Biodiesel coop form

http://www.baltimorebiodiesel.org/

Condenser repair

I am so lucky to work near a mechanic who specializes in old Mercedes cars, both diesel and gas.
Doug the mechanic is an ex-corporate warrior- - did he say he'd worked for the B and O Railroad?-- who regularly rolls up his sleeves in his venerable auto repair space on South Central Ave in Baltimore. The shop is about 10 blocks from the water front, on a wide but neglected thoroughfare that shoots from the ghetto to the financial highrises of Harbor East.  He says he hears me gun my engine past his shop in the mornings, and that the Mercedes 240 D is "about a perfect car."

Today's trip to the shop was necessitated by a strange smell that happened after I'd been driving for about 15 min-- my car was smoking, but none of the gauges showed anything wrong. Turned out my air conditioning condenser had "seized" and metal shards were shearing off on one of the belts. Doug removed a belt that was causing the condenser to spin needlessly. Needlessly, in that it is November and I don't need air conditioning.

I ended up paying $140.00 and some change for the belt removal and an oil change.
He pointed out that my fuel filters were looking a little brown and I mentioned my intention to get on the Co op biodiesel 50% mix for the winter.

Mounting expenses

Under my insurance, the dent in the side of the Subaru was going to cost me a $500 deductible. Not bad considering that they were replacing a door, but certainly a significant amount of money. The PT Cruiser rental was cheap. The insurance paid for a basic model of car, and I paid a couple of dollars a day more to get the Cruiser.

Then, somehow, in the mix of cars parked under the trees beside the Brown Round House where the cousin's reunion was taking place, the Cruiser sustained a dent. A nice round indentation on its plastic bumper. I didn't know plastic could do that!
Although I would argue with the insurance company about it, that dent would eventually cost me a $250 deductible.

When I picked up the Subaru, it was shiny and polished, no doubt in an attempt to make the car match its new part. I felt a small pride of ownership, but also felt the pain of being back using a stick shift.

After the deer incident, the check engine light had come on. Surprisingly, for a car with 135,000 miles on it, it was the first time this had happened. I asked the door repair people to look at it, and they said that the code indicated trouble in my catalytic converter.

I took the car to my trested mechanics at Brentwood Foreign Auto for an estimate. They said it would be $2100 because the car has a "California" catalytic converter.

PT Cruiser the Rental car

The dent in the side of the Subaru necessitated a call to my insurance company, who instructed me to take the car to a local dealership/car repair enclave in a nearby, but dodgier part of town.
There it was determined that the driver's side door needed replacement, and that it would take at least a week. I was to have a rental car.
An exciting prospect, but with hidden downsides.
Coming up was the weekend of a family reunion-- the Cousin's reunion. Originally started as a gathering of first cousins-- the offspring of my grandfather's generation-- it has in recent years come to include my generation and our children. My grandfather was one of twelve, so it is a large group.
I rented the PT Cruiser based on looks alone, with little thought to the considerations of gas mileage or durability.
And drove it from Baltimore to the cousins' reunion in southern West Virginia.
From Baltimore to it is highways most of the way to Greenbrier County. US 70 W to 81 S and down, down, down the spine of Virginia. Then lighting out to the West on a slightly smaller state highway, then a state route, then a county road and ultimately a dirt road.

During the preceding the hurting place on my back had been starting to tighten and itch. I had some kind of abrasion, although my blouse was not torn.
I drove home shakily, expecting every turn to host a leaping, crashing baby. And wondered how long it would be before I could drive this road carelessly again.
Once home I washed the abrasion with alcohol and tried to look at it in the mirror. Had my husband take a picture of it so that I could see it.
Later I photographed the outside of my car, deciding not to clean the deer hair from the window. just let it be and let it come off naturally.

Deer Trouble

The September 29, 2008 Baltimore Sun had several listings for older Mercedes Benzes.  Only one was diesel- a 1982 240 D.  Offered by its owner for $4600, it was described as being garage kept and in perfect condition.  Could the "beige" color really be that yellow I like so much?  Exercising restraint, I set the paper aside. Folded open to the listing.  For two weeks it sat in the bathroom where I would periodically stare at it.

It was about then that my primary car, a 1999 Subaru, began to have problems.  First it was just freaky bad luck.  

Not one, but two deer one day hurled themselves at the 'Ru on my morning return from Montessori "drop off." I was driving windows down through undeveloped parkland, and felt pain on my left back and heard a thump.  I saw the deer and shakily pulled to the side of the windy, two-laner.  Two animals jittered and dropped behind my car me, at the parabola of a bend in the road.

Later I came to wonder why those deer would do such a thing, run through the woods and jump on my car.  I began to believe that they were encouraged by a large truck that I perhaps didn't notice coming around a curve on the other side.  

The deer were, if not babies, then teens.  They still had their spots, no antlers. Graceful and clueless, one died immediately on the woods side of the road's white line,  and the other took longer.  He spasmed and tried to rise and bled out his mouth and more and had to be pulled back out of the road by the men in the truck at least twice.  

All the while, the driver of a fish-sporting mini-van behind me was in moaning her helpless distress.  Apparently she'd seen the whole thing.  But she couldn't give me many details.  She had towels in the van.  At her urging, the men used them when they pulled the deer back from its attempts to rise and run.  She was worried it would cut the men with their hooves, and while urging caution, she cried for the men to do something- i.e. kill it , put it out of its misery.   The white man in the pair said that anything he could do to kill it would be messier than just letting it die.   The brown man said nothing.  

She fretted and was tormented and all I could think to do was to offer to pray with her which I felt emboldened to do 'cos of the fish on her van.  She told me that she was someone  who had a special position in her church-- the Holy Ghost spoke through her, and she was on her way back from visiting an ailing church member on a pastoral call.  We held hands while she  told God that she realized that animals were not on the same level as humans, but were still, maybe, part of God's creation and could he please... I interjected "shield this animal from suffering" and she prayed assent to that and added that we were asking in Jesus' name and we said Amen together.

Still the deer jerked and stared and coughed and bled on the roadside. Cars went past and the men were looking at thier truck, pulled over under that a rock outcropping on the other side of the road.  We all wanted it to be over but the deer wasn't complying.  We stood at the top of the bend, tending to our sharp hooved victim who eventually did stop twitching.  Using the towels, the men grabbed it by the hooves and pulled it a little more toward  the woods.  It looked heavy.  I wondered aloud if any food banks would take it.  

We headed to our vehicles.  Mine had a big deer sized dent in the drivers side door, and short beige hairs covered the bottom of my window.

I watched in my rearview window as the truck drove away, wondering idly if I should get information from the guys.  Let's see, it was a plumbing company, I  think.  Maryland.  Big truck. There they go.  

Green Envy

Dateline: Baltimore, September 2007

     

     For years I have watched with envy as the slightly better-heeled were able to speak their environmental conscience through their choice of vehicle.  Prii (that *is* plural for Prius, isn't it?) appeared on my street.  I saw tiny Smart Cars on the highway.  Scooters zoomed past me in the parking lane while I waited at red lights.  

    Sure, my '99 Subaru was no Tundra or Escalade.  But I longed to do something more about global warming and fuel self-sufficiency than sporting a "Mountainhugger" bumper sticker.

    "Take the bus, take the train" said an inner voice. My daily schedule includes dropping off my son at school, a six mile drive headed out of the city.  Walking to the bus stop with a six year old in tow, waiting for the bus, riding out to "the county" and reversing the process, twice a day was more than I could contemplate.  Plus it would put a 4 hour dent into the 5 hours I have available to do billable work-- I'd be coming home, eating lunch, and walking back out to the bus stop.

    So in the waning months of the reign of Bush II, I decided to do something to really investigate the choices available to people who wanted to fuel their vehicles with something other than petroleum.  Get off the gas grid.  

    What I heard about biodiesel seemed too good to be true.  You could fuel your car on waste grease gathered from your local fast food joint?

    Some research revealed that this option was for people who had the time, tools and talent convert their cars, gather used cooking oil and strain it in their backyards.   Oh, and fill up their trunk with the extra tank that held the Waste Vegetable Oil, start their car using petrodiesel, and store their extra oil on-site. Though I found that admirable, I wasn't quite ready to go there. 

   Then a biodiesel co-op sprung up at a garden center in my neighborhood. Members could go and get the fuel twice a week when the pump was open. That sounded more do-able.  I started researching diesel engines and biodiesel on-line.

     The first thing I learned was that biodiesel is a term applied to many different brews.  The Waste Vegetable Oil option is the cheapest, once you've done the conversion and have the grease source in place.  Otherwise, there's a commercially available product called biodiesel comes out of a pump, pre-brewed.  This is what they had at the co-op.  Despite my aspirations to be completely off the gas grid, this seemed like a doable option, a starting point.

    So as I was doing my regular Sunday morning leaf through car classifieds,  I began to turn my attention to VWs and Mercedes Benzes,  the main manufacturers of diesel automobiles sold in the US.  Having owned two VWs, they have a special place in my heart, but I sensed they wouldn't be mileage champions.  Some Benzes, however, were said to run forever.....

    One day in late September a classified ad caught my eye.