Maya and I spent our last night together by a campfire in Maine. The next morning we drove back to Cambridge and said goodbye in an eddy of tears and kisses, laughter and runny noses, loving each other and parting ways once again.

The next day, the bus came lumbering down my driveway, Ethan at the wheel and Chris standing shotgun in the stairwell. They stopped just short of bumping into my basketball hoop. We embraced each other, gritting our teeth to contain our excitement. I dragged my trunk onboard, lashed my bike to the roof, and after convincing my mother to donate a beanbag chair from our basement (“Thanks, Mom. No grease stains, I promise. Love you.”), I waved goodbye to my family, slid into the cracked pleather saddle and eased the Bus onto the road.

Lillian Smith once wrote, “no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.” Two years earlier, Ethan, Chris, and I circumnavigated the globe with Semester as Sea. That journey, and those since, changed us all.

I was beginning another journey and I felt it changing me already. We drove past New Bedford and Fall River to the Providence Zen center to pick up Cat. The bus ran smoothly on vegetable oil the entire way. We puttered past the Korean style wooden temples and flowering rhododendrons, finally resting beneath a willow tree. I stepped out onto the grass. Ethan climbed out behind me, stopping to fasten the pad lock across the door.

“You’re locking the door, E.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s a Zen Center, E.”

“Right,” he said, pulling the door back open.

I met Cat the day she and her friend Jeremy came to Ethan’s house to help renovate the bus. She painted a sunburst on our ceiling and decided—on the spot—to join us on our voyage to Burning Man. Cat greeted us from the Temple steps with her unsinkable smile. She led us through the meditation room, introducing us to a large bronze Buddha, then into the communal kitchen where we helped ourselves to curry and vegetables. We took several of the monks on a tour of the bus. “One of the original Merry Pranksters is with us meditating,” one monk told us, pointing to a small temple perched on the hillside. The original magic bus: duly noted. The monks wished us well, and we pointed northward to Boston.

“This bus runs on Vegetable Oil!” proclaims the side of the bus. Needless to say, we turn heads on the highway, often eliciting thumbs ups and honks of encouragement. But despite the support from our fellow motorists, the bus began to tire outside the city.

“We’re losing power, Captain E!” I yelled back to Ethan, who was lounging on the futon, trying to catch up on sleep.

“Probably a clogged filter. Switch to diesel. We’ll change it when we stop.”

“Right O!”

We wriggled through narrow city streets to the Cambridge Zen Center to meet Jeremy. With him were Luke and John, who had also decided (apparently the night before) to join us on our adventure West.

I clamored onto the roof of the bus, lashing another couple of bikes to the growing pile. A woman with long white hair and a simple purple dress called out from across the street:

“Your bus runs on vegetable oil!? That’s great! Have you seen Al Gore’s movie?”

“No, not yet, but thank you.”

“Well, you should. Oooh, I’m so glad someone’s doing something about it! You guys give me hope!”

We decided to fuel up before leaving the city. Being the most ironic option, we chose the Middle East Café. We dropped Ethan and Cat at the front door (“No, we do not want to eat falafel. We want the grease from your dumpster to fuel our bus.”), and I pulled the bus into the back alley to find the grease. Though Ethan and I were novice grease pirates by this point, our fellow journeymen, and woman, were still virgins. I passed out the rubber gloves: “You ready to get greasy?” The first step is to test the grease quality: dip strips of cardboard into waste oil barrels and inspect the dripping grease—honey colored oil is good, gravy is bad. Though we opted for the cleaner grease of the Chinese restaurant next door, the owner of the Middle East was still eager to help:

“I’ve got five gallon buckets you can have. Very useful.”

When the bus had drunk her fill, we rolled up our hoses and scrubbed our hands. As I steered us onto the Mass Pike, we toasted a successful first grease team operation with bottles of surplus pomegranate juice. I followed an orange sunset across Massachusetts—my first day behind the wheel of a 35ft school bus and I drove tentatively, checking and re-checking mirrors to make sure I wasn’t crushing anyone. But I didn’t crush anyone; I kept on across Massachusetts, letting my driving partner Jeremy take on New York.

The bus grew thirsty again outside Syracuse. We tried McDonalds, but the grease looked like frozen gravy and I think we frightened the night manager. We tried Applebee’s grease, and deemed the orange swill good enough (though we later learned it probably wasn’t). Cat dipped the suction hose into the dumpster while we talked to the employees outside on break. “Damn, I wanna ride the Bus!” exclaimed one of the Applebee’s bus-boys who had just moved North from Georgia. A maternal senior waitress wished us well and gave us twenty dollars, which we gratefully accepted.

With “Vegetable Oil Powered Bus” written across our hull, I felt almost guilty stopping at a gas station to fill up our petro-diesel tank. I sought out a Citgo to soften the karmic blow, supporting literacy programs in Venezuala over contributing to Exxon’s and the oil cartel’s record breaking profits. We pressed on across New York, joining the herds of tractor-trailer trucks that migrate across the country by night. Jeremy and I finished our six-hour shift, and Luke and John took over.

In the morning, we pulled over in a town called Westfield, aptly named, but still in New York. A bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln holding the hand of a young girl in a bonnet welcomed us to Main Street. It felt like the small American towns that exist more commonly in Norman Rockwell paintings than real life. There was a local hardware store, a spinning barber’s pole, and a crowded diner. The absence of a Wal-mart made Westfield feel anachronistic…but still, thankfully, there was a Chinese restaurant.

Back on the highway, hurtling over the asphalt once again, Cat took the wheel with Ethan co-piloting. Luke sat on the futon beside John and Chris, anxiously trying to access the internet.

“I don’t think you would have gotten on the bus if it was a mistake,” said John.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I’m thinking that I’ve left too many loose ends and people I’m going to let down. I have obligations. I’m looking for bus tickets back to Boston from Ohio,” answered Luke.

“You’ve come this far for a reason,” Chris advised, but then left Luke to make his own decision.

We chugged through the corn-stuffed Northwest corner of Pennsylvania and into Ohio, stopping next in Cleveland’s financial district in front of a Fed-Ex/Kinkos. My fellow grease pirates ran off to send emails and buy groceries. I stayed next to the bus and fielded questions from a crowd of breaking janitors, construction workers, and eager kindergarten students with their peppy teacher. An African-American man wearing white overalls and a hard-hat admired our vessel:

“Vegetable oil? Y’all scientists?”

“No, we’re not scientists; anyone can do this.” “Well, I wish y’all luck, man.” Designer suits faced straight ahead and hurried by.

Our hazard lights had drained our ancient batteries; we needed a jump start. A “Manny’s Towing” truck rolled by and stopped at a traffic light. I walked up to the open window:

“Manny, could you give us a jump? Our battery’s dead.”

“All right, man. Where you at?”

We were soon back on the road, plunging into the sea of corn across Ohio and Indiana. With so many enthusiastic drivers there was plenty of time to relax inside our traveling lounge. Chris sat cross-legged on the love seat and explained to me the Mayan calendar— the second most accurate time keeping device that humans have ever created, behind the atomic clock (FYI: this world is set to end on the vernal equinox of 2012, so make sure to use up all your vacation time). John and Jeremy pounded African drums along with the beats of Michael Franti and Spearhead, Manu Chao, or The Matrix soundtrack. We read and wrote and talked. We watched the world pass outside the windows: the land, the sky, and the little worlds inside each passing automobile.

Sunset found us at a truck stop in the middle of Indiana. Triple-trailered Fed-Ex trucks streamed across the pink horizon. We tumbled out of the bus, stretched our legs, and tossed an Aerobie disk around the empty parking lot. It felt good to run around, and we resolved to institute daily recesses. Luke and John (who were childhood friends) danced around one another shadow boxing. They were laughing; Luke had decided to stay with us.

It was almost three in the morning when we got off the highway in Chicago. Nick, another shipmate from SAS, would arrive in the morning via Greyhound from Madison, Wisconson. We rolled through the South Side and into a maze of freight yards and truck routes. Luke successfully navigated us to a parking lot on Northwestern’s campus (his alma mater), where we slept soundly the remainder of the night.

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