Introducing the Big Easy Journey

Got Waste Vegetable Oil?

Towards the end of September, Daniel and I will embark upon an indefinite quest in search of sustainable living on both the individual and community level. We will be riding out on our humble yet faithful steed, The Big Easy Bus. We hope to record our travels through film and written word so that all of our friends and family can follow along, offering input and hopefully even learning a thing or two about how to live “easy” in a time when money is tight. We hope that you will join our journey by reading along and offering your advice and opinions as we go.

Technically, we began this journey back in February when we acquired the bus and first started brainstorming, but we will actually start rolling at the end of September. We have two distinct, yet closely related, goals in mind for our travels: The first goal is to support a simple, sustainable life, with those two qualifications going hand in hand. We won’t be using unnecessary appliances like microwaves and TV’s. We won’t have bills or huge gas prices to pay because we will be using and recycling nature’s renewable resources. Whatever power we will need (mostly for a small fridge) is supplied by solar panels, and our bus is powered by waste vegetable oil (WVO) graciously taken from restaurants. And not only will we be supplying our own electrical power needs, we will also work to support our simple financial needs, the largest being food (since, sadly, we haven’t found a way to grow a garden on the bus deck). Sounds easy, right? Well we hope the answer to that is yes, although we do expect to work hard. We aim to do this by picking up side jobs using what skills we already possess (and who knows, maybe even learning some more!). A few ideas might be to sell artwork, paint a mural, seasonal work, or even writing an article about our research project for a local paper. These are things that we love to do, so not only will we be living simply, but happily too!

The research that we hope to write about ties into our journey’s second goal: documenting sustainable living all around the country. We want to see and learn what other people are doing to live simply and sustainably, on both the individual and community level. We want to meet people who make their own clothes from recycled and organic resources, or a community garden providing healthy, natural food to all those living nearby. This research is not only being done to satisfy our curiosity, but also to prove that living sustainably is cost effective, efficient, and healthy for communities. We want to give those people who don’t support research into sustainable technology or participate in community sustainability programs a reason to jump in and start. We will do this by interviewing people and organizations that are proving on a daily basis that environmentally friendly and self-sustaining initiatives are not only really awesome, but efficient and economical as well.

We will keep this blog updated about where we are, who we are talking to, and what we do and don’t find when it comes to work, sustainable initiatives, or even fun things to do. We will also be writing more in-depth posts about some of the things I briefly discussed above, like how we are living simply, the solar panels, or Big Easy herself. In fact, if you are super curious (which we love!) about Big Easy then you can click here to see her page on Skoolie.net which details all of the work we’ve done on her. Thanks for following along and we hope you enjoy the ride!