We're baaaack!

We arrived safely in Hanover last Thursday. We're happy to be back- so happy in fact, that we haven't gotten around to posting the remaining blogs. Come back soon and look for blogs on Cleveland, DC, and Boston! Pictures are also slowly being updated.

Thanks to everyone for making the BGB Summer 2007 Tour a success!

New York Big City

I was told in kindergarten that if I was ever to set myself on fire, or in the unlikely case that I might just find myself to be on fire, I should stop, drop, and roll. In kindergarten the possibility that I might ever be engulfed in flames was a frighteningly morbid prospect to be learning a three-step maneuver for, but even then it seemed far-fetched. However, since the Big Green Bus graced page 60 in Newsweek, it seems as though the bus, and every person on it, has been set ablaze with social interest and a status of insta-recognition in the places that we go. Thanks Newsweek for being the leaky zippo lighter to our small strike anywhere match of a mission. And although I’d like to think that my kindergarten education is the basis for every simple decision that I make, stopping isn’t an option. We refuse to drop. And the only rolling that we do is on to the next city. Sorry Mrs. D, these wheels on fire rolled out of D.C. and straight on into New York on Sunday.

A bus-size parking spot in a prime location!

We spent our afternoon in the big mealy apple of New York City parked outside of 49 East Houston Street. We were visiting an organization called Times Up and checking out their program that promotes people to bike around the city rather than drive. The bus was also open to the street and more than a few curious locals took a second out of their busy day to hop on board and engage in a friendly little chat about our journey. You may be skeptical as to whether these people were actually New Yorkers after having read the last sentence. The enthusiastic adjective ‘friendly’ when ascribed to New York is as suspicious as razor-filled candy on Halloween. But these people were the real deal, each of them was thin and wearing black with a trace of ‘I’m better than thou’ etched into their faces.

"What is this bus doing here?"

Later, Frances, Kate, and I ventured a few blocks over to Babycakes, a vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, etc bakery. There we met Joel Bravo, a Dartmouth ’02 and employee of the alternative pastry shop and tried some of the baked goods, which proved to be surprisingly delicious. Also surprising was that I recognized Joel from an article I had read in Paper Magazine a year back. He was in a band called Bravo Silva, and one of Paper Magazine’s beautiful people of 2006. Joel is currently in a band called Sex With An Angel.

When evening draped itself over the city we found ourselves relaxing in the lovely apartment of four big green bus alums. Mikey Saladik, Vivien Savath, Steph Lawrence, and Forest Hanson, all rode on the BGB ’06 summer tour and are Dartmouth ‘06s. More friends joined us and we had a lovely warm evening full of kickball, soccer, youtube videos, and cuddle puddles (in that order). When we awoke in the morning it was about time to go, and we all lamented having to leave the city so soon. One doughnut and two glasses of whole milk later we were back on the road, peering out the windows and promising the graffiti that we’d call, e-mail, keep in touch, and see it soon.

-Hayley

Fried cheese curds are delicious

and will make your stomach hurt. Especially when followed by fried mozzarella sticks and beer batter French fries. But as Brent says, you gotta try it while in Milwaukee. He also says this about beer. Which would explain why we bought 8 different kinds of local brews for the 6 of us (and no, the local store did not let us mix and match the 6-packs). Which also explains why Milwaukee, despite being perhaps the only place it rained for a significant amount of time this trip, was one of the best stops yet.

Still exhausted from the trying long drive across Wyoming, South Dakota, and Iowa, we were delighted to find that Brent had arranged a perfect mix of planned Bus events and do-nothing-but-relax time for our stay in Wisconsin. We started the visit off with a grease-up at Villa Roma, where reporters from several local TV stations joined us to film the greasy job (check out the media page on our website for some of the coverage). They even got a view of veggie-power at its not-so-finest when we were forced to replace our fancy Rosedale filters. Our filters, it turned out, were still fighting the water we’d picked up back in Montana and had decided that they’d had enough. But never fear, greasers like us know what to do and always have a back-up (or rather, Lucas knows what to do and the rest of us know when to follow his lead). Out came the chase car filter and the plastic bucket for a great visual for the cameras. Later we even ended up reverting back to the old stand-in: pillowcases! It all works.

Back to the Milwaukee story. After leaving Villa Roma and our moment in the spotlight, we headed down to Pier Wisconsin for a gig at Discovery World. Though the rain kept many visitors away, we had a great time exploring the awesome kids museum and listening to the music coming from the Irish fest next door (also the source of my fried cheese-induced heart burn). Happy and tired, we went back to Brent’s lovely house for Villa Roma pizza dinner. But the fun wasn’t over yet! Oh no… Next stop: the Brewers game! Fourth row seats, beer, and roasted nuts made me so happy I barely watched the game. I just know that the Brewer mascot went down the slide over and over again (yes, they won). The game was followed up by a stop to eat custard. Not just one type of custard, but every kind on the menu. Have you noticed a trend yet? Brent + Milwaukee= lots of great “this is the best ever” food. Mmmmm!

After a very hard days work (obviously) we spend the next two days playing. Brent invited us all up to his lake house in Green Bay, where we did nothing but read, sleep, grill, swim, water ski, wakeboard, jet ski, sauna, and watch movies. Fantastic! Thank you to Brent and his family for providing us with one of the most relaxing (and delicious) weekends of the summer!

Chicago!

We departed early from Cedar Rapids, leaving Frances behind in exchange for leftovers from the night before, and headed for Chicago. We arrived in the city and headed straight for the Museum of Science and Industry to speak to museum patrons. For those who haven’t visited Chicago and seen this building, it was erected for the World’s Fair in 1893 and is quite the specimen of the city’s remarkable architecture. It’s grand underground halls host a submarine and coal mine, among many other interactive exhibits. While there we were joined by surprise guest Eric Larson ’10. After several hours talking to visitors, we headed to our home for the night – the apartment of Mike Vidmar ’03 about a lively restaurant in Chicago’s Greek quarter. It was great to chat with a recent Dartmouth alum and dine on a simple, yet comforting, meal of salsa chicken quesadillas fresh from Mike’s treasured Crock Pot.

After dinner, Mike half of the crew on a walking tour of the neighborhood to admire local architecture and visit the filming location for the next Batman film, complete with the Gotham City Police Department. While Mike and the gang were out on the town, Whit and Hayley sampled the movie collection with Kill Bill and after the rest of the crew returned home, we all fell asleep on the comfortable couch and air mattresses provided for us.

With no events planned until 7 in the evening, the day was ours to enjoy in Chicago. Merritt won the gold medal for the day by driving Hayley to the airport for her 8 am flight (ciao chica! We’ll see you in D.C.!) and then he and Kate hit the streets for an early morning run while the rest of us enjoyed the opportunity to sleep in. After a late breakfast, we all walked toward the lake to visit the Millennium Park, the Bean, and surrounding waterfront attractions (see photos). It was great to enjoy these sites as a group before splitting off to explore other sectors of the city. While walking the Magnificent Mile (Chicago’s premier shopping district), Kate, Whit and Merritt stopped off at the Apple Store to play with the iPhone and marvel at its user-friendly features. Take note gift givers – this is certainly the item of the year.

Later that evening we all met back at Mike’s apartment and drove to a hole-in-the-wall pizza joint to dine on some of Chicago’s specialty deep-dish pizza with some young alums and a bunch of ‘10s who were visiting a friend (who happened to work for Mike) in the city for the weekend. We all had a great time and loved having the chance to try some real Chicago pizza!

-Whitney

A mini-update

Many apologies for the lack of recent posts. We are all doing well, and after getting 200 gallons (hello, jackpot!) of veggie oil this morning, we left Milwaukee and Brent's family and are headed for Cleveland. Stay tuned... we'll tell you all about it asap!

"Reunited and it feels so good..."

After being picked up at the airport by Frances' sister (thanks Eleanor!) and hanging out with her family for a few hours, the chase car pulled into Vernon's driveway and I was swept into the loving embraces of Whitney (fresh off a bus ride from Minneapolis), Hayley and Frances. Oh, Reunions! Always a joyous event, and that was certainly the case that day, the fourteenth of August, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Yes, that’s correct: the one, the only Cedar Rapids, also known as the hometown of busser Frances Vernon.

After properly greeting one another and catching up on our lives apart, we piled into the car with Frances' parents for a delicious dinner at a Greek restaurant aptly named the Vernon Inn. Understandably exhausted after a long day of travel, Whitney tucked in for the night while Frances, Hayley and I rallied for an evening in Iowa City.

A Wednesday morning thunderstorm thwarted our (rather ambitious) plans for a run, so we compensated by sleeping in and eating a delicious breakfast of fresh fruit. Sigh. Life can be tough on the bus sometimes. The chase car then headed over to the local farmer's market where it was met by the bus, carrying Lucas, Esther and Merritt! We spent the afternoon drinking lemonade, talking about alternative energy, and showing off the bus. I had an interesting encounter with an old farmer who wanted to know my name so that he could report me to the Cedar Rapids police, because "it would be so funny to read in the paper that you were in jail." Hmm.

He had a good point though, and one that we've encountered several places along our journey: because we don't buy our fuel from gas stations, we aren't paying road tax. Back in good ol'New Hampshire we tried to do this, but the state had no way to process our money. In Raleigh, NC, we met with legislatures who were in the middle of figuring this issue out as a WVO user had just been fined several thousand dollars and was getting lots of media attention. As our country starts to change the way that we get energy, whatever method that might be, our government and infrastructure will have to change as well. Clearly, switching to alternative energy sources is a long and complicated process - but the sooner we start talking and thinking about these issues, the better.

Ok, enough of that, back to our day in Iowa. After the farmer's market we all headed back to the Vernon's for a delicious potluck block party. It was a great chance to have some longer conversations about the bus and also to eat some ridiculously good food. We managed to get quite a crowd of friends to come along for our grease run. We hit the jackpot - 75 gallons! Merritt enjoyed showing off his muscles, and we all like having so much company.

The next morning we were up bright and early with another delicious breakfast. After saying goodbye to Frances until D.C., we were on the road again....

Many thanks to Monica, Bill, Natalie, and Eleanor Vernon for hosting our wonderful stay in Cedar Rapids!

-kate

Busser-fact-o-the-day: The Vernon sisters are so accomplished and well known in Cedar Rapids that, for a period of time, they were actually banned from being written about in the local newspaper in order to give other people a chance.

We Dug Wall Drug

Yep, we stopped at Wall Drug while in South Dakota. How could we not?

Truckin' across the baaaadlands

More shots as we travel from Casper, WY to the Badlands of South Dakota.

Wow, it's really flat here.

still flat. But with trains! (Lucas is excited)

The bus obligingly poses in front of Mt. Rushmore

Though we failed to get a shot of the bus in the badlands, we took lots of photos of ourselves on the brief stops on our long, long drive. Other noteable happenings during this section included a stop in a beautiful campground at Horsethief Lake (where Merritt cooked gourmet rice and beans while Lucas ate tuna out of a bag and everyone went skinny dipping), being passed by lots of bikes on their way back from Sturges, and a brief panicky moment where we were all on the outside of a large green moving vehicle that decided to shut its doors on us.

Grand Teton Photo Shoot

Amazing views plus the bus... (and Merritt's stylin' haircut)



Note to self (and readers of this blog): Spend more time in this park sometime in the future.

“WE GOT CLOUDS ON OUR YellowSTONE(S)”

Hayley: You know, sometimes there are just those days when you gotta suck it up and go with the flow, roll with the punches…
Frances: Are those like the days when you have to pump 50+ gallons of watery veg out of the bus tanks by hand?
Hayley: I think that’s what I was getting at.
Frances: You know what I say on days like that?
Hayley: What?
Frances: Shucks man. Just Shucks.

‘Shucks’ is the less verbally offensive 5-letter-word that Frances and I have been using when expressing our minor frustrations with life, the universe, and everything (the answer to our frustrations was not 42 however).
Explain, you say.
Tell me more, you plead.
…You know we can’t say no when you look at us that way.

Frances: So we accidentally pumped a whole bunch of water the other day, which isn’t exactly good for our engine. In fact it kinda sucks.
Hayley: Feeding a diesel engine water is the equivalent of feeding a human being sand, and then kicking him in the junk.
Frances: Right, so somehow we had to get it out. And that somehow was by putting on our grease clothes on and getting dirty for a good 6 hours. And when I say ‘good’ I really mean ‘great.’
Hayley: We were essentially holding our bus’ hair as it coughed, hiccupped, and upchucked like a prom queen at an afterparty. Now I remember getting dirty and carrying 2 gallon buckets of veg-vom, 3 if you include the gallon that was smeared all over my body, sure. That was pretty rad. But riddle me this, why was Lucas under the Bus with a hose in his mouth?
Frances: So you remember the dead animal in our tank?
Hayley: I told Kate not to club that baby seal.
Frances: No, it’s a critter that got in there before we even left Hanover. Well it was plugging up the passageway that was allowing us to drain the tank, so Lucas being the manliest man man that he is, was blowing bubbles into the tank to move the critter and allow the veggie juice to flow.

Despite the fact that Lucas may have been mildly veggie-hazing himself, everyone was pretty chipper. We decided to take a break in the afternoon (aawwww noooo mom, let me play in the veg just a little more! Please, I like the way it smells like butt!) and check out the falls on the other side of the park.

Frances: Thank goodness Ranger Merritt was there at the falls with us, otherwise we may not have been observant enough to see the (not so) incredibly rare Yellowstone beast, the Awkward American Tourist (watch out they bite). After the ‘oohs’ and ‘aaaahs’ we made dinner and finished un-vegging.
Hayley: A bison ate my left arm. Actually that’s not true. It was Frances.
Frances: You had sauce on your arm. I didn’t want it to go to waste. That’s right, I’m calling you saucy.

After we finished eating dinner it had already gotten dark so we called it a ‘shucks’ kind of day (but in a good way) and tucked ourselves into bed. With Fran’s and my chatter at a temporary cease-fire, Lucas says that he could hear a wolf pack howling somewhere in the park. Blissfully unaware and serenely passed out, our theme song colored our dreams a dull shade of bling-bling-platinum. (Cue ‘Umbrella’ by Rihanna ft. Jay-Z).

-Hayley & Frances

Despite what Hippies claim, engines don't run on water

Frances, Esther, Erin and I woke up early this morning to go on a morning hike to Avalanche Lake. The name of the lake sounded much more dangerous than it actually was. We hiked two miles through cedar groves and pine forests, traveling alongside a stream flowing blue glacial water. When we arrived at the lake, I understood why people love the park. On three sides of the lake were mountains, each with bare rock faces and little streams flowing down the sides of the cliffs. Esther thought the area looked like something straight out of the movie "The Land Before Time." I realized that I was wearing my swimming trunks, so I decided to go for a morning dip. The water was SO COLD! The lake was very shallow, and the bottom was all silt, so it took about ten minutes of trudging through the muck to get to a spot deep enough to go for a dip. By the time I got out of the lake, my feet were numb. On our hike back down to the car, Esther got into a "fight with a bear," and scratched up her hands and legs pretty badly.
When we got back to the bus, we packed up camp and headed back to Kalispell. The bus vegged up, and the chase car dropped off Erin. We were all sad to see her leave, because fresh faces are always welcome on the bus. After saying goodbye to Erin and her family, we began our 360 mile drive to Bozeman – only to break down half an hour into our trip!! The bus was losing power, so we stopped at a small local gas station. Lucas and I spent the next two and a half hours in the parking lot examining the engine. Lucas worked on the bus and explained the problems to me while I nodded my head and pretended to understand. The "veg run" that we made earlier in the day turned out to be more of a water run. The tanks were contaminated with water!! We drained the water out of the front veg tank and cleaned out the fuel lines, but some engine troubles remained during our 6 hour drive.
We arrived at Sam Naney's house in Bozeman at 11:00. A crowd was over at his house, and they wanted us to hang out with them, but we were pretty tired. Sam, his buddies, and our gang all hung out on the bus for a while, but then it died down and we crashed.

-Merritt

The Courageous Busers in Glacier National Park

Today we went RAFTING!!!! We did some other stuff involving scary drives, beautiful views, and mountain goats, but the highlight was definitely floating down a river in Glacier National Park. I’d made it a personal goal to find us a place to go rafting when we were in Colorado several weeks ago, but had been unable to find to find any adventures that met my criteria (pretty much had to be free). However, my dreams came true when Erin’s family offered to take us in their boat on the Flathead River. Merritt, Lucas, and I joined the Windauers and their dog Holly at the park gate to prepare for the epic journey. HUGE waves, gnarly holes, towering rocks, and giant fish* threatened to flip us as we navigated down the river. Bernie gave each of us a turn at the oars (a fool-hearty move? Perhaps, but we are courageous busers and are not swayed by danger). I fought off giant waves at the bow in order to keep everyone dry while Lucas showed off his steering ability (“Only one rock ahead? Don’t worry guys, I’ll get us stuck on it”). After several hours of showing the river what we’re made of and nearly losing Merritt to the class 10 rapids** we arrived back at the gate, wet and very happy. After packing up the boat and saying goodbye to the Windauers (except for Erin, who we kidnapped for the night), we headed back to the Apgar village for huckleberry ice cream and a delicious dinner by Chef Hayley. An awesome day- we’ll have to come back some time and spend more time here.

*not true
**really, really not true.

Much thanks to the Windauers for hosting us, taking us rafting, and for letting us take their daughters for the day. Erin and Heidi, if you want to join us as new crewmembers, there’s still room!

-esther

Merritt and Lucas show off their manliness by jumping off tall bridges

Pretty

Merritt, Lucas, and Erin stare off into the smoky Lake McDonald

fact-o-the-day: Odors attract bears. However, several national parks are testing biodiesel trucks and have not founds sniffing bears to be a problem. We also concluded that veggie oil is not a bear attractor. (Though we still encourage you to be careful with anything that leaves a scent while in bear country).

Drive me to the moon

Me: Wow, only a few weeks left huh.
Lucas: Yep.
Me: That’s not much time is it?
Lucas: Nope.
Me: And we have, what, the length of the United States left?
Lucas: Uh-huh.
Me: That’s like, a crap-ton of driving.
Lucas: Oh yeah.

For those unaccustomed to my units of measurement, a ‘crap-ton’ (which is much closer to a ‘whole-bleeping-hell-of-a-lot’ than to ‘quite-a-bit’) is about 4,000 miles. Probably more. So considering this, and the fact that we’ve put a heavy restraining order on all-night drives , the next two weeks will be filled with days on the road and nights wherever we can find food, a place to sleep, and if we’re lucky (which we generally are) the familiar face of a friend.

On our last day in Seattle we faced the idea of running into our ex-flame, the 10-12 hour all night drive (despite the court order she keeps on calling). It had been our original plan to drive across Washington, Idaho, and straight into Glacier National Park in Montana all in one go. But as Whitney and Kate both packed to leave, the 5 lone bussers looked at each other and said ‘no way Jose’. Jose pouted in the corner and we made last minute plans in Spokane and Kalispell, rearranging our schedule and breaking up the drive quite nicely.

From Seattle we drove to Spokane, where we stopped and spoke to a few locals interested in our project, and were appallingly late for the dinner that had been prepared for us at Mike Maccini ‘08’s house. After the 5 of us demolished his ‘dinner for 10’, and inhaled dessert, we lounged and scattered for bed. In the morning Mike made us a delicious breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast, and huckleberry (a reoccurring theme later in the day) jam, further proving his undeniable kitchen prowess. Lucas, can we switch roommates? I think that I might appreciate Mike more than you.

After saying goodbye to Mike we set off for Kalispell, Montana, or as Frances calls it, “Cow’s Bell Montana? What?” Lucas, Esther, And Merritt drove the (now) ever-so-spacious bus, as Frances and I took off in the chase car to do errands before following along. What was a pretty, but uneventful drive for the three riding the bus, proved to be a bit more action-packed for us chase car kids. After a wrong turn in Idaho, and some screwy directions, Fran and I found ourselves careening through cow country and climbing a switch-backed mountain on a dirt road looking for a town that wasn’t even on the map. Side note: did you know that you can make just about anything with huckleberry? According to the numerous billboards we passed, huckleberry is great in barbeque sauce, ice cream, syrup, jam, and soap!

After finding Murray (the town that’s not on the map) and asking for directions inside of the Bedroom Goldmine Bar (where there were more tractors parked than cars) Frances and I got back on track and made good time up to Kalispell. The other three were waiting for us there gnawing on some ribs in Erin Windouer ‘08’s house. Erin is a firefighter. Erin is tremendously cool. That night a few people headed off to a local bar, I don’t know what happened there because I was sleeping and dreaming of giant huckleberries. Heaps of them.

On the road: Jack Kerouac eat my veggie dust

-Hayley

take a dip-and-roll

Sunday morning, post-awesome party, was a little bit of a late start for most of the crew. After waking up, a handful of eager helpers headed back to Evo for a little morning clean up. Hayley and Whitney headed to the zoo with Dartmouth friend Nora Johnson '08, while Kate and I headed downtown to the visit the market. As afternoon rolled around a group of us got to spend an amazing few of hours on Lake Sammamish-THANK YOU Titcomb Family!! The lake visit consisted of meeting new friends, wakeboarding, reading magazines, sleeping, swimming, and Xthen Titcomb's notorious nacho creations. We spent the rest of the evening catching up on much needed sleep. Thanks Seattle for such an awesome time. We hope to be back soon.

-Frances

THE Big Green Bus Party.

Have you ever woken up knowing that the day ahead was destined to be great? That every action, breath taken, and word spoken is fatefully predetermined not only to be graceful but impactful (a day that you can make up words like ‘impactful’ and get away with it) as well? Surprisingly, not every Big Green bus morning is like this, but on this particular day the planets aligned and The Big Green Bus embraced it’s inner superstar.

For breakfast, Elliott (BGB ’06) escorted us to The Market where the sea of people parted for our divine presence. Actually, to be completely honest, the sea didn’t so much part as it did try to drown us (some people just can’t seem to fathom greatness such as ours) as we ducked dove and darted toward the vendor selling adorably small hot doughnuts. After our cute pastry consumption and some egregious pointing at the tourists who were in turn egregiously pointing at the fish vendors who were eating up the attention of the crowd (I’d much rather a doughnut) we went our separate ways to adventure elsewheres.

Our crew of eco-argonauts reconvened in the afternoon to attend ‘The Big Green Bus Party’ that the ever-suave Elliott May had spent weeks preparing for us. It was described to us as a chill fun event that we couldn’t help but be majorly stoked for. Sickies. In other words we were ready for an awesome time, but the expectations we had formed from the surf-speech laden blurb were entirely exceeded.

At 5pm the gates to the Evo (A skate-ski-board-apparel-Seattle-retailer) parking lot opened where the band ‘A Handful of Lovin’ played in front of our bus, Sierra Nevada beer was provided alongside BBQ food and (of course!) Clif Bar samples. The entire BGB Crew and party staff wore Big Green Bus Party Shirts (80% Bamboo!) and Jackets provided by FiveUltimate who had a Disc-Dunktank next to the bus.

On the road we had obviously been treated like JV celebrities before, but this party shed the bus of the Jonathan Taylor Thomas exterior and revealed our true inner Justin Timberlake. The transformation from JTT to JT emanated from our Big Green Lovin’ Machine well into the night as the band stopped and the DJ began to spin inside beckoning partygoers to the dance floor. The bus was lit up and packed with people until the party ended sometime past midnight. After having talked to people all night, with a fair share of goodtimes dancing and laughing inner dispersed like a good pancake mix, we rolled back to Elliott’s and ended the night with some tunes, beer, and friends. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.

Rockin' out at Evo

-Hayley

Thanks to Evo, Sierra Nevada, Clif Bar, and FiveUltimate.
Very special thanks to Elliott May (Rockstar Extrordinaire).