6:00am | Two-and-a-quarter gallons of gas.
That is about what it will have taken Cliff Ricketts, a professor of agriculture at Middle Tennessee State University, to drive from the Atlantic Coast on Sunday to Long Beach when he arrives here later today.
Starting at a beach in Georgia about 15 miles east of Savannah, Ricketts was determined to get cross-country on what he estimated at the start of his travel to be less than ten gallons. Heading to Nashville following Savannah, he eventually took took the country’s third-longest stretch of road, I-40, all the way to Barstow. From there, he’s taking the 15 freeway and heading for Long Beach via the 605, where he’ll finally end at 100 Ocean Boulevard today at an estimated arrival time of 3:00pm.
Ricketts, who spoke to the Long Beach Post via cellphone last night while passing through Flagstaff, Arizona, has a demeanor typical of a Southern gentleman: appreciative, reasonable, and forward — which, according to him, are part of the reasons that fueled his taking on alternatives energies.
“The idea sparked about 30-something years ago when the [Iranian hostage crisis] happened,” Ricketts said. “Following that, gas prices tripled to a ridiculous $1.60 a gallon… Since I was in agriculture, I wanted to make a fuel alternative so in case of a national emergency, the American farmer could still harvest their crops. We were scared about that several years ago so we started with our with our first alternative fuel — ethanol. And then [we moved forward] to methane from cow manure and then to biodiesel and then solar-electric. But my passion and what I’m trying to work with now is hydrogen.”
He has taken on this hydrogen endeavor in steps over the course of years. About five years ago, he went from his university to Memphis — about a 245 mile trip — in a single day on solar-electric only. The following year, he went to Bristol, Virginia from West Memphis, Arkansas — about a 510 mile trip — on just sun and water alone. And this year, his goal was to go coast-to-coast on less than ten gallons of gas which, to his surprise and the boosting of confidence in his project, he will achieve in 2.25 gallons.
The first 500 miles of the trip were achieved on sun and water alone and then he went to ethanol. So where, exactly, did the gasoline come in? According to U.S. law, you have to have 5% gasoline in ethanol so that it’s not a consumable liquid. “Or else I’d be transporting what y’all call moonshine and we call White Lightening,” he quipped. “So the only gas we have in the fuel is what is required by law.”
And for 2013? He plans on going coast-to-coast on just sun and water alone. Despite the stress of this current trip, he emphasize that he believes he has the technology to achieve an oil-free cross-country trip by next year.
His passion for the discovery of alternative fuels supersedes the fact that it’s environmentally clean (a point he referred to as “obvious”), but also centers around a protective, nationalistic point. “We can keep our money in America without purchasing foreign oil. [My project] even has peace implications: the unrest and wars we have in the Middle East are directly due to oil so I feel it’s the way we should be going.”