Vege oil and bridges

When we lived in Baltimore, we had friends who would occasionally lend us their 1980s Mercedes Benz when we were going on a holiday.  It had been converted to also run on vegetable oil but we used it on diesel as the vege oil was a big job to get and clean.  My dad's friend happened to have a retreat on the Chesapeake Bay so when my parents visited, we borrowed the car for a weekend retreat.  Baltimore is on the Chesapeake but it's a huge bay and their retreat was several hours drive away.  The retreat itself was a very nice place to stay.  The house was huge and it was right on the bay.  There were loads of wild birds to spot, swamp grasses, and a hot tub.  When we were there alone, Jbird and I took the opportunity to visit Ocean City.  It is very similar to L.A., except it that it's on the east coast. 

On the way to the retreat with my folks, we'd had trouble putting diesel into the car because we couldn't find the switch to pop open the gas tank cover.  It had taken a long time, and we'd tried every single switch we could find until we finally realised it didn't have one, you could just open it if the car was unlocked.  We'd filled up on diesel and made our merry way. On the drive itself, there's a really cool big bridge that we have to drive across at one point.  Jbird always tries to make me take photos which I find a bit annoying because I want to look at the bridge too and I know the photos will never be similar to what we see, our camera is spectacularly sub-par.

After a lovely weekend of food, wine, books, boats, birds, and hot tubs, we were ready to head back to Baltimore.  The couple we were staying with drove off to catch their grandbaby before it left New Jersey just before we did. We waved them off, got in the Mercedes, and tried to go.  But it wouldn't start.  So we let it sit a bit and tried again.  It still wouldn't go.  Dad and Jbird got under the hood to try to puzzle it out but nothing seemed wrong.  We gave it another try and it started.  Everyone was glad.  That would've been a dumb end to the weekend, we had no idea who could've helped us at that point.

About fifteen minutes into the trip, Jbird mentioned it felt like we were running out of diesel.  It was a bit hard to know.  With all the different gauges for vege oil, heat, and diesel on this ancient beast, we weren't sure which was which (and if any) worked, and what they were for.  But it felt to him, as he pressed on the accelerator, like we didn't have much gas.  So as we drove we started looking out for petrol stations.  We'd just passed through strip-mall heaven* few miles back and there just weren't any more stations.  It started to feel more and more empty and wouldn't you know it, we were just driving onto that terrific bridge I mentioned.  We completely ran out two thirds of the way up the bridge.  At this point, I start trying to get hold of the owners of the car but wouldn't you know it, I could not find any signal while we were on the bridge.  Jbird somehow gets the car to the top of the bridge.  Don't ask me how.  And he coasts all the way to the bottom. It was amazing, you can imagine we were all panicking on the way up it.  As we coast down the bridge, I manage to get hold of the wife and then the husband calls so I have one of them on hold and then we all hang up and it's all really confusing.  After the bridge - which has a magical view with the water glistening all around and really showing itself off - Jbird pulls over to the side of the road and within seconds both a tow truck and a cop car pull up behind us.  He goes to talk to them while I try to sort out who I'm talking to on the phone.  I eventually get the husband, who knows the mechanics of the machine, and he tells me to use vege oil and get it to a gas station.  The thing is, he says, the car doesn't normally start on vege, it needs to warm up, but we're probably warm enough now.  I ask him where the switch is and he says there should be one that when I press will look really red.  Well, to our surprise, it already looks red!  It turns out that the car had been running on vege all the way from Baltimore, and we have an entire tank of diesel left.  That was why the car hadn't started well earlier, the tank wasn't warm enough yet.  I race back to Jbird and his group of helpful men and blurt out "It's alright, the car was running on vege, we have diesel in the tank."  The men kind of stare at me blankly.  They're not expecting my thick Kiwi accent and probably have no idea what I just said, particularly with that term 'vege' which probably comes out like 'vige'.  But that's just an aside. The car runs smoothly all the way home and we've seen the best of the Chesapeake Bay. 

*strip-mall heaven - a nice term for all the millions of Macca D.s, Starbucks, and gas stations that congregate over blocks and blocks in many place in the States.  It only becomes heaven if you stop at a DQ (Dairy Queen) for  a blizzard.  Otherwise it's incredibly ugly.