Semicolin's Blog

You gotta rant once in a while. It's been a while. Two very unrelated topics, but one solution: Lighten up folks!

Rant 1: Driver ticketed for using biofuel.
Rant 2: D.C. Judge Wants $65 Million for Lost Pants

Read more...

Winter hit the southwest unexpectedly quick and hard (well, hard for here at least). And I realize now that I should've prepared by stocking up on veggie oil.

I just returned from Zion National Park and my first bigwall climb. Attempts to collect grease in Socorro were foiled by empty barrels. So, I left Socorro with enough oil to almost get to Flagstaff. After spending a night in recently snowed-over Flag, we found a Chinese restaurant with decent quality oil, but collecting was almost foiled again by the highly viscous gunk that the cold oil formed and my pump wouldn't suck. I got around this by scooping it into a 5 gallon tub & pouring it into the dirty tank - doing this 10 times filled the dirty side of my Greasel Nomad tank. This fill-up tooks us to Zion and half-way back to Albuquerque on the return trip.

With my hands greased-up and oil stains soaking through my over-shirt onto my "clean" cloths, I asked myself, "Is this worth it?"

We travelled approximately 1,300 miles and used one tank of petrol-diesel. This works out to about 37 miles per petrol-diesel gallon (1,300 miles/35 gallons). Far below my 107mpg average on my summer roadtrip. We must've combusted a little over 50 gallons of veggie oil. Economically, my Honda coulda gotten 38-40 miles per gallon and unleaded is currently about 18% cheaper than diesel (makes no sense to me since diesel's a cruder, less processed form of petroleum as far as I understand). So, no winner there. BUT, we would've been hard pressed to fit 2 people with camping & aid climbing gear in the Hawaii 5-O Honda. Also, 50 gallons of veggie oil burned was 50 gallons worth of fossil carbon not entering the air along with the associated lower emissions of veggie oil (see roadtrip link above for info).

While just staying home would be the best answer (zero emissions, zero gallons of oil to collect), I know I'd get fidgety and start to twitch when I think about snow in the mountains. So, as long as I can keep up oil collection through the winter at this level, the answer to my own question is still a loud "YES." We'll see what winter has in store for me & Chip.

While on my 2006 road trip, I visited the Springers in the small but QUALITY town Council, ID. Their daughter Misty works for the Adams County Record. She was duly impressed by Chip, the French Fried Ford, and wrote an article which made the front page! Personally, I think think this was the most exciting thing to hit their front page since the first printing in 1908. wink. smile.

The pic came out real dark, but it's me pouring veggie oil from a 5-gal. cubbie into the tank in the back of my truck.

Thanks, Misty!

Finally've had time to update the dotphoto site. Winter has finally come and skiing takes up most of my free time. WooHoo! Problem has been, though, to find snow its a DRIVE. Mostly been weekend warrioring up in CO. Also bought ice tools in the Fall of '05, so have been testing them out. New photo albums are of a Thanksgiving winter ski ascent/descent of Mt. Quandary, a couple ice climbing trips, a backcountry ski trip to a hut near Aspen (slideshow), and some miscellaneous pics from this Winter including my new Veggie-oil powered truck! Click on the links above for photo albums and slideshows. Enjoy!
(photo of Willie by Karla).

2007-05-30 Update:
Added a Video!