I've finally got a full-time Internet connection in my truck, so I hope to be able to do some more writing. Supposedly I should be able to connect anywhere the Cingular GSM network works, so I'll let you know how it goes.

Meanwhile, I've finished training as a truck driver, and am managing to see a lot of the US. So far I've been in more than 32 states. It's a very interesting profession from that standpoint - if you like landscape, you would probably enjoy at least that aspect of trucking. I'm typically out driving for two to three weeks at a time.

The last time I was out, I discovered a major problem with running biodiesel in your car. Fortunately there's an easy workaround to the problem, but it sure was something that I hadn't thought of!

I got in from a trip and tried to start my truck. The temperature was right around freezing, so I was expecting that I might have some trouble because at that temperature biodiesel starts to gel. Sure enough, although it started right up, it only ran for five minutes. So I pulled the fuel filter to see what was going on. It was empty. But, the fuel was still liquid so I was somewhat puzzled. To make a long story short, I finally figured out that no fuel was coming from the tank. There were several holes in the rubber fuel line coming out of the bottom of the tank. At first I thought someone had vandalized my car and perhaps stolen the fuel, but on further inspection I found that the cuts were really teeth marks. Yes, bunnies had chewed through the hose and had gone on a biodiesel binge.

If you're a hitchhiker stuck on earth in the US for any length of time, and need to earn some money, you may want to consider becoming a trucker. Of course, US trucks ("18-wheelers", "semis", etc.) are mere specks of dust compared to intergalactic or even interplanetary freight transporters, but it's an interesting job which requires a minimum investment of time to learn. You see a lot of the country, meet a lot of interesting people on the road, and unlike space freight vehicles, you don't need a huge crew - you can do it by yourself or with one other person. The money's also a lot better than washing dishes. You can make $30K your first year, and two to three times that in a year or two.

Getting my CDL (Commercial Driver's License) set me back four weeks and $4,000. As a side note, I earned a little money doing a website for a rental property in Punta del Burro, Mexico (near Puerto Vallarta)...even though I didn't have much spare time. I'd like to mention that I used a cool PHP Open Source project for the photo galleries. It's called SPGM (for Simple Picture Gallery Manager), and it's on SourceForge here in case you ever need such a thing. Installation was simple on GoDaddy, I had only to copy the files to a directory and edit a few files to my liking. You can see the results if you click on the upper links near the bottom of the homepage.

Have you ever wondered where all the money that you pay for gas goes? This article from The Economist will give you some ideas.

Follow the money

One puzzle is that, according to data published by America's Treasury Department, OPEC members' holdings of American government securities fell from $67 billion in January this year to $54 billion in August. But Middle East purchases of American securities are probably being channelled through London. Mr Khan reckons that although the bulk of OPEC's surplus revenues has so far gone into dollar-denominated assets, those assets are increasingly held outside the United States. A big chunk is also going into hedge funds and offshore financial institutions, which are unregulated and so impossible to track.

Today I finally drove on my first batch of biodiesel made from wok juice. It was a big thrill for me, but probably not for anyone else. The final yield from our first batch was only two gallons. I think we can probably get another gallon or two out of the glop which is left over, but at least for today I'm happy that we got anything, and that it runs just fine in my old VW pickup. My daily commute is 42 miles, and my VW gets about 35 MPG on that drive (mostly freeway at 55 MPH), so I have a little less than two days' commute for the original effort.

I only have a few shots of what we did this first time since we were so nervous about making it. But, we did have fun. This first shot shows Sheik Yerbouti and Sheik En-Bay'kh proudly surveying the site of their new desert refinery (click on the photos to enlarge any of them).

(Also see part 1 and part 2.)

If you're watching the financial markets at all (and especially if you have US dollar investments), take a look at these articles. The first one is about how credit card delinquencies are at an all-time high in the US. This situation is blamed on the rising price of gas; not mentioned is that the minimum monthly credit card payment is going to double in October:

"As the tougher bankruptcy law approaches, it's feeding a 'perfect storm' of financial crisis as the credit card industry moves to impose higher minimum payments for card balances. Bank of America started the trend last year, and several other giants, including Discover, Citigroup and MBNA, have followed suit, raising monthly minimums from 2 or 2.5 percent of the balance to the 4 percent range.

Today I went out and got the rest of the stuff necessary for making biodiesel, which I plan on doing this weekend. I wasn't going to push it so hard, but after seeing the empty shelves where there used to be gas cans in several stores in Scottsdale, I decided that I might actually have no other option than to run my car on the homemade stuff - this due to hurricane Rita. I still did pretty well, and managed to dumpster dive for a couple of items.

The aquarium pump was the first item. I got it at Petsmart, with 25 feet of tygon tubing to make the bubbler, for less than $12. The next item I got was five gallons of methanol for $16.00 ($3.20 per gallon) from Speedway Fuels at 2300 W. Broadway. The fellow behind the counter there was also not optimistic about the future of fuel prices due to hurricane damage to the refineries. So then I looked up places where I could buy used polyethylene tanks. I bought a 55 gallon double-bunged drum for $10 at Valley Recycling on South 15th Avenue. I had to look through a lot of drums to find one that didn't have a lot of junk in the bottom. I also stopped at Apache Surplus on Apache near 7th avenue, and got a really nice 15 gallon polyethylene container for the WVO (Waste Vegetable Oil). It was also $10. I stoped by the car wash and got a 20 gallon polyethylene soap container to do the washing. It also has two threaded bungs. Then I went to Ace and spent $17 on all the PVC fittings and valves I need for this tank. That took a long time to figure out! Last, I picked up the WVO at Chop Wok. I had bought a yard of cheesecloth (69 cents) to strain the oil, but that turned out to be a messy process - I had made a funnel and a scoop out of two gallon milk jugs, and the cheesecloth wouldn't stay put. But, the oil (which was in a 55 gallon drum) had been sitting for so long that it was really clear. I could see absolutely no particulates in the oil. They also gave me an oil jug (which fits perfectly in the electric fry pan) for doing the reaction. Last, I stopped by the grocery store and picked up a can of Red Devil lye for $4.50.

I've been wondering all day if a tsunami is going to hit Arizona. Remember all those elephants that headed for the hills during the one in December 2004? If anyone had noticed, they would have followed the elephants, and they would have been safe. Well, while I was driving around getting my '82 Volkswagen truck checked for emissions, a squirrel ran across Scottsdale Road, headed for the McDowell mountains. Not significant, you say? Maybe. But in my decades of driving here, I've never seen a squirrel before in Scottsdale, let alone one intent on getting to high grond. Sure, there are plenty of bunnies, snakes, and even an occasional roadrunner. But no squirrels ever. So I thought something might be up.

Fortunately, nothing has happened so far, so let's get back to the more mundane subject of terrestrial human transportation. To get my VW truck registered in Maricopa county, I had to get it emission tested. I was a little worried when the Arizona Department of Motor Vehicles clerk told me about this, because this is a 1982 vehicle with 240,000 miles on it. So I went to the nearest test station. When I rolled the pickup into the stall and stopped with the front wheels on the dynamometer, the technician kept waving me forward. I yelled out "It's a front wheel drive pickup". That drew the attention of the other techs, and they all had to come over to look, including the manager. I guess they don't see many of these cars.

This is from Mother Earth News boards.

Dennis Weaver promoting Bio Diesel: Bio-diesel is fully biodegradable and is made from natural renewable resources. Bio-diesel smells as subtle as olive oil, is less toxic than table salt and as biodegradable as sugar. Bio-diesel is kinder to the environment as it eliminates the black smoke and fumes normally associated with diesel engines...

Connect to Bio-diesel Users in your area:
http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/eve/ubb.x?a=cfrm&s=447

One of the things we want to be able to do is make our own biodiesel fuel from waste vegetable oil. There are lots of resources available to make it in batches from used oil. You can get the oil from hamburger joints or Chinese restaurants. We also want to explore other possibilities, notably continuous processes or new processes.

The basic process of converting waste oil to biodiesel is called esterification:

Carboxylic acids react readily with alcohols in
the presence of catalytic amount of mineral acids to yield compounds called
esters.  The process is called Esterification:

The mechanism of the acid-catalyzed esterification
is as follows:

The carbonyl oxygen is protonized so that the carbon
can be more likely attacked by the relatively weaker alcohol nucleophile: