Veggie oil saga

            I’m finafuckinly ready to finish my last task: filling up with veggie oil! My normal fella who usually supplies really good oil here in the Bay has moved to South America but says he still has about 200 gallons (he thinks) left.

            He moved a few months ago from the Bay to the Santa Rosa area and after arranging to meet his friend at his new u.s.ofa. digs, I get ready to hit the road hoping he has almost 300 gallons instead of only 200. At the last minute, I google directions and have to repeat them a few times: Willows (which I thought was “Winters”, a town 50 miles away) is            over 130 miles away. I’m sooooo bummed. I can’t justify driving over 260 miles roundtrip just to get maybe 200 gallons of oil – so I move on to another ad for veggie oil I saw.

            This one wants to sell the oil in the 270 gallon tote it’s in – I take a chance and call. I find out the oil is not filtered but has been sitting at least three years! I’m excited – if worse comes to worse, I can always filter it myself (although I haven’t had to do that in a few years, I still have the equipment to do it).

            The biggest problem will most likely be the pump: he is in the process of moving and has no idea where his pump is at; and my pump is 12 volt battery powered and although it claims able to pump up to 10 gallons a minute, I think it’s more like 3 gallons a minute which means it will take at least 100 minutes to fill up my tanks. But longer because the pump should/can only pump for about 20 minutes at a time.

            But I’m desperate for and determined to fill up with veggie oil so I head out to just west of Sacramento – almost a two hour trip. It is a little after noon by the time I arrive and it takes me another almost two hours to figure out how to hook up the pump to draw from the tote and run thru the filters into my tank; plus to attach the pump to my solar-charged battery.

             I’m very worried about the pump draining my battery and so Saul brings out of his warehouse a battery charger that he attaches to my battery so it can charge at the same time that it’s pumping.

            By 2pm I’m all hooked up and ready to go. I throw the swith to on and the pump begins with a roar that immediately drops several notches to a thin but steady flow. Oy vey. The good news is that the pump keeps on pumping and never overheats. The bad news is that it has taken six hours to pump probably less than 40 gallons.

            I resign myself to staying in Rancho Cordova overnight. I find a grocery store that has a few organic items and so I buy avocados, tomatoes, fruit and tortillas as well as a couple Kombuchas – then grudgingly head to a walmart parking lot where I spend the night peacefully.