The CAR

Dominic's car is such a piece of work that it deserves its own separate post. The biking is only just beginning tomorrow anyway, so rather than obsessing with routes, mileage, and sore legs, the focus of the trip so far has been the car. Here is a picture of it, with Dominic striking a goofily proud pose:

Running a car on veggie oil is, theoretically speaking, quite simple. There are no conversions necessary, just dump some grease right in the tank and go. In fact, as Dominic likes to point out, the first diesel engines were designed to run on peanut oil. So it's really not a stretch.

However, running a car off veggie oil in real life turns out to be much more complicated. We won't go into all of the complications here, but here are some things to think about:

Finding a source (fast food restaurants are good for something!)
Filtering the grease (fast food = nasty food particulates)
Keeping it warm (most veggie oil congeals below 40 degrees)

Most people find a good source nearby and then filter the oil by letting it settle for several days at home. Obviously, this is not an option when you are driving cross country. So Dominic and Gretta rigged up a mobile filtering system:
Pump oil out of the tank using a bilge pump (for clearing water out of boats)
Drain oil through t-shirts into 5-gallon buckets
Add to tank

You can barely see the pump on the ground and the t-shirts and buckets quite clearly in the first photo below.

This photo is of Dominic and Gretta adding the filtered grease to the auxiliary tank Dominic built on top of his car.



So to go back to the timeline, we left my sister in Bethel, Connecticut at 8 in the evening on Wednesday. A google maps search for the nearest Arby's eventually landed us at the mall in Waterbury, CT. No Arby's there, from what we could tell, but after several failed attempts to find oil, we struck gold at the Olive Garden. The pictures above are from that mall.

Many adventures and setbacks were to come, as we spent the next 34 hours straight driving to Glendale, Nova Scotia. After this harrowing and sleepless journey, we were greeted with open arms and soft beds--at 5 in the morning, mind you--from Frank and Dolores, a lovely couple who has quickly found their way into our hearts. Here is a picture of our car--bikes on top and veggie oil buckets in the back--parked in front of our their house.



We spent today (Friday) prepping our bikes and hanging out with our lovely new friends.



Tomorrow we will head out on our bicycles and meet Frank and Dolores in Iona, roughly 80-100 km away, for a Ceilidh (pronounced KAY-lee or KAY-leed)--a Cape Breton traditional fiddling concert. From there, we are thinking we'll take the Cabot Trail up around the northern tip of Nova Scotia before taking the ferry to Newfoundland. But anything could happen. Nothing that far in the future is certain. What we do know right now though, 12:20 am Nova Scotia time, is that our new friends, who are quite the night owls, are calling us in for a late-night game of cards. So long!