The next day, having successfully negotiated our first full-on press conference, we headed to San Francisco's City Gall to meet with San Mayor Gavin Newsom and a bevy of new reporters, cameras, and microphones. San Francisco, a city that has always had an image of social consciousness and alternative thinking, was a great venue for our bus, and meeting the man running the city was a great way for us to find out what the city of San Francisco is doing to be a model for the rest of the country.
Mayor Newsom was especially excited about our project because of San Francisco's own recent venture into the world of green buses. On June 1, 2006 San Francisco added 56 diesel-electric hybrid buses to the MUNI transportation system. The new buses, which have been thoroughly tested in the bus fleets of New York and Toronto, have up to 45% better fuel economy than conventional diesel buses as well as significantly cleaner emissions - 90 percent less particulate matter, 40 percent less NOx, and 30 percent fewer greenhouse gases. While all of this is definitely a laudable improvement, it is not enough for the Bay City. Instead of using petroleum diesel San Francisco will use biodiesel, making the buses carbon-neutral.
While Newsom reclined on one of our couches and chatted with us, reporters and photographers crawled all over the rest of the bus. We had an especially large media turnout because the day we met with the Mayor happened to be the day San Francisco had made a bid for the 2012 summer Olympics and everyone wanted to know what the Mayor was going to do to prepare his city. Mayor Newsom refused, however, to let the reporters control the event and told the reporters he would answer all their questions at his press conference later that day, but at the time he wanted us to talk about our bus and to discuss what San Francisco is doing to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels. A very suave and polished politician he is indeed.
From City Hall we headed to the Crissy Field Center where BGB alum Aekta Shah '05 helps run a summer camp. We did a short presentation for the kids, illustrating and animating various forms of energy; th performance included Viv as an excited neutron during nuclear fission, Forrest as a dinosaur during the creation of fossil fuels, and yours-truly having a bucket of water dumped on him as we talked about hydropower. We then showed off the bus and showed the campers bottles of diesel, virgin vegetable oil, and waste vegetable oil. They all enjoyed bouncing on our couches but were sad that we didn't have a Playstation or X-Box on board. Xzibit wasn't on our design committee, alas.
From the camp we could see the Golden Gate Bridge, so afterwards we drove over into Marin County and up into the hills for a better view. After some impressive sight-seeing and many photographs we wound our way down back into Berkley to stay with Zabel's aunt and her family, the Blairs, and their menagerie of dogs, chickens, parakeets, and a neurotic duck named Zeus. After a hectic day we were happy to sleep in the stables, but fortunately the Blairs had beds and floor space to spare.
The next day we headed to the Walnut Creek Whole Foods, where a very nice Kerri works, to pick up food and table out in front of the store. We then got a tour of an Ibex production before heading back across the Golden Gate to stay with relatives in Mill Valley. We stuffed ourselves on chicken, Rice-A-Roni (fitting), and corn-on-the-cob, plus I got some good new music from my cousin Matt's friends' band that will be in the second vodcast. After a wonderful dinner and breakfast we strolled down the hill to the bus, safely stored to the thanks of the generousity of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Catholic Church. And the bus rolled on.
- Crank |
