Met up with Patrick Dolly driving a nicely wrapped Honda NGV from Price Honda in Delaware, and stopped to fuel at the CNG station Camden, NJ, as 1 bar of fuel would not get us to Atlantic City.  This was Patrick’s first time driving an NGV, so Evelyn gave him a lesson on fueling.

Patrick followed us to attend the grand opening of a new CNG station in Atlantic City, NJ, built to support and maintain the jitneys, which are operator owned shuttles.

Afterwards, we went to another station a block away to take a photo op of the first CNG station to open in New Jersey (too small to support the jitneys).  Afternoon had another photo op on the boardwalk to complete the coast-to-coast journey.

Photos are below (also have videos that still need review/editing before posting).

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Fabulous time today, seeing my aunt and other relatives I hadn’t met before.

Found out my Aunt Rose had rebuilt a Buick engine (didn’t get when, or the year and model of the car). When her friend’s car broke down, the the repair shop said it had blown the engine and was worth only $50. So she bought it and fixed it. No Buick manual available at the time, so she applied the concepts from a Chevy manual. Turns out only the gasket was blown. She also had the cylinders drilled another 1/16th (?) inch to get better performance. Wish I had been able to get video of her smile & hand gesture indicating the resulting faster performance… it was priceless, coming from my 85 year old aunt.

Out of time to blog… more to come. (Cousin Steve has lots of photos)

Met with Pittsburgh Clean Cities Coordinator, Rick Price, this morning at the new station in Pittsburg for a photo op, then headed out to the next fueling stop (State College) on the way to Philadelphia.  The CNG station in State College, PA is located at an Exxon Uni-Mart.   While filling, a trucker came over to find out about the car and as we were about to take off, another fellow tapped on the window.  This fellow turned out to be a salesman for Dix Honda, a block down the street, who had just happened to stop at the station to fuel his gasoline vehicle.  We had seen the Honda dealer on the way to the CNG station, and planned to stop by, unannounced, after fueling.  We went there and had a lively discussion with them.

Some scenes from today…(captions pending)

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We had an outstanding tour of a biogas facility this morning in Columbus, OH.  In my humble opinion, this is the business model all cities should be pursuing.  This facility creates energy from carbon-based waste products, including discarded restaurant oil and food products, as well as human and animal waste products.  The end products of this self sustaining plant include electricity, compressed natural gas, and liquid fertilizer.  The plant operates on its own electricity and they’re making a profit selling surplus electricity, CNG fuel, and liquid fertilizer.  Read more at the Quasar  website.

The afternoon was spent traveling to Pittsburgh, PA.  Clean Cities Coordinator, Rick Price treated us to a delicious dinner at a restaurant with a fabulous view.  He also provided a quick tour of the area.  We’ll meet him again for an event in the morning.

Here’s today’s pics (still need captions).  I also have some videos, but no time to review and edit.

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Amazing, we actually made it to the National Alternative Fuel Vehicle (AVF) Day Odyssey 2012 in Indianapolis, IN.  Gary ended up on the morning’s speaker panel.  You can check out the professional photos and videos at the National Media Kickoff Event.

Meanwhile, here’s my day’s pics (which still need captions).

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We started the day with an exceptional visit to Laclede Gas in St. Louise, MO. They were so appreciative and enthusiastic about our visit. I was able to get some video interviews with Richard Ockers (Business Analyst, Integration and Innovation), Michael Spontaski (Senior Vice President, Chief Integration and Innovation Officer), and Stephen Walker (Business Development Representative). I sent these off for posting on http://www.GreenAcrossAmerica.com. I haven’t figured out yet how to edit videos, so I’ll stick with posting stills for now. The upload process can take quite a while, so I’ll start it and hit the sack (they have to be uploaded before I had add captions, which I’ll probably run out of time to do).  I think I just figured out we actually drove through Illinois too.   We didn’t necessarily have to take a route through Kentucky to get to Indianapolis, but hey, what’s another state?

The photos start with our stay at a St. Louis bed & breakfast, the Lehmann House built in the mid-1860’s.  Lots of historical elegance is in that house. Too bad we didn’t have much time to spend in St. Louis. Will have to come back for another visit.

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Karma must be good (as my brother-in-law, Rip, says). It turns out that Don Carlton Honda is less than a mile from our hotel (Embassy Suites), and with 2 bars of fuel left, so we stopped there first to see if they could help. They were very supportive and not having the part in stock, tried to cannibalize a new Honda for the part, but unfortunately, the part could not be removed without being destroyed. They ordered a new part, but it would not arrive until the next morning.

We proceeded to the next stop, Tulsa Gas Technologies (TGT), which was less than 3 miles from the hotel (lucky pick on hotel last night). TGT to the rescue. They had the O-Rings, and not only fixed our problem, but gave us a spare (in case we forget to check when we fuel).

Also, CNGmembers from Iowa hooked up with us near Joplin and led us to the Springfield, MO, CNG station… THANKS Jeff and Cami!  What a great day.

Cami and Jeff (CNGchat members from Iowa) with Gary

Here’s pics for today.

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A very long day.  Took advantage of the 11:00 check-out to finish blogging on yesterday’s activities, so we finally left Trinidad around 11:30.  Wasn’t thought to be a problem since no events were scheduled for the day, just the long drive to Tulsa, OK.  Well, things went slower than planned as Gary was making a real effort to stay under the posted speed limits.

Filling up in the Guymon, OK, station went without a glitch.  Met the general manager, Jennilee Rice, and let her know how important her station was and that we’d be back on the return trip.

Reaching the next CNG fueling stop presented a problem, when we weren’t able to get a proper tight connection despite the connectors looking like the ones we’re used to.  After a call to Curtis, it turns out that it may that the O-ring in the car’s fueling connection may have dislodged and been lost at the last fueling.  At any rate, under wise counsel from Curtis, we were able to get 1.2 gge’s (gasoline gallon equivalent) more into the car making a total of 11 bars (of 20) to reach our hotel in Tulsa (118 miles away). Good thing Oklahoma has lots on CNG stations.

Not one to push the limits, Gary kept the speed around 65 mph or less, and we made it shortly near midnight to our hotel with 3 bars left… plenty of fuel left to cover the 4 miles to our 9:00 am event and fueling location tomorrow morning.

Not too much change in scenery along the way.  Here’s today’s pics.

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Morning at Run the Rocks 5K. Didn’t realize that the Red Rock Amphitheater is world renown as the best outdoor amphitheater. Lots of famous artists have performed there. The runners for today’s run will get to listen to different music groups (live?) along the way. So it’s literally Run the Rocks (as in rock music)  Too bad my leg’s still out of whack (not that I’d be any shape to finish a 5K run).

Later had lunch at Stueben’s (one of the places visited by Guy Fieri on his TV show “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives”).  It was excellent.  Then after refueling nearby (Denver has several CNG stations), headed south to Trinidad, with a short side stop at Fort Carson.  Gary wanted to visit where he had completed his basic training.

When we reached Trinidad (our final destination for the day), we caught the attention of Ray Duran (owner of all the Shell stations in Trinidad).  He’s very much interested in CNG and we let him know of the event on the 29th on our return trip  He’ll be there!

Aaron Williamson (the facilities manager for the nearby Pioneer Natural Resources facility) met us at our hotel, rode with us in our Honda (me in the back seat) to direct us to their facility.  Aaron took us on a comprehensive tour of the facility before providing us with a complimentary fill up.   This is the only private station that we plan to use in our quest to cross the nation.  I need to figure out how to get more folks to support my petition for government funding for a public station in Trinidad.

Here’s today’s pics

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No events scheduled today, so we have the day off. Gotta keep the driver happy so we visited some wineries and helped the local economy.

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