The veggie car...

Sunday morning bright and early we head down the coast near Pescadero to a small environmental retreat called the Venture Retreat Center. We're going to hear a talk by a guy called Shawn Sears about how he converted his car to run on vegetable oil! The additional pull to driving down there so early on a Sunday morning is that they have goats which they say we can feed and possible milk!

The talk itself is really interesting! We're told of the difference between converting you car to run on straight veggie oil (essentially putting heaters in the engine to heat the oil, hence thinning it) or removing the glycerin from the veggie oil itself to produce a thinner oil. All-in-all an interesting talk.

The above photos is of Skye listening avidly to Shawns lecture...I think she was making comments but we couldn't quite make them out ;-)











Here she checks out a sample of biodiesel.








As the lecture goes on, Skye become restless and we go look at the goats and feed them. She gets really excited to see them and make lots of 'oh' sounds!





We then get to check out the car and to sniff the exhast pipe! Yes, it does smell like french fries!






Soon it is time to go and we decide to have lunch of fish and chips at the harbour. I wonder what gave us that idea ;-)

But before we go, we get to milk a goat with VERY big udders! I don't know if she was very amused with our efforts though.










Here we are ready to go and impatient to get our hands on those fish and chips!