the skinny: refueling

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Hooray! Three weeks and ten pounds later we've pulled out of the quagmire that is Appalachia! It is great to get back on the road!

We collected a full 150 gallons of waste vegetable oil in Charleston, WV. It went really smoothly. I am pretty good at bridging the language barrier, and Flux can back the bus into some pretty tight places. We were able to get about fifty gallons from a sweet little Indian restaurant using our new oil pump/filtration system. It took about an hour and a half to get the fifty gallons, but with diesel at almost $5/gallon, it is totally worth smelling like samosas.

We hit the road the next day (after the cat decided to come back) and drove to Xinia Ohio. We wanted to go further, but since we got a late start we decided to stop, and it was good that we did! Let me tell you, in the Midwest when they say severe thunderstorms, they are not kidding. Within an hour it was raining sideways, thunder and lightning, 3/4 inch hail... Scared the hell out of me, and I insisted that we park right up next to this little gas station building under the awning. It stormed til about 4:30am and we moved the bus so they could open their business up in the morning.

Today we drove across Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois (the land of my forefathers)and ended up in Iowa at the welcome center, where I almost burned the bus down trying to make pasta on a sterno cookstove. Good news is we finally ate, and now it's time to settle in and get ready to collect more oil tomorrow. There is more severe weather headed our way tomorrow night and Monday, and we need to be full up with WVO by the time we leave Omaha into Lakotah Nation, where the pickins' will likely be slim!