The Watery Rave

By Brian Jill

After breathing dust for almost 1,200 miles everyone in the truck was ready to fish. Our gills were closing up, and like a bunch of gasping guppies, it was going to take some time on the water to bring us back to life. Luckily, we found ourselves stuck in a small coastal town which coincidentally hosted a legendary offshore striped marlin fishery.

None of us had ever caught a striped marlin before, much less on a fly rod. Our early research which consisted of Internet fishing forums and a $20 group binge on the fortune teller at the fair indicated that the marlin schools could be located anywhere within a 72 square mile radius of where we were—which is only like 500 miles in dog years.

A few minor speed bumps did lie in our path…1) finding someone with a less than sketchimo boat, 2) convincing them to take “El Loco Gringo’s” out in their boat, and 3) locating a striped marlin psycho enough to eat a fly. How hard can that be? We just crossed the desert in a truck that burns vegetable oil.

Several times we tried to get a Mexican captain to take us offshore, and every time we were met with the reply, “You’re all going to die.” Not sure exactly what that meant, we assumed that striped marlin scared the Mexican fishing fleet. Fortunately, we stumbled upon a gentleman named Bob Hoyt that helped us formulize a new plan of attack.

We decided to leave our truck and our only way out of Mexico in a parking lot and shuttle all our equipment to one of the outside barrier islands.  Once we reached the a remote landing on the island, we would then 4×4 down a long stretch of remote shoreline until we reached a lobster fishing camp on the other side of the island.  From this location Bob knew of a captain that had a panga boat that would help us access the fishing grounds.

In the morning we carried load after load down a long pier and stacked it on a transport barge that Bob fabricated in his garage using two pontoons, wooden planks, a tube of Super Glue, a roll of duct tape and the smallest outboard motor in the history of the planet Earth.  To this day, I’m certain the motor ran on lighter fluid.

Once we loaded up the shuttle, it was obvious that we owned way too much gear, and that maybe the Mexican Captains had a little short-term prophet in their blood. I just made sure I stayed close to the camera cases, which would float and also provide a molded plastic shark deterrent should we go into the water.

The ride was short and when we arrived, one of those old Chevy Suburban’s (the stegosaurus of SUV’s) was waiting to shuttle us to the other end of the island. We spent the first half hour 4X4’ ing across desert sand dunes before we saw water. While driving a remote section of coastline, we saw remnants of boat wreckages (think Insane Clown Gringo Fishing Parties) and the remains of two blue whale carcasses.

On the beach, it was hard packed sand, and 50 mph runs that cooled us down with what the locals call “Mexican air conditioning.” Once at camp, we offloaded the Suburban, something we were becoming exceptionally talented at, and we’re all hoping the Want Ads back home have a position with a six figure salary offered in the Miscellaneous Jobs section under “Gear Humper.”

We set up camp at the Scorpion Lair hotel, and settled in for an evening of cerveza testing and fly tying, as we tried to match the flies in size and shape to the striped marlin lures we’d seen back at Bob’s base camp. By morning, we’d run out of beer and were sufficiently locked and loaded for bear or whatever else came along.

First off, don’t let anyone tell you that you just go out and catch a marlin. That’s not like impetigo, dengue fever, amoebic dysentery or any of the other things you can go to a remote section of Central America and just snap your fingers and catch. You need some local knowledge, favorable conditions and a little bait pod luck.

The marlin fishing started out rough, and we ended up getting our asses handed to us for the first couple days on the water. It was immediately apparent that something needed to change, whether that was our luck or our underwear.

Our trip budget was already running thin and at that point we didn’t have a single fish to hand. Over serious debate (think total resupply of cervza) and a coin toss, we decided to put in one more day of pain, but instead of cruising the 10-plus miles offshore, we opted to only venture out three miles to explore new water that the locals assured us in a 100 million years times infinity wouldn’t hold fish.

We immediately spotted flocks of frigates diving on schools of sardina. Seals started to show up by the droves to join in on the feast and Thad did his fish dance on the bow.

Not far behind the seals were large schools of striped marlin that started to slash at the baitfish on the surface with their bills in this archaic form of fish fungo.  We were sure we were watching the top predators the Pacific had to offer when a pod of killer whales swam through.

If you have ever watched the Discovery Channel’s Planet Earth series, then you have a basic idea of what it looks like when marlin attack the sardina schools.  In person, it’s magnified because the sound and visual effects stretch to the horizon, and you have this entire food chain working before your eyes and everything is just going off around you. It’s a lot like dangling naked from a cable above an NFL football game in progress while the crowds in the stand shoot bottle rockets at you. In other words, it was totally awesome!

What happened next was an unforgettable fly fishing experience that we’re saving for the movie release.  The sound and sight of a fly reel spinning at Mach-3 speeds while a marlin takes you deep into your backing, or the silence of a totally berserk striped marlin tailwalking and jumping its way into the boat is something that none of us will ever forget.  In a word, it was E-P-I-C!

By Brian Jill

Any time you embark on an expedition you can expect to have issues, and taking a vegetable powered diesel truck into the harsh desert terrain was sure to create problems. I mean, pick a worse environment to stick a combustion engine and moving parts into than an endless horizon of sand and potholes. Okay, maybe freezing sand and potholes, so I guess it could have been worse.

 Fortunately, we made it all the way to the Middle Of Nowhere, Mexico before we began having issues with the truck. Actually, it was not long after crossing the border, so in a pinch we could always put the wheels on our Gheenoe’s and push pole our way back to humility.

 When we originally built the vegetable fuel system we utilized some used parts, because new parts would cut into our fly tying material and cervesas budget, and that strategy completely bit us on the ass and caused us to utilize the fly tying materials allocation of the budget to purchase more cervesas to compensate for the stress of the breakdowns caused by the used parts which caused most of our troubles on the trip. In other words, we spent our essential truck parts money on beer.  

 The most consistent non-working part was our fuel pump, a pretty much essential component of the vegetable fuel system that was continually freezing up and not doing its job. If the fuel pump coughed, laughed or gagged it would cause our truck to stall on the vegetable side of the combustion machinery.   

 Since I had the most engine mechanic experience I was voted the expedition’s technician, jack of all trades and master of the blame if the truck didn’t run. Although I had never rebuilt a fuel pump, much less a diesel to vegetable conversion fuel pump, I had to dissemble and rebuilt that damn pump over two dozen times throughout Baja, which really tested my resolve to avoid smashing a diesel to vegetable fuel pump on the road and doing a Mexican hat dance around it. 

The Pump would run fine until it was put under a load, then it went to crap!  And before you say, “Since the fuel pump is an instrumental component of the fuel system, why didn’t you just drink two beers a day for a week and buy a new one,” because we did that.

 We found another pump, again used, because Small Mexican Towns are living proof that used parts go somewhere to die. Our beer ration fuel pump would only allow us to do 45 mph on the flats running on vegetable oil, which at the time was better than the alternative of sitting on the side of a highway waiting for the old pump to be rebuilt, someone to die of heat stroke or a band of banditos to realize the fly tackle is worth about the same as a fine watch.

 We soon realized that our fishing expedition was quickly turning into a road tour of all of Baja’s auto mechanic shops, which in itself was enough to make us pop, because no matter how many times we utilized the Spanish Translation Dictionary we couldn’t communicate to local mechanicos that vegetable oil powered our truck. It was easier to explain why all the wild dogs tried to hump Chris’ leg than to convey that tortilla juice made the engine purr.

 Eventually we went through every fuel pump in Mexico and started experimenting with water pumps or anything else that had the potential to work because if we had to switch over to using diesel, and thus PAYING for our fuel, we weren’t going to make it to the Yucatan.  I obviously had to get this pump situation figured out.

 Did you know there are NAPA Auto Parts stores in Mexico? I didn’t either, but I do now. After calling anyone with moving parts in the phone books from aeropuertos to zapatos frenos to try to find another vegetable fuel pump conversion, we finally found a stock diesel inline pump for a ford at a Napa in La Paz. We knew this was not the answer, and it would likely only would work for a little while, but again, it was better than waiting to be victimized and even if that was an unavoidable option we wanted it to take place in an area where we could fish.

 Another major concern of ours was a grinding/rattling sound coming from under the truck when we accelerated. Thad thought it might be a dog that threw Chris in a closet at one of the mechanic shops that was hanging out for seconds, but after we looked under the rig we realized that our drive shaft was getting thrown into the fuel tank skid guard only millimeters away from the fuel tank. That situation was obviously not so bueno! 

 We first thought that the U-joints were bad, but eventually determined that we broke the transmission mount and that the entire driveline was getting torqued upward. Mexican’s are very resourceful people and at a small repair shop in Cabo they were able to find our exact part within 30 minutes and had it installed in no time flat, which prevented Chris from having to tolerate the local dog population.

While the diesel to vegetable fuel pump created the majority of hangover inducing stress on the trip, we also dealt with fuel leaks, air leaks and vegetable oil spills. Not to mention the broken rear leaf springs from hauling so much weight in vegetable oil. That issue was resolved at a Mexican mechanic shop where they re-bent the old springs one by one and replaced the broken springs with recycled beer cans and duct tape (not really).

 We had a couple of instances when the vegetable/diesel fuel valve was sticking causing the vegetable oil to fill the diesel tank and overflow out of the fill spout, but one solid shot with the hammer and a very oral threat to stomp the valve into paste if it did it again took care of that issue.

 It’s funny how a breakdown in the fuel system will trivialize any other mechanical issues like flat tires. After spending enough time on the side of the road to consider opening a mobile tacoria, changing a flat was like eating cornbread. We did have one instance where we cracked the actual wheel, which was fixed for $12 and two beers in some Mexican auto shop that had a welding machine.

 Once we accepted that breakdowns were an expected parable on the trip, it was a lot easier to concentrate on where we were going and what we would do when we got there, knowing we would arrive sooner or later even if it took every crappy used rebuilt vegetable fuel pump in Central America.

By Brian Jill

Loco Gringo

Despite all our reservations and an apoplectic bank account, it was time to get things going. So we pointed the rig south and made a run for the border.  We stopped at a surf shop in Ojai, California for some supplies, and had a somewhat dubious conversation with the owner that went like this:

Surf Shop Owner: “You guys are rigged out. Where ya heading?”

US: “Mexico. Baja or bust man.”

Surf Shop Owner: “What’s the matter, you got a problem with being robbed at gunpoint by Americans?”

US: “Huh.”

Surf Shop Owner: Yeah, I had a couple of buds that just got back from a month-long surf trip to Baja, only they came back after five days. Came in from a cool four foot glass at a remote break to learn that banditos like MiniVans. Pulled guns on them, made them stick Cheetos in their nostrils and dance like chickens while they video’d it for Youtube.”

US: “Um, what about their stuff?”

Surf Shop Owner: “Oh, everyone in town now has surfing T-shirts and board shorts. They were pissed that neither of them wore underwear. I guess there’s a demand for that in Mexico. Took their boards too. The one guy, Brian, he had a sweet 9’ 4” Bing noserider squaretail that…”

US: Dood, what happened to the guys?”

Surf Shop Owner: “Oh, they left them there with flipflops, board shorts and Cheeto nose. Keep your eyes open for a white Dodge MiniVan with an “Enjoy Surfing, A Healthy Habit” bumper sticker on the back.”  

Later that afternoon, Jay ran into a former Mexican policeman that stuck us with the “Loco Gringos” label and said he hadn’t made a trip back to his home in Mexico for some time because of the random violence and even randomer killing. That’s when Thad picked up a permanent stutter and we all felt a little sick to our stomachs knowing we were crossing the border at first light.    

Fortunately, we weren’t flying blind. We were armed to the teeth with a wooden dowel, a spear gun, two Hawaiian slings, two canisters of bear mace, four canisters of wasp spray with a reach of 27 feet, and an array of folding pocket knifes and bottle openers.     

That night we set up base camp in a San Diego Wal-Mart parking lot. Thad threw out his sleeping bag in the truck canopy, Brian and Chris went upstairs to the Gheenoe suite and Jay reclined in the drivers seat.    

After 10 minutes of shuteye, Barney Fife and his one bullet security team was on us. Apparently, any time there’s a truck pulling a trailer with two Gheenoes on top parked in the lot, there’s someone sleeping in the Gheenoe, or so Barney alluded as he pointed out the “no camping in the parking lot” city/Wal-Mart ordinance.  

Unfortunately for us, Barney was up for the Rent-A-Cop of the Year award and wasn’t going to let the fishhead Loco Gringos affect his status. From there, the night was such a blur that I can’t really remember where we ended up sleeping, but I had the imprint of a waffle on my face when I woke up.   

The next morning, well-stressed and red-eyed, we gathered to discuss our border crossing options. We could cross at Tijuana if we didn’t mind playing bumper car in the traffic congestion. Then again, recent newspaper headlines pointed to major cartel activity in Tijuana.  Jay was quick to point to the “Enjoy Surfing, A Healthy Habit” bumper sticker that someone from the surf shop in Ojai secretly stuck to the back bumper.  

Not knowing if that was a code sign for Banditos-R-Us we removed the sticker and headed inland for the Tecate border crossing thinking it’d be faster and there might be a fresh batch of the local beer available. We crossed the border without incident and were relieved to get our journey started and put some miles behind us. We were immediately stopped by Mexican Border Patrol.    

I’m sure all of you know that it’s illegal to bring drums of fuel across the border, apparently because when you live in an impoverished area, you’re more likely to buy expensive fuel than cheap fuel.  The four 55 gallon drums of vegetable oil in the back of the trailer raised suspicion.    

We’d thought of just about everything when planning out the trip: the course; supplies; rations; water; fuel; spare parts; boats; dive gear even toiletries, but for some reason, no one thought about the language barrier. Needless to say, our Spanish speaking skills were near obsolete, so we had to communicate through the time-tested art of hand signals and Charades. It took no time for us to convey that we were simply Loco Gringos looking for the nearest Banditos-R-Us.      

Tensions were at an extreme knowing that if they didn’t let us through at this point we we were screwed, glued and tattooed with no trip, no footage, no fishing and a dozen sponsors looking for the return for their investments. Several of the sponsors had complaint divisions worked by Moose and Rocko, who would help you find your checkbook and return the sponsorship money.  

At first the Border Patrol denied us passage citing the “No mobile fuel bombs” Tecate City ordinance.  Not wanting to give in, we attempted to explain to them the veg conversion and why we were transporting 300-plus gallons of veg on the trailer. That confused them. Were we planning to open a Tacoria?   

It was time to get mime-like with our game of Charades, so we ripped two dozen Pelican cases and bags out of the truck and onto the streets of Tecate, and had the Border Patrol stick their head inside the canopy to investigate the veg system. That really confused them. Where was the deep fryer? How can you open a Tacoria without a deep fryer?   

It was time for drastic measures. Jay took a lighter to the veg and showed them that it would not ignite and then Chris stuck his finger in the oil and tasted it. They all agreed that Loco Gringos was an appropriate label that should be included in all our official paperwork so as not to confuse any other Mexican officials into thinking we were normal tourists. But it finally got us a response.  

Immediately, senior border officials filed out of their offices in their buttoned up suits and ties. They stuck a paint stick into the barrels, only to have dirty veg oil blow off the stick all over their nice shirts and pants. They were disgusted, confused, and pissed at their officers, and they let us pass.  

We immediately stopped at the first Tacoria and filled the coolers with tallboy Tecate beer and headed south. Viva La Mexico!    

The Road of Death  

It’s not until you visit another country and drive on their roads that you realize the value of shoulders and that a pothole is less than a minor inconvenience. The roads through Baja were at best crappy, and more often than not, super sketchy…   

At one point we were traveling down a long section of highway dubbed the “Road of Death,” due to the fact that if your tire crossed over the white line your vehicle would summersault off a cliff into the desert. The Road of Death was a cemetery for tossed cars, semi’s, busses and other white line crossers. Apparently, Driver’s Ed isn’t mandatory your junior year in Baja High.       

Most of the time, we drove each day until nightfall, or until the truck had a mechanical failure and we worked into the night to fix it before the mobile bandito show could arrive.  

We tried to sleep by the ocean most nights, but sometimes ended up camping in neighborhoods and city parks. Jay’s prize purchase at the Wal-Mart in San Diego was a camouflage Snuggie that we wore each night.    

Brian and Chris would spend every opportunity they could spear fishing for dinner.  We ate snapper cooked 30 different ways.  

We had our wasp spray locked and loaded, but no one, not even the surf shop owner mentioned anything about spiders. Black widows were thick at almost every spot we camped throughout Baja, so we slept with cotton in our ears and our mouths closed in case one of the spiders wanted to make a new nest.  

This is a good time to mention the quality of our map, GPS and planned route. All along Baja there were pull-offs and dirt roads, many leading to rocking remote beach locations where the fish were plentiful and the camping scenic. Many others were simply roads to nowhere that ended up at a cactus plantation. Accessing our camping areas at night was a serious pain in the ass, and required us to continually back up down long one-way roads with a trailer at night to find another route.

We spent the evenings blogging and logging footage from the previous day and building shrines out of empty Tecate bottles. One mention, Big Ups for the Baja Atlas we purchased before crossing the border. It saved our asses and I would highly recommend it.

When you commit to running a vehicle on vegetable oil, you’re changing your normal straightforward life to one of a scavenger. Face it, the oil is free, but you’ve got to scrounge it up, and more importantly, beat the other scroungers to the pot o’ gold.

 We were hoping that we could stockpile enough vegetable oil to fuel our Veg powered F250 diesel to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, but more would be even better, because hunting vegetable oil in a town you didn’t know with no local contact could put you into some sketchy areas pretty quickly, and last I heard, banditos don’t offer up a free pass just because you’re eco-friendly. The truck burns roughly 13 mpg of veg, so to make it to the bottom of Mexico, a 4,500 mile trip, we were looking at having to find 350 gallons of the stuff. That’s a lot of crawling behind restaurants.

 Fortunately Joel was an expert at scrounging waste oil, and was willing to share his secrets with fish headed fools. So we spent the next two days scrounging waste veg oil, which was a lot like playing homeless treasure hunt. We went from one end of town to the other, bailing out, checking the waste veg containers and quickly moving to the next one. Obviously the veg culture was secretive and motivated. Finally we hit the mother lode at the Lucky Dragon, a series of waste barrels behind a movie theatre.

 Our pot o’ veg gold was more a barrel of brown mound with plenty of chunks to go around. It was nasty stuff that needed to be cleaned using coffee filters. We’d siphon the veg oil using a hand pump used for pumping water out of boat bilges, which is why Thad has one skinny arm and one balloon arm. Fortunately, he randomly chose his casting/fighting arm to beef up with the pumping, so he had that going for him later in the trip.  

 One thing about veg hunting, you need to be aggressive and assertive (basically ruthless) at all times. There were occasions when restaurant staff members would take umbrage with the sketchimos digging through their waste behind the building, but we found that by acting like we owned the place, were there for a reason and might have some link to the border patrol, we could get most of the cooks in the Asian restaurants to run, screaming back inside. BTW, what does, “I hope you get carpfinger” mean?

 At the same time we were becoming alley thieves Joel was going through his hit list of Friends of the Veg to see if he could bum us some extra oil. On the top of his list was a guy who runs a driving school with vehicles totally powered by veg, and the guy was a hoarder extraordinaire. He had enough veg stockpiled to manipulate the stock prices of Crisco, and even more amazing was the quality of the stuff. I mean, it was the macking golden artery juice.

 Not only was he extremely generous, giving us 200 gallons of the primo veg, but also mentoring, explaining where the quality stuff could be had. In essence, you wanted to hunt the restaurants where the oil needed to be changed continuously, so sushi bars topped the list because the diners have educated palates, and you didn’t want the crab in a Spider Roll to taste like tempura eel, compared to places like Kentucky Fried Chicken, where it wasn’t a big deal if the chicken wings tasted like, say, chicken thighs or chicken breasts.

 Joel also gave us 75 gallons from his personal stash, which put us at 275 gallons of the oohey gooey kablooey. We put all the oil in five gallon containers (55 in all), and as we started hoarding our own stash, we realized that the truck not only looked like the world’s largest accident waiting to turn into a roadside sliding car comedy, but stacked to the top we could only hold about 30 of the fuel bombs. We needed a trailer.

 Once again, Joel came to the rescue, with a old trailer behind his shop that some nomad had traded him for a heavy duty brush guard and a new pair of blue jeans. We went to work on the trailer, which set us back another day from departure and drained our extra beer money cache, but in the end beat buying diesel fuel.

 At the same time we were leading the scavenger existence, Brian played geek ranger and found a website called freefillup.com- which was a site designed to connect people who veg and people who have excess veg to give away. Brian signed up for an account and was immediately contacted by a guy named Jim (yeah, I really should know his last name since he also hooked us up) who not only filled us up beyond capacity, but also let us borrow four plastic fifty gallon drums so we didn’t have to look like we had a leak in the radiator and were towing a lifetime supply of coolant in the trailer.

 The plastic drums made transporting and filling the veg tank on the go one hundred million times infinity more efficient. We were now stocked, locked and loaded, and ready to make a run for the border.  

Before you can ever think about embarking on a major trip of this nature, you need get out a pencil, some paper and enough beer to kill an elephant, and put down everything that needs to be addressed for the expedition to be considered a success. Our first attempt at this was nothing more than a list of where we wanted to fish. We immediately realized that we needed to do more research on how an expedition is planned out, so we spent countless hours of research on the Internet, and came up with a more expanded list of places to fish, including some great remote areas none of us had heard about.  

 I just want to point out that none of us are trustafarians, we’re you’re typical broke fishing bums that know if we can find a project someone might want to support monetarily, we can get a free ride to fish. Unfortunately, product manufacturers have become hip to the sponger/angler game, so raising enough sponsorship to pull off this trip was a multi-month ordeal that we wouldn’t swear on our worst dinnertime phone ringing telemarketer.  

 Several members tried to bail during the sponsor solicitation period, but we were usually able to placate their concerns with copious amounts of beer and mostly true fishing stories.  Then a funny thing happened: corporate sponsors started falling for our pitch, followed by products (and the occasional check) showing up at our doors. 

 Next up was to figure out how we were going to get from Jay’s house in Portland, Oregon to Mexico, across the country’s rough terrain and less traveled roads, and then back to Oregon, hopefully with all our gear and minimal delays for jail time, breakdowns, armed robberies and bathroom stops. Once we learned that tequila refineries don’t do sample tours, our path of travel was mapped out and it became pretty obvious that we were going to need a beast of a truck.

 The Truck Purchase

Did I mention that we don’t have any money? We’re also young, like to fish, eat and visit the occasional adult beverage container, so if we were going to be on a tight budget as it is, where were we going to get the extra money we’d need for fun? The obvious answer was to eliminate some of the costs associated with the trip, and with the gas the greatest expense, we quickly schemed a way to knock that expenditure off the list—we’d get the citizens of Mexico to sponsor our fuel bill. Well, sort of. We’d convert the truck to run on vegetable oil, and then swipe it from the disposal sites behind restaurants as we went.

 First, we needed the perfect truck for the job, one we could turn into a house at will. After researching vegetable oil conversions we knew we needed a diesel rig, preferably with a crew cab so no one had to spend two months crossing Mexico in the Sweet Seat.  Brian scavenged through vehicle listings in Florida, Thad in Utah, while Jay and I tackled the North Western US. We spent weeks surfing Craigslist trying to find a vehicle for the expedition.  After a while it started to get frustrating because trucks were constantly being sold out from underneath us, and with only two weeks until our predetermined departure date, the pressure to pull the trigger was building.  

 Then Thad gave notice that he’d found a rig in Salt Lake City that might work, so with the offer of a road trip and multiple stops for fish population research,  we jumped on it. Hours later, we purchased a 1996 Ford F250 Crew Cab diesel truck from a Utah diary farmer by the name of Cooter. Looking back on the decision, I really can’t explain why we would buy a truck from someone who delivered it to us on a trailer and if the asking price of $5000 might be a sign that the truck had seen some blacktop.    

 Next, we purchased a used canopy with locking storage compartments on the side, then bought a construction lumber rack to haul the boats on.  It was actually a flawless, yet compact design that would yield maximum storage capacity while making the entire rig look like the country went bankrupt and we were the first of the sketchy youth migration heading for Central America.  

 Our biggest mistake was turning on the television. Headline News was touting the recent Mexican cartel activity–beheadings, murders and gang violence along the border, which was right in the areas we needed to pass through, so we all started to get cold feet. Then our friends starting wearing on us. ‘Don’t ask the federales to show you their badges,” they said, because your answer every time is going to be, “Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!”

 We were starting to stress the safety issue when Brian flew in from Florida and Thad had just driven the truck up from Salt Lake City, so we were all in the same location, with the planned departure date just days away. We’d already spent a bunch of the sponsorship money on the truck and fly tying supplies, so we were locked in and felt like we had to commit, lest Moose and Rocco show up at the door offering to help us find our checkbook. 

 One morning we awoke to the beeping sound of a large semi truck dumping two Gheenoes micro skiffs that we had sponsored for the trip in the middle of the street. Carbon Marine sponsored elevated carbon casting platforms and push poles, which we adapted to the Gheenoe’s, allowing them to operate like ultralight two man cartop flats boats. Days later we bought a pair of used 9.9 Yamaha motors off Craigslist, so with all the vehicles prepped and supplies stocked, we couldn’t come up with a valid reason not to head south.    

 In the weeks leading up to the trip, we were on a first name basis with the UPS and Fed Ex delivery crew.  The mountain of boxes inside the living room started to overflow from the living room onto the front porch.  Camera equipment, power inverters, fly lines, spear guns, and ARB vehicle recovery gear was spread to every corner of the house.   

 The preparation for a multi month filming expedition is never ending. The first stage of organizing is making sure you have all the necessary production equipment in place to actually document the project. After the fallout with AEG buying new cameras, hard drives and lenses broke the bank. Our plan was to do most of our filming in remote locations for long durations of time. AC oulets to charge wasn’t an option so we prepared to operate of the grid utilizing solar panels and power inverters to fuel our computers, batteries and camera gear.  When the last Pelican case was loaded we headed Joel Woolfs to have our Veg Conversion Done.

Truck Build:

            Even in Central America the price of gas can add up, so the original plan was to convert our Ford F250/Family Truckster to run on vegetable oil and do the whole journey as a vegihilce. We would slum vegetable waste oil from the back-alley dumpsters of taquerias all throughout Mexico, which means we’ll basically ride for free and can transfer the costs into our adult beverage and fly fishing entertainment accounts.  

            We knew that a vegi conversion would run us somewhere in the neighborhood of $4000-5000, which we didn’t have, so we sent media kits out to all vegi conversion companies in the United States hoping to secure a sponsorship. The first guy (and one of the only people to contact us) was Joel Woolf of Veg Powered Systems in Ojai, California. It turns out that Joel was the guy that did the conversion for the Malloy Brothers in the book Bend to Baja where a couple of guys head into Mexico to surf the Baja Peninsula, so we figured he knew his stuff. Really, we had no idea how good Joel was at his trade.   

            So we loaded up the F250 and worked our way down to Ojai where Joel was standing in the driveway when we pulled in. He took one look at the truck and said, “I’m sorry fellas, but you aint gunna make it. Your truck sounds like crap.  Pop the hood and let me look inside.”  

            By nightfall, we had tents pitched in his cow pasture and he was dissembling and rebuilding everything. It was like someone let Dr. Doofenschmirtz,  the evil scientist from Phineas and Ferb loose on our ride. Below is just a small list of modifications he did in the first two days:

 - Installed fuel valve, hoses, tank, filters, cleaned turbo

- Replace fuel pump, lift pump, glow plugs, and head gasket

- Replaced rear drums and breaks

- Replaced Front outer/inner axle shafts
- Replaced Front axle seals
- Replaced Front U joints
- Replaced Front axle needle bearing
- Added A R E Aluminum DCU Topper

-Instructed to pour a quart of ATF (auto transmission fluid) into one of the fuel tanks every fill up. Works as a detergent to clean the injectors.

            If one person ate up all the headlines about the mass murders in Mexico it was Joel. He was absolutely convinced that we would die unless we took the utmost precautions–and by that he meant we had to make some serious cosmetic changes to the outside of the truck. In his mind, banditos were attracted to chrome, so the easiest way to address all the chrome on the truck was to make it look like plastic. He said we needed to make this truck look like it was straight out of hell because the Mexican populace is very religious and even the sketchy characters would shy away, lest they spend time on the spit in Purgatory. So again, we let Dr. Doofenschmirtz loose to depimp our ride. 

1)      We striped all the chrome, bought half dozen cans of black spray paint, and turned the bumpers black.

2)      We decided to weld lights onto the back of the truck, so when thieves tried to break in we could flip a switch to spook them off—and here we thought lights were to help us organize in the dark. 

3)      We welded rusty horseshoes on the truck and trailer for good luck.

4)      When Joel wanted to wrap the truck in chains, we drew a line in the sand.  

5)      We  then welded on recovery point hooks.

6)      Replaced the tires and suspension.

7)      Added an ARB pull-out awning to roof rack.

8)      Re-installed the rack canopy with added supports.

9)      Installed ARB Xtreme driving lights.

10)  Replaced the stereo (conveniently the one in the dash had already been glipped), and this made Thad happy that he didn’t have to leave his Twisted Sister box set at home.

11)  Tassels for the front window—Because when in Mexico…

Building the Veg System:

            Joel’s place was like a fenced in compound that had a little bit of everything lying around—sort of a Monster Garage for veg conversions. We found a used semi-truck diesel fuel tank behind the barn that we made a few fabrications to and soon converted into fully functional insulated tank that would sit in the back of the truck bed and house 60 gallons of Veg Oil. After a half dozen trips to the hardware and auto parts stores to get the necessary pumps, filters, and fuel lines, we had the makings of a system that would transfer the oil from the veg tank to the engine.

            Joels plan was to build us a Veg and Go system—an enclosed system that would allow us to roll up behind a taqueria and pump veg oil out of waste barrels and be gone down the road in 5 minutes or less. All of us had visions of restaurant workers with bats and hammers coming out to play piñata on the fishheads after they spotted us taking their waste oil, yet we went with the Veg and Go design anyway.

            The Veg and Go system was an onboard waste oil filtration system that would allow us to pump veg oil from outside of the canopy, through a heated filter and into a heated fuel tank via our collection pump and hoses. Once the veg tank was filled, a fuel pump located in the bed of the truck would draw the veg through a water separator filter, before it exited the truck bed and pushed the veg through heated fuel lines to our lift pump and into the injectors. At least that was the theory. 

            After a week of wearing vegetable oil and a few tweaks along the freeway our new F2Veggie purred like a Valley Girl with a new Versace purse. When all was running smoothly we had full power and the truck ran at 1/10th the noise factor that it did on diesel.  Plus it didn’t smell like diesel butt.

Mexico, Central America

 THE STORY:

The plan is simple: bridge the language gap, convince the Federales that you’re not trying to smuggle cooking oil into the country to corner the market on cheap fish tacos and find out if everything you read about remote areas to fish on the Internet are true. At the same time, spend little money, sponge off the local delicacies and see if you can kill stomach cramps with a combination of tequila and lack of sleep.

 Join four fish bums with two first names as they cover 8,000 miles of Mexican dirt in a diesel pick-up converted to run on cooking oil while soaking flies at every opportunity. Trying their best to avoid break-ins, break-downs, break-ups and broken rods, the angling quartet cuts their own path through some of Mexico’s most rugged terrain in hopes of finding out-of-the-way locations—with fish, and escaping with captured memories.

 Travel via extreme low-budget plan down the Baja peninsula, across the Sea of Cortez, from West Coast to East and finally to the jungles of the Yucatan as they ride the vegetable oil-filled exhaust fine line between entertainment and extreme parking lot camping. With a pair of Gheenoes on the roof, a fresh set of radials and pocketful of pesos, you’ll get a glimpse of the preplanned post college road trip where digital SLRs and camera phones go cinematic.

 There’s a reason everything in Mexico has a hide thick enough to make a pair of boots out of–from marlin to minnows, desert racing to dead-stop traffic in a town tortured by drug gang violence, join the hunt for food, fun and a cure to Montezuma’s Revenge, proof that what doesn’t kill you only makes you avoid it the second time around. Or not. Then again, who can pass up a roadside taco stand?

 THE ADVENTURE:

Known for its coastal resorts on the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, Mexico is a thin man in a big hat—a coin toss of whether you get to sip Margaritas in the shade or spend the day hungry. While the resorts cater comfort and style, the residents struggle to eke out a life in country more fit for to accommodate a glia monster than a fish head.

 When you travel by road (be it dirt or paved) the next campsite can be just around the corner whether you like it or not, and at any time banditos can take a liking to your vehicle/home or decide to test the waters of EBay with your fly tackle. To make it home you have to keep moving, or the dust and desert will surround and overtake you, making you just another roadside casualty in the vehicular ancient burial ground.   

 Along with some of the poorest slums in Central America are also the most pristine waters—places where lobster can be plucked from the tide pools and fish fight over flies. Mexico is a contrast of extremes (beauty and pain), and the road you end up traveling may not be by choice, but as with anywhere that human interaction hasn’t overtaken, once you get there, paradise and unspoiled fishing are right at your feet.

THE PLAYERS:

Motiv Fishing: The production company that will make this exodus into a film and 20 minute (or less) stokefest segment you can view during the 2011 Drake Magazine Fly Fishing Film Tour. Shot exclusively with digital SLR cameras and video phones, you get technology and short term memory loss in the same frame.

 Jay Johnson: A cross between Bluto from Animal House and the classic overachiever fisherman, Johnson stumbles through life like Fred Flintstone in flip flops but has a heart of gold and a liver of cast iron. The head of the herd, he gets to sleep indoors.

 Brian Jill: Introspective, silent and brooding, much like a serial killer, Jill has managed to get paid to go fishing even if it requires baking like a potato in a Dutch Oven to get there. Never one to complain, you won’t know Jill is sick until his eyes turn yellow.   

 Chris Owens: A sketchy obsessive compulsive, Owens is the kid who liked to run the stick across the lion’s cage, even knowing that sooner or later the lion was going to reach through those bars and take a swing. He fishes like he lives life, dangling over a cliff and waving his arms.

 Thad Robison: The voice of reason, direction and non-life threatening wildlife interaction, Robison is the guy you want to have behind the wheel when the whip comes down and the brakes fail. He also has an aversion to public toilets.