BioDiesel in Asheville, NC

Since Asheville is a tourist town (Fall Color Season coming) some might be interested in knowing that B99 is available from Blue Ridge Biodiesel at the Gas Up Station at 405 Haywood Road. Their B99 is from virgin Soy feedstock. Here's a link to their address using Google Maps.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=405+Haywood+Rd+Asheville%20+NC+28806

I was there a couple of weeks ago. Word to the wise, don't go early on a Sunday morning to fillup! I was there at 7:45 AM, waiting for them to open & got propositioned by a lady of the night.

The station is nice and clean, but it didn't appear to be in the best of neighborhoods...

i got some there when i went to visit back in august. i asked my 11 year old son to go into the store and give them my credit card while i started filling up (had the golf plus 6 five gallon containers); he came back and said he was afraid to go into the store. the station is in a kind of bohemian neighborhood, kinda like where mayberry and the twilight zone intersect....

Comments about the neighborhood where the station is located are appropriate. When I started filling up two weeks ago, I probably saw the same lady of the night. Before I finished filling up, the Asheville Police were having a rather serious discussion with her. It would have been nice if Blue Ridge Biodiesel had chosen a different location for their pumps.

Just filled up. $3.36 for B99. Had to wait in line. Junkies passed out behind the pumps. Asheville is a little rough around the edges. That's how we like it.

TJK

FYI, the auto-shut off on the B99 pumps still don't work. They say they're fixing them but it doesn't seem to be happening (not over the course of two weeks, anyway). So know what you need and shut it off yourself.

TJK

Oh, Sunday, 10:30 am -- no junkies, dealers or prostitutes. There goes the neighborhood....

Coop??

Is the B99 station in Asheville part of a COOP as the B100 Trail is in Raleigh? Charging $50 annually to join up and belong?

No. Just pay and pump.

TJK

Bio Issues?

Hi folks, we are picking up our new Jetta TDI Saturday and have been looking into biofuel. Have any of you had any problems? Fuel related? any diferrence in MPG?

No problems related to the TDI for me. Biodiesel is more expensive and I'm seeing slightly lower fuel economy. Well worth the trade-off for cleaner emissions, in my opinion.

TJK

I know the area well as I spent much time in the Black Mountian area during the late 80s & early 90s . I'll have to fill a couple of jugs of BD next time I'm in the area .

Anyone familiar with " Mckails bar" ( not sure of the spelling ) in east Ashville off of US 74 bypass ?? I threw darts there many times over the years .

MacKell's. Membership only. But any of the white folks at the bar will gladly sign you in. As long as you're white and not gay and are just like them. Otherwise you'll be told it's membership only and that they're not taking any new members at the time. Vestiges of the old South still hanging like smoke in the air in that place....

TJK

Put the "Membership only" crap gripe where it goes , on those religioius right wing nuts that didn't want to allow anything other than beer sales at the bars . Those nuts still fight to keep NC counties dry , to ban all alcohol sales .

North Carolinas' "private club" rules go back to 1979 when the "liquire by the drink rules" were passed . It was a way to restrict full drinking in the bars . And NC is not alone with these silly rules . Many states have this silly private club law for full alcohol sales .

In NC anyplace that wants to have a full alcohol permit 50 % of sales must be food or they must be a private club . This is state law , not local .

I bet most here don't even know what a dry county is ??

In NC out of 100 counties we have over 30 of them that ban all alcohol sales completely "dry county" .

And in the wet ones all the hard alcohol is sold in city & county owned & run ABC stores . Beer is sold in grocery stores & alike .

I'm not griping about membership only. I'm griping about selective membership only. Especially in a town that has no membership only regulation. They choose to be membership only so that they can be selective as to who they let in. And that's discriminatory.

TJK

Getting better all the time

I live in Asheville and for the most part all kinds are tolerated. You do, however, find pockets of ignorance. Sorry you ran into that.

Haywood road is the next target for gentrification. West Asheville is indeed rough, but money is moving that way and it will become more eclectic and sophisticated in the next 12 months.

I drive 700 miles a week in my 2000 Jetta TDI. Mileage is down from 40 to 38 when running biodiesel and I am struggling to pick the best oil to use for my type of 75 mph + driving. I fill up in Raleigh - full tank + 2 x 5 gallon jugs. I will check out Haywood road this weekend.

FYI - I drive biodiesel for 2 reasons.
1. I cannot afford to run out of fuel. I work in Raleigh and live in Asheville on the weekend. I am converting to Eslbett in a few months so I have more options.

2. I have a little Mother Earth rebel in me and I want to get off the grid.

How does running biodiesel keep you from running out of fuel?

TJK

West Asheville really isn't very bad, but for some reason the entire town has a bizarre sex trade. I lived there for years (on Elizabeth Place, right north of downtown in the beginning of Montford) and the hookers did their business in the most bizarre ways and they and their customers were absolutely brazen about it.

For instance, we female housemates got propositioned constantly walking home by the johns, even if we were carrying groceries, tools, etc.

My best friend, who was working as a chemist for the county, was walking to work at 8 am downtown in her respectable work clothes, and some hooker tried to run her off from 'her block'. My friend tried to defend herself saying 'hey, man, I"m just walking to work' to which the hooker screamed 'yeah well you ain't workin' right here on MY block!', and Colleen had to fend her off by pointing to the county building where she worked before the hooker left her alone.

The demand for their services there seems to be the problem. We came up with pet names for the not-dressed-up ladies who were constantly getting picked up in the morning or the middle of the day by construction guys from the hills.

One was the Hockey Whore, who dressed every single day in red sweatpants and a hockey t-shirt, without makeup or any other accoutrements of 'attractiveness', and made no attempts to flirt or look allurringly at the drivers coming up- it didn't seem to matter because she was always busy with business.

Another was Grandma, because she probably was one several times over and was missing quite a few teeth. Yet there was a near-constant stream of guys in pickup trucks driving up for 5 minutes of business with these two, in the middle of the day or even early in the morning.

One of my buddies had a theory that the johns were all coming from Madison County, and that something about it being a dry county made prostitution more difficult or something. Something about driving to town for a burger and a 'ho at lunchtime was apparently triggered by all this dry county stuff.

But it doesn't really mean anything about the particular neighborhood, these ladies seem to be everywhere in that town even though it's a really clean little place with very low violent crime rates.

TDI_Jeffster said:

I was there a couple of weeks ago. Word to the wise, don't go early on a Sunday morning to fillup! I was there at 7:45 AM, waiting for them to open & got propositioned by a lady of the night.

The station is nice and clean, but it didn't appear to be in the best of neighborhoods...

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