Wheels On Meals: The Grease Not Gas Snowboarder Magazine Tour

Dec 05 2006 / Los Angeles, CA
What happens when you load a bunch of snowboarders into an RV powered by vegetable oil and travel across country--The Grease Not Gas Tour 2006

“This had a deeper meaning than just a road trip. I knew I had to go. If we could promote something that is bigger than snowboarding and encourage people to think, then sh*t, I’m down for that.” Sean Genovese

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Last winter, thirty snowboarders enlisted for the Grease Not Gas tour and weaned themselves free of reliance on petroleum. Our addiction’s exit made way for broader enlightenment. It allowed us to see the whole world more clearly—no smoggy clouds of exhaust in our sight. We took filthy emissions, fuel payment, gasoline consumption, and comfortable conventional-life archetypes and shoved them up the crooked asses of all those who dare stifle growth and hope for future generations. This 12,000-mile mission brought us to some of the most amazing snowboard spots in the United States, as well as behind the scenes of some of the cleanest-frying restaurants. Any place that fries food could potentially power your vehicle, and by removing their waste oil, you’re saving them the trouble of paying people to come get it. That’s on top of the fact that you get up to 20% better gas mileage and horsepower, and the emissions are clean, as they’re actually reused by the plant life this fuel comes from. If using petroleum is like smoking cigarettes, we were educating everybody on how to plant trees as a substitute. Goodbye addiction, hello altruism.

After six years of honing his recycled vegetable oil fuel system, Grease Not Gas founder and lifelong snowboarder Mike Parziale, with the help of sponsors (Clif Bar, JDK, ThirtyTwo, Oakley, Etnies, Lib Technologies, Exit Real World, 686, and N) purchased a Renault Le Sharo Itasca (a French diesel RV). Being an editor at Snowboarder made it easy to see how if I teamed up with Mike with the intention to load the RV full of friends and friends of friends for a cross-country shredding expedition, we might be able to pull this trip off. With a plan in place, Mike used Rudolf Diesel’s compression ignition engine, and re-worked the arteries of this RV to function flawlessly on Frialator gunk from fast food restarants. He installed a seventy-gallon tank for the oil in the back of the RV, which could take us over 1000 miles when filled to capacity. The tank was heated in order to keep the oil less viscous (thinner), therefore firing a finer mist through the injector nozzles—causing no need to alter anything on the motor itself. Upon completion, the RV was named Soy George. Soy was much happier after the operation: just one whiff of his farts, and you immediately knew that he was a scavenging vegetarian.

THE ADVENTURE BEGINS
Our adventure began in Snoqualmie, Washington, at the Holy Oly Revival contest. As a reward for his quarterpiping skills, Ice Coast export and grease compatriot Luke Mathison walked away with a winged trophy and 559 cans of beer. While we were warming up Soy George in the parking lot, the French fry-like aroma of the exhaust was wafting under the nostrils of passersby. They would cast an odd glance, and maybe even pause for a confirmation from their noses. Not only is it pungent at a standstill, but if you’re ever behind a veggie vehicle on the road, your nose will lead you right up to the bumper.

After riding the snow-socked Stevens Pass the next day, we made our way down to Portland. For the first leg, our crew was Luke Mathison, Mike Yoshida, Scott Stevens, Jesse Burtner, Sean Genovese, and Jeff Keenan. There were a few overall adjustments to be made on Soy George, and a rack to be welded and mounted—each of which took a bit longer than anticipated. All the guys eagerly put their hands together to have Soy up and running as quickly as possible, which allowed each person more insight into the possibility of driving on waste oil.

Grease Not Gas  Who invented the vegetable oil run car?  Who thought this crazy trip up?  What was this all about anyway?  Click here for the details>

Unfortunately, our traveling circus encountered a snag near the Oregon border involving a broken starter. It actually remained unfixed for the rest of the trip. As you might guess, without said part, the vehicle would not—you got it—start. For anyone wondering if the starter has anything to do with the vegetable oil tank in the back of the RV, it doesn’t. (That would be like blaming your dog’s farts on torn shoelaces.) Over the years, doubters and cynics were quick to let their ignorance step to the plate and crap out something like, “Ooooh, busted headlight, huh? Well, that’s what you get for running on that pussy vegetable oil junk. Get a Hummer and move out of San Francisco!” Having isolated our problem, we put our noggins together, and before you could even say “Soy George,” we were bob-sled pushing that greasy bastard through intersections, looking for any sign of a hill to bump-start it. When Mike finally popped the clutch, Soy George reared and bucked with all the sights and sounds of an angry, metallic, epileptic rodeo bull with a stack of fat-ass clowns on his back. But alas, he was running!

HELLO CALI
Mammoth was the second of our many snowy stops, but visibility was so poor that we weren’t able to safely drop any of the 200-foot cliffs that everyone was hoping for. Thankfully, Sara Phillips—one of our two new additions (the other being the XXXXXXL diesel aficionado Max Weinberger)—had a better idea. She led us to a powder-drifted zone riddled with dilapidated shacks and miscellaneous garbage that provided two days of creative shredding. Jesse Burtner and Sean Genovese, the brain-parents behind the Think Thank movies, stacked up a couple of shots for this year’s release, Patchwork Patterns. But not everyone was getting to shred this quirky little zone. Mike Parziale spent those two days on his back in the snow under Soy George, laboriously working on the starter problem. In the end, Mike held the remedy in his wallet—for anyone planning on taking a road trip, vegetable or petroleum-fueled, always make sure you have a AAA card. Knowing we could bump-start the rig, we called AAA, had it towed up to an incline, and set it loose. Sure enough, with a drop into second gear and a magical blast of fry-scented cloud, we were back on track.  

With spots at Donner—every cannibal’s favorite pass—shredded, Soy’s course was set eastward. We rotated our crew in Reno and swapped out Jesse, Sean, Jeff, and Mike Yoshida, and pulled aboard German jibber Silvia Mittermuller and fiery auteur Amber Stackhouse. We cruised the “Biggest [Piece of Crap] Little City in the World” searching for Soy George’s breakfast with the help of Silli’s able-nosed sense of direction, as she knew the exact location of a few choice Chinese joints. The girls were given a hands-on crash course at the first stop when they grabbed some pails and began scooping for the veggie gold. They got grimy in the grease traps and didn’t mind one bit, as Silvia said, “I never thought a getting-fuel process could be that exciting, interesting, different, or weird!” They learned how it all worked with a couple of buckets, and how to make as little mess as possible. We were using one smaller one to scoop directly from the waste-oil barrel and dump into the bigger bucket, which was then poured into the sock filters on the back of Soy George. The sock filters caught particles in the oil before it finally made it into the main tank. Even though it may have been clean, the oil still had debris that would disturb the final injection from the fuel pump and might have made the vehicle run erratically. The bottom line is, the cleaner the grease is before it makes it into the fuel lines, the better your vehicle will run. Another misconception people have is that it’s dangerous having so much fuel in the back of your vehicle, thinking that if you were rear-ended, it would explode. Vegetable oil is nearly incombustible, though; it takes an extremely high temperature for it to ignite. You could probably back the RV into a furnace and be perfectly fine. Hot, but fine. So, it gets an A++ for safety!


Follow the crew on to middle America by clicking here>