Friesen Fritter Fired Fossil Fuel Free
Blog Across
America
Time Log:
May 26
12:15 PST Departed
San Francisco
5:15 PST Arrived
Reno
6:00 p.m. PST Departed Reno
May 27
3:00 a.m. MST. Arrived Salt Lake
City 750 miles (end of day
one)
6:00 MST Departed
Salt Lake City
12:30 MST Arrived Cheyenne,
WY
May 28
2:00 a.m. CST Arrived Coralville, IA
1940 miles (end of day two)
6:00 a.m. CST Deaprted Coralville, IA
12:00 EST Arrived Elkhart, IN
(Belmont Mennonite Church)
1:15 EST Departed
Elkhart
4:30 EST Arrived Hudson, Ohio
7:00 EST Departed Eastern Ohio
(exit 12) for final run to the coast.....
May 29
3:00 EST Arrival Rehoboth Beach,
Delaware. 2987 miles (end of day three)
6:00 EST Arrival back in
D.C. time to sleep.... (real end of day 'three')
6:01 EST Sleep!
Fuel Consumption:
Diesel:
~ 1.5 gallon after 2987 miles = 1991
mpg (the
diesel used is to start up when the engine is cold, and to cool off the
injection pump when the veggie oil runs too hot!)
Used Fritter Oil
72 gallons
after 2987
miles = 41.2 mpg
Other Stats:
--infinite cups of coffee and cups of ice consumed. Dozens and dozens
of CD's played, sometimes multiple times late at night when the driver
was too numb to change CD's
--Only one full meal bought - supper our first evening in Reno. After
that it was the hospitality of many Mennonites spread throughout the
land!
--Most expensive part of the trip: $30 of tolls through Indiana, Ohio,
and Pennsylvania (I guess we didn't pay any road use tax in diesel
taxes, so fair enough).
--Total cost of trip - about $50 (Ken's second cheapest trip across
country, the cheapest being a $18 hitchhiking trip across in the mid
1980s)
-- Total hours door - to - door (Fresno, Ca to San Francisco to
Rehoboth Beach, Delaware to Washington,
D.C.) 66 hours
-- Total hours of sleep. Not nearly enough!
DAY 1, Part 1
May 26, 12:15 pm
Depart from Golden Gate Bridge
We're off! Success!
We drove up from Fresno to San
Francisco with no problems, got there just before 12:00 noon.
We've got 50 gallons of oil in the trunk and another 30 in the back
seat. That leaves enough room for a duffel bag of clothes, two laptops,
lots of junk food, and a few pieces of fruit. At least we made it up
here!
Filling Up with Veggie Oil for the trip out to Tahoe and beyond. We
expect to get about 42-45 mpg of used veggie oil, the same as on diesel.
We were met by
several members of the San Francisco Mennonite Church. Thanks for
coming out to see us off! A Golden bridge and golden oil (well kind of
golden) to get us on our way.
Travel from San
Francisco out through Sacramento was ... well ... slow. But it was nice
to go out over the Golden Gate bridge in great weather. Seems like
everyone is wanting to get out to Reno or Lake Tahoe (or perhaps
Rehoboth Beach?) on I80. Saw a sign that said 3048 miles to Ocean City,
MD. So we've got a few miles left to go....The Escalades are passing us
but we're laughing all the way to the gas pump....
DAY 1 - Part 2
May 26 San Francisco to Salt Lake City
757 miles down! The trip so far has been quite uneventful, all things
considered. We 'did' Reno in 45 minutes, mainly looking for a Starbucks
to upload our file and pictures. The car has (surprisingly?) been quite
troublefree. The only problem has been the oil temperature has
fluctuated more than expected. We traced it to a slightly crimped hose,
and now the problem is the oil is sometimes too hot (not a bad problem
to have when the whole goal is to get the oil hot enough). The routine
has been to drive about 3 hours, stop at a rest area, put in 5 gallons
of used vegetable oil, rearrange the car so that we have more room
inside, and take off again. A few stops along the way for coffee and
ice. We got in to SLC about an hour later than expected so now it is
3:20 and we need to leave at 4:00 for our Today show interview. So much
for sleep. .
Well, here's proof a veggie car can climb over the Sierras, at 70 mph.
We've made it out of the golden state on golden fuel...
Now if we had some more time, perhaps we'd actually stay and enjoy
Reno. But thankfully all we need is a Starbucks to upload the last
pictures and off we go.
Here's what we saw through most of Nevada, at least during daylight
hours. Pretty fun, eh? The gauge in the corner is the oil
temperature gauge, reading 160 (the 1's light is missing because the
camera caught it in between cycles). The temp was low at that point,
because the guy who installed the system didn't notice a small kink in
the line. It's hard to find good help around here. Now that I traced
the problem the temp is reading 200-210 - a fine temp to travel on
vegetable oil.
DAY 2, Part 1: May 27 Salt Lake City to Cheyenne,
Wyoming
An
eventful morning.
We arrived in Salt Lake City a bit late, so the thought of getting some
shut eye was not really an option. But we did get a motel room
for an hour, thanks to Dave Worth of MCC who showed up a couple of
hours before us in Salt Lake. The purpose of our stop was a live
interview on the today show. We went out to the pre-arranged gas
station location (ironies abound) and met the camera crew. As they set
up we tried to look dignified and less bleary eyed then our serious
lack of sleep would betray. Not much was scripted, except the idea of
showing how the car works. Since we've never seen Campbell Brown (?)
(we
were holding out for Katie but they refused) we just stared into the
camera and tried to look interested. Now that that is done we feel much
more able to have a serious vehicle breakdown without too much pressure
on us.
Here's the Today Show clip:
Here's what we saw in Wyoming for 300 miles (well, Steve saw a cop too,
but that story can be told later)
fossil fuel free energy is everywhere!
In windy Wyoming even filling up with veggie oil can be a challenge.
But a towel as a makeshift windbreak makes it possible to fill up in
40 mph winds. We made it to Cheyenne basically on schedule - now we're
1100 miles from home and 1900 miles to go!
DAY 2, Part 2
May 27 Cheyenne to Coralville, Ia
A very smooth,
uneventful and tiring trip.
We totalled almost 1200 miles today. The car seems to be finding its
stride, enjoyig the veggie oil to its injector pumps content. A very
windy day, battling crosswinds all the way through Nebraska.
Here's our competition to the fritter oil. Pumping, pumping, pumping...
until they all run dry.....
The best meal of the trip - rice and curry at the rest
stop near Kearney, Nebraska, thanks to the wonderful generousity of
David and Lorna Wiebe. Oh, that chicken curry was fabulous!
And one of our favorite 'refueling' places to keep us
awake over the endless miles. This guy was all thumbs up for our fossil
fuel free trip across America.
Ah, the joys of
refueling using veggie oil. Sure, you make a bit of a mess, but there
are no 'connections' to the pump - either in the fossil fuel or the $$$
going down into the tank.
Now that we are into Iowa, there is finally enough room in the trunk to
actually put the spare tire into the trunk, instead of having it in the
back seat where it has been for the past two days!
DAY 3
May 28: Coralville,
Iowa to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware!
A very welcoming Wiebe reception at 2:00 a.m. in Coralville, Iowa.
Thanks, Paul, for getting up to show us in and to Paul and Donna
Bethfor getting up at an ridiculous hour on a Sunday morning to make us
some breakfast and see us off.
12:00 noon Elkhart, Indiana. A
wonderful reception by the folks at Belmont Mennonite Church announced
our arrival in Elkhart. We couldn't believe it. We're hardly
celebraties, but were treated as such. It was great to see Mennonites
interested in environmental issues and showing their support for
alternatives. There was another SVO (straight veggie oil) VW there,
using a great Ellsbet one-tank system. The local Fox TV show was also
there, but it was the greatest to see 'regular' Mennonites come out to
support this cause. Sorry, we didn't take any pictures!!
4:30 p.m. Hudson, Ohio. A couple of
hours later and we pulled off the Ohio Turnpike in Hudson, Ohio and
were again welcomed by a great group of Mennonites. Thanks to
Cathi Sinsabaugh the event was pulled off in a great manner, in
spite of being 80 miles from the nearest Mennonite Church.
8:00 p.m. somewhere in Pennsylvania. The suns sets on our final day's
drive. 
May 29 3:00 a.m. We made it! So, I guess we
look a bit tired, don't we. Oh well, there's always time to sleep
later. Many thanks to Dave Worth and Brenda Wagner from MCC for coming
down to Rehoboth Beach to take the official arrival pictures! You're as
crazy as us!
The three hour trip back from the beach to Washington, D.C. Sleep,
joyous sleep!
THE END!!
Background
As a
fundraising effort for Mennonite Central
Committee, Steve Friesen and Ken Martens Friesen plan to use the
leftover
vegetable oil from the fritter booth at the MCC West Coast sale to
power a Volkswagen Jetta TDI across the United States on Memorial Day
weekend, May 26-29.
They will start from the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco and
hope to arrive about 60 hours later at the Atlantic Ocean beachside
town of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
Perhaps you are asking what this
"fritter fired" car is about. Using
a
relatively simple conversion, diesel cars can run on used deep-fry oil
from any Chinese or Vietnamese restaurant, or McDonalds french frier.
The
result is an
engine that uses only
recycled, renewable fuel, and runs cleaner and more efficiently than
one using fossil-fuel (and smells like whatever was cooked in the
oil!).
Perhaps you are asking why we are
doing this?! Well, our families think
it is because we are crazy. But it also comes down to demonstrating
alternatives to our current addiction to fossil fuels. Ken is in the
process of converting several VW Jetta TDIs (diesels) to run on used
vegetable oil. Since he is doing this, he thought it would be good to
promote the fact that it is indeed possible to drive an ordinary car
without using fossil fuels, including driving across
North America.
At the MCC West Coast
Sale on
April 8, we collected 40
gallons of used vegetable oil. We will supplement this with about
30 gallons of
used soybean oil from a Japanese restaurant. The total of 70 gallons
should be enough to power the Jetta the 2950 miles we are expecting to
drive.
You can join in
this effort by donating either a fixed amount or a per-mile pledge for
their record-setting fritter-fired fossil-fuel free drive across
America! Our goal is to raise $5/mile in pledges and contributions
(total of $15,000), minus the cost of the fuel ($0), for a total
contribution to MCC of $15,000.
We currently
have cash and pledges of about $6800. Thanks for the
generosity! We're hoping to hear from many people interested in
supporting the need for alternative energy sources and helping
people in need around the world. The money raised
will be
used by MCC for environmental projects, including a
forestry project in Cambodia.
If
you want to donate money to this cause, you can:
1. Donate the money online
directly at the MCC Fritter Car web site at http://www.mcc.org/frittercar
2.
Pledge a per mile
amount. Email your pledge amount to
ken.friesen@sbcglobal.net
(a 1 cent/mile pledge is equal to $30). We're taking pledges until June 1.
3. Mail in a contribution. Mail a
check to:
West Coast Mennonite Central Committee
1010 G Street
Reedley CA 93654
Include a note that you are
contributing to the “fritter-car drive across America.”
For a clip from local news Channel 24 on the FritterCar, click here.
For more information on Mennonite
Central
Committee, click here.
For a good story about the potential future
of bio-fuels, click here.
