I called to tell Mark that I was proud of him for entering the truck in the parade and that I would be there to watch.

Mark said, “Good, you’re driving.”

Our fuel truck made a debut of sorts, at the Charlotte Labor Day parade on Monday. It’s not ready yet for fueling … we have to take it over for tank inspections and bumper upgrades later this week…but it was ready for its’ close-up.

After several weeks of work, Mark and Barnard have the truck looking good. George picked up the lettering for the sides, after some delicate democracy involving the color of the lettering, and Mike showed up with the first tank load of B100. The truck took to the fuel like a duck takes to water.

I practiced by driving it around the block at our garage location, Charlotte Energy Solutions, and then ten blocks over to the parade staging ground.

Mike placed his daughters and their friends on the back of the truck, much to my consternation. I have to admit to a small freak-out about the whole situation right before we started. My limited experience, a very tight parking lot, Mark buzzing the truck on his Segway, and small children holding onto the side of the tank. I could just see how it would all play out in stilted prose in the accident report.

But, as Mike and Mark and Denise pointed out, we were only going to be traveling at two miles per hour. And after all—take a look at those tractors and flat bed trailers — hauling children around in potentially lethal vehicles is pretty much an American parade tradition.

Anyway, it all went great. Except that the TV stations only showed the cute little girls on top of the truck rather than our nice logo and website address. Now, who wants to volunteer to drive the truck in the next parade?

Well, we did it! The call came in on Friday, and by Tuesday morning at seven we were filling up buses and trucks for the Dave Mathews band. We are now officially a biodiesel fleet supplier.

First of all, I have to give some credit to our esteemed el presidente, George. I talked to the Reverb Rock guy first, and I thought the notice was too short for us to pull off. I told him to schedule us for the next concert.

But George took the ball and ran with it, working the phone during breaks while he was stuck in a trial. Surprisingly, he was in the jury. Since our truck was not finished, he set up a subcontracting fuel service, bought 8,000 gallons of fuel from a refinery in Lenoir (friend of the co-op Randy?s Foothills Biodiesel) and coordinated an intricate hand-off of fuel from fleet trucks to an on-site fueling truck.

Denise provided moral support (emphasizing to me that it was important to do this), Sutton helped with the logistics, and I got all of the paperwork straight on Monday. Tuesday was a busy one and we worked like a well-oiled machine. George met at the first fuel transfer, I met the truck and rode it through security at the venue, and Sutton arrived just in time to keep the paperwork straight while we pumped the fuel.

Eleven semi-trucks, six crew buses, and five band buses. We pumped from eight o-clock in the morning until 4:30 at night, with a break in the middle of the day.

It was fun, it felt good, and Reverb says they want to use us for every concert in either of the Carolinas. After that feeling, and the passes to the concert and backstage bar they gave us, we?re primed to go as far as they want us to. Next time, maybe we’ll even figure in a couple of pennies for ourselves!

The lesson is this: Metrolina is starting to really get somewhere. We are now a real-live revenue-producing entity. We stumbled into this and found that it is easy and fulfilling to do. We have a truck and can service any size account. Our pump is finally, really coming. Time to stop just messing around, and make this into something we can be proud of.

I’ve cleared out the next two weeks of my schedule and I’m not working on anything else until our pump is open. I plan on starting this week by camping at the building department until finally tell us what we need (it’s been a constantly moving target) and give us the required building permits. Then I am going to do whatever it takes to get the thing done, inspected and filled with fuel. So I’ll probably call on the membership for some help during this period. Let’s do this thing!

photo credit: Mary Ann Dawkins

The Egyptians have flown the coop. Yeah, that’s the code. We are finally ready to proceed with our pump installation at the north location.

I talked to George, el esteemed presidente, yesterday. There have been landlord issues, salvage operation issues and … well, I guess there’s no reason to air all of our issues, is there? But at the end of this month, the coast is clear.

So I’m calling it: work days on Friday, August 3rd and Saturday August 4th. We’ll have it on a weekday and a weekend day so that hopefully anyone who wants to participate can. If you can’t, no problem. Just come by and check out our handiwork anytime.

Hopefully Friday we can do some of the heavy work … we have to remove a fence, put the tank into place, rebuild a fence and build a kiosk over the pump and fence. Justin said he’ll be there and bring some help, Tom Sawyer-style.

Hard to say exactly how it will all go down, but on Saturday there will likely be a better variety of ways to contribute … we’ll have to get our information posted and decide how to protect it, etc.

If all goes well, we should be able to have a functioning tank and pump, with B99 in it, shortly after that date.

And by the way, I know that it has been frustrating working out some of the details these last months. If it makes you feel any better, the Piedmont folks took 18 months to get their first pumps installed. Granted, they were trailblazing on unexplored ground, but still, we didn’t get that serious about raising the funding, writing the grant, and hunting down location/landlord permission until October/November. We’re not doing that bad at all …

So let’s start at nine on Friday and Saturday and get this thing rolling. My jeep is crying out for bioD from a Metrolina pump!

P.S. George, can you post some directions or the address to your place? Thanks.

image credit: John

Warning: This is not an official mission statement.

I think it’s because it sounds a little bit too earnest, a little too manifesto-like. Several of the folks in the co-op got a slightly pained look in their eyes when I brought it up, like they didn’t want to hurt my feelings. My better-half suffers from no such reservations: she laughed out loud. Mostly, everyone just ignored it.

Still, I’m thinking that if we are a co-op dedicated in some manner to public service, if we are asking people to join us in our endeavor, we should have a mission statement. So I wrote one. And since the blog is about the exchange of ideas, I’m going to go ahead and post it.

Let’s get some feedback, have a discussion, and adopt something to say what we are about; you are not going to hurt my feelings—life’s too short to have your ego tied up in words and agendas.

Draft Mission Statement

We hereby organize the Metrolina Biofuels Co-op in Charlotte, NC, with the aim of educating the public about biofuels, promoting the expansion of the biofuels industry in a responsible locally-oriented manner, and providing to the public as high a blend of biodiesel as possible.

We are motivated by certain truths:

1. The current regime of fuel generation, distribution and consumption is detrimental to the interests of our city, our region, our country and our species.
2. The current dependence on traditional oil has forced our nation to pursue foreign policies that support human rights abuses, corruption, and the needless loss of human life (American and otherwise) throughout the world.
3. The current consumption of oil is undeniably harmful to our environment.
4. The current consumption of oil is unsustainable, with a dwindling supply which will eventually undermine our economy and stability.

The most rational reaction to these truths is to pursue a goal of reducing our consumption of energy wherever possible. Because it is impossible to completely eliminate fuel consumption, we believe that the second reaction should be to pursue a biologically-based fuel.

While this may not be the ultimate solution to our energy needs, it is the best solution within our grasp. And we feel that one of the best biofuel options available is biodiesel because it is carbon neutral, easily processed, and the most conducive to a locally-controlled production and distribution system.

The goals of our organization are simple:

1. The education of the public about biodiesel. The majority of the public do not fully realize that a viable form of biologically-based fuel is available to them.
2. The expansion of the biodiesel industry in a responsible, locally-oriented manner. Our fuel consumption should not depend on immoral policies in the Middle East. But further, even in an ideal world of biologically-based fuels, the distribution model should not depend on harvesting plants harmful to the eco-system here or abroad, the requirement of vast amounts of fuel to create and transport feedstocks and fuel, or the exploitation of farmers here or abroad.
3. Providing the public with as high a blend of biodiesel as possible for the best price. In order to prevent the biofuels industry from maturing into the same mistaken form of the current carbon fuel industry, we believe that it is essential for cooperatives to form in each region to establish an alternative distribution of biofuels.

image credit: Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council

Forty years from now, give or take, it’s going to be really easy to hate some of the executives at big oil. Why not avoid the rush?

You know how we shake our heads at the things big tobacco did last century: targeting kids, commissioning fake health studies, using their limitless profits to buy the political system and hog-tie the judicial system. It’s going to be like that for a lot of these folks.

And Exxon? They are particularly annoying. Annoying in that oil-spill covered bird, blatant disregard for humanity or planet, corporate- greedhead- on- an- immense- scale kind of way.

This isn’t the plea asking you for your boycott. Do what ever you want. But do it with full knowledge of the entity with which you are transacting. And realize you get a little dirty when you roll in the dirt.

So whether you are driving a diesel or a regular gas vehicle or just need a candy bar, let’s put a few things on the table for you to consider the next time you need to pull into a gas station.

• I don’t even need to mention the Exxon-Valdez spill. I was a kid when that happened, and I’m into my middle ages now. Exxon still has fishermen and other groups tied up in court, trying make sure they don’t pay for their crime.
• Since 2005 and 2006 particularly, gas prices have been choking our economy and putting a real hurt on all of us individually, Exxon chose this time to give their outgoing CEO, Lee Raymond, a $400 million retirement package. After paying him $51.1 million the previous year. That is $141,000 a day. $6,000 per hour. And why not? They made a profit that year of $36 billion, more than any company in the history of the world.
• Exxon has made lying a sport. They do it the old-fashioned way, by paying think-tanks to disseminate foul-smelling “science”. But don’t take my word for it, read their own memo, and see how many millions of dollars they’ve pumped into their magical misinformation machine.
• Exxon gave federal candidates for public office in excess of $8 million last election. Guess what they are buying for that?

I don’t have time to actually list all of their near-human-skin-lampshade antics. I’m just saying if there is a BP across the street and you have to pull into that or an Exxon, think about the BP.

And one last thing … remember that U.N. report which pretty much universally agreed that global warming is a fact? An Exxon-supported think tank is offering $10,000 to any “expert” who publishes an article disputing the report. Can these guys really be trying that hard to make their children be ashamed of them when they are sitting in a nursing home wearing a diaper?

Dorothy Parker once said of a rival that “everything she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.” This is pretty much Exxon, and they have been insulting your intelligence, and your life, and your planet, for quite some time now.

image taken from movie poster for Brazil

It’s hard to pinpoint which of the water bugs in your head — skating around on your grey goo — causes you to embrace particular ideas, believe systems, movements.

If you are sitting in a group of biodiesel enthusiasts and you pay attention to the people around you, you can find a lot of different motivators.

There is the urge to find a hands-on way to help the environment, like you get when you separate your trash. There is the disgust for a foreign policy driven by our national blood-thirst for crude petroleum. There is the desire to be Mr./Ms. Scientist, sitting in your lab concocting wonderful new substances and getting to play with cool glassware. There is the ancient urge of the alchemist to create gold from baser elements.

I watched the movie Brazil last night and it illustrated another of the reasons I immediately took a liking to the idea and practice of biodiesel.

I hadn’t seen the movie in almost two decades and didn’t remember anything about it except a really great line with the word necrophilia in it. And there are so few of those these days.

The vision is of Kafkian bureaucracy in the age of the machine, privacy and freedom drowning in a sea of data collected collated and confused. And it hits closer to home now than it did then. I think, in fact, that the folks at Gitmo might owe Terry Gilliam some royalties.

And there, rappelling in from nowhere, is Harry Tuttle arrived to fix your air conditioner without the proper government permits or permission. A heinous crime. With a little wrench work and a slap on the back and a big “We’re all in this together,” the problem is solved. It’s against all of the rules and it’s wrong and it’s done.

That’s it! The exhilaration of biodiesel is also its potential for release from the corporate and government structure of our fuel system. For almost a century now, the vast majority of us need fuel to survive almost as much as we need food and water.

You can still grow food, learn how to can it, and collect some rain water, if you need to. You would never do it, but at least the possibility of independence is there.

Until recently, if you needed fuel, there was only one trough for you to belly up to. That trough stretches back through time, unbroken all the way to Rockefeller and Standard oil, and it is deep enough for corporate behemoths and Arabian Sheiks and all of our governments to play in. This entity has a life of its’ own, and you and I mean nothing to it, yet support it and require it to survive.

So yes, the idea of being able to do it ourselves, of making the fuel, of setting up a local system that excludes large corporate interests, of being able to rappel in and take care of business Harry Tuttle–style — well, that sounds pretty good.

I know I should feel good that our president actually said the word biodiesel in his state of the union. And that big fuel is finally taking an interest in biofuels. If the stuff is popularly embraced, is used more, that will provide a host of benefits.

But it also provides a lot of ways to screw it up as only big fuel can: like, say, cutting under rainforests to grow feedstock to ship from another hemisphere, charging too much to pay greedy executives hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to come up with more bad ideas. I can see it coming down the line, and it makes my teeth itch.

So let’s do this thing. But let’s do it right. We’re all in this together.

image: biodiesel mug from Propel Biofuels, credit: “skidrd”

I don’t want to throw these guys under the bus, but c’mon. Last night we were drinking the stuff. And this morning, I feel fine.

Some of the other regions are a bit behind Charlotte in some areas of development. Surely some way or another we’re ahead in something that is good. I say that defensively, because here at the Metrolina Biofuels Co-op, we’re behind the biodiesel co-ops in other places in the state. Just by a couple of years. Maybe a little bit more.

I guess we aren’t out in the country enough soaking up the beauty of North Carolina. Maybe we got into an urban bustle and forgot. That’s neither here nor there — we get it and we are working like crazy to catch up and convince our neighbors that we need to end the insanity of our current fuel regime.

Our primary problem is that we are homeless at the moment. Not begging-in-the-streets-man-that’s-sad homeless. We have a great place to meet thanks to Mark at Charlotte Energy Solutions. (Shameless plug: corn fireplaces and Segways and tankless hot water heaters, oh my. On Baldwin street.)

But it’s a little bit like that perfect family that has an Uncle Louie they would rather you not know about. He farts at parties and tells too-loud stories about that time in the county lock-up and generally ruins the atmosphere of civilized superiority they are trying to cultivate.

You see, we have an ugly reactor. And it was recently evicted by a member who decided that his commitment to biodiesel was price-sensitive. Sadly and ironically in that way you can’t make up, it was evicted to make way to park cars that run regular petroleum gasoline.

None of us have an extra room for Uncle Louie at our house. So he is sitting, at the moment, under a tarp.

Don’t get me wrong. We are doing great right now. Our plans for Earth Day will blow your socks off. (Shameless plug #2: two booths and demonstration test batches, our new super-secret marketing idea, oh my. At the Nature Museum and at the street festival.)

But we are currently not making any fuel ourselves, as a group. And it just doesn’t sit right. Individual members are making fuel. We’re close to bringing fuel to the public at two pumps. But the group is not making any fuel. And it really just does not sit right.

Mike, another member of the co-op, the brewmaster, and I were sitting at Solstice in NoDa yesterday (and there is another shameless plug here somewhere, because the place is great). We were waiting for a 2:30 appointment to meet with the realtor for a wonderful building around the corner.

And we were serious business. Frankly, if you are sitting at a great bar/restaurant in NoDa on a sunny afternoon with someone you just referred to as the brewmaster, and you don’t have a brew yourself, you must be on very serious bizness indeed.

As we finished up our lunch and got ready to make our appointment, I got a phone call. The realtor. Just talked to the owner of the building. Was guessing that since we were involved in biodiesel we would be storing some on the site. Even a thimble full was too much. Randy was friendly and terribly sorry, but they were applying for some type of grant and having any type of fuel whatsoever was a nonstarter and our appointment was not going to happen.

It was enough to make you want to have a cold libation.

Which brings me to the drinking of the stuff.

We had a great meeting last night, probably our best, which I hope to write about if I can carve out the time after writing this. And after it was over several of us did in fact have a couple of beers. Which also turned out to be surprisingly productive.

We ended with a heated discussion about how safe the fuel we were working to promote was. And about the misconceptions of it generally and specifically. At some point, the bottle of biodiesel coincidentally sitting in front of us made it to our lips. Then again. And again. It kind of became a machismo thing. By the end, the bottle was pretty much gone between the four of us.

This same fuel is in the car right now, and the tractor. This is real live run-your-car-on-it fuel. This particular batch was made from the oil from a poultry plant. And yes, my friends, it tasted like chicken.

My point is this: we need to try harder to educate the public about just how safe biodiesel is. Yes it can break the fuel chain that causes so many misguided foreign policies. Yes it can lead us to the promised land of a local fuel economy. Yes it is good for the earth. But, heck, it’s also yummy.

Plug #3, shameful: shout out to Randy at Merrifield Partners and your building at 430 East 36th Street, NoDa.