The BioBus Daily News

One of the many great things about living at Flowershop is that there is a big market right outside the front door every weekend! Saturday is the farmer’s market while Sunday is the flea market. HMMMMM strawberries chili peppers chocolate cheese melons chard plums.

Only a few notes on the bus – Aaron is off today. First, found out that the engine compartment was open to the back interior of the bus – the cover was there but was not bolted down. Bolting this down should keep exhaust from coming in the back. Second, there was a leak in the air system that seems to have been fixed when we took the driver’s left hand control panel off and back on. I think it had something to do with the disconnecting and reconnecting the parking brake knob, because there is no longer a persistent hiss of air when the parking brake is disengaged. Also, as of now, there is no hiss coming from any of the wheel wells, which is itself a change, and bodes well for the state of the air system.

Finally, I spoke with Daniel, a metal / wood worker here at flower shop. He and I will start working on installing the first microscope station on Monday. We are going to start simple and flexible – there is this stuff called Superstrut that has a dealer on Potrero Hill. It is basically a strut-based Legos system made out of steel, with lots of different joints and mounts attachments. Conveniently, there are mounting holes on the roof where the luggage rack used to be (see Greg’s picture showing original racks). The plan is to put in a series of vertical struts that hook into the roof where the luggage racks were and screw into the wood floor of the bus. The lab tables will then bolt onto these struts, like any basic adjustable shelving system. And, like shelving, multiple tables could be installed – for instance the microscopes could be on a lower, full shelf, while there could be a shelf half as deep above the microscope to hold equipment such as a computer monitor and power supplies.

I keep thinking about how perfect it is to be here at the Flowershop. The place is filled with talented people that are really enthusiastic and creative. I’m going to try to give a little bit back to the place tomorrow by giving a little lecture and having a discussion about my PhD work, titled How Cells Move and Why They Might Kill You – basically the same talk as I gave at my thesis defense. I’m really looking forward to it! That will be at 7pm, just before the 8pm weekly radio show (broadcast here) and Double Dutch. FUN. Back in the old days in Philly I used to be able to do double dutch – last week I could get in but only hop once or twice before tripping up. We’ll see how I do this time!

One last thing – there is a hippie living here named Diamond Dave (photo to right by Dave Rhodes) who has invited me to give a public lecture at San Francisco City College, where he is a student as well as Minister of Culture (he helped lead a takeover of student government by a coalition of anarchists and other politically radical students). So another thing to look forward. This should also help me kick into high gear my search for used microscopes for the bus! So far I only have one microscope lined up.

That’s all for today – heading out now to meet my sweet Aunt Dena for an early dinner!

I am working in the Flowershop collective just South of Bernal Hill in SF. Veggie oil pro and all around great guy, Aaron, is helping me convert the bus to run on waste vegetable oil. After more than a week of planning, we have decided to redesign the back portion of the bus. Since the front of the bus will be where the microscope lab is going to be, I want there to be a bed and an office in the back of the bus. To the right is a sketch of what it will look like.

I like this design for a few reasons – 1) the bed area can be partitioned off from the workspace so that students can come back into the workspace without being in my bedroom, 2) it consolidates the bed and office space more than before and 3) it allows us to put the grease tanks above the back axle and mostly centered. One interesting feature of the design is that you have to step over the back driver’s side wheel well to get into the back. The wheel well comes up about 2 feet – I think that this will make the rear compartment of the bus feel like a cozy little nook, although I suppose that depends on how tall you are.

Why veggie oil? Lynn and I found that the bus gets about 6mpg, and driving from Beresford, South Dakota to San Francisco cost about $700 in diesel fuel. The veggie conversion should cost around $4000 including everything, which, at $3 per gallon of diesel, will pay for itself after around 10,000 miles. So, from a purely economic stand point, the conversion will pay for itself very quickly.

We’ve hired this great guy, Brian, to fabricate the oil tanks out of aluminum. He lives in the East Bay, about 3 blocks from Aaron! I am really glad we found him – it is great to be able to customize everything and to be able to see the tanks as they’re being built, and he is doing both tanks for about $1000. The tanks should be done by the end of next week.

While Brian is working on the tanks we have plenty to do. For instance, Daniel, an awesome metal and wood worker here at Flowershop, built a metal bracket on which he mounted the ‘clean’ veggie oil fuel filter (it is the tall white thing hanging on the two horizontal arms):

A second filter like this one will sit between the ‘dirty’ and ‘clean’ tanks shown in the diagram above. It will be accessible from the hallway as you walk towards the back of the bus. I will have to figure out a way to keep from splattering oil everywhere in the hallway when I change that first filter, which needs to happen roughly every 500 miles. The paper filter replacements (about $8 a piece) are easy to change out, but I think I will be happy that this is not happening just under my bed! I mean, I love the smell of french fries and all, but…

In the coming days, Aaron and I will get all the fuel lines, pumps, filters, valves, and switches in place. Today we installed the wiring for the switches and gauges that will sit on the driver’s left hand dash. This will allow the driver to switch between diesel and veggie, backflush diesel into the veggie tanks, and control the flow of oil from the dirty to clean tank. There will also be fuel gauges for the two oil tanks – a step forward from the diesel tank, which has only one gauge right next to where you fill it, and that does not even work!!

In spite of no diesel fuel gauge, Lynn and I managed to NOT run out of diesel on our trip. OK, well there was this one time where we got pretty close – my eyes popped out when I pumped 42 gallons into the tank. I think the tank is 50 gallons, but no one REALLY knows. Throughout the trip we were having really erratic fuel efficiency readings, which made predicting when to fuel even more difficult. Oh, and did I mention that there is no Odometer? HAHAH Fortunately, someone installed one on the rear axel. Once we figured this out, Lynn didn’t have to add up the mileage from the map anymore!

Enough for now – when I have time I will put up some retroactive posts chronicling the journey out to SF! For now, here I leave you with a picture, “BioStar in the Badlands”