PROFILE; Brent Butler; Tales (and Odors) From a Vegetable Oil- Powered Bus That’s Touring the U.S.
By TIM CIGELSKE
At Dartmouth University, Milwaukee native Brent Butler was the swim team captain and the literary journal prose editor. He graduated with honors in English and premedicine.
His next phase will be nothing like that.
“It’s going to be a couple of years of being really stupid,” he said. “I have to get it out of my system.”
To promote alternative fuels, Butler is riding across the country this summer on a green bus – appropriately called the Big Green Bus – that runs on waste vegetable oil. On a rainy day in August, the bus is parked in Milwaukee, where Butler greeted visitors and wore a shirt that read “Change your fuel, change the world.”
The seeds of his environmentalism were sown growing up here. His Eagle Scout project consisted of protecting native plants at the Schlitz Audubon Center.
Butler, 22, took a short hiatus from the ride to come home and earn rent for an apartment in Los Angeles, where he plans on starting an improv comedy career at the end of the ride.
Now he’s back on the bus, and he shared with MKE what it’s like to travel the country with 10 other Dartmouth students in a vehicle that often reeks of catfish.
Q: What are your fellow riders like?
A: They run the gamut. There’s the super hippie vegetarian to the varsity frat guy to the premedical student and everything in between. What they have in common, though, is they are all extremely driven and capable.
Q: Is it hard sharing tight quarters?
A: Not so long as you never ask the girls what that THING is in their bin.
Q: Does the road bring out the best or the worst?
A: Both. Sometimes the bus rises in incredibly unexpected ways. Sometimes it almost self-destructs over who had lunch at Jimmy John’s.”
Q: What’s it like to fuel the bus?
A: “One time I sucked a dead crow into the hose and had to pull it out. Another time, the valve on our pump broke. We shot a 12- foot grease geyser all over the bus and the rest of the Burger King parking lot where we were fueling. Once (another rider) siphoned a dead mouse out of our fuel tank – with his mouth.”
Q: Does it always smell like french fries?
A: “The bus smells like whatever we pick up. In the South, we smelled like catfish a lot. In Texas, we were never really sure. The smell becomes part of us. It’s not so much that we become immune to it as we embrace it.”
Q: What comments do you hear about the bus?
A: “We met a diesel psychic who channeled the bus to let us know that it didn’t like running on grease.”
Q: What do people say when you tell them you’re from Milwaukee?
A: “Oh, I know someone from there. You must know Bill, right? My cousin Bill?”
Bio
Age 22
Hometown Milwaukee
College sports Butler was captain his senior year of the varsity swim team at Dartmouth.
Across the pond Butler’s family lived in England for a time while he was growing up.
In his words
Being a tree hugger
“I wanted to be in the woods. I wanted to be around people who needed to be in trees. The wilderness is the greater classroom at Dartmouth.”
Car-shopping advice
“The answer to what new car do I buy? Don’t. Keep the one you have. We treat cars like napkins.”
Environmental awareness in Milwaukee
“Here in Milwaukee, no one would say, ‘How is the water that’s falling off my massive roof affecting the waterways?’ It’s not their fault. It’s just never been an issue. But it should be.”
Brew City vs. L.A.
“(Los Angeles) is an environmentally unfriendly city. Compared to L.A., Milwaukee is Green City, USA.”
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