dvd this winter with Casey featuring the film. You can discover info at the facebook link The Avant Guardian: Life on Another Planet. I believe it will be quite impactful once released so stay tuned for that. I also caught up with a Last Bar Standing crew member wild child Mindy look and her roommate Steve as well as Mindys sidekick Charlotte. They are also accomplishing their filmmaking ambitions in tinsel town but Im not going to send a link to that one. They reminded me of the movie Bowfinger and the shenanigans of ultra low budget film crew. After all that fun in California sadly It was time for me to return to Georgia and I knew it was going to be a long road trip. Thanks to Clay, Austin, Mindy and Steve for letting me couch surf with yall for a few days! I decided to look for veg oil in the dumpsters behind rural restaurants opposed to collecting it in the city. I was nervous about getting caught steeling their grease because it could be an arrestable offense. This is the problem with veggie oil fuel procurement when traveling these days. The only way to do it right is to plan out your stops and call ahead to people who you can find on craigslist and other forums who will collect and sell your veg oil. The two reasons why I did go this legit route were, Id blown through my small budget and had to save my cash for food and fuel filters. Id lost my smart phone which is absolutely necessary for coordinating those pickups on the fly. Again if I could have brought enough oil with me from Reno to get all the way home I would have done that but I was forced to pirate the oil three times between AZ and GA. This isnt something I like to admit because I live by the golden rule and dont want people stealing from me. I dont want to encourage this so if you decide to be a greaser, again, make sure to plan your veg collection stops ahead of yourself so that you can stop and buy your oil from the communities of folks who are out there in every town dealing with it. Even if you have to pay $1.50 per gallon you are still saving two dollars per gallon on your fuel cost and avoiding getting in trouble for getting caught draining down a dumpster. On my first collection I was able to get to get about 25 gallons using my 12 volt pump to get the oil out of the dumpster. I found a place to make camp off the highway in the middle of nowhere out in the Arizona desert. It might have been Navajo territory but it was a lonesome place thats for sure. The wind was blowing and the the sky was clear so the moon light was bright. I put up my tent which had a damaged support pole and the wind just wiped the tent around all night which made it impossible to get good rest. Id gotten oil all over me and just want a hot shower but the was no hotel budget for this mission. My brother kindly offered to paypal me some money so i could stop but I was determined to make the trip on my last hundred bucks. In the morning, my front tire was flat so I pulled out my spare and changed it real quick. I threw everything in the car and got out of there and found a place to filter the oil at the next exit down the road. For the second time since Id left Reno i splurged and bought five gallons of diesel fuel because the tank was pretty low. Id brought a 55 gallon barrel that was cut off for a fire pit. It held about seven gallons of veg oil which turned out to be perfect because it didnt take up too much room in my over packed car and the small volume of oil could be heated quickly conserving propane. This oil had a fair amount of water in it so I had to heat it hotter that usual. Once the cloudiness went away and I could see that most of the water had evaporated after about 30 minutes or so, I would scoop the oil out with a cooking pot ladling it into my one micron filters. The filters were hanging from a small military shovel handle that I would rest on the edge of the gas tank and the cook pan dangling the filter over a clean five gal. bucket. Once the bucket was getting full, I would transfer the filters over another empty bucket and then pour the filtered oil into a screened funnel filling my filtered oil containers which were 6 gal plastic jugs. The screened funnel was my way of capturing any debris that might have somehow splashed out of the filter bags or blown into the open buckets during the process. It took me a couple hours get this batch oil processed. My 12 volt pump is stored in a plastic bin which contains the oil that spills out of the hoses after you have used the pump. Every so often Ill pour that oil out of the bin and re filter it with the other oil Im processing. I raise the hood and connect the pump electric cable to my battery and filled my fuel tank with the filtered oil from the storage containers. I made it to central Texas where I found buckets of oil sitting next to a dumpster behind a grocery store in a small town. This was nice because I didnt have to bother with getting my pump out to drain down the dumpster. Again I found a inconspicuous place to filter that oil which with another five gallons of diesel fuel was just enough to get me over to New Orleans. I discovered that my left rear cv axle on the benz was worn out and making noise. That made me pretty nervous and so I tried to drive a little slower and brake easier to reduce wear and tear. I prayed to creator to get me home in one piece. It wasnt fun driving across the never ending expanse of Texas. If I wasnt cramped in the front seat I would have jumped for joy when I saw the welcome to Louisiana sign at the state boarder. Id gotten searched at the check point in El Paso because they said their dogs detected pot. I was smart enough to leave it behind so they sent me on my way. If you take the 10, be aware of this check point because that was the second time Id been stopped and interrogated. They defiantly like to ask a lot of questions especially when they find a dirty hippie on board. Thank god for my my friends in Nola Casey and Nick who gave me a nice comfortable place to land, clean up, and get some rest for the last 12 hour leg of the trip to GA. Nick introduced me to a friend of his who has a gallery in the french quarter on Toulouse st. I was really blown away with Christy Lou and her magical realm. She was dealing lots of interesting antiques, local art, and other nic nacks reflecting the spirit of the bayou country. We all enjoyed some good local brews and and kicked back on the porch of her apartment over looking the courtyard while she greeted tourist walking in off the streets. She was excited about selling Nicks tiles that he makes in his ceramics studio in Asheville. He has a contract to make the replacement tiles for the street name tiles that are embedded in the sidewalks throughout the city. Check out New Orleans Tile Co. on the web. I collected 50 gallons of veg oil from one of my favorite po boy shops and took it to Covington to filter it at Nicks dads house. By the time I returned to Savannah I still had 25 gallons oil that Im going to make biodiesel out here at Rons chicken shack. My prayers were indeed answered as Im here in Swainsboro where Id set out from back in august at the library writing this. Ive got some friends coming out from Savannah to learn biodiesel production this week. I took the benz to my mechanic this morning and got a reasonable quote on the repair of the axle. If you are interested in running on veg oil and need more info about how to do it, please get in touch. Thank you for reading my blog and I hope everyone has a pleasant holiday season with your friends and family. As always, Ill keep you in the loop of my journeys. I appreciate being able to share my experiences with people and hope its sheds some useful insight. Warm Regards, w/LV Dickie Ps Thanks again to Bill Whipple for helping me with going to get the benz, loaning me money, and partnering with me of the veg equipment and oil procurement.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 20:12:21 +0000