Oil and Water Project

It has been a long long journey already.  With a combination of frost heaves in Alaska to Topes (speed bumps) here in Mexico, our baby is starting to get a bit loose.

We found that our front bumper had just about worked itself free which would have been a complete disaster.  It was really easy to tigten the bolts….  The boys are leaving soon, so we have been cracking the whip on them a bit.

Not 20 minutes later, the bolts on the drive shaft broke free and left us on the side of the road looking for bolts, nuts and washers.

As always Sechronicity kicked in full board.  If not for each of these breakdowns, we would never have met up with Team Explor here in Tuaculpa, MX.  They are helping us find oil, giving us a place to stay, and taking us to the best rivers in the area!  They came driving by when we were broke down on the side of the road, and instantly became our best friends in the area!

Thanks BOYZ!

We had a major epic on our 36 hour visit to Acapulco. We got completely shot down on our plan to make a quick stop to collect oil, getting trapped in a savage circle of police encounters and accidents.

It was “Full contact driving.” We made contact with other vehicles several times.

As you pull into town, you can either pay 20 bucks to go through the tunnel or take your chances with the summit. We did both.

We visited almost 50 restaurants, and were barely able to scrape together 25 gallons. It has been our first wake-up call on what a mission this trip is going to be, because we hear that if will only get harder further south. Luckily we found 8 gallons more in a small chicken frying restaurant on our way to Puerto Escondido.

All in all, we were pulled over 6 times during our short visit. With each encounter, we easily won them over with our humor and our cause.

Seth has worked as a taxi driver in the past. The locals take a look at the truck on the road, and think they can push us around. Wrong. This taxi driver got a little to pushy, and gave us a full-on broad side.

Lucky for us, our truck is such a beast….we hardly got a scratch.

The taxi didn´t fare quite as well.

We had a heated argument about whose fault it was, but when the police showed up the evidence showed that it obviously wasn´t our fault.

We ended in a 10 dollar pay off to the taxi driver so we wouldn´t have to stick around for a court date.

A special thanks to New Sun Solar! Our military issue solar panels are giving us 100% of all the power we are using. This Solar Panel charges two large battaries each day.

A PHOTO OF TYLER STREAKING THE FREEMONT SOLSTICE PARADE!!!

THE MSR TOP TENT IS LOOKIN GOOD…

We found that the truck was bottoming out every we time we hit a bump, and the frame was in danger of being bent. We ran into Luke with 4×4 Labs in Gras Valley, CA (a Toyota finatic), and he donated his entire Memorial day weekend to help us design our custom suspension. Hats off to Luke and family, and thanks to Chris Kelly for letting us stay at his place on the South Yuba! Tom, You would DIG this guy!!!

New Tires, Oil Change, Work on the Veg Press, New Latches, Tent Overhaul, Upper Lounge Tent Designed……Just a few things on one of our only days free in Montana!! A special thanks to Tom, Andy, Gracie and Amber for coming down to help out.

The next morning after the event, our clutch went out 2 miles from laney’s house…

We called our friend Brett that had come to our event the night before, and he came to tow us into Rapid City.

Our boys from the Chevy Truck place had seen us on the news the night before, and stoked to give us a hand! Finding the replacement part has been a different story….

Brett invited us to stay at his house with his wife. It turned out that he was one of our biggest fans, having followed all of our kayak trips in the past. We had a fun time hanging with them last night!!

It is definitely hard being stuck here in South Dakota, sorry to all the kids in Bozeman that missed our visit today! Rest assured that we are still in VERY high spirits, and looking forward to getting back on the road!

On our way from N. Carolina we stopped off to paddle the New River near Fayetteville. After running into the frenchies from team adrenergie/Quebec city, they convinced us to go hit up the Upper Blackwater in West Virgina.

This proved to be a good call because the next day Red Creek, one of the best rivers in the Southeast ran. It runs so infrequently that we had never even heard of it. Once we dropped into Super slide, (a 1/2 mile long steep, clean slide) we knew this was no ordinary run. It was a day to remember, thanks to Adam Johnson for getting us out there.

The day was perfect, and we were on the road to PA in no time……. except another double rear tire blow out left us stranded in the middle of the road in po-dunk West Virgina. AAA couldn’t even locate us, so we set up camp.

The next morning, we hooked up with the local boys to help us get back on the road and on our way!

We hadn’t used anything but Waste Vegetable Oil since North Carolina and to continue the trend, John Weld of Immersion
Research helped fill us up with 40 more gallons!!

He also showed us how he makes Biodiesel right at the Immersion Research Warehouse. He uses it to heat his house!!

The event at Wilderness Voyageurs was fun, thanks to Kasia, Roger, John and Kara for helping us create a great night to rally for the cause!

Of course we got swarmed with Local Media, so it is safe to say that Somerset will be switching over to Biofuels soon.

The boys got us running on Straight Vegetable Oil in 4 days!! Special thanks to Justin Soares and Josh over at Greaseworks (www.greaseworks.org).