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.