Blog

Timing

Amusingly, just days after posting about my Dad and the lawnmower, today he put it out on the front lawn for free. It died while he was cutting the grass, and combined with the other problems it had been giving him, stopped being worth it. I guess there’s always a line to draw.

Bit by bit

Slowly getting things done. Yesterday we finished deconstructing the majority of the interior of the bus. All that is left are the captain’s chairs and the veggie system. I wrote a post about it on Anne Marie’s very own website.

Same can be said for the Landshark reboot. I have a bit of a mental block keeping me from just sitting down and hammering out as much as I possibly can in an evening, so I just do bits and bits as I can, and it’s slowly coming together. It’s scary to be embarking on a risky business venture when I’m right on the verge of taking control of my life. I have considerable savings built up, and I’m ready to make my bus a home. If I can make myself a job at the same time, all the better.

Landshark

Had a meeting tonight for the new incarnation of Landshark. We’ve been having weekly meetings for a while now, and we’re really building up steam. Still some big hurdles in our way, but we’re figuring it all out, and it feels like it is going to really take off. Exciting times.

Looking ahead

I’m trying to figure out a few things before winter hits. I’m not sure if I just wasn’t ready for it or if the air got cooler quicker this fall, but I feel like I’m running out of project-weather. There have been a lot of days recently that were too cool or rainy when we would have otherwise worked but didn’t. Today Nishi and I got a lot of oil strained and buckets washed. I won’t be able to keep straining and storing oil like I do now when winter comes, so I need to be ready. Last winter I filled a 55 gallon drum, and I think I’m going to do that same strategy this year. I may buy an additional drum to be safe. As a backup, I have 12 five gallon buckets that can be filled, holding about three months worth of oil. The New England Emporium only produces about 5 gallons a week in waste oil, and I need to be on top of servicing them or they’ll get someone else to do it. I’ve been that someone else too often in my day job.

Whenever I question the amount of work I put into veggie, I do a little math in my head to make me feel better. It takes me about three hours to strain 150 gallons of oil. It will still need to be run though a centrifuge, and will take approximately another six hours. Add another hour for picking up the oil from the restaurant (might be overshooting that a bit, but it makes for easier math). That means I’m rendering approximately 15 gallons of waste cooking oil into usable fuel each hour. Each gallon of waste cooking oil offsets one gallon of petroleum diesel, which is currently $4.20somethingish at the pump. Working one hour on veggie saves me $60ish dollars in fuel. I don’t make $60 an hour, so I think it’s a pretty good deal.

This math didn’t work so well on the bus trip. Not only did we not have a reliable filtering time, but we didn’t have a steady supply of oil. That made a huge difference. Finding oil was a big process, and took entire days. I think we figured out once that if we had each worked somewhere at minimum wage for the time we spent looking for oil, we could have just paid for diesel.

Anyway, after today, I’m just about ready for winter.