Grease Riders by Greg Melville

Every time I hear the author's name, I think of Herman Melville and "Moby Dick." Well, this book was about an adventure, not so much a sea voyage. Two old college buddies, Greg and Iggy, embark on a road trip from Vermont to California in a car powered on vegetable oil. Much like the historical explorers who were the first to circumvent the globe by airplane or boat, Iggy and Greg want to be the first trans-national travelers by grease car, veggie-powered car, whatever you like to call it. The book is quite amusing. What I enjoyed is how Greg keeps his experience very human. His adventure hits at a critical energy and environmental issue: America needs to get off its fossil-fuel laden a** and take on the challenge of greater renewables. Have more veggie-powered cars and windmills and so forth. Underneath this political message are the facetious chatter between Greg and Iggy. At one point Greg describes how Iggy belches so loud in the car while he tries to carry on a phone conversation. Iggy makes Greg promise not to hide any car problems from him as Iggy is the mechanic guru. Greg sometimes avoided telling iggy about problems in the car because he knew Iggy would spend hours poring over the problem, thus delaying the trip. The reader also learns that Greg's wife, whom he leaves back in Vermont to care for his 2 kids while he takes this journey, hates Wal-Mart and catches that he charges some purchases from Wal-Mart when she reviews the credit card payments. These side aspects to the story which do not directly relate to the political message of the book remind the reader that this experience--driving out West, leaving your family for a long drive with god-knows what problems will arise--is very human and possibly lunatic. I admire Greg for his trip and his book. Along the way, he does use his road trip to touch on key issues. While he visits Minneapolis, he sees wind farms and draws in many awesome stats on how much energy a typical household uses and how many windfarms it would take to power a house for year. Then in South Carolina (or was it Tennassee), he tries to visit Al Gore's mansion to see just how big of an energy hogger it really is. He didn't make it in but describes how he gets in touch with Gore's press officer to find out what steps Gore is taking to reduce energy consumption in his house. I found some of Greg's frustrations resonant with other peoples' and countries'. He realized that he still wanted a big house and great electronics but he realizes--as all Americans should--that our demands going forward need to be tempered with an understanding of the environment--that just wanting things that suck more energy is not sustainable.