So we’ve been in Wisconsin for at least 3 weeks now…A shockingly long time for us to be anywhere…but it’s been worth it, so worth it…
When we rolled into Madison, we had already heard about a place called PrairieFire BioFuels, a fuelling station/garage on the east side of Madison offering B100 from their pumps. This by itself was something to get excited about…almost always, if you’re lucky enough to see biodiesel for sale at a gas station, what they’ve really got is just B5 –yep, just 5% biodiesel, and 95% petrodiesel– or even just B2…despite the plethora of stickers loudly proclaiming their support of green energy to draw in more conscientious customers. 2 or 5% is something, I suppose…and yes, lots of little bits add up…but, really, people, that’s bullshit. It is possible to find B100 out there, but it’s often a messy situation involving siphons and five gallon buckets, tapping into the fine but small-scale efforts of backyard afficianados and tiny local cooperatives. Essentially, America is still the wild west of biofuels…and the necessary step of making production and distribution consumer-friendly has yet to happen. So when we heard about PrairieFire pumping B100 right into the tank…we were excited.
We rolled up on a Friday, fresh into Madison, and I leapt out, video camera in hand, and marvelled to see cars pulling in and a friendly volunteer with a clean rag in her back pocket working a pump proudly labelled ‘BioDiesel’. We discovered that PrairieFire is a huge supporter of SVO (straight/waste vegetable oil) power as well; they’ve found the best specialty mechanics in the Midwest to do conversions on diesel engines, allowing them to run on grease from the dumpsters, just like Busosaurus. At the moment, they’re pumping only biodiesel, but, as we discovered on a fun trip up north, several core members of the Co-op were building a giant vegetable oil processing plant a few hours north,
using components scored on the cheap from the failing dairy industry; they’d already accumulated thousands of gallons of grease from restaurants in preparation for their opening. Within a couple of months, PrairieFire will be pumping this beautifully prepped grease right into converted cars, straight from the pump. Unheard of! You wanna tallk about making veg consumer-friendly? These guys get it like no one else we’ve seen.
The core group at PrairieFire was excited about us, too. Before we knew it, co-founder Taavi MacMahon (an old hand at running cross-country bus ventures himself) had donated a killer, top-of-the-line conversion system, a sweet lil piece of German engineering affectionately known as ‘the Pig’, to update our aging and poorly designed early system. 
Luke Matthews, PrairieFire’s barely-captive genius of a mechanic, took us under his wing and began spending long nights with us under the bus, designing and implementing a pre-filtration system for Busosaurus. We’re almost done now, and although I’m not glad to end an amazing education with a master, it will be incredible to drive away with the capacity to finely process and store a total of 280 gallons of grease…enough to take us across country in one shot. Unending thanks to the dearly humble and ever-gentle Luke, for all the kind support and patient teaching, not to mention for the most wondrous of gifts, his friendship. (And no, I won’t tell anybody it was you that taught me to weld…until I get better at it.)
Madison’s gonna be hard to leave. Very.
