Leaving Los Angeles

The day is long, the sun is hot and the sushi has been excellent. We have just left Fuku Sushi on the outskirts of Venice Beach. Dinner was tuna with albacore maki rolls preceded by octopus with green salad and a bottle of Kirin; now an hour and a half long drive to the Ojai (O-hi) Valley north of LA where tomorrow we will be converting our bus to a two-tank system of diesel and vegetable oil. I hear the Ojai is gorgeous.

We finally got our mint green short bus today – the road trip can now begin in earnest.

Robin, an awesome mechanic/environmentalist who lives in Highland Park, had been putting in seats, seatbelts and some other essential components. It’s roomy, has got pretty solid acceleration and looks wicked – though right now we’re getting pummeled by the stench of diesel. We plan on hooking up some solar panels, planting a garden, installing an espresso maker, cup holders, side tables, bamboo flooring and an LED chandelier, for starters, We will be spending a third of year in this vehicle traveling across the USA so we gots to get comfortable.

We dropped by Robin’s house yesterday where he had been working on our bus all night long – consequently, his neighbours called the cops. It wasn’t planned but we filmed a segment with him that I felt gave some incredible insight into the green movement. He spoke with casual conviction about the issues; conservation at the core of his philosophy. Produce less, recycle more (like the retro green mini cooper that he found in the dump and rebuilt from the ground up – only in California or not?), and stop burning everything.

After our talk, he waked us up the street to check out the public transit system with electrically powered rail cars – apparently the city is expanding its range in an effort to make it truly possible to travel the whole city efficiently without a car – and better serve those without one. As we walked up, we saw a house that had just been burned pretty badly. The owner’s dog tried to get our attention from behind a fence. His name was “Smokey”, which Robin said everyone now thought was pretty ironic.

Robin still had some work to do so we left him to it. I went off for dinner with family friend Dennis Bartok (at Gingegrass on Glendale – I had good veggie pho) and was later joined by Anthony Cran, a pal who I met recently at another good pal’s wedding in Ilha Grande, Brasil. Both told me stories that kind of blew my mind. We headed up the street to the Red Lion, a pretty juicy German bar replete with grand piano on the first floor and plush leather banquettes on the second. At the end of the night I walked down the stairs and had a quick moment admiring the piano players fingers effortlessly dancing up and down the keyboard. This antithesis of the “piano man” knew how to get the most without exerting too much energy. I loved the short moment.

Today, in Venice Beach, we learned how to make bio-diesel fuel. Suddenly I was thrown back to a time of high school when I spent more time trying to light the lab table on fire, than actually try to understand the periodic table and all its possibilities. For hours we baked under the unbelievably hot sun getting schooled. We mixed lye with methanol into a tank of vegetable oil to extract glycerin to produce bio-diesel. I literally need to repeat the process over in my head about ten more times before I fully understand and can repeat all the ingredients. I’ll have to practice.

We took some of the bio-diesel we made and put it into our school bus, another indicator that the road trip was on on on on on on. But right now, as we drive on the freeway, the leaky diesel smell is starting to wear us thin, another thing to take care of. Nasty. We should be doing this trip riding bikes.

For now, those of you reading this, please help in coming up with a good name for our show. We have a few on the short list but none are really the shit. The title has to indicate something about green inventions, sustainability, road trip. Micah came up the best title that we could never use for obvious reasons; BONG THE ROAD.