It all happened after a very successful meeting with the International Deep Drilling Project manager at Landsvirkjun Power, Iceland’s largest power producer. Bjarni and I shook hands over an agreement to work together on a project helping Landsvirkjun adapt its geothermal plants to meet potential climate change regulation. I will research sulfur and carbon emissions control technologies, and their effects on plant operation. In exchange I get full access to LVP personnel for my Watson research. I also get office space, a desk and a computer in the LVP headquarters tower in October.
I left the LVP office feeling pretty excited about the string of six meetings I had just completed with some of the top executives and directors in Iceland’s power industry. Since I had no more obligations, I decided to reward myself with a visit to the Reykjavik outdoor museum – a collection of historic buildings that have been moved to a farm inside the city limits.
Suddenly the scent of chocolate and mint penetrated my nostrils. Oh no. I looked ahead at the grinning visage of my doom (featured below). The chef stared down at me from a mint factory exterior. Allow me to explain what I call “the hunger crescendo effect.”
I’ve been competing in endurance sports for about five years now. I began with mountain biking and marathon running then became very active in Middlebury’s road bicycle racing club. After college I got a sponsorship from Long Trail Brewery to keep racing road and mountain bikes out west in California, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and elsewhere. During the training and racing season I am constantly besieged by waves of hunger. Snacks often consume thousands of calories at a time, and I have learned to prepare for the ravenous pangs.
I’ve spent considerable time, effort, and money studying my body. Lactate threshold tests, VO2 max tests, power to weight ratio tracking, etc. One thing I’ve learned is how hunger hits after a workout. Weird as it may sound, I’ve taken some data on my hunger. For me, hunger arrives in a wave pattern, with characteristics similar to the waves we saw in high school physics. The peak of a wave is maximum hunger, the trough is satiation, and the difference is the amplitude. The wave’s frequency is how often I feel the cycles of hunger.
An intense workout creates a high frequency wave. A mild workout creates a low frequency wave. The total calories burned by a workout have some bearing on the amplitude of hunger waves. So, an intense but short workout will result in a few fast but mild waves of hunger – maybe two snacks in the following 12 hours. A long but low-intensity workout (like a slow 100-mile bike ride or a marathon) may create a number of major cravings spread throughout the following days.
After a multi-day stage race like the Tour De Gila or the Green Mountain Stage Race these hunger waves sometimes “stack.” Each stage of racing looks different in terms of intensity and total effort, so the hunger after one stage can sometimes combine with hunger from other stages. During the racing season I’m usually ready for hunger and never find myself far from food. I’m now out of season and absorbed in my Watson Fellowship projects, and as a result I forgot about the hunger wave issue after running the Reykjavik Marathon last weekend.
Like the full moon for a ware wolf, the mint factory triggered a massive hunger wave 36 hours after my marathon. This feels like a rapid drop in blood sugar, a sense of panic, and the usurping of self-control by the reptilian brain. Imagine handing the controls of your metabolism over to a rabid wolverine.
Fifteen minutes later I regained consciousness. My dress shirt and jacket lay in a rumpled heap nearby the park bench where I lay. I looked about and saw an empty banana peel, a ½ kilo bag of mixed nuts and dried fruits (turned inside out and licked of oil and salt residue), drained liter of water, empty coffee cup, and a plate smeared with the remnants of hearty chocolate cake.
Rebuilding my composure, I burped, dressed, and continued on my journey. The question is no longer IF, but WHEN I will get diabetes. Incidents like this create an insulin profile resembling the Patagonia Outdoor Clothing logo. Such is the life of an endurance athlete with a supercharged metabolism.
OK, enough story telling. Some people are wondering if I’m actually accomplishing anything out here. Unfortunately it’s more fun to write about fish festivals and puffin barbeques than geothermal well logging and remote sensing projects. Still, I’ll take the time to describe what I’m spending the bulk of my effort on.
For the past few weeks I’ve worked with the Icelandic Geosurvey (ISOR) in Akureyri. When they learned that I speak some Spanish, I assumed the reigns of a research project on the geothermal industry in Chile, where ISOR is opening a subsidiary geothermal consulting agency. I spent two weeks compiling information on geology, geochemistry, geothermal exploration, business development history, government regulation and incentives, contacts, and other information required to build an accurate picture of the burgeoning Chilean geothermal opportunity.
With research in hand, I built a digital map to catalogue the info. I synthesized my research into an interactive map that links a spreadsheet of data to a Google Map through a password protected system. It’s basically a prospecting toolkit for geothermal energy in Chile, and the people I’m working with at ISOR seem pretty psyched about it.
Next I started working with some well logging data to learn the science of geothermal exploration. I’m learning new computer programs like Well View and PETREL, and also refreshing my thermodynamics, rig terminology, geophysics, and related technical topics.
I’ve also been traveling to meet with people from all over the Icelandic power industry. I focus on the financial executives because I want to know more about the economics of this business. Some have shown me the models they use to project costs and revenues in a geothermal or hydropower project. One CFO actually mailed me copies of his models after our meeting. I generally prepare a list of questions I want to review, often relating to concepts I've been trying to develop for my writing. I'll sit down with a CFO or CEO, and we spend an hour drawing graphs and talking through aspects of the power business, problems the company is dealing with, the way they structure contracts for power purchase or sale, etc.
The next month probably involves a move to a new town, Husavik, to work directly with a geothermal power plant and a team of American and Chinese engineers. My final month in Iceland looks to be filled with this new emissions control research project at Landsvirkjun in Reykjavik.
So there, I’m not being a bum.
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