Out of Oregon

October 2, 2007

Current Location: Olympia, WA
Destination: Seattle, WA
Miles Driven: 856 miles

I'm currently at my friend Hannah's house in Olympia, WA. She's a student at the Evergreen State College here in Olympia and she was nice enough to house me in for a night. So I'm chilling with her and her dog Lu tonight and they are being wonderful hosts. She's got a washer and a dryer so I'm doing my 1st laundry since I left, she offered me some beer and pizza along with a joint when I walked in, I've got a nice comfy couch to sleep on, I can't complain. It's nice to be in a heated space without car noises for a change. Much appreciation to Hannah!

So after Eugene, OR, I headed up to Portland, OR. It was my 3rd time being in Portland, but I swear to God, I fall more in love with this city every time I visit. Great people, great music, great food, clean, modern sheek with old charm, and on top of that, the whole city is so progressive, green, and liberal, I just dig it. I really see Portland as a bigger version of Berkeley and you all know how much I love Berkeley. I can really see myself living here right now in my life. I think there might be a great opportunity for real estate here too. I saw a lot of old vacant commercial buildings in the heart of restaurant/bar district of Portland just a couple blocks aways from a high-rise multi-residential development, and it's much cheaper than the Bay Area. Hmmmm...a potential new spot for me?......maybe...just maybe....

Nothing too crazy went down in Portland as I spent most of my time in Portland trying to collect WVO since I was down to my last 50 gallons of WVO. I managed to collect about 35 more gallons but it's a lot less than I had hoped for (even though I did get some of the best quality oil on the road yet here at Cha Taqueria in NW Portland). I was hoping to fully re-stock before leaving Portland. It wasn't hard to find restaurants that would give away oil but it was really rare to find a restaurant that used pure vegetable oil to fry. Most of them used shortening, if not hydgrogenated or partially hydrogenated oil, which I can't put into Bertha since it would gel up too easily and clog up her injectors. I must have hit up at least 50 restaurants in Portland and I was only able to get oil from 3 of them. Anyways, I had a funny random high-class incident while trying to collect WVO last night.

Last night, I had a free dinner at a 5-star French restaurant that just opened....FOR FREE! I came across "Sel Gris" while I was riding around Portland looking for more oil. They had opened just a week ago and they were having an open house for their friends and neighbors last night to show case their wine and food. The head chef, Daniel, was real nice cool dude, and gave me a referral to his chef friend in another part of Portland since his restaurant hasn't been open long enough to even have WVO, and he let me stay for the open house. So I ended up having oysters and various chesses and deli as a appetizers, various Hors D'oeuvres including toaster point with foie gras and tomato jam with a fig and honey on top, french baguette with fire-roasted bell peppers and truffle oil, and sel gris (that's grey sea salt I learned last night) crusted dark chocolate for dessert. Oh yeah, and 2 glasses of champagne and a glass of nice pinot noir. That's right...ALL FOR FREE. I've never even had foie gras until last night. By the way, it's not as cracked up as people make it out to be. I felt a little out of place at first since everyone else was dressed in collard shirts and dress shoes and here I was in my dirty long sleeve shirt and tennis shoes that I've been wearing all day looking at oil dumpsters, and digging through recycling bins for containers, but those 3 glasses of wine took care of that social fashion awkwardness real fast. Before I knew, I was talking to locals and going to town on those oysters and cheeses. Thanx Daniel.

Well, here are the latest pix:

That's the morning before I left Eugene at Andy's place. That's Andy next to me and what I'm holding is some Burrito Boy left over from the night before. I must have had those burritos for at least 6 meals while I was in Eugene. Once again, my gratitude goes out to Andy for being such a great host.

Here is Bertha being filled up at a biofuel station in Eugene. You think the Bay Area is the front(wo)man leading the green movement? Think again. SeQuential Biofuels is a state-wide biofuel company in Oregon. They have these stations all over Oregon. God bless the Oregonians. I don't think there's a single state-wide biofuel company in California. I never thought I would say this but something to be learned from these Oregonians. This just goes to show how extensive a green movement is in Oregon, especially around Portland. You can see it everywhere from green car wash and laundromat, and green furniture companies, to biofuel stations. It is simply AWESOME! In fact, when I was going around asking restaurants for their oil, so many people have appreciated their appreciation for what I was doing and really went out of their ways to help.

Mark my words now! You are gonna be seeing signs like this all over California and hopefully all over America very soon. And hopefully, the biofuel prices would be much lower than fossil fuel prices. For those of you who are not so familiar, bioethanol is a blend of gasoline and ethanol that can be used for gasoline engines. Notice how B80 bioethanol is cheaper than the lowest grade gasoline? If there were biofuel stations like these in California, wouldn't you fill up with bioethanol? Less environmental effect, no dependence of imported oil, supporting domestic farmers (ethanol in USA is mostly produced with corn), and it's cheaper? How could you lose? Don't get me wrong. Ethanol is not without its faults as it takes a lot of fossil fuel to produce it so the net effectiveness is quite minimal, but I still do think it's a great alternative as long as we come up with more efficients designs to produce it. For any of you that's interested, you should all check out this month's issue of National Geographic. It covers a lot of biofuels being produced in America and in the world and there's a good section on bioethanol and its overall effects. By the way, notice the weather in the back. The weather in Oregon and Washington have been like that for the past 5 days. Ahhh...the Pacific Northwest.

Here's a shot of Bertha at a local SVO conversion and biodiesel shop in South East Portland. I accidentally came across Lovecraft while I was looking for grease in South East Portland. See what I mean by you can see "green" everywhere in Portland? Anyways, I spent some time talking to the guy about what kind of system they use and where to go gather grease. He gave me the phone number of a guy who own 3 restaurants in the area who's trying to get rid of his oil to a biodiesel stations. The restaurants ended up using shortening so I couldn't take any, but hey, I appreciated the gesture. Us, modern hippies, gotta stick together.

This was last night right before I parked Bertha in this parking lot of old-folks cards club/pool hall/bingo lounge/bar called Eagles club. I swear to God, the average age of the people in there was 60. Hey, more props to them. Old people gotta party too. Anyways, I just had to take a picture of Big Bertha in front of Big Bertha's. As I was taking this picture from across the street in front of a bar, a random bystander gave Bertha props by saying "Nice rig!" and gave me a bottle of bud light. See what I mean by nice people in Portland?