Sunday Go-to-Meetin'

Sunday, July 28, 2002

This morning, nothing tried to get into my tent, no frightening smells assaulted my nose. This could actually turn out to be a good day...

As usual, some breakfast, tea, dental hygiene and back to work on the Pusher, the final "push" to get it running again.

Over the course of the last three days, I'd begun to become the event celebrity. Folks would come by every few hours to see what progress had been accomplished on the engine, exchange a few pleasantries, and move along to the next lecture or seminar. As the engine began to have a finished appearance, excitement began to grow, and several people wanted to know when the "big event" would take place, the starting of the engine. I told each of them that I didn't really need or want a big crowd around when I tried starting it, mostly because if it didn't work, they weren't going to enjoy my reaction.

The wife of one of the exhibitors whom I am familiar with asked if I needed anything from the store, and so I was able to get a replacement tube for the tire on my bicycle. Now I have two brand-new tubes, let's hope that's enough for the rest of the weekend!

The last of the parts were in place, I had reconnected all of the removed wiring and hoses, and put the battery on solar charge using a small panel that Darren had bought at the silent auction. It was time to fire it up. Before this could be done, the injector lines needed to be bled, which is a pretty straight forward procedure. This time, however, the injection pump would not draw any fuel up out of the tank. This was most puzzling, and I brushed it off to the fuel lines draining back into the tank from being disconnected for the last three days. The owner of one of the cars running on straight vegetable oil had purchased a small, battery-operated pump, and brought it over so we could prime the injection pump with Biodiesel pumped from a styrofoam drinking cup. Once the pump had a prime, it pulled fuel from the tank, the injectors bled and it was time to try actually starting the engine.

Oh, except one small oversight. I didn't have any antifreeze for the cooling system. Rode my now newly retubed bike back to the NAPA store, hoping to find them open. They were, and I bought a gallon of antifreeze, stopping by the grocery store on the way back for two gallons of distilled water. Filled the coolant reservoir with a 50/50 mix of antifreeze and the distilled H²0.

Now the moment of truth. There was no marching band, no jugglers, no midgets doing summersaults, no elephants balancing on giant balls, no fanfare. The engine just started and ran like it had just been shut off a few minutes beforehand. Oh, no champagne, either...

By this time, it was 3 PM or so. After cleaning up my tools, I began taking the rest of my outdoor workshop apart. There was a considerable amount of stuff to find places for, debris and clutter to dispose of, nasty used motor oil to pour back into the containers the new oil came out of, and someone had left two containers of reacted Biodiesel from Josh Tickell's demonstration on my table. What am I going to do with that?

The rest of the Solwest event was beginning to pack up, Darren came by for his pop-up tent, and Joe Schwartz stopped by to take some digital photos for an upcoming Home Power magazine article.

Now it was time to take a test drive to see if everything still worked as it should. I approached Richard Perez to see if he wanted to accompany me, but he was busy knocking down the Home Power booth and organizing the truck for the trip back to Agate Flat. I pretty much just walked up the the nearest person I could find and asked if she wanted to go for a drive. "Sure, why not" was the reply, so we set off to the south, me and a prefect stranger who was intrigued enough by the offer to travel a short distance with someone she never met before.

The operation of the Pusher was normal by all accounts, and when I checked the engine in Canyon City a few miles up the road, everything looked fine.

Arriving back at SolWest, I ran into Michael Welch of HP, and asked if he wanted to accompany me on a longer, high speed run in the car. He did, and we set off to the west, accelerating to 60 MPH once outside the John Day city limits. Again, the Pusher ran fine and no cooling system problems were noted. We turned around at the entrance to the landfill, and jetted back into town.

Once back, I ran into Victor, who was just getting ready to leave. The car he was traveling in had had some aerodynamic enhancements added in the form of a wedge-shaped nose piece that cut wind resistance considerably. He claimed that fuel mileage was much higher with this addition. Yet another example of home-brew innovation, although the resemblance to Darth Vader is kind of spooky.

Victor's companion had entered in the Electrathon race. That's the race car on the trailer.

Things at the fairgrounds were winding down pretty fast. One exhibit that I had been hearing a lot about was the solar telescope, which allowed one to look directly at the sun through a very sophisticated and expensive filter device. I managed to get over to the 'scope before it was taken down and was treated to an astounding view of the sun, with huge arcs of plasma shooting a great distance from the body of the star. Sunspots were clearly visible, and if viewed for a length of time, both the spots and the flares could be seen to be in motion. The filter that made this direct observation of the sun possible was powered (naturally) by photovoltaic panels, producing electricity from the very same sunlight that I was observing.

Back at the tent, I spent some time stowing excess gear, putting away tools and generally packing up as much stuff that wouldn't be needed into the car as I could. This evening, I've been invited to join the HP crew for a small dinner party at their motel room, with tortillas and tacos cooked up by Daniel.

I was planning on plugging the car in to charge at the outlets in the center of the fairgrounds, so I drove the EV over to the motel, paring at the base of the stairs going up to the room. Inside, all of the familiar faces were in attendance, some helping to prepare the meal be chopping onions, grating cheese or handing out brews. A fine meal was soon served up buffet-style, and once again the balcony outside the room was transformed into a party deck.

After a suitable number of tall tales were told, and old times remembered, folks began to depart, some for their motel rooms or tents, and others to seek out some night life. Windy Dankoff was my passenger on the way back to the Orchard campground, where he joined the celebrants around an orange highway cone with a flashlight under it in Margaritaville (their own version of a safe-n-sane campfire in this time of extreme fire danger), playing his flute with several other musicians.

Sooner than not, I stole away to make my bed and get some sleep after plugging the car in to charge at an outlet in the center of the fairgrounds.