EV Pusher meets the Eco-Trekker

Continued

July 31, 2003, Steamboat Springs Campground.

Morning, and I'm the only one up. All of the tents here are occupied by people attending the wine convention at the Inn, and it seems that they all stayed up well past midnight and probably had a wee bit of their trade to drink. The Eco-Trekker RV is silent, and Eddy is still wrapped up in his sleeping bag on the ground.

Before he left for Crater Lake, I mentioned to Thomas that he should probably put up his tent while it was still light, but the push was on to get to the lake before the light gave out, so when he got back with the rest of the ET crew and the van, it was fully dark. No problem, I found him peacefully asleep in his Honda MiniRV.

One-by-one, the crew awakened, organized their brain cells, and turned their attention to coffee and breakfast. Apparently, Thomas had been promised some Vegemite, so the electric toaster was brought out, plugged into the RV's electrical system, and white bread toast slathered with butter and flavored yeast extract (Vegemite) was the featured fare. Since Vegemite is vegetarian friendly, I produced some wheat bread and made a few slices for myself. It's not bad, but you have to be careful to not use too much, it's quite salty. Sally showed us the proper technique for spreading it along the top of the toast in just the right amount. Search Google for more information about Vegemite than you could ever want to know...

Ray and Teresa left in the van to scout some locations and Shaun washed the dishes from last night's meal, carefully drying each plate, bowl and pan with his own personal bath towel. Teresa would re-wash the entire lot later when she cleaned up the RV. I remarked that Shaun had already washed them, to which she replied that she needed no other reason to re-wash them, because she had seen before how Shaun washes dishes....

One project that I had not managed to finish before leaving for this trip was getting the cruise control brake interlock circuit working. For some time, I've been concerned about the possibility that I might have to make a panic stop in the EV while using the Pusher, and that I wouldn't have time to turn down the throttle knob to stop the trailer's pushing the car into danger. This concern became even more acute when I learned that Shaun would be driving the EV, so I designed and installed a circuit that cuts the throttle to the Pusher when the brake lights of the Pusher come on. No throttle control commands will function until a "resume" button is pressed on the Pusher's control panel. On the bench, the circuit worked fine, but after installing it in the car, I couldn't get the brake lights to fault the throttle. I had a pretty good idea what the problem was, and brought some resistors of a different value to swap into the control to see if I could get it working.

While Shaun and the crew did some filming in the creek bed (more on this in a moment), I used my AC inverter and soldering iron to change the value of the circuit, and got it working perfectly. Now, touching the brake pedal shuts the Pusher's engine down to an idle, and the oil pressure warning light flashes to indicate that the cruise control is faulted and needs to be reset using the resume button.

While I was putting away my tools, I noticed Marty and Eddy trying to strangle a tree with a length of rope. What they were trying to do was to pull the top of the tree aside so that Ray could get a shot of Shaun down by the creek from the roof of the RV. Although it was a fairly skinny bush of a tree, they weren't having very much luck pulling it aside. The action down in the creek was some footage of Shaun "discovering" the Pusher on the web, using his Mac computer power by a portable PV panel. Of course, the entire thing was staged, not only was there no internet access in the campground due to the steep ravine which prevented the RV's satellite uplink from working, but there was no sun this early in the day to make the solar panel operate. No Problems, mate, both issues will be taken care of in post production. A photo of the car will be chroma-keyed onto Shaun's laptop screen, and the aperture of the camera will make the shadowed creek bed look like mid day sun.

Anyway, after Shaun "discovers" the EV and Pusher on the "web" (insert special effects here), he "calls" me on my "cell phone", walking up and down over the stones of the creek bed, talking animatedly, setting up a "meeting" so that he can use the EV and Pusher to continue his "trip". Are you getting the feeling that this bit of video I'm participating in is a bit less that a fully accredited documentary?

Round about noon, I was in my tent eating a banana or something, when Sally walked up and said that we would be leaving. I stepped out and zipped up the tent fly behind me, and she said we were leaving, as in not coming back, and sent Marty and Eddy to help me carry my stuff, bedding and tent over to the RV to be packed away in the garage, so that the EV could be empty for filming.

Shaun would be riding with me as far as the Steamboat Inn, where I would turn the car over to him for some "driving shots". This would work out well, as I needed to show Shaun how driving the car was different from yesterday, now that the cruise control fault circuit was working.

At the Inn, I switched over to the van, giving Shaun last-minute instructions about the operation of the car. We drove up the road a bit to a place where there was an accessible rock outcropping that overlooked the road, a perfect place to set up the camera and tripod. Eddy and I continued up the road after letting Sally and Ray out, parking the van in a turnout that didn't appear in the camera's view. Shaun drove the EV and pusher past the camera location a number of times, Sally calling on the two-way radio for repeat takes when Shaun had cars following, or traffic approaching from the opposite direction entered the shot. Eventually, Ray was satisfied with the takes, and I got back into the EV with Shaun to travel to the next location.

Shaun was actually doing very well controlling the Pusher, and had picked up on the cruise control's fault function very quickly. He seemed to have the driving of the car figured out, and I snuck a few glances at the temperature gauge to make sure the Pusher wasn't overheating in the mid-day temperature.

The next shot was set up at the end of a long straightaway. I got out of the car at a turnout at about the middle of the long stretch, and hid myself out of the camera's aperture by moving back into the trees. Shaun again made several passes, and at one point, complained that they were "just bloody driving shots" and that Ray should have enough to be satisfied by now.

At the end of this session, Shaun circled back to pick me up, and we continued to the "rendezvous" location, where Shaun and I would "meet up" for the transfer of the car and trailer to him. Remember, this was all being shot out-of-sequence.

The final shooting location was a wide apron of pavement alongside the Umpqua River, where there would be ample room for us to pull the car over, set up the camera, and get all of the angles involved for the shot.

Shaun had made a cardboard sign that read "Mr. Sharkey", which had a cartoon of a diver's legs and feet sticking out of a sharks mouth. The idea here was that Shaun was going to stand alongside the road flashing this sign at passing cars as though he was trying to flag me down. That's exactly what he did too, while Ray filmed the whole thing. Most motorists just stared at this wild-haired, tall Aussie wearing a solar panel on his back, jumping up and down waving a sign at them. None of the stopped. Well, almost none of them, one car did stop to take a picture of the river, and Sally had to go over and shoo them away, as they were in the shot, and Shaun was supposed to be deserted, in the middle of nowhere, trying to hitch a ride from some guy with a weird EV/Hybrid combination.

Now it was time for my "Grand Entrance". Eddy dropped a wireless microphone transmitter into the pocket of my shorts, then taped a small mic inside my shirt using gaffer's tape. Ray piled into the back of the EV with the Sony digital camera, and we drove downriver a mile or so, with Ray taking shots of the instruments on the dash, my hands controlling the Pusher remote, and views out the windshield. As we approached Shaun, standing alongside the road, he went into a frenzy, jumping up and waving his sign at the car. Ray trained the camera on him as I brought the car to a halt alongside him.

We did this several times until Ray was satisfied that he had enough stock to pass the editing process, then he set up the camera in a position to view the EV approaching Shaun, and I repeated the drive-up a couple of more times solo. Each time, I got out of the car, shook hands with Shaun and greeted Sparky the dog as though it was our first meeting.

The next bit was me being filmed while I explained the Pusher to Shaun. What Sally wanted was for Shaun and me to both jump up on the towing tongue of the Pusher and stand up there while Shaun made exclamations about "Look Sparky!! It's an EV Pusher!!!" I kind of thought he whole jumping on the tongue thing was a bit overdone, and just didn't do it. Shaun did though, and while he's already about 6" taller than me, while standing on the trailer, he was about two feet taller, meaning Ray had to pan the camera up and down between us to compensate for the height difference.

They wanted me to show Shaun the engine, the trunk with the fuel tank and shift lever, etc, but DID NOT want me to explain why a pusher trailer was a useful piece of equipment for en electric car driver, the operating modes the hybrid was capable of, total possible range of the vehicle, or anything else about the car. In fact, they didn't want, and did not take any video images of the EV's under-hood electric drive components, batteries, or really, any images of the EV at all, outside of what was necessary to show the trailer. I was told that electric vehicles were covered in the previous segment, this segment was about Biodiesel, and I needn't bother with any EV-related information. Also included in this part of the filming was me turning the car over to Shaun, giving him brief operating instructions, and him driving away, leaving me standing on the side of the road, waving goodbye. I guess that I wasn't a very significant part of the plot after Shaun had the car, as no explanation of what I was supposed to do to get home was given....

A good long bit of time was spent installing a small digital video camera inside the car, using a suction-cup mounting device that was placed on the inside of the windshield. A microphone was taped to the sun visor above the driver's seat, and the cable tucked out of sight. I put the passenger seat back in the reclined position so that Ray would have more room to wield the big camera. We loaded Sparky into the EV, Ray and Shaun got in, and then drove off. Sally, Eddy and I stood around for about 15 minutes in the hot sun, with very little shade to block the July heat. I finally climbed down the slope to the river and soaked my feet, eventually joined by the other two. The temperature of the Umpqua was not nearly as temperate as that of Steamboat Creek a few miles upriver. We splashed about for 40 minutes or so before Shaun, Ray and my car reappeared. I have no clue where they went, what they did, or what the finished video will show while they were gone.

The filming completed, we were now going to go into Roseburg and join up with the rest of the crew and the RV, which had gone into town to offload the Corbin Sparrow EV that was in the RV's garage, and connect to the satellite uplink so they could send some e-mails. Shaun got into the passenger seat, and I started the EV's electric drive for the first time today, running the car in parallel mode. Shaun had been doing all of the driving for the filming using only the Pusher for power, as I was reluctant to turn him loose on the EV's operating modes without a lot more training.

We met up with the RV in town, and then nicked off in the EV to a coffee kiosk for some caffeinated beverages. Once back at the RV, which was parked in the lot of a closed-down industrial building, I attracted the attention of one of the local VW enthusiasts, who couldn't resist the appearance of a vintage VW Rabbit towing an even older VW trailer.

After half an hour or so, the RV was made road-worthy, the satellite uplink dish returned to it's traveling position, and we made our way to Interstate 5 for the trip to Eugene, the EV/Pusher in front, the van following and the RV bringing up the rear.

Antenna flag flapping in the breeze on the RV

Onward, to Eugene...