Vegetable oil can be used for more than just cooking. Just ask Michael Hoy.

Hoy and eight of his friends bought a school bus on eBay in 2006 and rode it across the country.

Hoy said it was an excellent trip, except for one thing: the $3,000 he and his friends had to pay for diesel fuel.

This summer, Hoy, 26, is on another cross-country trek, but with one difference: the bus is now fueled by recycled vegetable oil.

Hoy and a new group of seven travelers call their mode of transportation the Brave New Bus.

Most of the group lived in the same apartment building in Brooklyn, N.Y. They said they were each there following a dream, but were intrigued by the idea of the trip when Hoy described it to them.

"We are all in between jobs or on summer breaks," Jo Schottleutner, 21, said.

"Summer is a good time for us to gypsy around," Ian Daniel, 26, said.

The ability to have time to travel on the bus also is part of the group's mantra.

"It's about having a freer lifestyle and taking time out to explore," Kirstin Johansson said. Johansson just finished backpacking across America and was taking a break in New York when she came across the Brave New Bus.

"We freelance and weave work in when we can," she said.

The group is looking forward to exploring the country and promoting the alternative fuel. Unfortunately, the bus' fuel-injection pump broke on its way through Lancaster.

"It already had almost 300,000 miles on it," Hoy's brother, Winston, 20, said. "It was the end of its life."

Michael and Winston Hoy were born in Los Angles, but have family in Lititz. The mishap has given them extra time to educate local people about alternative fuels.

The brothers spent two weeks last summer making the necessary changes to the bus engine so it could run on oil.

"It's actually very basic," Winston Hoy said. "We found an article on how to do it, and it took us a week to order and receive the parts and a week to install them."

He said the bus uses recycled, filtered and nonhydrogenated oil that generally needs to be heated before use. The group gets the oil from restaurants for free.

"It just makes sense economically," Winston Hoy said. "Sometimes the restaurants even pay people to take the oil away because they are finished with it."

Johansson compared the use of oil to power the bus to healthy eating.

"We have a motto that we use," Johansson said. "Good for the bus, good for the body. The higher the quality of oil, the better the process will be for both."

"It's the thick, heavy oil that clogs arteries and causes heart attacks," Winston Hoy said. "It's the same for the bus. The purer the oil, the better it will run."

The simplicity of the vegetable oil process is something the members of the Brave New Bus hope to share.

"Most people don't know that engines were originally made to run off of vegetable oil because they were used by farmers," Kareem Farooq, 25, said. "We want people to see that you can (use it), and we do."

Farooq, from Long Beach, Calif., owns a production company in New York and is responsible for taking pictures and video during the trip.

"There are all kinds of ways to create energy," Farooq said. "(The bus) isn't at the whim of giant oil corporations. We're not funding OPEC or terrorism."

Michael Hoy hopes to expand this alternative fuel project into a lifestyle based on sustainability.

The Environmental Protection Agency defines sustainability as "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

"The eventual goal is an education in sustainability like closed system water and organic growing," Michael Hoy said. "We want to provide a model for other people."

The first model is the bus. While the group hands out fliers and wears T-shirts promoting the project, members feel the bus speaks for itself.

"When you pull up in a bus, it gives a platform for change," Schottleutner said. "It's old technology. It's a huge vehicle. We're in a bus, but it's quite different.

For now the group is enjoying its time in Lititz.

"We are making the most of it," Michael Hoy said.

Still, the group is anxious to get back on the road. Its goal is to reach Los Angeles by Aug. 18. Half the group will attend a wedding between two people who met during the bus' first trip. The rest of the group is just along for the ride.

"It's going to be a lot of time on the bus," Winston Hoy said.

But the group knows that its time will be spent advocating its cause to everyone they meet.

"People learn best by example," Johansson said. "We want everyone to know that they are capable of real change."

For more information, visit www.bravenewbus.org.

E-mail: lfreeman@lnpnews.com