On the hunt for RVO

On Friday morning the NOLS bus and its crew bid farewell to Lander and began the 1,231 mile journey to Chicago. We listened to copious amounts of the Grateful Dead and Rolling Stones. We debated the cultural implications of chocolate’s powerful hold on the human psyche. We discovered that our ability to name every U.S. president in order goes to pieces after Alexander Hamilton and recovers itself somewhere around Herbert Hoover. And most importantly, we took every opportunity to practice the fine art of greasing.

I will never look at a Chinese restaurant the same way again. In fact, I may have a hard time passing any eatery without trying to spot their grease trap and wondering whether they toss bacon fat away with their vegetable oil. And with the memory of $4.50 gasoline still fresh in people’s minds, I will never lose my sense of amazement that it’s possible to pull up to a restaurant, pour someone else’s slimy, sticky, smelly waste product into my fuel tank, and drive away. The entire process is dirty, time consuming, exhausting and completely awesome.

As someone who grew up in a family that did its best to recycle and compost, ride bikes or walk whenever possible and all the other everyday conservation techniques, it’s cool to participate in an effort at sustainability that is definitely out of the ordinary. At our very first grease stop, the Hoot & Howl in Rawlins, Wyoming,
the manager and most of the kitchen staff came outside to learn about
what we were doing. They thought it was just about the coolest thing
they had ever seen, and it kind of made me feel like a rock star. Which
is not an easy way to feel in a baggy, grease-stained orange jumpsuit.

I still have a lot to learn, and fortunately, Matthew is a great teacher who has done his best to make the entire process comprehensible to my mechanically-challenged brain. There’s a whole crazy cool world of alternative fuels out there, and while recycled veggie oil will never be able to power all the vehicles in the world, or even most of them, it should get the NOLS bus everywhere it needs to go.

More adventures to come!

Christi