It's happening soon. . . .

Beyond Clothing

I have recently applied to be sponsored by Beyond Clothing. They make custom sized outdoor aparral, from underwear to waterproof jackets and softshells. I have had a fleece they made me since 2002 and it has been the only jacket I've ever had that actually fits. Apparently I'm too tall and skinny to fit anyone's standard sizes. I still wear it to school most chilly mornings on the bike.

Wish me luck.








Rocking the beyondfleece on Mount Moran

My car, the design project

So I have come almost full circle and am now sponsoring a senior design project in the Mechanical Engineering department here at school. The project is to convert a Mercedes diesel car to burn straight vegetable oil.



As you may or may not know (or have guessed after that first sentence), I recently purchased a 1984 300SD turbodiesel Mercedes Benz. It's a very nice car still, with power leather seats and a sunroof and so on. Most importantly, it has the Mercedes OM617 diesel engine, which is widely regarded as one of the most durable diesel engines in the world. Ever.

Because of this fact it is one of the most popular for "grease car" conversions, the science of which I will briefly cover below.

Basically, the vegetable oil (VO) that is used as fryer grease in restaurants all across America is a perfectly viable fuel for most diesel engines as long as it is heated up to around 160 degrees F. This is necessary because at colder temps it is too thick to be successfully pumped through the fuel system or sprayed into the cylinder through the diesel injection nozzles. It may burn fine in the engine if you manage to get it there, but not efficiently and not without damaging the engine. This is mainly because the system has been optimized for the viscosity of petroleum-based diesel fuels. (The original diesel engine was developed to run on peanut oil by Rudolf Diesel). So you have to heat the VO. This isn't too hard to do really, since car engines produce tons of heat that we attempt to dissipate from the radiator via the coolant system. Some of this heat just needs to be used to heat the VO too. The system that the students are going to make for my car will have 2 tanks of fuel. When the car is first started it will be on regular diesel fuel or biodiesel. It will then run on this for a few minutes while the engine heat being generated heats the VO. Once a suitable quantity of VO has been heated, some valves will be switched and the engine will start burning heated vegetable oil and the exhaust will start to smell like popcorn.

The benefits of burning grease are large. For starters it produces more then 75% less carbon dioxide, which is good. It also produces around 80% less of things that cause cancer. Another important benefit is that fuel will cost between 0-$1.50 per gallon, depending on whether I scavenge and filter it myself or buy it from someone else. My VO tank will be 21 gallons, add half a dozen 8 gallon gas cans and that's a lot of traveling that can be done without having to buy any $3.20 dollar gallons of fuel. Sounds great huh? Well it's not the solution to out problems by any means, as there is only so much oil going to waste out there. Once the local supply is gone, the advantages become fewer.

There are a couple of drawbacks to burning vegetable oil, or biodiesel for that matter. One is that it has a slightly smaller amount of stored energy in it, which translates to around 5% fewer MPG then petroleum diesel. It is also a harsh solvent that likes to dissolve rubber, which in lesser engines then the OM617 can be a problem. I've been burning biodiesel in my car for a while now, the first thing it did was dissolve a bunch of the residue that the petro-diesel had left in the fuel system and clogged the fuel filter. After replacing that it's been trouble free. Back to the senior design project though.

There is more to the project then just my car. It is the first part of a larger project headed up by Kevin Cook and the local ASHRAE club that hopes to get a large federal grant to convert many of the MSU fleet vehicles to run on waste fryer grease from the MSU dining halls. (which produce about 200 gallons of waste oil a month that is currently being "recycled" into things like dog food on the west coast somewhere.) It makes a lot more sense to cart the grease 100 yards across campus and then run cars on it then to ship it in diesel trucks across the country. My car is the experimental one, where they try to make a system that is totally reliable even in the sometimes arctic Bozeman winter. I have faith they will, but I'm not going to leave them alone with it quite yet.

New Blog

So after posting on various other blogs for years, mostly my brother's, which is linked on the right, I decided I should have my own. I will post various pictures and anecdotes from adventures that go well and especially those that don't.

I added some of the latest posts I've done elsewhere that fit the theme.

Enjoy

Summer adventures

Here's some photos from the last 4 big scenic bike rides

Curly Lake: A newly popular ride in the Tobacco roots, starts with around 4,000 feet of uphill to just over 10,000 feet, then it's a loooooooong way back down.






The Bridger Ridge: It was a goal of mine for some time to ride the Bridger ridge trail all the way from Fairy Lake to the M. It was pretty cool being way up there for 20 some miles.








The Gallatin Crest: A remote ride from Hyalite Peak to Windy Pass on the "Devils Backbone". This trail is close to being closed to bikes.
http://www.imba.com/resources/wilderness/montana/index.html




Italian Peaks: Another threatened trail, it features the coolest spring ever.




The spring:

The E100 (August 26th, 2007)

This year was harder then last. I placed better but took hours longer to finish the course.

Stage 1:
We started racing at 6 am in the dark at the bottom of Park City Mountain Resort. The first mile or so of the climb was on a steep dirt road, which was designed to string the riders out enough that it wouldn't be a big traffic jam when we hit the singletrack. It kind of worked, although I ended up behind some people who were going slower then I wanted to. The singletrack climb was pretty tricky, I gained four places as the people in front of me failed to manuever themselves up the roots and switchbacks of the climb. The climb ended with a 12 or so mile section of trail that was relatively level. I rode and chatted with 2 different people on this section. Then I got a flat on the descent down to The Canyons and fell behind a few minutes.

Stage 2:
Stage 2 started with a long climb vack up to the same relatively level section of trail then a descent back down to Park City. I picked up the pace a little bit and quickly caught up to the people I was chatting with before the flat tire. I rode with them for 30 minutes or so then passed them and took off. I passed a couple more people before the end of the stage, although most of them weren't in the 100 mile race (50 mile or 100k racers).

Stage 3:
This started with the first of four climbs up the trail called "spiro". This trail would be the source of the majority of discomfort caused by this race. I wasn't feeling too great after the previous 40 miles and 6,700' of climbing already completed. This was the hottest stage, and I slowed down a bit in the sun. I passed a couple of people on this stage that had stopped to rest because they couldn't pedal any more. This made me feel a little bit better about myself since I was feeling less bad than they appeared to be feeling. This stage was two laps on the same 10 mile section of trail. The climb up spiro was marginally better the second time, although I was a little bit slower.

Stage 4:
This was the bad one. It started the same as stage 3, but when you reached the top of the stage 3 climb you kept going up a steeper section of trail for another thousand feet of vert. I passed several more shattered looking people on the first half of it. Another rider was behind me the whole time, and I was trying pretty hard to stay in front of him. I managed to for the next 45 minutes or so of climbing, but unfortunately I didn't eat enough food in this period and started to bonk badly. I eventually had to stop riding and eat something. I quickly consumed 700 calories of sugar in the form of hammer gel. It took affect rather quickly and I sped up a little bit. The climb still went on and on, and after 3,000 feet of vertical it finally stopped. This was the start of a 14 mile descent that was fun even in the decrepit state I was in at this point.

Stage 5:
This one was the same as stage 4, on the same climb I had been doing for the last 3 stages. It was pretty hard, but knowing that it was the last time made it much better then stage 4. I had some strange wildlife encounters on the descent, including having to chase moose and deer off the trail so that I could get by. The strangest was a squirrel who hesitated a bit too long before trying to cross the trail and bounced his head off my front wheel with a nice little "ding" and scrambled back the way he came. Pretty soon I was coasting down the street to the parking lot finish and it was all over.




The course was different then last years, and in my opinion it was much harder. I placed 12th overall and 3rd in my age class, which was better then last year, but took 2 hours longer to finish the course. Out of over 60 entrants there were only 25 who finished the course. Lots of people had a really hard time on stage 4 and many dropped out because they didn't want (or couldn't do) the same climb again.

The realistic gain was somewhere over 16,000 still though, which was more then enough for me. Total length was just over 100 miles, and probaly 98% of it was on singletrack, some of which was pretty technical.

Thanks to my tireless support crew the race went really smoothly. I'll most likely be back next year after I've pushed the bad parts of the race out of my memory.

www.thee100.com

The East

So after years of harassment from Jesse I came down to visit him in Connecticut. I arrived at 5:30 AM after an interesting day/night of traveling that started at noon and involved 7 hours of driving, 5 of flying and 3 of waiting in airports. We went for a bike ride back behind school the day arrived and it was fun, slippery rocks and roots the like of which I haven't seen in Montana. The next day we went over to Rhode Island and did some Rhode Island things such as eating stuffies and quahogs and helping Jesse practiced his "Rhode Island block" on the roads. I broadened my chowda experience to include the clear variety too, which is also delicious. We then went to Block Island via ferry and hung out on beaches, did a little ocean swimming and looked at some bluffs and lighthouses and such. Good times. Then we drove back to Storrs and slept for a while. Now I'm in his office downloading some pictures off of my camera to make room for our upcoming trip to Mass. and the White Mountains.

Mount Rainier, Emmons Winthrop (may 29th, 2007)

Dave Tarby and I skied/snowboarded mount Rainier (14,410' tallest in WA) on Tuesday. We weren't totally committed to the idea since we only had 2 days for it, but the forecast was so good we decided to do it. Hiked up from the White River campground at 3,400' to camp Sherman at 9,400' by sunset, then slept there for the night and started towards the summit at 6:00am. Reached it by 11:30, hung out for a while and then headed down. Back at the car by 2:30 and drove to Missoula (which was it's own adventure, I'll elaborate later). Had ideal weather (hard to come by there) with almost no wind or clouds. Picture link

Emigrant peak (may 6th, 2007)

She's a big one, 10,940' rising 6,000' out of the paradise valley. And some old gold miners conveniently built a road that goes right to the base of it, almost to snowline, which was at around 7,500'.








2. On the top looking down towards the first picture. The sun conveniently came out for us once we made it to the top at around 2. (the previous picture was taken on the way back to bozeman)








3. Heading down. . .
4. and down. . .