About bioTrekker
The Mission     The History     The Team     Sponsors

The Mission
This is a grassroots campaign born out of a desire to serve future generations and have fun doing it. Our purpose is to spread awareness of where our energy currently comes from and to inspire organizations and individuals to implement renewable energy and sustainable practices now. Our message is that massive change is possible when individuals believe they can make a difference and connect with others who are like-minded.

The vehicles we use to the deliver the message? Motorhomes transformed into traveling eco-friendly exhibits — green homes on wheels. 

Our vision is to see all industrial societies powered by scores of clean, renewable sources that are operated by the communities they serve and balanced with the environment. We see communities becoming more connected and self-sufficient by producing their own energy and using it in a wise manner.

We believe that our society can quickly realize this vision using a combination of increased energy efficiency, the rapid application and improvement of renewables, reducing and harnessing waste streams, and also by encouraging a global culture of planetary stewardship, harmony and balance. Just a few examples of these concepts include:
    • Increasing vehicle fuel mileage and embracing sustainable fuels
    • Adding solar electric and solar thermal panel systems to businesses and homes
    • Using wastewater treatment facilities to grow high yield biofuel crops like algae
    • Large-scale recycling and re-use programs
    • Educating ourselves and our children about how to conduct our commerce and consumption in ways that preserve the balance of our environment.

The History
April 2006: Ty Adams, 95% happy with life and occupations, decides to go for 100%.

November 2006: Ty, 28, quits five-year desk job as magazine editor, sells house and spends $27,000 to get a loan for a motorhome, intent on becoming a full-time freelance writer. Ty, because sustainable energy is something he believes in, also spends another $12,000 to start a biodiesel advocacy campaign called: bioTrekker – motorcoach adventures in biodiesel.

December 2006: Ty answers many questions from others that seem to infer that he’s insane, however, he is able to rebuff the inferences by pointing out that he has been invited to drive the bioTrekker in the Springfield, Oregon, holiday parade. Allison Hintzmann, Ty’s significant other, becomes the first to join bioTrekker, perhaps unwittingly.

January 2007: Ty hits the road in the bioTrekker motorcoach. He visits biodiesel stations, meets all sorts of amazing individuals in the biodiesel scene, does a few newspaper and television interviews and gives talks and tours to school kids. He navigates the streets of San Francisco, frolics in the Redwoods and fishtails on snowy mountain roads. He breaks down, he fixes things with the help of new friends, he gets covered in biodiesel and tastes it through a siphon hose. He arrives in San Antonio, Texas for the National Biodiesel Conference.

February 2007: At the conference, Ty witnesses Nash Evans giving a spirited motivational speech/light spanking to a number of men and women in suits who control much of the biodiesel industry. Nash joins the team and coordinates a summer festival tour.

March 2007 – October 2007: The bioTrekker campaign includes more media interviews, an appearance at a biodiesel plant groundbreaking in Wisconsin and presentations at more schools, a university and a Boy Scout troop, as well as several large RV shows and music and camping festivals around the country. 

December 2007: After one year, two RV shows, three music festivals, 25 states, 20,000 miles, and 125,000 web hits, bioTrekker continues to grow. Michael Wolbach joins the team and purchases the first bioTrekker motorcoach in order to begin East Coast operation of ‘bioTrekker1’.

To reflect the expanded campaign and mission, the bioTrekker description changes from “Motorcoach Adventures in Biodiesel” to “Adventures in Renewable Energy”.

The Team
Nash Evans
Michael Wolbach
Ty Adams
Allison Hintzmann

Nash Evans

Nash is the scientific mind and the “connections and promotions man” on the bioTrekker team. He appears to know everyone and sees a world full of friends instead of a world full of strangers. Armed with southern charm, the gift of gab and a preacher’s zeal for renewable energy, Nash could probably talk the Exxon board of directors into lobbying for electric cars and higher fuel mileage standards.

He spent the majority of his formative years on the Gulf Coast, living in Louisiana and Houston, Texas.  Nash took to the outdoors early, coming to love mountain biking, hiking, and camping. Other hobbies included an avid passion for hunting and fly-fishing, as well as tinkering with whatever transportation was on hand.

At the University of Texas in Austin, Nash graduated with a degree in hydrology and studied environmental, ecological and conservation biology. He was heavily involved in the construction trades doing general contracting, carpentry and punch work. He also played lacrosse for the UT team and still practices the Bikram yoga he learned while building the award-winning Bohdi Yoga Studio.
 
Nash is now based out of Snowmass, Colorado, where he works at the Rocky Mountain Institute, a non-profit dedicated to renewable energy and sustainability. Nash is the general contractor at RMI, in charge of upgrading the Institute’s original building. This very special 4,000-square-foot structure is passive solar, super insulated and high in thermal mass. When combined with the active solar hydronic and photovoltaic systems and high efficiency design elements, this building consumes 1% of the energy that the average building its size in the U.S. consumes.

The current work includes solar hydronic radiant floor heating, photovoltaic upgrades, LED lighting, plug-in hybrid electric vehicle parking, an induction stove and adding the most efficient windows ever installed anywhere in the world. Nash also had a hand in the redesign of the greenhouse where tropical species grow in abundance and banana harvests have taken place – very rare for this setting at 7000 feet.
 
Nash has been a general contractor in the construction of 86 residential homes, is a certified master composter, and is currently in the development stage of Bioss, a new biodiesel production facility in Colorado. He is motivated by his inner truth that love and community is the root of all good and continued prosperity, and he wishes to spread this message. Most of all, he wishes all souls much love for each other as they interact in this large Petri dish called Earth. He is dedicated to do his part to keep this very special gift of a planet the wonderful place that it is.


Michael Wolbach

Michael was born in Omaha, but was raised in the green mountains of Vermont, where he and his family participated in the first “Green Up Days” of the late ’60s and early ’70s. At about the same time, the family began camping at various state parks in Vermont in a pop-up trailer, learning the fine art of “roughing it”. In addition, once a year the family would pile into the station wagon and pull the camper out to visit all the cousins in Omaha, laying the foundation for his love of the road and camping. Before graduating from the University of Vermont with a degree in Business Administration, he enjoyed summer vacations as a camp counselor at UVM’s Adventure Camp, where he took the teens on overnight campouts to some of the same state parks he enjoyed as a kid. Following his parents, brothers, and sisters to Florida in the early ’80s, Michael enrolled at the University of Florida, earning a masters degree in Education.

After a few years exploring France and Switzerland, he moved to southern California to work in academia, but after a few years of endless staff meetings, he decided to start his own business, MW Marketing, selling everything from $12,000 golf club cleaning machines to international phone cards. But he never really found his niche until he moved to Oregon and heard about this 30-year-old technology called biodiesel. He explored this opportunity and attended a few events focusing on renewable resources, especially as they related to biofuels. Moving to Orlando, Florida in 2007 to be closer to family and friends, Michael heard that this guy named Ty Adams was selling his first ‘bioTrekker RV’ so he could begin building another one that would be even more eco-friendly. Michael jumped at the chance to get on board the campaign, joined the team and purchased the motorcoach in order to roll-out ‘bioTrekker1’ to the east coast of the U.S. in 2008.

Ty Adams

Ty spent most of his childhood tromping around the mountains of Southwest Montana, with Yellowstone National Park as his backyard — literally. Although he never wrestled Grizzly bears or danced with wolves, a love of the natural world became part of his core.   

At 15, he moved to Saudi Arabia with his family, when his dad began work for the Saudi Arab American Oil Company. His mother, a schoolteacher, was not allowed to work there. They stayed for a few years, and this might have played a part in his interest in energy and his passion for renewable power. It also stoked a passion for travel, and by the time he graduated high school, Ty had been to exotic locales like Malaga, Spain; Kenya, Africa and Blairstown, New Jersey.

Ty decided to be a writer before he began college at the University of Texas in Austin, and never veered from that passion. He majored in journalism, traveled more, studied in Europe for a while, came to love Tex-Mex food but learned to stay away from both U.S./Mexican border towns and any drinks involving Jägermeister.

His professional career began by reporting for several small newspapers, which lead to assignments that included riding a rodeo bull and following the activities of a county judge who sometimes fell asleep, while dipping snuff, during commissioners’ meetings.

Ty went on to work for five years as an editor of RV travel magazines at Monaco Coach Corporation in Eugene, Oregon where all of his passions and influences converged into the idea of selling his house and hitting the road in a biodiesel motorhome to follow and help create the story of sustainability and renewable energy in the U.S. He founded bioTrekker for that purpose.


Allison Hintzmann

When she agreed to go on a weekend date with Ty, Allison had no idea that she would one day find herself singing the praises of modified vegetable oil to crowds of intoxicated revelers at a music festival in Kansas. She also didn’t expect that she would one day be waiting for mechanical help in a motorhome on the side of an Oregon highway, lulled to sleep by the rocking motion of trucks blasting past. But as the unofficial keeper of sanity and most grounded member of the team, she takes it all in stride and reminds Ty to relax when his enthusiastic energy winds him into tightly coiled ball.

Allison was raised near Madison, Wisconsin and earned a degree in special education at the University of Wisconsin before traveling the U.S. and living in places like Alaska and Hawaii. She landed in Portland, Oregon, seduced by the beauty of the nearby coast and mountains, the thriving local music and art scene and the vibe of Portland’s lively neighborhoods.

When she’s not ’trekking, Allison currently works as an education specialist at Outside In, a local non-profit where she helps homeless and low-income youth to earn GEDs and obtain housing and employment.