By Rich Eldred
Aug 16, 2010
Once you've graduated it's great to leave those big yellow school
buses behind, but Jessica Spier of Brewster can't wait to ride one again.
Of course, she's painted it white, put in wood paneling and will be
burning french fries' oil all across the country. She and her
boyfriend, Zachary Haroth of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., are turning a
used bus into a bio-diesel home on wheels for their own Magical Mystery Tour.
The bus is being refitted at Spier's mother's house in Brewster.
"I think it was really Zach's dream, to go cross country in a bus,"
Spier explained. "My dream was more to figure out how to overcome my
shyness and do the next thing in life. So when we met he had the
dream of a bus and I had the dream of the next place."
Well, a bus will get you to the next place, even if it runs on
vegetable oil. But it will be a roundabout route as they plan to
crisscross the country several times.
The two met when she was majoring in English and Spanish at Skidmore
College in Saratoga Springs. Spier hopes to work with children at a
nonprofit. "I was working at the Saratoga Springs Children's Museum," she said.
But first why not take a page from "Easy Rider" or Ken Kesey's "Merry
Pranksters" and see America? They bought their bus last October after
Spier graduated from Skidmore (she's a Nauset alum from 2005).
"We pulled it out of a salvage yard in New Jersey. We've done a lot
of research on school buses," Spier explained. "They have to retire
them every 10 years for safety. We found a lot that specialized in
school buses so we drove to New Jersey and found our bus."
The big conversion was from conventional to vegetable oil fueled
transportation.
"You need a diesel vehicle for that," Spier noted. "Zach's family has
run vehicles on vegetable oil. It is gaining in popularity."
They'll have two tanks on board, one for vegetable oil, one for diesel fuel.
The idea is to contact fast food restaurants along the way and use
their old frying oil. Spier and Haroth should get 15 mpg, provided
restaurants are friendly; the cost works out to 10 cents a mile.
"It's a little daunting at first but this is Zach's second vehicle
using vegetable oil," Spier said. "I'm trying to learn fast. It seems
pretty doable. It has to be filtered twice, and it's filtered through
the tank. You have to be careful about what's running through there."
The system was purchased from Golden Fuel Systems.
That's only part of the work, which is ongoing as the October
departure date looms.
"So far we've gutted the entire school bus. We've put down flooring
and getting the inside set for furniture construction. I can't wait
to begin that," Spier said.
They'll have wood paneled walls, a bed, tables, chairs, an industrial
sink, a small cook stove and save space for "a whole lot of oil."
Spier works at a local inn, serving breakfast and cleaning rooms.
Haroth works nights at a restaurant.
"We both work almost 40 hours a week and probably spend two days
working on the bus," Spier said.
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