Road Trip!

As some of you know, I had my annual charity bike ride in Callaway Gardens. It's a 2 hour drive so I figured what better way to break in the Merzola than a road trip!

So Thursday evening, I spent a few hours pouring oil through my filter. I don't have a complete setup for filtering just yet, so I used a slightly more time consuming method called gravity. Basically, I pour the oil from my 4.5 gallon collection jugs through a 5 micron bag filter and let it drain into a bucket. Once it drained, I would pour it from the bucket into my veggie tank. The only hard part of this process is keeping the dog from licking the oil...I'm guessing it tastes like fried chicken or something similar.

Yes, this was my first attempt at filtering WVO, or waste vegetable oil. It was fairly easy, but a little time consuming with my current setup. But I suppose 2 hours of effort and a little bit of mess is worth $75 (15 gallons @ almost $5/gallon).

With a full veggie tank, we did a preliminary run to the Braves game that night. It ran as expected...like butter...melted butter.

Friday after work, we loaded up the Merzola with bikes and camping gear and headed south. Don't get me wrong...I think the Merzola looks cool by itself, but when you throw a couple bikes on the roof rack, it really looks cool. And even with the veggie tank in the back, there is still tons of room for gear. We cruised all the way down on veggie oil...and back.

I suppose it's a testament to it being a classic car that everyone wants to come up and talk to you about it. And that's even before they find out it's a veggie wagon. It's kind of like seeing an old friend that you haven't seen in a long time. The Merzola definitely ignites a feeling of nostalgia. People my age remember riding around in these things as kids...well some people do. We never had one...in fact, in 1984, this car was sold for $36,500! That's a lot of dough in 1984. Definitely too much for my folks.

When we got back to Atlanta on Sunday, it felt like the world was ending. Most gas stations were out of fuel and the ones that had it were charging an arm-and-a-leg and had dozens of cars waiting to fill up. Oh my gosh! There may be a fuel shortage so let's all run out and fill up everything we can so we actually create a fuel shortage. Personally, I hope Atlanta completely runs out of gas. There will probably still be diesel fuel available and tons of veggie oil. That sure would make for a nice commute!

So the grand total for the weekend of driving...270 miles on veggie oil. Free veggie oil, that is. A savings of about $60 (22mpg @ $5/gallon). Multiply that out over the course of a year and that's a significant savings.