Submitted photo
n A crew of Winonans embarked on an adventure aboard the bus called “Tootsie,” recently, cruising cross-country on the makeshift home converted to run on diesel and waste vegetable oil. “It’s like the cutest little mobile home you could want,” said traveler Katie Mueller.
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Trip west adventure now going eastward
Andy Dulas is not a hippie.
But if you've seen the Up and Clean Bus, burning veggie oil, decked out with an eclectic paint job, adorned with bean bags and sage wraps, you might think he and the other six travelers are exactly that.
No matter what the name, the crew, ranging from seven to eleven deep, just returned to Winona after an 18-day veggie cruise across the country, a mission bent on sharing their newfound alternative energy knowledge, learning more, and making friends, music and fun.
Although they mapped out a course to bring them to Salem, Ore., with friends and other veggie oil fanatics to help them on their way, the trip was a learning experience, full of adventures, disasters and surprises. Some towns met the busload with open arms, others cast sideways glances at the strange crew, parked in alleys behind Chinese restaurants, filtering the waste oil that fueled their temporary home.
It all began last winter, when Katie Mueller and her dad, Jeff Mueller, began looking into the world of vegetable oil-run diesel motors and how they worked. Katie said that, after meeting a fellow "greaser" at the Winona Earth Day celebration, she and her dad set out to convert a novel brown bus she and her friends had pitched in to buy.
From there, she and the Up and Clean Bus crew began hosting Secret Cafes, where they raised money for the trip by transforming the inside of the parked bus into a little restaurant for their friends.
Then on May 25, ready or not, the group set off, escorted out of Winona with about 30 bicyclists waving goodbyes and good lucks.
"Everyone had their own reason [for going on the trip]," said Dulas. He said that ever since he'd been a kid, he'd dreamed of traveling on a bus cross-country. "I wanted to make better friends with the people I went with," he added, " and make new ones."
"I wanted to travel," said Mueller, " and I just heard about this veggie oil thing and thought it was something fun I wanted to try."
Each on the crew had a role, from filtering waste oil in shifts all through the night, to the public relations man blogging updates for friends across the country, to the resident clown-slash-life-saving-hero, Dulas, who pulled a crew member from a raging river current during a swim.
The trip west began smoothly, with the Up and Clean riders taking in a couple of music shows and camping in relatives' and friends' yards. But it didn't take long for them to realize that their tight timeline was going to be tough. In order to keep the bus fueled and running, the long process of filtering waste oil meant that they had to work in shifts through the night.
When they got to Butte, Mont., the veggie family met up with a fellow greaser named Derik, a friend of a friend. Both on the way west and on the way home, the group said that Derik was a lifeline of support. With his veggie fuel knowledge, fancy filtering system and kindness, they were able to harvest lots of grease for the ride.
Because his filtering system was so advanced, the group was able to work with thick, chunky oil that their smaller filtering efforts couldn't handle. With this volume of dirty oil came a smell that even the racks of sage bundles couldn't counter, a smell that followed the bus the rest of the way across the country, with the crew actually resorting to face masks for part of the journey. Among the lively descriptions of the odor was Mueller's blog: "Imagine a heap of parmesan cheese that has been left in the sun to rot and sweat. Put that in a grease dumpster with two dead raccoons, a deceased family of squirrels"[censored] Let it simmer in the receptacle for three years in the desert. Now it's ready!"
Although the smell lingered, the group's spirits held fast, and they hurtled into their next challenge: mechanical problems. The bus, which could be switched between diesel fuel and the waste oil, wasn't running properly when switched to oil. They were losing power and couldn't go faster than 30 mph on the interstate at times. After battling the problem across state, they pulled over, suspecting the rank oil to be the culprit. "Maybe that rancid oil was a stew cooked by the devil and it needed to be exorcised so the bus would run," blogged the group.
The oil function of the bus worked off and on, but the crew kept moving, sometimes having to resort to the more expensive diesel fuel to keep the vehicle moving.
But the Up and Clean tour reached Salem, Ore., for a much needed bit of fun and friends, picking up a former Winonan, "Froseph," who would join the bus on his riot folk CD release tour. They cleaned out the bus quarters, and spent a night hearing the new CD, "Deep Breath," for the first time at a homemade concert. "Hearing songs born in, or about, Winona, alongside songs born in or about Salem made it a completely different type of night," reported the Up and Clean blog. "It was fun to walk out the door with our first official show poster on the door, and onto the bus to give bus tours and describe what we were going to be doing. I don't know if we even know yet. But it feels good to have the bus in a town with new people."
As the Up and Clean folks continued back east, the troubles with the bus continued. They met up with Mueller's dad who was on the road for work, and he helped them do some troubleshooting, but the issues with the bus (by now named "Tootsie") continued for the rest of the trip home.
Troubles with the bus meant the group needed more resources for diesel fuel and repair help. They'd stop at co-ops in each town, ask around for people who might know about veggie systems or have an interest in their tour. "We just followed any leads we had, and they sometimes brought us to what we needed," said Mueller.
Sometimes, while they stopped to eat and filter oil, the group would park in a lot and lay out the works. There'd be music, face painting, costumes and the odd scene of the group filtering oil and crafting a cookout. Folks would stop by, ask questions, donate food or cash or gas or oil.
Throughout the trip, the crew traveled through an underworld of veggie oil fanatics. Some they knew, or had met while researching the trip online, while others they stumbled across on the way. "It's a mixed bag," said Dulas of the veggie people.
Mueller agreed. "Everywhere we went we met a lot of people doing it," she said. "I guess I was surprised at how many there were."
But although they encountered lots of help along the way, the continued battle with the engine put them behind schedule. Fearing they'd miss music shows scheduled for Froseph's tour, he canceled some of the shows, and a couple of the crew members set out hitchhiking when it seemed the bus might not make it back.
In Spokane, the group stopped at a rest area and found an oil filter with a note taped on it, which read, "For six hippies on an old school bus." With eight crew members on board, they accepted the anonymous gift, arguing over who the lucky two were who hadn't been labeled as hippies on the old bus.
On the way through Missoula, the bus died, and the crew decided that Tootsie was broken and the tour was over. As they struggled with their newfound friend Derik to get her working, Froseph and company set off to hitchhike back to Winona, while the rest wondered what to do next.
But they finally reached some amount of success running on diesel, and found themselves barreling toward Minnesota, trying to keep schedule for the concert and welcome home party in Winona on June 12. Tootsie even found those who'd headed out to hitchhike home, picked them up, and the crew was complete.
With an odd coincidence in meeting a crew member's cousins driving beside them on the interstate, the Up and Clean tour had some kindly donations for its diesel needs, and rolled into Winona just in time for the Latsch Island welcome.
"It was pretty great," said Mueller of returning to Winona. "There was a chance we wouldn't make it, but we all agreed how important it was to get back to our hometown for this big event."
Last week, the Up and Clean crew met to discuss what was next for good ol' Tootsie. They had planned on stopping in Winona for a few days, then continuing on to the East Coast. Since the bus needs some work, Mueller said they plan on getting it up and running over the next month, and will go from there on the last lap of their tour.
This time, she said, they'll bring more filters, and they'll give themselves more time. "With travel like this, filtering takes so much time. You don't want to spend the entire time in alleys or garages," she said.
Dulas said that he had a blast, even though "two-and-a-half weeks on a bus feels like five years."
And this time? "I would bring a bigger variety of tapes," said Dulas, "and my dancing shoes. There was a lot of dancing."
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