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A trip is an adventure, no matter how you get there

By SHEILA STOLL
Published June 27, 2006

It's a shame when you're forced to sell your first-born child (or grandchild) to fuel up your RV for that trip to Yellowstone. But I remember another time when I crisscrossed the country - twice - for about 5 cents a mile.

My first husband, Alan Buck, who died in 1994, was a mechanical genius and extremely frugal. He became concerned about fuel prices when the oil-producing cartel of foreign nations created a petroleum embargo in the early 1970s.

So in 1982, we embarked upon a project to prove the effectiveness of an alternative to petroleum-based fuels.

We bought a new four-cylinder industrial diesel engine built by Continental. We went out into the Mojave Desert - we lived in California then - and found a small, abandoned van with a blown engine. We towed it back to our home on the coast.

During the next seven months we built an amazing vehicle. (That's when I became a grease monkey.) We installed the new engine, hooked it up to a five-speed Toyota transmission we had bought, and built dual controls for it - including two sets of instrument lights and two steering wheels.

And we planned our mission: We would drive across the nation and back, nonstop, the engine fueled by vegetable oil.

We went to a major cotton grower in California's central valley and talked him into giving us 250 gallons of cottonseed oil, which was pumped into 50-gallon drums we had brought along.

In August 1982 we drove off and successfully completed this bizarre 6,500-mile journey.

We had a third driver, and we all took turns at the controls, sleeping on the floor between the fuel barrels and cooking our food on a propane burner.

From Carmel to San Francisco, through the Donner Pass of the Sierra Nevadas and all the way to New York, crossing the George Washington Bridge - and then back, to Los Angeles and finally to Carmel.

We timed it so we passed through congested areas in the dead of night. The trip took 5¹/₂ days.

If we had paid for the cottonseed oil, it would have cost us 5 cents a mile for the trip.

So it amazes me that, 25 years later, people are just beginning to seriously discuss biofuels.

Alan and I then lived about eight months a year in his homemade house-on-wheels. It had no side windows. It looked like any ordinary truck - from the outside. That was for our security. Inside, this customized vehicle had a shower, commode, handy kitchen, all the amenities. Alan had wanderlust, big time.

I don't travel that way anymore. Now my second husband, Reg A. Kaenel-Stoll, and I squeeze into economy seats for very long flights back and forth to Switzerland four times a year.

(Our basic comfort tips: Drink lots of water, which helps mitigate jet lag, wear loose, comfortable clothes, and, because your feet will swell from fluid pooling in them during the prolonged sitting, do NOT take off your shoes; it's too hard to get them back on when you land.)

I find travel is much more tiring as I grow older. On the other hand, adventure is good. And adventures almost always involve travel.

During a recent 10-day trip we took with my 80-year-old mother to South Africa - I have friends and relatives in Cape Town but hadn't been there in 12 years - we had a ball. We found our accommodations on the Internet, and we learned to drive on the "wrong" side of the road and the "wrong" side of the rental car. (I had driven on the wrong side of that converted van, shifting with my left hand, on the cross-country trip.)

My mother was tired by the long journey but now considers the trip one of the great experiences in her life. It's daunting for seniors to contemplate such major travel, but don't be deterred. Isn't it time you had a good look at Alaska, up close and personal?

Write to Sheila Stoll, c/o Seniority, the St. Petersburg Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731.

[Last modified June 27, 2006, 07:06:46]