The BioBus Daily News

Had a two day delay in Macedonia and Twinsburg, Ohio – the veggie system still needs a little work. Translation = I’m back on diesel. The good news is that I ran about 100 miles on veggie oil and I think I know how to fix the system for good this time.

I have also just come to an agreement with the Frederick Douglas Academies in the Bronx to do a week of teaching in December. On the first day all of their science classes will come on, and then each day for the rest of the week five students will spend an entire day on the bus. It should be really fantastic!

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid. it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

Spent all day rebuilding the heart of the veggie oil system – the valve assembly. It was removed 1 mile from this very spot, 1 year ago. However, if things continue to go as smoothly as they did today, we’ll be running on waste grease by tomorrow afternoon.

Veggie Fuel Schematic

I will post pictures of the process soon. But for the moment, here are an overall schematic of the system and a detail of the valve assembly I drew today. The design was made by Aaron and some of his friends out at SPAZ. It is a pretty complex system with on the order of 25 connections, and this does not include the heating system – so it’s not that surprising that we had some problems on the first try.

Oh, and thanks to Veerle for the great video tutorial on how to draw 3D pipes in Illustrator.

We rolled into Urbana last night, and got an early start this morning, pulling the bus into the Leal Elementary school driveway. We had about 10 clases of 20 students each on the bus today, split into two halves. Ric led discussions about the (cellular) meaning of life with half the class while I showed them the differences between bacterial and animal cells inside the bus. It was a beautiful warm sunny day and we ran off the solar-panels all day long.
We got a pile of letters from the students which was really nice – here is one of them:

Dear Bio-Bus
We are so happy that you came to Leal School to let us learn about bacteria and animal cells. Looking into the microscope was the best part. Seeing the bacteria was like watching little worms squirm around. The cheek cell looked like a smooshed and crumbled candy wrapper or a piece of sand.
Sincerely,
David
P.S.
How do cells make completely different cells?

We will work on answering all the great questions that came up over the next few days!
Tomorrow is another day of students, ranging from kindergarten to 5th grade. I expect hat Ric and I will have a great time tomorrow too, in spite of the rain we’re expecting.

Good day fellow bioforms

I’m so excited to be part of the BioBus project.  We have just finished our first full road-day on the way to Champaign / Urbana, IL where we will be opening the BioBus at various schools and universities to teach the peoples HOW THE CELL WORKS!  My whole body (I know, this is crazy) is like a million tiny individual lifeforms all working together to make me a person.  I think yours is, too, but you might want to ask your doctor about that.  After several rain-delayed days, we finally hit the road.  Our official starting point and time: Rubulad, 11:10 am.  We sat up last night talking to the live-in Rubuladers about the fascinating process of staining a cell, while one of them was in the process of creating a beautiful work of art – it’s amazing how many parallels there are between art and biology.  We also spent a decent amount of time talking about the slime mold.  Check it out: a slime mold is a bunch of separate one-celled life forms that, at a certain point in their life cycle, COME TOGETHER AND FORM A MULTICELLED LIFE FORM.  Just like me.  But don’t take my word for it – come aboard the BioBus and find out!  You will actually get to harvest cells from your own body and view them under a microscope.  Now I don’t know all the technicalities involved – I leave them up to Dr. Ben – but I do know that I am cells, and you are cells, and we are all cells.  This bus?  It is a cell.  But unlike you and I, it is not made up of invidual cellular bits of live all working together.  It is made of metal and wood and grease.  So it is not really alive.  But it’s the BioBus and it rocks!  Even with a new paint job?  Nope it’s still not alive, despite how it gleams in the midday sun!

We leave bright and early from this lonely truckstop in middle-of-nowhere PA for the golden shores.. er, plains.. of Illinois!  See you soon!

Love,

Ric

P.S.  He doesnt have opposable thumbs so he can’t actually write blogs himself, but I’d like to introduce our BioBus mascot, Elliot the Dragon.  He also doubles as the guard-dragon when we are away from the bus, and keeps a lively discussion on the road.  He make take part in classes, as he is very good with children and quite knowledgeable in cellular biology (as a dragon he was not allowed to enroll at Colombia, but spent several years auditing classes and is petitioning for an honorary degree.  We’ll see.)

Feels great to be on the road heading West again! We are retracing, in reverse, our journey made exactly one year ago, when Ed and Robin and I made our way to New York from California. I had forgotten how steep some of the PA mountains are – fortunately we are almost out of them and into flatter and flatter land. One mis-step today when I missed an exit – but Ric made good as navigator and brought us back to the turnpike quickly – after showing off the bus a little on country roads. The new paint job is really wonderful – people’s reactions are really funny, we’ve been getting even more dropped jaws, honks, and waves than usual.

My laptop is still dead and is making a harrowing ‘yowl’ every-time I turn it on. I fear for the hard-drive… fortunately I have a drive with a relatively recent backup. But we’ve got the lab computers setup tonight and bus-wide internet going strong. I am so grateful for all the donated computer equipment we’ve received.

Well, a long day of driving tomorrow as well as prepping for Monday’s teaching, but I will leave you with a few photos from the past few days.

I apologize for the lack of updates over the past few days, but my laptop is, after 6 years of trusty service, dying a painful death! So I write this post from my phone.
In spite of off-and-on torrential downpours over the last week and continuing into the foreseeable future (tomorrow, that is), we have laid down two coats of insulating primer on the outsides of the bus and 3 coats of insulating, reflective paint on the roof!
And, until it started pouring a few minutes ago, Donald started putting in the blues on the side of the bus. It is very exciting, and will look great. We are using oil paints, so the rain doesn’t seem to have much of an effect, though of course you can’t actually be painting while it is raining and you have to wait until after the bus dries off to begin again. So, if we are lucky we can get most of the rest of the color done tomorrow and Friday morning so that we can make it to Pittsburgh Friday evening and Urbana by Saturday night. Teaching begins Monday morning at Leal Elementary school in Urbana.

Donald busts up some flakey paint

After an entire week of scraping, scratching, scrubbing and sanding, the bus is ready to be painted! Of course the weather forecast for the next few days is RAIN, SHOWERS, and more RAIN. Oh well, we’ve had perfect weather up to now, and it will be good to have a day off tomorrow to send email to all of the teachers that I’m visiting or hoping to visit in the coming months.

One of the exciting things we did today was replace the gaskets that are supposed to seal around the edge of the back windows – previously they had just been taped. Well, the rain had a way of getting around the tape – and tonight’s showers will be a good test! 

After the painting is done, the BioBus is heading west towards Illinois.

Rick Cleaning the Wheel Well

Rick Becker will be joining me for this exciting mid-west tour. We will be teaching at public schools as well as museums along the way, as well as making a stop at a bus customizing company as well as a bus garage to get some estimates and perhaps start making some improvements to both the bus and the lab elements of the bus. Many of the people we will be visiting are people that we met with on the way over from California at about this time last year. I am very excited to give them all tours of the lab – without some of those people’s help, this project may have ended in Columbus, Ohio or Washington, PA!!

You see the mucky

Spent the day prepping the bus for painting. Disconnected the photovoltaic solar collectors and started scraping and sanding the roof. I definitely had some karate kid moments up there, sanding away in circles with my sanding pad. But tomorrow I’ll get to use the electric sander and let my muscles start to atrophy again.

It is minor archaeology, scraping through layers of paint and seeing what colors are underneath. There are places where the aluminnum and steel are starting to peak out, but for the most part the existing coat is tight enough that we are going to just paint right over it.

We’ve finally settled on a blue and orange color scheme, and bought the paints today. We spot tested the paints, and I think it is going to work really nicely. The bottom of the bus will be a burnished orange – an earthy base. Then there will be a broad blue swath around the center, representing the ocean – muraling will go on top of this light background. Above this will be more orange as well as yellow sun-rays sweeping through. The roof will be silver with a special insulating ceramic mixed in order to keep the bus as cool as possible under the sun. Here you see Donald pondering over colors.