At the Not In Our Name benefit in January 2003, John O'Reilly was inspired to do something proactive, creative, and explorative.  He had a vision of traveling across the country in a school bus that runs on veggie oil.  The main stated purpose was to spread the word, plant the seed, and stop supporting the oil industry, but it would also be a personal growth and experiential sort of trip.  John mentioned the idea to Steve who mentioned it to Trevitt.  The idea only took a few days before it became our new life goal.  The general plan was: quit work, quit school, sell (almost) everything, give up our wonderful living spaces, search out a bus to buy, convert it to run on vegetable oil and get on the road.

We had a fourth for a time (our good friend Sobi), but after helping to get the bus ready to roll, he decided to build a city in the desert.  After many late weeknights, long weekends, much support from friends and strangers, and not much sleep, we hit the road on July third.  We went up the West Coast visiting friends, networking within the veggie community (its growing!), and doing lots of informal education on roadsides. Our good friend Melissa joined the tour on July 22^nd, and the crew became a foursome. We made time to visit our national parks and soak in as many hot springs as we could drive our bus to while learning lots about the bus and our veggie system.  We cruised through the Canadian Rockies, down through Glacier to Yellowstone and into Salt Lake City for a little R&R from the road before heading back west for Burning Man. Post Burning Man, we were called back to the bay area for what seemed to be a necessary but unfortunate backtrack.  The backtrack ended up being preparation for a running leap forward. 

We had become more confident in our system and our ability to help others along the way, and were looking to be more visible to the public and work in more formal educational settings. 

Julia and company were just kicking off a solutions oriented cross country tour called We The Planet (www.wetheplanet.com). The tour was to be conducted completely on biofuels as an example of an available solution.  We were very excited to be invited to be their backup bus and crew as our visions seemed to match so well. Our good friend Jason joined the crew for the first part of the WTP tour and the excitement and energy he added to our mission has stayed with us all along the way.

This was a very inspirational time for us in many ways.  Connecting with so many good people in this country who are making positive contributions to our world really gives us hope for the future.  (Interesting side note: When Jason left Colorado for California , he managed to catch two rides home.  Both of them were powered by biofuels!) Mid way through the WTP tour we picked up Steve's brother Andy, just arriving back in the U.S. after 13 months in Italy . Joining the Unifried crew has been a fun and sanity preserving way for Andy to adjust to a land ripe with over consumption.  We spent some time visiting family and friends on the East Coast after the W.T.P. tour ended. 

The four of us remaining crew members have now redoubled our efforts towards creating as much of a positive stir as possible in our last 6 weeks on the bus.  We are currently doing TV and newspaper interviews as well as a college tour through New England . We will be continuing along these lines as we head south and then back west across the U.S. again to CA.  The bus is a magnet for wonderful people.  We are astonished by all the support and enthusiasm that we have received from people along the way.