Our shortcut and the war against petroleum dependency.

A lot of you may be wondering why we still haven't left the Midwest. Personally, I'm itchin' to be on the road, but we've had to visit EVERYONE before heading west.

When we left Ironwood last week we decided to save some time and skip riding through Northern Wisconsin, opting to catch a ride in Olkonen's grease powered truck.



This thing has two fuel systems under the hood, allowing it two run on either diesel or straight vegetable oil. We loaded the gear and bikes on the back and drove from Ironwood to Eau Claire, by way of Ashland.

We stopped for a couple pints at the South Shore Brewery...



before continuing on to the fair city on the banks of the Chippewa.

In other news, our epic journey west will begin in a couple days.