Update, Nov. 6: Escape from Berkeley '09!

Well it's been almost a month since our great adventure, and we've got the word that "Escape from Berkeley: By any non-petroleum means necessary" is a go for next year!

Since the last race, ideas are still popping into our heads on how to make a "Serious" contender. Jack McCornak's MAX and the Green Team Dodge really got us inspired.

So we've whittled down the options until finally we reached our last. . .

We've deduced, that the only way to win this rally is Victory by Sheer NUMBERS!

Yes that's right. If one Merc won't beat 'em, three will! Using the best ideas of all the previous contenders, we will have an alternative fuel smorgasbord! "The Merc" will stay as he is, running on waste vegetable oil. Another car will feature a gasifier-fueled engine. And finally, another car will sport a high performance steam engine!

For back-up, all the cars will feature bicycle pedals connected to the drive shaft, and tether points on each car if tieing them together is necessary.













Heh. Well of course I'm not serious about that, but we are figuring out ways to make the "Merc" a better contender. Heated fuel lines are at the top of the list.

I'll keep you updated on the going-ons here in the shop. I think the smell of veggie-oil will probably follow me to my grave.


P.S.

We still have some of the oil donated to us by fellow homeschool groups for the race (thanks again!), and we hadn't filtered some of it yet.

Well we found it that it was good that we waited until now to use it...
















Fish scales and shrimp. Yummm....

Tuesday, Oct. 14: The Send-off.

We got a call in the morning from Jake. He said they were all meeting at the Sahara lobby at 0900. Unfortunately, he called 15 minutes before 0900, so we didn't have time to get the Merc running and get him down there. Before we left, dad, out of interest, tried to start the Merc, but the engine barely turned once. Looks like the battery is pretty much dead. So we hopped into the chase vehicle and took off to the Sahara.





As usual, we got there late. The Green Team and many of the event staff had already taken off. But Jake and a few others still remained, along with Kristie's Flyer and MAX.

And, since we missed the awards ceremony the previous night, Jake presented us our awards!

Our awards were:

"Worst idea actually made to kind of work" - "An award for an engineering solution to a problem not wisely chosen, but made to somewhat work anyway. Bestow on the team who was not tempted by more simple, direct and elegant solutions, and in their stead pursued the more esoteric, vaguely evocative or just tragically heroic and difficult solutions to a problem much more simply solved by other means."

And:

"Exceptional Community Building" - "The Judges also awarded the HOMESCHOOL HEROS an award for EXCEPTIONAL COMMUNITY BUILDING in their approach to gathering fuel. They combined reliance on a broad social network and recycling of waste material, changing it into a resource."

Good work I'd say!

We spent the rest of the morning taking pictures and shooting the breeze.

Finding articles on the Escape in the New York Times.






Scott getting the angle again.


Then Jake joins in.


The trusty steamer.


Dad talking with Shannon.

Finally, we bid farewell to everybody, and made off to get the Merc ready to return home.

In the resort parking lot.

A great deal of thanks goes out to all the organizers and support crew for Escape from Berkeley. You guys put together an awesome adventure, and we're waiting for next year's race!

To our frustration, when the temperature was over the 70 F mark, Dad tried to start the engine. It worked flawlessly. Apparently the battery doesn't like the cold either...

So for photo verification, we drove back to the Sahara for a final "yeah-we-made-it" picture.

Also note that the external fuel line is still in place.

With everything running fine, the oil in the main gas tank loosened up with the help of diesel and additives, we made the trek home.

Thank you to all our supporters, our fellow racers, and the event staff for making this an enjoyable journey!

Monday, Oct. 13. Day 3: Part II

"So we can only go ten miles at a time?"

"Maybe twelve on a flat."

"We're going through mountains?"

"To cut across to Nevada, yes."

"Our odometer is broken."

"We'll call out the miles by the radios from the chase vehicle."

"Oh joy."


Bishop was almost 45 miles down the road, but it is a sizable town and could have a store to pick up more fuel filters.

We readied the Newman Tank. It was going to be a long laborious drive to Las Vegas, but it was our only choice, we weren't giving up.

It was past sundown now, and we got news that everyone reached Las Vegas safely.

Placing on the scoreboard was long out of the question. All we really wanted was to finish anyways. And by the Almighty we were going to do just that.

We had to stop to refuel on the average of every ten minutes. My Uncle Lowe, in the chase car, would call out the eight through twelve mile marks via radio. At first, we were slow to refill, but the actual time we took to refuel started getting shorter and shorter as we got into a rhythm.

When we reached Bishop, we stopped by a Kragen's which thankfully, was still open. We picked up more oil filters and a 1.2 gallon gas can that we hoped to replace the Newman Tank with. Theoretically, it should increase the range to around 20 miles. Unfortunately, we didn't think to install the "Newman 2.0" until AFTER we went through the mountains into Nevada.

After Bishop, we headed south to Big Pine, where we hung a left onto Highway 168 East, which would cut through the mountains and into Nevada where it would connect with the 95 South to Vegas.

There were narrow one-laned roads again, but thankfully there were no cliffs involved this time. But there were some climbs that cut down our fuel mileage.

As we drove through the high-desert of the California/Nevada border, the temperature was higher than in the Sierras, but it wasn't high enough at night for our oil to loosen up.

The clear sky, full moon, and lack of any man-made lights gave a seemingly barren desert landscape a picturesque quality of its own.

We passed through one or two 100-person communities and dozens of miles of open range. There were no fences along the road, and we saw dozens of cattle sitting by the side of the road. The prospect of an angry bull "removing" us from his territory was something I didn't need at that very moment, considering I'm facing my back toward the open country as I help Dad fill up the pitiful grape juice bottle.

Another thing worthy of note, is that the local jackrabbit populace hasn't any form of entertainment except making all the wary travelers like us swerve our vehicles excessively...

Alas, we finally made it to the US-95 and headed south, which would eventually lead us to Vegas.

Just before we turned onto the 95, we got a call from Jake saying that although we missed the awards ceremony, we had won some awards and everyone was rooting for us.

At a small town called Beatty, we finally "upgraded" the Newman Tank to "Newman 2.0".

The new tank extends our mileage to 18-20 miles, makes for an easier ride, as stops are every 18-20 minutes now.

It wasn't until after 0140-ish that we saw the glow of Las Vegas over the hills. Then the beacon of the Luxor casino became noticeable. It was around 0200 when we pulled into the Las Vegas city limit. When I called Jake to let him know, it was clearly evident that we was already in bed and sleeping when I called. And sure thing, everyone had retired for the night already. Oh well, they're having a get-together at the Sahara Casino valet parking area tomorrow at 0900. At least we can see them then.

We all breathed a sigh of relief as we pulled into the Cancún resort parking lot. We had faced and beaten the elements and the odds. We drove 600 miles without using a drop of petrol. We had finished the race, hours behind everyone else, but we finished.

And there we were, covered in veggie-oil and dead-tired, but TRIUMPHANT.

Now if you'll excuse me...

Ahem...

WOOT!!!!

Monday, Oct. 13. Day 3

Finally, a great night's rest. We woke up refreshed and rejuvenated to face the last day of the race.

We were pretty confident that we could make it to Vegas, and we were right, just not about the method and the time...






We started off by running through our usual cold-weather start-up procedure, although this time we had access to the shower in the motel room, so start-up went much quicker than the previous morning.

We bid Scott farewell, as he left with the Kristie's Flyer down south to Death Valley where the last two remaining competitors were.

Mom and Dad went down to Mammoth Lakes to pickup a new secondary fuel filter at Napa Auto Parts, as ours was pretty gunky. Thanks to Chris at Napa, they had one in stock.

After everything was set, we decided to utilize the Process of Elimination and test the car while running off the Newman Tank, to make sure nothing else was wrong besides the cold fuel in the main gas tank.

It started up perfectly again with the help of a jump-start. And it drove around town like nothing was wrong with it. It even powered up a steep logging road with no problems at all. So the problem was readily apparent, the problem was somewhere along the fuel line into the main gas tank and/or the oil itself.

We spent the next couple of hours checking our fuel filters along the fuel line.

While we were there, we helped a foreign visitor operate a gas pump, and even assisted another wary traveler by jump-starting his truck.

At around 1330, Dad came up with another plan. This time we needed more fuel hose.

So we hooked up the Newman Tank again, and headed on south to Mammoth Lakes, 10 miles at a time.

We were even checked on by a CHP officer.

Eventually, we made it to Mammoth Lakes and went back to the local Napa Auto Parts store.

Unfortunately, they didn't have long enough fuel hoses in stock. But they pointed us to where we could find one, at the "Do-It Center".

We pretty much spent the rest of the afternoon in the Do-It Center parking lot, pursuing different ideas to warm up our fuel enough to run in the engine.

Our first whacky idea was to run the fuel line out to the left side of the windshield, up along the roof and down into a 5 gallon tank in the rear-left passenger seat. We hoped the fuel would be warm enough on the inside and would keep warm when it got to the engine.

The plan had a chance, and it seemed as if it would work as fuel pumped through the clear hose. but alas, the fuel was getting cooled to quickly while outside the car and the fat was turning into lard in the filters.

What a major blow! We kept dismissing the Newman Tank, we weren't going to go almost 200 miles 10 miles at a time!

While biting into his tuna fish sandwich courtesy of Subway, dad got another idea.

"How about we coil the fuel line around the upper-radiator hose???"

Huzzah! Another plan that can't go wrong!

After running back into Do-It to get more hose, we put our plan together.

We then waited in bated breath as Dad turned the ignition key. The engine sputtered, revved, coughed, sputtered, then died.

GGGGAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!

It was almost sundown, icicles were forming on every overhang on every roof, we were hundreds of miles away from the finish line, and the car wouldn't start. The temptation to just give in and buy diesel was SO strong. But could we bring ourselves to do it?

We had just braved the Sierras, below-freezing temperatures, and highways clearly built for the suicidal, now we're just gonna give up???

Our only other option became oh-so-painfully clear...

Sunday, Day 2, Part III

So what's this crazy idea called a Newman Tank? We pulled back into the Shell station and popped the hood.

The grand idea was to place a small container inside the engine compartment next to the engine itself. We'd run the fuel hoses into the container, and fill the container with fry oil. This way, the heat inside the engine compartment would keep the fry oil inside the container warm.



"A fuel tank within the engine compartment with constant heat from the engine..."

At that point in time, the sun was setting, the wind chill was bringing the temperature lower and lower, we were almost shivering, any idea that could get us there faster was grand...

So immediately, Dad got right on it. Unfortunately, earlier in the race, we had recycled all the small containers that we subsequently emptied, but we luckily saved one... After rummaging around in the trunk, we found a container among the junk food and camping gear. It was a Kirkland Brand "Newman's Own" Grape Juice container, held about three quarts. It wasn't the best thing we could've used, but it was all we had.

So Dad then cut the fuel lines, plugged the ends leading back to the tank with pencils, and put the ends leading to the engine inside the grape juice container. We then tied everything down with zip-ties and filled up the container.

And voilá, the finished Newman Tank.

After a moment of silent prayers, we hooked up the jumper cables and started the Merc. It took a few tries, but by golly the engine started! And he ran like his old self too. The oil was getting warmed up, and the engine ran it just fine. Finally, with our morale boosted, we headed off to Lee Vining, a town nearby Mono Lake, as they might have auto parts.

Now, Lee Vining was over thirty miles away, and there were several hills to climb over to get there. And that accentuated the only major flaw the Newman Tank had, a 3 quart capacity. With three quarts, the Merc and his two-ton weight could only go about 12 miles on a flat grade before refilling. When going up a steep hill, it halved to about five or six miles.

In our first run, we made it five miles up the hill before the engine coughed and conked out. So we had to get out, pop the hood, stick a funnel into the container, pour in oil from one of our five gallon jugs; remove the funnel, oil rags, and anything else that shouldn't be there, shut the hood, put away the oil and any other miscellaneous items, get in the car, and go . . . Our first refueling stop took more than five minutes, not exactly Indy 500 pitstop material.

But we made it to the top of the hill. Luckily, with hills, there's usually another side to them, and that side is where you go downhill.

We went almost twenty miles on one tankful because we set the car in neutral and let the force of momentum carry our two-ton weight down the hill at 65 mph(we probably could've gotten up to 80 mph, but we didn't need a speeding ticket in our present situation).

Finally, after a few more refueling stops, we made it to Lee Vining. By then, it was after dark.

Unfortunately, the garage at the nearby Shell station was closed, and the nearest auto parts stores were further along in Mammoth Lakes, another 30 miles away, or 60 miles back in the direction of Bridgeport. We then ultimately decided that we wouldn't make it to the campsite at Lone Pine anytime soon, and that we should spend the night here. Thankfully Scott, the photo journalist, was a good sport about it and accepted it as it was.

So we went from motel to motel, looking for lodging for five people. To our luck, the Gateway Motel had a family suite open. After freezing our butts off in the mountains the previous night, anything with a roof and a bed would have sufficed.

Scott, the pack-mule.


Deciding our next course of action.

Ultimately, our decided next course of action was to get a warm plate of food. And what better place than Nicely's Diner across the street.

After our stomachs were full, we returned to the motel room. We got a call from Jake saying that Shannon and the Kristie's Flyer were staying at a campsite just down the street! This was good for Scott, as he now had a reliable transport to catch up with the remaining competitors.

So with our plans made, we turned in for a blessed nights sleep on a soft bed.