Wednesday, May 23rd: Kent and Richard added a few washers to the trunk latch so it would close, and Rachel and Lynn cheerily saw us off, delayed but not denied. Fearing permanent relegation to the back seat, I offered to drive, my maiden voyage in the Vegginator. We launched at 15:34. Used to driving the Prius for minimal gas usage, I eased onto the “accelerator” and little happened. The boys explained that the diesel engine takes some time to get going, so I should downshift to “S” and keep the pedal to the metal. 0-40 in about two minutes.
The steering wheel is impressively huge and very loose, the climate control system fairly non-existent. It was windows down on a crisp and cool day. We stopped at Soldier’s Field to say goodbye to Lyda and Lily, and after a 10 mile warmup to get the temperature gauge to 80 Celsius we flicked the green and blue console switches to engage the veggie oil system. Smooth as silk, we were off.
Kent brought along his ancient GPS system, which has a range from about Cambridge to Western Mass. So we made a pit stop at 18:00 in E. Hartford to pick up “Mandy,” our sultry voiced GPS system. We asked Mandy to take us to the Staten Island Hotel and off we went, Richard at the wheel.
Richard has a heavy foot and we started making better time. We pulled into a rest stop at 19:05 (Mandy keeps Military Time) to top up the veg tank. At the stop we spotted fellow BABE travelers, car #13 from Western Mass with Short Bus, Lagger and Darren at the helm. The boys' '83 Reliant wagon couldn’t have looked more Babe-liscious. Their names were spray-painted on the wagon. Darren’s dad had signed with an arrow pointing under the front fender, indicating where he had spent the last week to make the car almost road-worthy. #13 was given to the boys out of an estate where it was discovered in a barn as an after-thought. Last year, in a different junker, they made it all the way to New Orleans and almost all the way back to Western Mass, dying in Hartford.
Leaving late turned out all for the best as we hit virtually no traffic and had a beautiful twilight cruise through Brooklyn and over the Verrazano Narrows bridge onto Staten Island. The small parking area in front of the hotel was rockin’ with rally goers and their beater cars. The Vegginator got a huge welcome, and we jumped out in our Vegginator chefs’ hats to greet the throngs of well-wishers.
We filled out the voluminous release forms, which the UK-based marshals had mistakenly based on English common law. So we pledged to conform to the laws of Britain, whatever those might be. A couple of intrepid entrants from Sheffield, England met us in the bar, waiting for their car to be delivered from the Mid-West. Courage!
Our extremely friendly waitress, Diamond, took a strong interest in the chefs’ hats and our project, and offered to investigate the possibility of getting a bit of canola oil from the kitchen for our fuel tank. After some appropriately greasy food and a few island brews we were off to rest up for the real action: Day One!
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