(Mis)Adventures Of A Roaming Coloradan

Climbing Mt. Massive

2012-02-13T16:02:00.000-08:00

In the summer of 2011 I climbed Mt. Massive, one of Colorado's famed "14ers" (over 14,000 ft) with a bunch of friends from college. Check out this video, made by my friend Haik on his Rebel T2i. A stylish tribute to our adventure:

Mt. Massive from Haik Kavookjian on Vimeo.

What a great day trip in Colorado!

The Electron Cowboy And A Glance Back On My Watson Fellowship

2011-08-02T14:20:00.001-07:00

I sat, chin on fist, in a restaurant on the grubby periphery of Mercado Del Puerto in Montevideo, Uruguay. My mind had finally turned to a subject that I’d shoved under the rug several weeks ago: an email from the Watson Foundation titled “Final Presentation Details.” My brain struggled with this topic as my mouth delighted in some local delicacy of seared strips of chicken breast wrapped around cheese, ham, peppers, and spices. Grilled provolone with herbs accompanied – a decidedly high cholesterol affair, but definitely worth the approaching infarction.

How does one summarize a year, especially a year spread over four continents, dozens of jobs, hundreds of relationships, thousands of thoughts, struggles, successes, and failures? It’s the kind of question you’d rather avoid, really. But it’s also the kind of question that you know will be worth answering – the kind of question that could produce valuable introspection and mental consolidation. It’s also, incidentally, the kind of question that I’m contractually required to answer publicly next week.

First there was Iceland. Akureyri, Husavik, Reykjavik in that order. I lived in a fjord with a middle-aged couple, in a village with a young group of farmers, teachers, and whale watching guides, and then in the Salvation Army Guesthouse in Reykjavik (where I found nothing resembling salvation, unless of course salvation is actually an immortal sinus infection, a haunting Colombian fortune teller, a rotting-while-living elderly Viking, a pair of Nigerians cooking fatally spicy rice dishes, and a ghoulish Sicilian with expensive electronics).

Iceland’s isolationist and naturalist culture challenged my concepts of “progress” and “development,” and made me account for values beyond conventional economic metrics. I lived for three months in a national community – the only nation I’ve ever known where everyone seems connected to everyone else in a tight web. Iceland’s proverbial commons are slightly less tragic because it’s quite impossible to shirk social responsibilities in the island’s small population of 300,000. It’s a tiny community where everyone is your cousin or friend.

I noted how Icelanders pride themselves on their deep roots and shared history, on their traditions, their agrarian and fishing lifestyles, and their ruggedness. I also noted the pain and cultural damage caused by foreign companies, mainly aluminum smelters and banks, slowly overprinting Icelandic traditions with the seduction of greater material wealth and status.

I saw Icelanders pelt their own parliament with fireworks and rocks while politicians fled through underground passages after the total mismanagement of the nation’s financial system. Icelander’s felt afraid because outsiders seemed to own more and more of the country and its resources each day. Icelanders felt outraged when they woke up with the largest national debt as a proportion of GDP in the world, and they felt tricked when they learned that recovery plans centered around multinational firms damming waterfalls and paying minuscule prices for the power. Icelanders saw foreign banks financing the country’s largest construction projects, foreign firms buying the power for almost nothing, while Iceland seemed to be left holding the bag – fewer waterfalls, trampled ecosystems, and tainted landscapes.

Of course there are two sides to each story, and I saw the flip side while working with, for, and around those same multinational companies vilified by Iceland’s left wing. I found many great mentors and friends working in the power industry, and I can say with confidence that none of them felt that they were exploiting or undermining Iceland – they were developing businesses that they believed would create value.

I also saw firsthand the vital importance of economic incentives. Recovery depends on investment, and investment will flow to profit centers. Iceland’s government had a duty to attract investment, and cheap energy was an important tool in that mission. Many Icelanders saw unjustly low power prices for foreign industry, while businesses saw an incentive so set up shop, import technologies, and invest in Iceland’s infrastructure.

One of my greatest takeaways from the whole year was actually that humans are all very similar regardless of location and social strata – we’re all motivated by the same fears, hopes, worries, and dreams. We all want something a little better for our families and ourselves; we all want a little more security and a little less trepidation. I began to see patterns and repetitions of human characteristics and tendencies as I moved through my year abroad.

One of our shared human motives is the drive to create "value." I realized that the conflict arising between conservation-oriented Icelanders and pro-development business forces is simply a conflict over the meaning and definition of “value.” Consider the three prominent opinions about Iceland’s development choices, for example, damming rivers to build hydropower plants to power aluminum smelters (now Iceland’s largest industry):

1) One group of environmentalists argues that Iceland has the responsibility to build as many clean-powered aluminum smelters, data centers, and other energy-intensive industrial sites as possible, because doing so can replace coal-powered industry in other nations. Iceland’s “value” is its ability to offset and replace dirty industry abroad by offering cheap and clean electricity (100% hydro and geothermal powered electric grid). The fungible nature of commodities and the interconnectedness of global markets makes this a feasible argument.

2) A different breed of environmentalists argues that Iceland’s sensitive wetland ecosystems, bird sanctuaries, breeding grounds, and pristine landscapes contain inherent value, and should remain untouched to preserve that value. This argument claims that dams flood valuable ecological areas, and power lines destroy valuable vistas – untouched nature is “value.”

3) The pro-development faction argues that building out Iceland’s industry will dramatically raise the average standard of living, bring wealth and prosperity to the nation, and help it fight out from under a crushing national debt (the result of an irresponsibly privatized financial system). “Value,” then, is monetary and material.

Which is the right definition of value? This is a question for which I have no answer, and perhaps there is no single right answer. However, I do know that the winning perspective is generally the one that can mobilize the most support (voices and dollars), and that the third option generally has the advantage because promising money and material wealth plays on the power of greed, which is often more powerful than altruism.

Then an Icelandic farmer raised a fourth idea:

4) Why not just use less aluminum?

That seemed like a very obvious and elegant solution, until I went to China.

China impressed upon me the importance of population pressure in emerging economies. This century will be the story of population pressures, and I believe the story’s hallmark will be scarcity of resources in the face of unsustainably accelerating demand, combined with the destabilization and degradation of ecosystems that provide critical resources. I am not alone or extreme in this opinion, as virtually every important metric of macro ecosystem health, beginning with oceans and ending with topsoil, suggests that we are passing critical and sometimes irreversible tipping points. This century will be the struggle to sustain a lifestyle built on fleeting abundance - an abundance historically enjoyed by few, but now demanded by all.

China: 1 billion people with virtually nothing, and 1 billion people who want to live the consumption-fueled lifestyles of characters in American media – that’s the quandary of China, and that’s the nightmare we’re entering. India? Africa? South America? Same story.

In China, the vast population creates immense economic, social , and political pressures. The economic pressure is inflationary (see any recent article about Chinese real estate valuations or the P/E ratios of stocks). The social pressure is one of generational divide (children use computers and speak English while parents are first generation urban migrants) and accelerated consumerism (new wealth mixes with an influx of hyperefective western branding/marketing to create extreme consumerism). The political pressure is to somehow manage and direct this social-economic momentum by increasing liberties and freedoms without changing things so quickly that they become uncontrollable.

It’s easy for westerners to criticize the Chinese government from the outside, but go there and I guarantee your opinions will change. Experience the mania, energy, and barely-controlled chaos, and think about what you would do in Wen Jiabao’s shoes. I gained a new respect for China’s top politicians, and I fully believe that they have the toughest jobs in the world right now.

I also realized why we can’t “just use less aluminum” or oil, coal, steel, wood, water, or virtually any other commodity. Sure, Americans and Europeans could use less, but it’s awfully tough to tell someone with nothing at all to use less and to not desire more. The Chinese (Indians, Brazilians, etc) are racing towards development and away from poverty, and there’s no environmental campaign in the world that will stop a starving person from reaching for food, cars, houses, televisions, etc. The only real question is: how efficiently and responsibly will China develop?

Population pressure in a finite environment:

Efficiency is a key to China’s story. China uses 4-6 times more energy per unit of GDP than developed western economies, so while China isn’t going to stop increasing its consumption, it can dramatically increase its efficiency. China could boost efficiency such that it could increase energy consumption while decreasing the amount of fuel used, the amount of pollution produced, and the amount of money spent on electricity. If China can find a responsible development strategy through new technologies and efficiency-oriented planning, then China can export that model to other developing nations.

I spent my working life in China learning how a waste heat recovery power plant develops, from soup to nuts. I went to cement and steel factories with wasted heat resources to be used as fuel, I spent days at the factories where metal sheets are rolled and welded into pressure vessels, I attended inspections, I toured assembly facilities, I met with clients and buyers of these systems, and I witnessed a highly publicized power plant commissioning. I became convinced that increasing efficiency is a major opportunity to align an environmental good with the human profit motive – a “value” that drives the majority of human activity, and the beginnings of a solution to problems like Iceland’s growing industrial-economic-environmental rift.

Following my four months in China I spent two months in Spain with wind farm financiers. During this experience I realized the following: the world’s affluent and corporations will pursue the next dollar for the same reasons as the impoverished Chinese laborer. The Chinese drive to improve and prosper is the same exact drive that the Spanish CFO takes into his boardroom. The profit motive is universal, highly powerful, and does not disappear with prosperity. This is another reason why we cannot “just use less aluminum,” because in all strata of life you will find large contingencies of people who are plainly addicted to “more.” That’s human, or so it seems. The human drive for more will often conflict for our collective preference for less (or at least less waste).

Then I went to Argentina, where I found opportunities to put all my learning together. I launched into multiple entrepreneurial pursuits. I hit the ground running as www.thinkgeoenergy.com published an interview article about me and I published my second piece through the International Geothermal Association. Those credentials allowed me to rebrand myself from student to project manager, and a number of groups appealed to me for help in that capacity.

First there was an early-stage 20MW biomass project in northern Argentina. The local promoters had developed all the plans, biomass supplier relationships, and financial models, and wanted me to help find financing for their project. I initiated a relationship with a massive power project developer/investor in the United States, pursued it aggressively, but ultimately the political thorns around Argentina scared investors away and the deal collapsed.

Then another local promoter contacted me looking for help launching a 5MW geothermal project on existing boreholes in the Argentine Andes. I agreed to help, but quickly learned the following:

1) There is no geothermal law in Argentina, and all geothermal development must be achieved through expensive mining concessions (which this person did not have access to).

2) The state energy company is not a trusted purchaser of power, and investors will not support a project with a government power purchase agreement (PPA)

3) Based on #1 and #2, I concluded that the only viable strategy is for mining companies to use their existing leases to develop geothermal power plants near a mining operation, and “self-supply” the mine with that power instead of burning imported diesel. In other words, the consumer and producer must be the same entity before a bank will make a loan.

Those were valuable and righteous insights, and form the thesis of a new paper that I am co-authoring with a PhD geothermal researcher in Peru. Unfortunately those insights also crushed the hopes of my small developer friend. So, another optimistic dream died.

Then came my attempt to consult to a waste heat recovery startup. The CFO of this firm had just raised $5 million to launch a new WHR technology firm based on a package of international patents. I offered to use my contacts abroad to help the firm develop a supply chain and intellectual property defense strategy in China.

I spent a week working practically without stop. I didn’t leave my apartment except for once a day to grab a quick lunch and/or workout, and I’d work late into the nights. In one week I mobilized an international team of consultants including an Ex-McKinsey China/manufacturing specialist, an Ex-Accenture aerospace/mechanical engineer with a masters degree in renewable energy systems, and a fluent Mandarin speaker who has toured dozens of Chinese energy systems manufacturing facilities. I built financial models, schedules, a proposal with three different scopes and budgets, and most importantly, a 2-page list of contacts with expertise in manufacturing, IP protection in China, law, and transportation, as well as a list of specialized suppliers capable of manufacturing all the required heat exchangers, pressure vessels, and micro turbine-generator units.

The bulk of the preliminary planning was done, and I was having lawyers draft contracts when I got a simple 2-line email stating that the company's financial partners strongly preferred to not take the IP risk of manufacturing a new technology in China, and instead opted for a US manufacturing base. Although disappointing at the time, the experience now encourages me. I was able to accomplish a great deal and organize a large project quickly - something I certainly couldn't have mustered before my fellowship.

This summary of my year abroad clearly omits a mountain of details. There were thousands of beautiful, hilarious, depressing, shocking, and eye-opening experiences along the way. My most valuable learning probably happened outside of work experiences. I learned volumes about my self, others, and the way the world works. I learned to plan, adapt, connect, improvise, and negotiate, and I learned how to imagine solutions to strange and unfamiliar problems.

Lessons humbled me, and forced me to realize that I still have a huge amount to learn. The energy industry is so complex, and I’ll need a bit more patience and experience before I can learn to develop projects the way that I want to. Luckily I’ve found a great group of mentors, who I’ve already started working for. My first assignment was to present our technology to a geothermal training group from the United Nations in Iceland!

In Montevideo, during my Uruguayan layover en route to Santiago, people kept calling me “caballero,” or cowboy. I couldn’t help but feel like that fit. I’d been roaming the world homeless and alone, chasing random working opportunities on distant frontiers, surviving a range of conditions and lifestyles from the very best to the very worst, and adapting to new social and working environments over and over. I felt haggard, weary and a bit jaded, but also full of adventure and excitement. Those seem to be cowboy-like feelings and activities. So, for the remainder of my trip I considered myself to be an Electron Cowboy. Giddyup.

What Is Geothermal Power Anyway?

2011-06-19T06:40:00.000-07:00

Here is a great info-graphic from www.wellhome.com

You will see that Geothermal is divided into a number of technologies and applications. My main interest for the Watson Fellowship has been power generation (creating electricity), not the heating and cooling application offered by a ground source heat pump (bottom of the info-graphic). Enjoy!

Home Energy Audits by Wellhome.com

Second IGA Article Set To Be Published

2011-06-03T13:48:00.001-07:00

Dense? Yes. Esoteric? Yes. Interesting? Err...hopefully?

I took the opportunity to condense some new ideas and perspectives into another article, and was again lucky to have my work approved for publication by the International Geothermal Association. This article will appear in the 84th edition of the IGA's quarterly review. It details how the geothermal industry can cooperate with the oil and gas industry. I'm now beginning work on my third article, which will target collaborations with the mining industry here in South America. Enjoy:

Cully Cavness, Thomas J. Watson Fellow

The geothermal industry shares commonalities with many technically related, but otherwise disconnected industries. A non-exhaustive list of technically overlapping industries includes: oil and gas (drilling, reservoir engineering), waste heat recovery (heat exchanger thermodynamics), industrial corrosion and scaling management (piping and equipment protection), wind and solar power (financing and grid connection challenges), emissions abatement (H2S regulations in California or in Iceland, for example), and fossil fuel power plants (turbine-generator engineering, control systems, operations). This list could easily expand to include many other industries and professions that bear similarities to geothermal energy.

These industrial and technical synergies present a valuable opportunity for the geothermal industry – collaboration could easily increase efficacy and efficiency, reduce risk, and ultimately increase profitability. A previous article in the IGA Quarterly (Ed. #83) explored collaborative ventures and future possibilities between the geothermal industry and the Asian waste heat recovery industry. This follow-up article aims to deliver a similar analysis of developments and possibilities with the oil and gas industry.

Specifically, the cutting edge of geothermal development, Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS), can leverage the experience and technology of the Oil and Gas (O&G) industry. The O&G industry presents opportunities in directional drilling, reservoir stimulation, and fracture proppant. Additionally, oilfields present an interesting prospective market, as showcased by a case study in Colorado.

EGS is a frontier method of geothermal energy extraction. EGS proponents seek to drill into hot rock with low permeability and/or water levels insufficient for conventional geothermal development, then fracture the rocks and inject and recover a working fluid, thereby creating an artificial geothermal reservoir. EGS techniques and technologies are fraught with all the uncertainty and risk of newness, but the methods also promise to unlock boundless resources and opportunities if they can be mastered. The majority of the earth’s geothermal potential is trapped in areas that are not currently accessible to conventional geothermal methods, but which could be harnessed with the ideas of EGS.

Companies like AltaRock Energy, Geodynamics, Petratherm, Ormat, GeothermEx, as well as the American Department Of Energy and other international agencies all have interests in developing the highly prospective EGS industry. Success will depend on advances in a variety of techniques and technologies.

At the surface, developers must apply highly efficient heat exchangers and turbine-generator systems to optimize their power cycles for lower temperatures and/or flow rates. Rankine and Kalina Cycle technologies both offer this ability, with the latter being a particularly effective option for the low-temperature scenarios that typify current EGS development.

In aspects of drilling and reservoir engineering, success is largely contingent on the amount of surface area that can be accessed by circulating fluids. A combination of technologies developed by the oil and gas industry will be critical in this area.

Multistage hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling (both originated by the petroleum industry) will likely be fundamental technologies for EGS, as they allow for the targeting and expansion of artificial reservoirs. Once reservoirs have been created through hydraulic fracturing, the burden then becomes to maintain the productivity of those reservoirs. Reservoirs will become less volumetrically productive when either of the following occurs: porosity decreases (through chemical scaling or the physical collapse of pore space), or permeability decreases (when physical or chemical effects decrease the interconnectivity of pore space). Here, in porosity and permeability maintenance, through the use of proppants, for example, we may also find help from the Oil and Gas industry.

Beyond technologies and methodologies, the hydrocarbon industry may also provide an interesting market for geothermal power. Consider the fact that oil and gas fields consume massive amounts of power for their operations, often exist in remote locations far from transmission lines, and often generate power using purchased diesel or locally produced natural gas, which could otherwise be sold profitably into pipelines.

The above criteria form the exact backdrop of a scenario currently playing out in the Raton Basin, southern Colorado. Pioneer Natural Resources USA, Inc., an independent oil and gas company is developing a Coal Bed Methane (CBM) field in the Raton Basin. Raton not only boasts significant CBM resources, but also a curiously elevated geothermal gradient, which inspired the author’s thesis in geology, and led to ongoing collaboration between Pioneer Natural Resources, the Colorado School of Mines, the Institute of Earth Science and Engineering in New Zealand, and the Colorado Geological Survey in a study of the potential for an EGS development under the CBM field. . If successful, Pioneer would at least be able to substitute geothermal power for locally consumed natural gas, then sell the offset gas at a profit. Ultimately, however, the project could expand to provide regional power and demonstrate potential for other hot sedimentary basins, hugely expanding the applicability of geothermal energy.

Part of Pioneer’s attraction to the project is the tremendous overlap and synergy between the geothermal and O&G industries. Existing well bores provide exploration data to delineate the thermal anomaly, representing a dramatic cost savings to the high-risk frontend of geothermal development. Further synergies are offered by the technical expertise and infrastructure already in place at the gas field. Pioneer has drilling equipment and drilling teams, hydraulic fracture and well completion equipment, drill pads, offices, existing geophysical data and analysis, as well as experts in local geology and conditions. And, of course, Pioneer already owns land and subsurface mineral rights. Doubters only need to look at Chevron, the world’s largest producer of geothermal power, to understand how powerful these synergies can be. Origin Energy (an Australian Oil and Gas company) also recently purchased 40% of Energia Andina SA (a Chilean geothermal outfit), and provides another look at how petroleum and geothermal can marry.

To conclude, perhaps it is incorrect to view the “conventional energy” industries like oil and gas (or even coal) as diametrically opposed to the goals and purposes of geothermal energy. True, geothermal energy must compete on price against natural gas and coal, and there’s the pollution issue, but at the same time there are tremendous mutually beneficial opportunities to be harnessed from collaboration with hydrocarbon-based industries. After all, most of the drilling and power generation technologies that drive geothermal today were initially developed for hydrocarbon extraction or combustion. Perhaps the best approach is to embrace other industries like oil and gas, learn from their expertise, and potentially even develop new research, technologies, and projects together.

Cully Cavness is a Thomas J. Watson Fellow researching industrial synergies for the geothermal energy industry in Iceland, China, Spain, Argentina, Chile, and the United States. He is a geologist and native of Denver, Colorado, USA. He currently resides in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Andean Hydropower, Ogres, and Lardy Dough

2011-05-26T10:50:00.000-07:00

“Southern Argentina is a very dark and cold place at 5:00AM in May.” That was the only thought I managed to squeeze through my brain as I hauled my duffle up into the bed of Carlos’ pickup truck. By 6:00 we were on the road, heading west for two days of hard driving into the Andes. The sun would not rise for another three hours, yet I was not permitted to drift back into the pleasures of slumber. Instead I found myself enslaved as a mate brewer and server – the very traditional act of pouring hot water into a hollowed gourd full of a tree tea and sucking that juice through a filtered metal straw. Mate is the centerpiece of Argentine culture, and I have grown to dig it.

The preceding Saturday night was my first “milonga,” a large public dance with live tango band. I’d worked with Carlos’ tango dancers every night that week, and was ready to demonstrate my new abilities: rhythmically walking in a straight line while clumsily holding a woman. Harder than it looks. Later in the night, after loosening up with a bit of malbec, my confidence grew to the point of spinning and dipping bewildered, high heel-wearing females. Perhaps my form was not perfect, but it was very fun.

I returned to my cage-like hotel room at 3:30AM and dismayed at the narrow angle between the hour arm and the alarm arm on my radial clock. This insomnia was encouraged, however, because Carlos was the tango band’s bassist, and staunchly refused my early departure from the milonga when I proposed the idea at midnight.

These entertaining memories sustained me as I fumbled to pour crumbled tealeaves and hot water into a small gourd while bouncing down a dirt road. Carlos, or “Cokie” as he would have me call him, was driving us into “el campo,” the field. Cokie continued to explain the fundamentals of transmission systems, turbine-generators, electricity and magnetism, power plant development, and his extensive career, as he had done for the preceding week. He’d also given me a textbook, literally a layman’s guide to building micro-hydroelectric power plants, which I’d studied in between tutorials on using AutoCAD to plan and design transmission systems.

Our four days in the field would entail surveying terrain for the construction of a small hydroelectric power plant, which would power a remote alpine valley near the town of Chalten. “Chalten?” I wondered, “Why does that sound familiar?” I could not place the name, but knew that I’d heard it before.

Earlier in the week Cokie had driven me and the tango dancers to El Calafate, another name I vaguely recognized, but could not place until we arrived. When we arrived I remembered seeing a photo journalism piece about the site’s glaciers. We gawked at the Perrito Moreno Glacier, the ice-throwing monster that slides down from the Andes and occasionally calves house-sized blocks of ice into the surrounding lake. This World Heritage Site certainly deserves the credential. So, I wondered why Chalten sounded familiar, and if it was similarly spectacular.

As the sun rose (an it was a stunning moment, featured below), the horizon illuminated and exposed a far-away jaggedness – the mountains that would later envelop me. We drove for hours, initially on well-paved roads, then dilapidated blacktop, then eventually a dirt double track cutting through the desert. Our voyage was a virtual safari, and included continuous wildlife sightings. Flamingos, Guanaco (like a llama), horses, an emu-like flightless bird, condor, geese, rabbits (I accidentally ran one over during my driving shift), and multitudes of sheep.

Then a strange thing happened. I had been searching the horizon for greater resolution. What do these mountains really look like? I’ve always liked the idea of the Andes – the young, volcanic, impossibly long, and frequently deadly mountains that form a continental spine. I glanced down to prepare another mate gourd, and when I returned my gaze forward I was startled to see that the mountains were all around me now, and they were huge masses capped by knives of snow and ice.

“Did not bring adequate clothing,” I scrawled in my journal next to the words, “Intimidating, severe, ominous, harsher than the Himalayas, totally beautiful.”

“Welcome to the foothills,” said Cokie. “Foothills?” I asked, because surely he was mistaken and we had somehow teleported to the center of the range. “Yes, and here is where we must do our first work,” he replied. We turned off the dirt track next to a sign reading “Fundo Dos Hermanos,” or Two Brothers Ranch.

Fundo Dos Hermanos:

Moments later I was shaking the hand of a Chilean man with four fingers and enough gold in his teeth to make Lil’ Wayne jealous. This man, one of the Hermanos, wore a tattered black beret and a heavily frayed navy jump suit. He invited us inside, and regaled us with the graphic tale of killing a mountain lion to avenge a small lamb that was dragged away from the farm during the previous day. We had more hot tree juice before Cokie and I accompanied the Hermano up the valley behind his farm.

In the valley we crossed a bridge that Cokie had designed, and which was still being constructed - essentially a high wire with handles. We scrambled along the valley walls to the place where Cokie intended to build a small hydropower plant, which would power the farm and their textiles operation. I learned that Cokie and I would spend the day here making measurements, calculations, drawings, and plans. But first we retuned to the ranch. Cokie silently handed me an ornate silver knife in a leather sheath. I knew what I had to do… eat!

The following hour could easily constitute a cardiologist’s nightmare. We ambled back to the farmhouse where another gruff Chilean was slicing strips of meat from a freshly killed cow’s skeleton and frying the steaks in a deep skillet of brown oil. Adjacent to the meat on the wood stove was a pan of frying onions covered in herbs. There was also dough being deep-fried in melted lard, and eggs, which were not only fried, but literally spooned over with additional coatings of grease.

We sat down at a sturdy wooden bench, and, as has become customary after months in food obsessed cultures, I was stuffed to the point of begging for mercy.

Following this feast I labored my way back up the valley with Cokie and spent several hours working with a Total Station (not the gas company, but a highly sensitive surveying tool). Total Stations require two people – one mans a device that fires low intensity lasers, while the other person stands up to two kilometers away with a prism that receives the lasers. The result is a highly accurate gridding of points in 3D space, which can be used to create drawings and engineering models. This system requires the prism holder to trudge around and intermittently stand very still while one hundred lasers per second fire into the glittering sphere fastened to the top of a pointed shaft. The other person remains still and manipulates various dials and controls to aim the laser gun into the prism (and not the eye ball).

After hours of surveying, Cokie and I went to inspect a turbine-generator that had broken down nearby. We had to cross the sophisticated and sturdy bridge featured below, then spent some time assessing the turbine situation and how Cokie would proceed to re-power the site. Subsequently we packed up our gear and continued driving. Apparently this was only an appetizer project, and the big gig remained ahead.

Cokie, you see, is a very dear, kind, and gentle soul. He is a mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer, a passionate musician, a dancer, and a lover of the outdoors. As an outdoorsman, he enjoys working as a consultant on projects that demand frequent and arduous fieldwork in beautiful settings. I was beginning to realize what a sweet life he had carved out for himself. At one moment he spontaneously exclaimed, “I love my job!” I had to agree – I loved his job too.

Hours of night driving later we arrived at Chalten. We immediately drove to the restaurant of Cokie’s friend, where we would eat for the following three nights, and where they serve absurdly large and perfectly prepared steaks (most of Argentina does this, actually). We talked and laughed and ate with Cokie’s local friends, and merriment abounded. I felt comfortable with my Spanish.

In the morning I again awoke hours before sunrise and was promptly filled with coffee and mate and shoved into a freezing truck and again found myself bouncing down a dirt track and struggling to pour dry leaves into a small hole. When the sun rose it illuminated none other than the Fitz Roy and Cero Torres – two of the most famous, deadly, and iconic peaks in the mountaineering world. This is why I knew the name Chalten, the base camp for so many epic climbs, and this is where I would spend the next two days endlessly ascending and descending through valleys and forests, and along river banks.

“Now you see why we’ve been eating so much,” said Cokie with a grin, “you are going to need it.” But I didn’t believe him yet, and I hadn’t gotten used to the heavy diet.

People who know me well, know that I’m fairly disciplined about diet and exercise, and that I generally don’t eat lard-fried dough with deep fried steak and eggs. So it was somewhat of an aggravation when we arrived at a dilapidated shack in the woods, and were greeted by a tremendous lumberjack, Gonzalez, offering more lardy dough. I politely nibbled, but discretely hid the majority in my pocket.

Gonzalez and his enormous compatriots (ogres, actually) are the valley’s manual laborers extraordinaire. Cokie told me that they had built every house, hotel, trail and road in the valley by hand. These were real men. Gigantic banana-like fingers covered in dirt and calluses that crushed my dainty palms with each vigorous shaking. They smelled and looked like hard workers deprived of all female interaction. In the distance I could see a few men throwing huge logs to each other and splitting them with ease. These men would build Cokie’s hydroelectric plant, and Gonzalez was the one in charge. He’d been scrambling through these mountains since the age of eight, or so he said, and knew the terrain in terms that a doctorate geomorphogist couldn’t begin to approach.

Cokie and I zipped between houses scattered in the valley. We met various colorful characters, including one man who I believe was actually an elf, and who later prepared for me a cauldron of stew filled with robust steaks (literally).

Finally we set off with an altimeter to find the perfect hydroelectric site in the valley beyond. Several hours and several hundred meters of climbing later Cokie informed me that we would not be eating lunch because we hadn’t found the proper site yet. The lard dough began calling my name.

I’m dividing this story in two because it is a long one, and because I don’t have time to do it justice at the moment. Patience, please.

ThinkGeoEnergy Interview

2011-05-15T10:52:00.000-07:00

Back from a very, very interesting alpine adventure in the Andes with my engineer-musician-dancer-mountaineer-consultant host Carlos. I'll write that up soon.

It was a very nice moment when I opened up my laptop for the first time in four days and found this on my homepage: http://thinkgeoenergy.com/archives/7579.

ThinkGeoEnergy is the geothermal industry's main blog for industry updates, deal reporting, interviews, new exploration activity, and broad geothermal trends. I was excited to meet Alex Richter, the blog's creator, and gladly delivered the above interview. Alex is a German lawyer turned Icelandic financier (married an Viking - always a good move), and has a business degree with a specialty in digital teamwork and online businesses to boot. Quite a character.

Thanks for the flattering write up Alex!

Paradise Lost and Found

2011-05-05T12:02:00.000-07:00

It’s a surreal thing, the Watson Fellowship. At times it is like some kind of bizarre time warp. Too much travel can confuse you. It is strange, for example, when you accidentally thank a Chilean in Icelandic, or when you try to pay for yet another bland sandwich in yet another airport but forget which of the seven currencies in your wallet should be placed on the counter. I’ve taken six flights in the last week, and that hard-driving journey has delivered me from Madrid to the tip of South America in Argentine Patagonia.

I’ll spend two weeks trekking through wintery winds, scoping hydroelectric sites, and understanding the engineering and planning of transmission lines and grid connectivity. My host is Carlos, a local of Rio Gallegos, which is a rough oil and gas town in Argentina’s southernmost province of Santa Cruz. Carlos is also a tango fanatic, and has two professional dancers from Buenos Aires living in his house. Upon arrival I was immediately outfitted with tango shoes and inserted into nightly dance classes.

People sometimes inquire as to how I make connections and develop projects with people like Carlos...

“Cully:

Meet my dear friend Carlos. He is the best power engineer in Argentina, and one of South America’s finest tango dancers. Carlos and I have a lot of interesting history and I love him very much. In fact, my little Chihuahua is named after him.

Carlos has moved on from his chief engineer position at the provincial utility and now runs his own consulting company. I have explained your Watson Fellowship and your work with me this year, and I asked Carlos if he would accept you. I am very pleased to inform you that his answer is yes and you are being welcomed to Rio Gallegos.

You should contact Carlos to advise your schedule and begin your relationship.”

The above email is an introduction that was made by the CEO of a geothermal company I worked with in Iceland, and an example of the surprising interconnectivity of the geothermal industry. The deeper I penetrate this industry, the smaller I realize it is, and the easier it is to move around within it. A small world indeed - everyone seems to know each other.

Next week Carlos will take me into "la sierra" – Andean mountains where we will trek up valleys and ravines to survey the hydrology and geology of prospective power plants. We will stay in the mountains for four days of fieldwork. Our living conditions, according to Carlos, will be “very bad,” and we will shelter in various cabins and ranches that he has access to. It seems that my Death Race training from last summer may come in handy (www.deathraceforlife.blogspot.com).

Of course this is all a brutal and shocking contrast to my luxurious accommodations in Madrid. The only similarity is the language, really, and I still enjoy that part very much.

I ended my time in Madrid happy with the knowledge that I had made friends, helped a wind power development company analyze the economics and finances of a large wind farm, explored a magnificent country and culture, developed my language abilities, and glimpsed the European model of power plant development. But those are only the surficial things I did there, and to be honest, they were secondary. My greatest struggle and potentially my greatest success this year was a personal, philosophical, and spiritual one, which was initiated by a Spanish sage and business mogul. I don’t feel compelled to share the details, just to say that my mental space is different now, continues to change, and is perhaps healthier and happier.

After two weeks in this frozen realm, I will resurface in the comparatively tropical worlds of Buenos Aires and Santiago, where I intend to remain for one and a half months. I will be in the center of the world’s greatest geothermal boom – the piping hot volcanism of the Andes. I imagine some blend of the wild American west, the early oil boomtowns of Pennsylvania (where Colonel Drake drilled the world’s first oil well and precipitated a human flood of prospectors), and the volcano scene from Indiana Jones And The Temple of Doom.

Of course I must also be warry. I’ve already been scammed in Argentina once, and have heard gruesome tales of taxi cab kidnappings, robbings, and murders. One close mentor wrote me, “Buenos Aires is seductive, but is a culture without standards. It is all passion, and whichever way passion blows, that is what happens. This means that financially, all money is one way - into Argentina, and to the person with the upper hand. Because of course, no one is ever passionate about giving money back, and if there are no other standards beyond what the person with the upper hand and passion wants, that is what happens. But, everyone seems wonderful, and soulful and talks good stories and seems reasonable. But this is why the country is a 500 year basket case.”

Still, all of the world’s biggest geothermal developers have set up shop in either Buenos Aires or Santiago, so I intend to spend the remainder of my fellowship in those places. Also, I’m going to tango, study Spanish aggressively, consume lots of steak and maté, and probably succumb to the local obsession with fútbol.

Queen's Day Layover

2011-05-04T18:07:00.000-07:00

Surprise, it's Queen's Day! Here's a video of a spontaneous street parade during the biggest festival of the year in Holland. Wasn't expecting this when I stepped of my plane for a layover in Amsterdam...

The Spanish Packet

2011-03-20T04:05:00.000-07:00

Life comes in packets, I think. It comes in sections of time with borders constituted by changes in life’s pace, mood, activity, place, philosophy, circumstance, etc. Years and semesters of school are discrete in these ways. Periods lived in one city or another, or working various jobs, or dating a person, or playing on a certain team are also ways to partition the otherwise continuous river of life.

Sometimes changes are gradual and barely discernable, and other times they are stark and rapid. No transition in my life, however, has ever been as drastic or profound as the transition from China to Spain.

I left my frigid, biohazardous, dark, and jackhammeringly noisy apartment in Shanghai at the end of a long and challenging winter in Shanghai. Each day was a new challenge and a new learning experience in my 100% Chinese office, in smoky factories, power plants, and meeting rooms, in my Chinese language classes, and on the bustling Chinese streets. I grew and learned through those challenges, but also frequently remarked how much more comfortable life might be without some of the less enjoyable accoutrements of life in China: the smog, toxic water, noise, unforgiving language barriers, and general marginalization of the individual in the sea of billions. I left the country knowing that I had ended a 4-month period of rapid and important learning and personal growth, but also looking forward to something a bit more comfortable and familiar.

Fast forward to Madrid, where I disembarked from my train into the balmy Mediterranean air. Pablo, a Spaniard I met through a friend several years ago in New York City, waited to help me with my bags. Pablo had graciously offered to host me for the next month and a half.

I knew little about what to expect. For example, I did not expect to live in a famous and beautiful piece of Spanish architecture – a house frequently shown in design magazines and architecture blogs for its genius use of material, space, and light. I did not expect to pass through three fortress-like security gates, meet multiple guards, and be "introduced" to gigantic German Shepherds so that they would not tear out my throat when returning from my morning runs. I did not expect to have a forest of manicured running and biking paths at my disposal, nor did I expect them to be stocked with tweeting songbirds. I was certainly surprised to see my new home featured as a set in a new G-Unit music video.

So, that was a nice change. Then there was the language, which I already know a bit about, and can navigate with some confidence. As in China, I have enrolled in an aggressive schedule of language courses to learn more. Languages, I’ve come to believe, are the most critical key to understanding and participating in a culture.

My work is also new and different. I am working with the second largest private company in Spain, Gestamp, which employs over 50,000 Spaniards. All my previous projects in China and Iceland focused on broad business strategy or technology/engineering. Now I’m going after finance. Somehow I weaseled my way into the office of Gestamp’s Wind Power CFO, and convinced him to teach me renewable energy project finance. I’m currently translating and retooling the financial models that Gestamp used to plan and raise money for large wind farms in Spain and Brazil. Gestamp has provided me with amazing opportunities in terms of personnel and information, and now it’s my job to assimilate and learn.

I’ve also linked into some side projects targeting geothermal developments in Germany and Switzerland, which are now fast-tracked since the crisis in Japan has officially plugged many European nuclear power pipelines. Germany, for example, has halted operations at 17 nuclear power, and is considering a new wave of incentives and policies to encourage geothermal energy development as a way to achieve decarbonization targets. The earth's heat, unlike other renewable and clean energy sources like the wind and sun, provides "base load" power, meaning that power is constantly available throughout the day, and can be dispatched like a fossil fuel or nuclear power plant. This consistency is critical for national utilities, which, rain or shine, need meet the demands of millions of customers.

So, it’s a busy but exciting time over here in Spain.

Outside of work, I’m taking some salsa-dancing classes, exploring the Madrileño nightlife with Pablo & Co., hitting many of Madrid’s famous museums like El Prado and Palacio Real, and learning about the local cuisine. Tapas are a new personal passion for sure – I had a creamy truffle pasta that almost brought me to tears the other day, and I've been diligently watching my house's live-in chef, Jose, to learn more about Spanish cooking.

I still can’t believe that two weeks ago I was wearing a down jacket, sweat pants, skiing socks, and a wool hat to bed every night in my oppressive Shanghainese apartment, and wondering how many poisons were in the milk and cereal I’d eaten for breakfast. As transitions go, this has been a cool one.

Onward to Madrid

2011-03-07T06:17:00.001-08:00

I awoke in a pathetic delirium when the door of my cramped sleeper cabin suddenly crashed open as the train’s brakes screeched, again, and I rolled against the wall, again. This time blinding sunlight filled my closet-sized space and elicited vampiric hissing. This meant that it was daytime, and that my only opportunity for sleep in the bracketing 48 hours had officially closed without a single “Z.”

My cabin smelled of flatulence and Frenchmen. The former, I admit, we may credit to my predilection for the French cheeses on which I had supped for the preceding several days. I’d been visiting my girlfriend in Paris and had used the entirety of my French language abilities to order croque monsieurs and onion soup au gratin. Colonol Gadfdafi could seriously economize on his tear gas expenses by bottling the air in that cabin.

The French odor, the worst national body odor of any by far, emanated from the four Frenchmen with whom I shared my temporary prison for the first eleven hours of my journey south to Madrid.

There was also a Pakistani in my cabin. He had startled me from my half-slumber at 4:00AM by announcing that we had arrived at my station of disembarkation, and that I only had only moments to shuttle and unload my copious baggage through narrow train corridors. I furiously packed, lifted, and panicked until he returned moments later saying, “actually your destination is not for six more hours.” I imagined with gratification the superpower ability to fire lightning bolts from my eyes into his head.

My 24-hour train journey from Paris to Madrid included a 6-hour layover in Irun, a boarder town in northern Spain. I unloaded in Irun, reached back into the deep recesses of my brain, and extracted the high school Spanish skills that I had buried somewhere between Pokémon names and GEO101: Introduction to Earthquakes and Volcanoes.

I asked someone where I might store my baggage (I prefer my sleepless wanderings to be unencumbered by rolling bags and briefcases), and learned that a subterranean bar several blocks away would be my only option. Sure enough I found the bar, asked around, and four Euros later I was strolling through Irun observing gypsies, somber looking men walking a somber looking terriers, sombrero-wearers, and an ancient, rickety man wearing a Johny Walker Whiskey baseball cap with the slogan “Keep Walking,” which seemed to be about all the man could muster.

I settled down in a café, fired up my laptop, and set out to somehow summarize China without barring myself from later professional excursions there. I'll keep it brief.

My 24-hour train ride was a luxurious experience compared to the train I took from Shanghai to Beijing in December. But before I complain about the filthy cramped quarters of that travel experience, let's acknowledge how luxurious and easy these trains have been compared to travel options of millennia past.

Whether contemplating the Oregon Trail, transatlantic sailing, or the Silk Route, we must feel thankful for the blessings of safe, reliable, and fast transit. My trips from Beijing to Shanghai or from Paris to Madrid would have taken weeks or months in the past, required a much larger financial commitment, and would have been wrought with the perils of sickness, banditry, and the feral wilderness. I marvel at the near-thoughtlessness with which I traveled from China to Singapore, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Japan.

Easy access to energy and improved engines (power production) are largely to thank for our modern travel system. In fact many aspects of our modern lifestyles owe largely to an enhanced energy system. Energy consumption correlates tightly with a variety of important quality of life metrics like Human Development Index (HDI-energy chart shown below), education, health, and GDP, to list a few. My four months in China exposed and reinforced these relationships for me.

http://pensiveprimate.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/energy-use-hdi.jpg

China is a nation in flux: nearly every aspect of the ancient society is racing forward to enter the modern era. The government, the economy, the cities, and the culture are all struggling and striving to come to terms with New China. These changes certainly do not exclude the nation’s energy system - the improvement, modernization, and sustenance of which constitutes a major priority in the Chinese government's new 5-year plan (released this year).

China’s power supply depends 70% on energy from coal. Much of the remainder derives from oil and massive hydroelectric projects. Renewables constitute an infinitesimal portion of China’s domestic primary power portfolio (in the graph below, renewables = 9%, but that includes over 6% hydro). However, wind power is accumulating quickly, especially in the west and north, and now China installs more wind power per year than any country on earth.

Energy Graph: http://www.chinasnaps.com/?p=209

The most important role of renewable energy in China is actually as a source of demand for China’s immense manufacturing capacity – the international community, particularly western Europe and North America, now purchases the majority of its cleantech gear from the Middle Kingdom. China is the world’s manufacturing leader for solar cells and wind turbines in addition to many of the components and inputs for other clean technologies like lithium batteries, steam power cycles, etc.

Beyond manufacturing and exporting clean energy technology, the central government has yet to roll out significant incentives or plans for a domestic buildup of clean or sustainable energy. Instead, new initiatives are targeting increased capacity for natural gas as an alternative to additional coal. Coal mines around the country are also being consolidated and reformed for greater safety, efficiency, environmental standards. Additionally, the government is prioritizing energy efficiency – a massive opportunity as China currently uses five to six times more energy per dollar of GDP than S. Korea, Japan, the US, and many Western European economies.

Don’t allow these lofty goals to mask the tremendous environmental problems currently wreaking havoc on China’s air, waterways, and ecosystems. Beijing is a veritable environmental apocalypse, as are most major Chinese cities. Pollution from poorly scrubbed coal smokestacks, urban factories, and the thousands of new cars entering Chinese streets each day all contribute to the particulate emissions, noxious fumes, and ozone that blanket urban China. One day in November the American Embassy in Beijing reported that the air quality had exceeded the 500-point scale used to measure harmful elements in urban air. By contrast, anything over 50-80 points is a red flag day in most European and American cities.

The truth is that Chinese pollution's damages to human health and the broader environment are severe and worsening – therein is the motivation for the government’s new environmental and energy objectives. Appalling environmental damages also underlie my interest in China as a place where large opportunities for clean energy investment exist, and where the necessity for such investments is literally palpable and visible. China’s clean-tech industry (like most of China's industries) has generated a gold rush mentality among international investors, which has resulted in rapid asset price inflation. Some cry "bubble," but most of the investors I interviewed concluded that opportunities for companies to generate massive environmental impacts and fast growth are real.

My experiences in China truly opened my eyes to new layers of the world and the global energy industry. I learned so much from my experience: I studied Mandarin every day for two hours, I learned volumes about how to build and operate geothermal and waste heat recovery (WHR) power plants, I gained soft skills relating to the Chinese business settings as well as general face-saving etiquette, I greatly improved my chopstick usage, I benefitted from daily street-side haggling and negotiations, and of course I participated in a radically different culture and lifestyle.

Taiwanese Geothermal Power Plant:

I spent November in Beijing interviewing and meeting individuals from all over the Chinese energy industry and related industries. In December I moved to a home base in Shanghai, where I remained for three months working on engineering and business development projects with Global Geothermal, Recurrent Engineering, and Shanghai Shenghe New Energy Resources and Technology Co. I spent five days per week in a 100% Chinese office, and was also invited to power plant and factory tours in five different cities. Additionally, I was introduced to key Japanese and Taiwanese clients by my host companies, and I spent many days working with those clients to understand their power plants, projects, problems, and solutions.

In Late February I left China, flew through Dubai for a very fun 24-hour layover, and arrived in Paris to see my girlfriend for a few days before heading down to Madrid, where I will stay with a Spanish family and work with Gestamp Wind to understand European renewable energy subsidies and their impacts on “green field” project finance. I will also take Spanish language, culture, and dance classes in the Salamanca district to connect with and participate in the local culture. Additionally, I’ll have the opportunity to continue writing and publishing articles for the International Geothermal Association after the acceptance of my most recent article, “Industrial Synergies Between Geothermal Energy and Waste Heat Recovery.”

With that, I’d like to officially re-open this blog after months of government censorship-induced silence. I’ll post my stories and reflections from Spain, and also fill in my Asian adventure with photos in the sidebar and perhaps a full post of my favorite pictures. Thanks again for reading, and to those of you readers (over 1,000 page views per month before my shutdown in China) who have drifted away, please come back!

Flying to China

2010-10-28T19:50:00.000-07:00

Week 15: Goodbye Iceland

2010-10-22T17:41:00.000-07:00

Today I flew to Copenhagen. Soon I’ll continue on through Moscow and finally arrive in Beijing on Wednesday morning. The second country of study in my Watson Fellowship, China, fast approaches. I feel some mixture of excitement and intimidation towards China’s megacities and burgeoning populations. To be sure, China will be radically different from Iceland.

For starters, the contrast between the energy systems of China and Iceland couldn’t be starker. Goodbye Iceland. Goodbye 100% renewable electricity. Hello Beijing. Hello Shanghai. Hello coal. Hello Three Gorges Dam. Hello two coal power plants added to the national grid per week. Two per week! Hello world’s largest investor in renewable energy technology. Hello 1.3 billion people. Hello hustle and bustle and relentless march of economic development.

Before departing Iceland I wrapped up all my loose ends. I finished a report on hydrogen sulfide emissions control technology for Landsvirkjun, the largest power company in Iceland. My hosts at Landsvirkjun arranged a farewell party at a local tavern, either signifying satisfaction with my work or good riddance. I can’t be sure which.

I also had a tasty farewell dinner with the Director of Sustainable Energy at Islandsbanki (Bank of Iceland), with whom I hope to continue various projects surrounding www.thinkgeoenergy.com.

Finally, I said farewell to the various folks I’ve met and lived with in Iceland. My buddy Hinrick drove five hours from Akureyri to say goodbye over one final dinner of Thai food (the Icelandic Thai population is burgeoning after Icelandic males experienced a brief infatuation with mail order brides). I also said a somber goodbye to all my new friends in the Salvation Army Guesthouse – the most international and cramped accommodations I’ve ever had the privilege to call home for one month. Never before (outside the UN) have Tajikistanis, Nigerians, Americans, Germans, Canadians, Colombians, Italians, Greeks, Poles, and countless other nationalities come together in such an energized, generally friendly, occasionally angry, and always physical manner. Imagine 20 people from all over the world waiting to cook on one of two stovetop burners – the line for dinner each night was an experience in and of itself. I spent many hours sampling the foods and ideas of all these different folks while bumping and shuffling about in a dim and tight kitchen.

Looking back on my last month in Reykjavik – “City of Fear” as rural Icelanders call it - I can say that I grew. I refined, updated, abandoned, and re-evaluated many of my opinions about energy. My personal strategies and goals moving forward have changed. Again, I found myself fighting the same old environment-economy-energy battle that I’ve wrestled with so many times before. I spent the last month with an overwhelming array of personalities spanning from staunch capitalists to communists, fundamentalist environmentalists to unrestrained industrialists, politicians, regulators, businesspeople, entrepreneurs, and a sampling of about twenty different world cultures. This bombardment forced me to see things in a new light. I wont delve too far into the specifics of my musings because they are private, in progress, and would constitute multiple essays each (not the kinds of things one simply tosses out without support, evidence, and argument). It will suffice to say that I’ve taken on a more pragmatic view, I think. However, I haven’t compromised my idealism so much as tempered it and redirected it within the confines of our imperfect world, our technology, our demand, and especially our financial system.

I’ll add that my musings in Reykjavik evolved naturally from my experiences, relationships, and observations. The focus of my time in the Icelandic capital was researching the technology and economics of hydrogen sulfide pollution control systems and evaluating carbon sequestration options for Landsvirkjun, but that was by no means my only source of learning. I gleefully participated in meetings with Japanese power plant manufacturers, geothermal investment bankers, and power plant designers. I toured a number of operating geothermal facilities. I attended lectures from international researchers in geology, engineering, and environmental protection. I also met and discussed with inventors, financiers, and developers from other energy industries like hydro, solar, gas, and coal.

One last thing. China doesn’t like people publishing details about their energy industry. Occasionally they imprison offenders, like the unfortunate American geologist who will be in Chinese jail for the next two years because he released information about some oil wells. I’ve decided it’s best not to risk a similar situation. Beyond that, I’ve heard that blogger.com is intermittently censored within China, so I probably wouldn’t be able to publish frequently if at all. Accordingly, this may be my last post until I land in Madrid come March.

In China I have plans in various stages of development/commitment to work with Shanghai Electric, Global Geothermal, Hysen International, Shaanxi Green Energy, tour two district heating facilities, attend meetings of the Beijing Energy Network, and much more. I’ll study Mandarin with private tutors, and will plan at least one rural trip to really experience the culture, see the contrast to urban life, and perhaps find some opportunities for a post-Watson return. Beijing, Shanghai, and Xian will probably be my home bases for one or two months each. My total time in China will be over four months. I have an apartment arranged in Beijing, which is where I’ll land at 9:50 on Wednesday. So exciting!

I want to thank everyone who has taken the time to read my blog, leave comments, email me thoughts, and support me during this year. I’ve received over 2,100 hits so far, which is pretty exciting for me. Don’t be alarmed if I don’t post here for a couple months. I’ll be back before you know it!

Week 13: Riots, Millionaires, and Resource Wars

2010-10-03T13:40:00.000-07:00

Last night Reykjavik erupted. I’m not talking about a volcanic event, but equally fiery and explosive protests outside parliament. I watched this demonstration while dining on lobster, lamb, and chocolate cake with Iceland’s “wealthiest self-made man,” according to the man himself. The experience felt utterly surreal as we pursued history, philosophy, and technology while thronging crowds broke the windows of parliament, ignited fires throughout the city’s center, launched fireworks at government buildings, clashed with riot gear clad police, and never once stopped beating their oil drums – the drum beat of revolutionary impulses.

Rewind to Saturday. I walked into one of the theaters hosting films from the Reykjavik International Film Festival. I bought my ticket for Oil Rock: The Story of Stalin’s Floating Caspian Oil City, and noticed a 50-something year old man, or more specifically, I noticed his bomber jacket. Exquisite. An American eagle patch screamed across the worn leather breast, other flags and patches adorned the arms, and a fluffy wool collar lay casually on the shoulders. Where can I get one? I started the conversation: “Great jacket.”

I left with the man’s number and a promise for dinner. Three days later he picked me up in his white BMW. “Before we eat, I want to show you something.” He drove me past various embassies in Reykjavik, then we doubled back towards a looming black building. “That’s the Chinese embassy. It is four times larger than the next largest embassy – the American embassy. What does China need such a large embassy for? Remember, there are only 300,000 Icelanders. What is China doing here?”

He explained his theories about global wars fought through markets and resources instead of armies, and about China’s investments in the aluminum smelters here (which consume 80% of Iceland’s energy). He told me about “buying friends,” and how he fears that Iceland will become a bargaining chip in the market/resource wars ahead. He pointed out Canada and America's similar interests in Icelandic smelters and geothermal resources. He seemed to know much more about these subject than the layperson might. His pattern of unusual insights – suspicion arousing insights - only strengthened through the night.

Over dinner I continually probed my new friend to discover his past, but he revealed very little. His family, business, and political positions remains shrouded. When I tried to turn our conversation towards my own projects, goals, and ideas he seemed equally uninterested. Instead, he steered me into the realm of understanding man. “You are here to learn something about energy and to make some decisions about your future and career, no? You say you want to avoid the mid-life realization that your efforts have been misguided, meaningless, or even destructive to this world. To make these decisions well – to really be effective – you must first understand man thoroughly." He demanded that I see my contemporaries clearly, that I see their darkness as well as their good.

We discussed falcon breeding and the historical implications of that industry. We explored the beauty and horrors of Thailand. We reviewed psychopathy, and how many psychopaths build high-powered careers. “People on a mission are sometimes the most dangerous type. They are the ones who think they must accomplish something, and they will stop at nothing to get what they want. You seem to be on that kind of mission. Keep it in control. Know why you are doing what you are doing.”

My friend ate his lobster by hand. He dug his fingers into the buttery meat, but managed to do so with a completely dignified and sophisticated aura. It seemed totally appropriate that a pile of translucent napkins should mount on the table’s surface. He ordered apple juice and told me that he has never once had a sip of alcohol. Outside I saw crowds overrun a police barricade and shatter the windows of parliament. The trapped politicians escaped through a secret tunnel instead of face the financial collapse-fueled mob.

At one point the man unexpectedly asked me to state my IQ score, and later he wanted very specific details about my athletic abilities, particularly in swimming and running. He extended numerous offers of connections along with an offer for more meetings before I leave Iceland for China. “Perhaps you can meet the Governor here,” he added. I felt increasingly bewildered by the whole experience.

I left the restaurant and stepped out into the middle of the protest's central barricaded area (we literally dined overlooking parliament). I found myself among police in full riot gear. “Icelandic Jibberish?!” “Sorry, I only speak English.” “How did you get behind the barricade?!” “I entered the restaurant before the protests started. Don’t worry, I’m a disinterested American, and I'm not really into the whole 'violent protest' thing anyway. I’ll go now.”

The police escorted me to the perimeter of the safe-zone. I stepped over the riot wall, ran past some flames, a man waving a skull and crossed bones pirate flag, and people firing flares at parliament, and dashed into my guesthouse.

Next morning: charred lawn and broken windows at Iceland's "Alping" parliament

In Reykjavik and Infected

2010-09-30T11:35:00.000-07:00

Hello,

This will be brief for the same reason that it is delayed - sinusitis and a cold. Yes, I've been besieged by microbes. I find myself typing from a small cot in the Salvation Army Guesthouse in downtown Reykjavik. The room is somewhat like a prison cell, but more austere. I do theoretically have the option to leave the premises at any moment, but must confront an utterly unpleasant desk worker every time.

As for progress on the Watson, I'm deeply entrenched in a few interesting projects. I have assumed responsibility for shipping and insuring a half-million-dollar turbine gear from Iceland to Germany via the Netherlands. It's a complex task to say the least, and surprisingly educational.

I've also spent a few days talking with the owner of www.thinkgeoenergy.com. This website is the de facto source for all news geothermal. The site's owner is also the Director of Sustainable Energy at the Bank of Iceland, so I've enjoyed a few top-floor powwows in the Islandsbanki headquarters. Today I wrangled myself the opportunity to write an article for the website, which is super exciting, and could lead to even great involvement down the road.

A third project is researching H2S abatement technologies for Landsvirkjun Power, the largest electricity producer in Iceland, and now the subject of the world's most stringent H2S gas abatement regulatory policy. I called up the Director of Safety at Calpine, which operates The Geysirs geothermal field in California (largest geothermal development field in the world), and told him about Landsvirkjun's gas problem. He literally laughed at the policy - achieve 99.5% abatement in 4 years. It took Calpine 30 years and hundreds of millions of dollars to achieve the same results. He told me to "que up the mission impossible music," but also offered some good information and the opportunity for a private tour/Q&A for my Landsvirkjun hosts when they head to Cali for a conference in one month. Hey, it's a start...

Reykjavik is a cool town. The rural folk call it "Fear City," but it feels more like "Swank Village" to me - lots of euro clothing stores, jewelry shops, and extremely trendy cafes, bars, and restaurants. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in Reykjavik, buy Armani. The Reykjavik International Film Festival is on, and tomorrow I'm planning to see a movie with my friends from the very first house I stayed in here in Iceland (Carola and Hersir).

OK, I'm off to mow Amoxicillin, irrigate my sinuses with salt water, and spray steroid laced liquids into my nostrils. Then I will stretch out on my bed, at least until my feet and hands touch opposite walls (literally).

Casual Day At The Office...

2010-09-18T08:28:00.001-07:00

I love the smell of ammonia gas in the morning. I spent the morning wearing a gas mask and analyzing corrosion in the power plant's heat exchanger. Is this the "hands on experience" that Thomas Watson had in mind?

Pretty intense working conditions...

It's all worthwhile when you step outside and see this, the first snow of the year:

The Great Sheep Wrangle of 2010, or, Karmically Paying For What You Consume

2010-09-13T11:51:00.000-07:00

Exhausted from hours of wading through sheep doo and arduous wrangling, I sat on a generations-old lava wall and snapped a large flake of dried cod from my salty filet. I crammed the stiff meat into my maw and allowed my saliva to soften the fish until I could switch from sucking to chewing. Some blueberries, picked minutes ago on a nearby hillside, rinse the fish down my throat. This is the Icelandic way, and I've learned to enjoy it for reasons beyond the acquired tastes. Earning that food is delicious too.

One of my missions here in Husavik, should I choose to accept it, is to translate the expansive control panel at the power plant from Icelandic to English before an American company assumes proprietorship and operation of the facility. But I don't speak Icelandic.

My landlord, Ditta, is fluent in English and Icelandic. She has agreed to assist me in exchange for an equivalent amount of labor in gathering berries, moss, and sheep. I deemed this a fair trade. In fact, I replicated it with a different housemate who helped me translate French technical drawings in exchange for my services as her personal chef.

So, to win the favor of my power-plant building mentors I must first indulge in the Icelandic tradition of living from the land. I picked four trash bags of moss, which we will cook into breads, sauces, and soups. I hand picked a full bucket of blackberries. Most recently, I wrangled three sheep in the annual "rettir," the event where all local farmers go to reclaim their sheep after a summer of carefree wandering and fattening in the verdant summery pastures of Husavik's outskirts.

Each farm dispatched a group of horsemen numbered proportionally to the farm's number of sheep. These horseback herders joined forces last Thursday. They rode hard for three days to gather sheep from all the hills and dales in the area, and on the fourth morning they came blasting over a ridgeline with about 2,500 sheep bleating and stampeding their way into a massive corral of basaltic lava brick. The walls have been built and maintained by generations of farmers here. Each farm dedicates two days per year to the maintenance of this large and intricate pen.

Our horsemen, dressed in white shirt, red tie, and black pants, signal the event's inception with yells and whistles. Hundreds of farmers, friends and families all began marching in lines to send sheep flooding from one large area into a smaller area where they were identified by ear tags and hauled into the corresponding farm's section in the lava structure.

After Ditta's family found its 60 sheep, we marched them about three miles by foot along a country road. Two sheep collapsed of exhaustion, so we put them in the car. We finally deposited our sheep on a big green pasture, and retired to the farm house for waffles and jam (from the very berries I picked).

I offered many solutions to the inefficiency I saw at the rettir:

Why don't you tag their ears with colors so that you can find them faster? Couldn't we just use one of your tractors and trailers to haul the sheep instead of getting six people to walk the sheep back to the farm? Why not keep the sheep from mixing each summer by leaving them in separate parts of the countryside and building a few fences? The lava structure needs so much work - why not use metal fences that won't need so much repair work?

Each suggestion, despite its economic sensibility, seemed to upset or offend my host (below, middle). I slowly realized that the point of the rettir is not to efficiently aggregate sheep, but to aggregate culture. Historically, the rettir was the grandest social day of the year, and it remains so in many ways. I saw dancing, singing, local foods, old friendships, authentic costumes, traditional back-to-the-earth activities, and so much rich culture. Building the walls is a right, not a duty. The same goes for riding three days to collect the sheep - I've never seen such pride.

"You need to learn what real value is"

After the event, I ate the best waffles of my life. I saw the farm where the cream came from, I picked the berries myself, and we mixed our hearty batter by hand (side bar).

The tea steeped in the moss I harvested, and the cheese came from just down the road.

Sorting moss...

I recalled fishing for my cod and wrangling my mutton. Without thinking I exclaimed "this is the life!" and everyone agreed.

I never say that. I never cavalierly scream "this is the life!" in some stranger's house. I swilled strong coffee and listened to indecipherable Icelandic conversations and I felt completely content.

But how can this be? I've done all these things that I considered to be "the life," so how can this stinking, sore, famished, sheep-crap-covered experience rank among the best? I used to tell stories about sitting with Lindsay Lohan in shi-shi night clubs or rubbing elbows in the swankery of London's Whiskey Mist lounge or New York's Masa. I reveled in that stuff because it was the most exclusive, because I got access and you didn't. But I'm quickly learning how shallow those experiences were.

My currency of satisfaction has been wrong. I never really earned those experiences. I never knew value - not like this value of really and truly earning my bread. Hard-earned dignity and quality experiences always trump cheap thrills.

Excuse me for taking this rant towards energy, but I'm paid to do so.

This all has implications for electrons. Not all of them are created equal, or rather, the consumption of one energy source is not equal to another. All energy sources have their problems and their advantages, but we aren't measuring them properly are we?

You don't pay the same for the corn-fed, steroid-pumped, factory slaughtered cow as you do for the pasture grazing, organic, natural beef, do you? We discern between hand-wrangled, heather-munching mutton and industrially processed mutton, don't we? So why do we pay the same utility bill for coal power as we do for solar power?

Dollars don't measure the political weapon of oil that Venezuela or Saudi Arabia can turn on us. Dollars don't measure the high mercury levels in American fish from coal emissions. Dollars don't measure the burdens our resource-depleted future will inherit. Dollars don't measure the hazards of a nuclear waste dump, or the potential for terrorist attacks on reactors.

Dollars do well at measuring the quantity of energy we produce, but dollars do very little to measure the quality. As a consumer, you can't pay more for energy that you deem to be of a higher quality (a few utilities actually now offer the option to pay more for wind or solar power, but most do not).

Just as my initial preference for efficient and streamlined herding would have destroyed the rettir's true value, our economic system's preference for low-cost energy output perversely incentivizes some bad energy choices. We currently operate the tractor delivered, metal pen enclosed, automatically sorted, and industrially butchered sheep herds of the electron world. Only in this case, we don't forfeit culture, but resource security, environmental quality, and sustainability.

Investors dictate the energy sources, but consumers have little ability to affect investment. "Low-cost" trumps all. Investors look at our alternative energy options and say that they are "too expensive," which I've come to learn simply means that they don't pay back fast enough. What about the value - I'd argue the very real value - of not feeling like a jackass because your energy source just flattened 20% of West Virginia? I can't tell you how good it feels to turn on the lights and take long showers in Iceland and know that every single joule is clean and renewable. I'd honestly pay more for this feeling back home, but there aren't any established avenues for me to pay that premium.

Robert Kennedy said in a very poetic speech that "GDP measures everything except that which makes life worth living," and I finally know what he meant. He was absolutely right. The type of output also matters in addition to the volume of output.

If we want to make any progress on our energy system, then we may want to consider how to value quality. Hand-wrangled power plants (clean, domestic and sustainable) will cost a little more in terms of dollars, but does the satisfaction of paying the full karmic price of our energy have no merit?

Producing food by hand, even if it's economically inefficient, makes it taste better because you know you didn't cut any corners and you can take pride in the meal. I'd argue that electricity can be a lot like jam or sheep - people will pay for energy that doesn't cut the corners of sustainability, cleanliness, and security.

In fact, we already monetize those fuzzy feelings. We've branded them "green," and our government has placed a regulatory premium on them through feed in tariffs, RPS standards, and poisonous emissions regulations. Perhaps the next step is to launch the Whole Foods of electricity - giving people the option to volitionally and proactively choose their energy source. I have a few ideas percolating on that front.

This will be my last post for a couple weeks as I wrap up here in Husavik, move to Reykjavik, and buckle down on a few time-constrained research projects. Thanks very much for reading, please share the link, and check back in about 10-15 days for more physical and mental ramblings...

Week 8: Boxing with Philosophers

2010-09-11T04:02:00.000-07:00

I’m sitting on my front porch with a mug of extremely strong Icelandic coffee (most of us would call this espresso). I’ve watched for an hour as my fjorded front yard disappeared behind foggy curtains.

I’ve chosen to shelter my feet with the handsome Elven slippers featured below.

Days like this lend themselves to mental wandering.

I have in my mind at this very moment a boxing match. Not just any fight, but something to rival Rocky II, something to top the Rumble in the Jungle, even more splendiferous than the Thrilla in Manilla. In the blue corner we find Adam Smith spraying menacing jabs and hooks through the air. The red corner contains a vicious Karl Marx bouncing spryly on his toes. The tension between these two philosophical heavy weights has slowly built until we arrive at this current moment – Madison Square Garden can’t possibly contain another spectator.

Ronald Reagan and Bill O'Reilly finish taping Adam’s fists; I think I just saw them hide some barbed wire in Adam’s left glove. Those guys will do anything to win. Is that Ayn Rand taking bets?

I look left and see Castro massaging Karl’s body – foreboding in its hairy corpulence. Friedman just broke a bottle and threatened Hu Jintao in the stands. This place is blowing up.

I’m down in the middle of the ring to referee this crazy thing, only, instead of the standard tuxedo I've opted for a chromatically equivalent coat of Siberian Tiger pelts. It looks awesome, trust me.

Jay-Z finishes the pre-fight show, and now we move onto the main event. The fighters tap gloves, I ring the bell, and our two brutish contenders crash into each other, clubbing with fists of economic zeal.

If I succeed in my main goal for this year, then I will be able to narrate the rest of this fight. How would the philosophical brawl play out in your mind?

The proposed goal of my fellowship was not to learn the specifics of power generation, but to build a philosophical foundation for my aspirations. Each experience I have out here should, theoretically, inform my idealistic and naïve quest to work towards a better energy system. Everything I see is a hook or jab or uppercut in this fight for my ideology.

I definitely tend towards the deregulated free market side of things, but I can't avoid the countless examples of scandal and corruption that could have been prevented through some stricter regulation and oversight, through a little less greed. BP might not have spilled that oil if it had just a bit more patience. Lehman might not have gone broke if it had just a bit more caution. Iceland might not owe $75 billion if it had given bankers just a few more rules.

You don't want to strangle businesses with rules, but it seems irresponsible to leave the door wide open for catastrophic failures like the financial crises (American and Icelandic). These really were examples of unrestrained greed causing major problems for everyone, even those completely detached from the reckless speculation (America) and corruption (Iceland).

This post is a silly way to describe something I wrestle with constantly. I project Adam Smith and his "dismal science" as an embodiment and validation of my selfishness. Marx is my avatar for selflessness. If I ever succeeded in building a power plant, what portion of my effort should be to make a buck, and what portion should be to improve the broader energy system? The answer probably dictates what kind of plant I'd build.

More importantly, is making a buck in this business mutually exclusive with helping the future? I'm out here to answer those questions - to find a personal balance between Adam and Karl. Again, I'd love to hear where you find your balance. Here are some of the examples that have batted my philosophical badminton ball around since landing here:

I’ve learned about the rampant corruption in Iceland’s privatized and deregulated banks. The idea was to increase the profitability and competitiveness of the banks by removing regulatory burdens and de-socializing the financial system. Unfortunately, Iceland's bankers opted for robbing Iceland’s banks from the inside beginning immediately after the deregulation and privatization in 2005. They shipped millions of dollars into offshore accounts then fled the country. Within three years the privatization had bankrupted Iceland’s three largest banks, which had to be bailed out by the government and foreign loans, thereby bankrupting the entire country.

The economic wreckage is incredible here. Imagine a national debt of 5 times GDP. I’ve seen a lot of kind families financially crushed by that scandal, the ensuing currency devaluation, and the investments that materialized to zero. At first I defended my first love, capitalism, and said, "that's not capitalism, it's just crime." I've slowly learned that the economic systems we choose set a tone for the population - economic philosophies affect people's goals, attitudes, and behaviors.

Deregulating the banks sent the message that banking is about making money, not protecting wealth. The result was profiteering taken to a wild and illegal extreme, but an extreme that didn't exist here before the privatization. The majority of Iceland's left-leaning population despises this kind of thinking, and they counter it with genuine community support, outreach, and kindness. My next post will illustrate this community cohesion.

The banking example has Smith against the ropes and Marx is brutalizing the Scotsman. But then Smith pulls a rope-a-dope, faking left with an example of greedy excess and coming up with the massive right hook of lowering costs and improving quality through competition.

I observe all these socialized energy companies with outrageously bloated overheads, unnecessarily opulent office buildings, careless employees, and unpunished mistakes. For example, imagine buying a new fleet of transformers for Reykjavik that don’t fit into their housing because you never bothered to measure – literally an “it’ll probably fit” mistake that costs millions of dollars. Now imagine not getting fired.

Nobody gets fired. The socialized businesses don’t go broke; they just take out more loans. Reykjavik Energy’s balance sheet is outrageous, and it would have been dead and buried a year ago if it were private. Iceland's weird brand of socialized capitalism means that many businesses have no incentive to conserve or stay lean. People assume regulation will take care of the system, but it clearly doesn't. There's no incentive to do better than expected, even when expectations are pretty low. Everyone just notices a slightly higher energy bill to offset the utility’s lackluster performance.

Marx is bleeding, wheezing, spitting out teeth.

I observe companies hamstringed by overregulation, and Smith momentarily gains the upper hand. Just then I see some contractors cut corners to save costs at the expense of a quaint fishing village’s energy infrastructure. Marx slugs Smith with the local economic collapse that followed this shortsighted profiteering.

This fight keeps raging, and I’m just trying to figure out what to think. I see sloppy footwork in both sides of the ring. I also see admirable qualities in both fighters. The answer must be somewhere in the middle, but where?

I’m beginning to envision Marx and Smith both collapsed on the floor, equally exhausted from so many rounds of uncompromising brutality. Just as I reach for the mic to call this fight a disappointing draw, Stephen Harper dashes out, snatches the title belt from my hands, and runs away back to his utopian blend of efficient free markets and kind social systems.

Personally, this philosophical brawl keeps my ambitions in check. There are many legal ways to take advantage, to deceive, and to advance yourself by throwing another under the proverbial bus. But after you live with someone who was just run over by that bus, you clearly see that "legal" doesn't mean "right." Recklessly shoveling out sub-prime mortgages, even if you break no laws, is still wrong. Crippling the environment, even by legal means, is still wrong. Conversely, doing a little good, even if it’s less profitable, is still good.

I think that the next ten months will really help me hone in on this philosophical balance point.

Flow Like Whoa

2010-09-09T06:11:00.000-07:00

I thought I might post these two flow diagrams. They detail the pathways of water through some auxiliary systems attached to Husavik's power plant. I made these diagrams for Recurrent Engineering to help with their due diligence work as they plan to buy the plant, refurbish it, and sell it back to the town.

The first schematic shows where the power plant's cooling water goes. The water either flows to a fish farm (supplying warm fresh water for the fishies) or to a "hot pond." If a "hot pond" sounds menacing, just take a look at the photo above - it's about 15 degrees C, lush, and great for swimming. The power plant's dump site is basically a small manmade lake, and has developed into a cute little park. Seriously unlike the effluent from some other industrial processes, aye?.

The second schematic diagrams a system designed to garner additional BTUs from a nearby recycling/trash facility that sometimes burns rubbish and can reheat water for the power plant. Eventually this hot water flows to the town's district heating system.

So yesterday I bathed in the power plant's cooling effluent and showered in its fuel source. Did I mention the healthy minerals in the geothermal waters? My skin feels great! This is a power technology I can really endorse.

Week 7: Chasing Bruce

2010-09-04T11:41:00.000-07:00

7:45 AM: Ring, ring, ring. Blocked number.

(drowsily) “Hello, this is Cully”

(Exuberantly) “Cully, baby, aren’t you making the coffee yet? What are you good for?”

(Stunned) “Bruce?”

“You know it kid. I’m in Husavik. You have an interview with Husavik Energy at 2:30”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope. You want to get involved? Find a way to get here. Soon.” Click.

That was basically my first contact with Bruce after not hearing from him for about two months. Bruce is a mentor and major player in the power plant development business; he rarely deigns to include me in his plans, but when he does, things get intense. Describing Bruce is a challenge because of his singularity. A sharper, sometimes serious version of Rodney Dangerfield from Caddy Shack might approximate him. He’s a playful and light character with a business edge that emerges suddenly when required.

Bruce builds power plants all over the world, and he’s very good at it. He runs a consultancy with a clientele described as “the rich and famous.” I’ve enjoyed hearing stories about George Soros and Australian billionaires. Bruce makes it rain, and he agreed to teach me how after I pursued him across America for one month, eventually waiting in New York for two weeks until he gave me the opportunity to come to his house (referred to as the magic cottage) for a five-hour interview and tutorial. That was several months ago, and I haven’t heard much from him since.

Bruce and his team of world-class engineers built the power plant here in Husavik, and now they are back to make some repairs. The opportunity seemed ripe for me to learn the inner workings of a power plant. However, this is no ordinary plant. It is the first of its kind. Early adoption is going down on the sleepy shores of Husavik, a small fishing village of 2,000 people on Iceland’s north coast. I’m here to learn what makes this plant, a Kalnia Cycle model 34 binary phase geothermal power plant, work.

Alexander Kalina, Russian èmigrè to America, invented Kalina Cycle technology for the explicit purpose of greater efficiency when utilizing low temperature resources for power generation. Thermodynamics always limit geothermal power plants, and I’ll simplify a complex issue by saying that cooler incoming water limits the amount of energy available for power production.

Kalina Cycle technology uses a new “working fluid” of ammonia and water to increase the energy available from low temperature resources by as much as 20-50% when compared to existing technologies. The technology’s advantages become more pronounced at lower temperatures, which is good news for the 120C brine pumped 20km to Husavik from a geothermal field to the south. Keep in mind that many geothermal plants in Iceland receive incoming temperatures of 240C or higher. Here is a photo from inside the plant at Husavik:

After Bruce hung up, I sat in bed, dazed. Bruce agreed to mentor me, but then I didn’t hear from him for months. He said my first lesson would come in Iceland, but I didn’t know if he would actually show up to teach me anything about this business or the technology. Last Wednesday he did.

I packed my bags as fast as possible, then ran to ISOR for a last-minute PowerPoint presentation to educated the whole staff on how to use my map of Chile’s geothermal industry before I left town. I boarded the next bus for Husavik, and arrived to discover that Bruce didn’t have room for me in his car because of an important Danish visitor. I ran several miles to the power plant in order to see it for the first time. I ended up meeting with the local energy company the following morning, and after garnering their approval, I met the team of engineers that I will work with.

This month I’ll help evaluate equipment, check the functionality and condition of the plant’s components, and translate the control station (a massive array of screens, dials, knobs, and levers) from Icelandic to English. I’m also doing a bit of due diligence on a part of the plant that Bruce and his colleagues still don’t know if they want to buy. This should provide a hands-on way to learn how a power plant works.

Living in a town of 2,000 in northern Iceland might not sound very appealing to some of you, but just take a look at the view:

I live with a Spanish girl who is studying to be a French-English-Spanish translator and works at a café in town. Another roommate is a Spanish-teaching, yoga-instructing, artist who grew up locally – she owns the house I’m living in. My third roomy is an Austrian whale-watching guide, who took me out Minke Whale watching yesterday.

The town bustles with a diverse and international young crowd attracted by the whaling museum, whale research center, and various whale-related tourist businesses. Last night I attended a barbeque onboard a beautiful sailboat where I met 20-something-year-old characters from the following countries: Canada, Denmark, Netherlands, Iceland, Sweden, Spain, France, Germany, Estonia, and America:

Also, there is a phallus museum… seriously:

Bruce and his “cast of hundreds” left on Friday, and I had my first chance to explore Husavik and its outskirts. I climbed a mountain directly behind Husavik, intermittently following haggard sheep trails and breaking my own trail through the waist-high underbrush. I reached the summit at noon, and got my first look at the arctic cycle lying just north of Husavik's shores. I snacked on cheese and bread, then dropped off the back of the mountain.

I ran out of water while tramping around, and felt a bit worried when I became lost at one point. Eventually I emerged over a knoll and found myself in some utopian geriatric berry-picking scene. I looked around at about twenty grey-haired Icelanders stooped over, collecting blueberries. I peered down, picked a berry, ate it, and replicated that process for about an hour. Yes, I spent my Saturday foraging about in the Icelandic heather and gnashing on succulent blue fruit.

Occasionally I sat in the thick loamy cushion of berries and flowers (the seat of my Carhartts now stained various shades of purple) and contemplated my situation, the year ahead, my friends, family, girlfriend back home, and how much my life has changed in such a short time. I left home less than two months ago, and I feel worlds away from everything I’ve known for the last 23 years. I’ve already learned volumes, and I can look forward to learning so much more about energy, the world, and myself in the months to come.

I met a French girl who asked me if it's hard to spend so much time alone and away from my close relationships. I paused and said,"it is hard, and I do miss those people, but I'm becoming much closer with myself. You can't keep any secrets from yourself out here." The time and distance has given me so much time to think. It's the healthiest I've ever felt emotionally - the most secure.

Hot Off The Presses

2010-08-28T06:36:00.003-07:00

OK, so I received a bunch of great feedback on my post called "The New Manhattan Project Needs Greed," which attempted to describe the difference between the risk profiles of a natural gas well and a geothermal power plant. I've taken those comments (especially the one about discount rates), and revised the charts with new data.

I interviewed the Director or Production and Sales at Reykjavik Energy (OR), and he gave me some very helpful information to use in this projection - rules of thumb for construction costs, operating expenses, well sustainability/longevity, and productivity.

I've also been in touch with a good friend at Bentek Energy, which is the gold standard of natural gas data and analysis. Bentek helped me put together some averages for natural gas wells in the Haynesville shale gas play (gulf coast area - TX, LA).

The following charts assume an equal $8.4 million investment in both the unconventional gas (Haynesville) and geothermal energy (Iceland). I applied a 10% discount rate (Value/((1+r)^t)) to all values after year zero (all years after production begins). Basically, I tried to analyze both projects as if they were being developed in mature fields with exploration and resource studies completed by previous operations. I did include a construction period of three years for the geothermal power plant just to show how that buildout and capitol expenditure actually looks (according to OR), but that would be part of the exploration and study that I've assumed out of the equation* for now.

*When I applied the discount rate to the geothermal plant starting in year -3, the project was still in the red in year 40!

CLICK TO ENLARGE
Natural Gas Well Cash Flows ($5.00/mcf):

CLICK TO ENLARGE
Geothermal Well Cash Flows ($.10/kwh):

I think this really shows how the natural gas well repays its investment so quickly. The revenues lag the costs only by a few months, and the well is profitable within year zero. Admittedly, I did give the gas well a $5.00/mcf value for gas, which is about 80 cents higher than the price today, but that is the forward looking price used by Bentek in their break even analysis for the Haynesville. Actually, that price is easily achievable when companies sell the volatile liquids produced with most Haynesville gas.

These graphs also show the massive appetite for risk that a geothermal investor needs to have. The geothermal project lays out a huge ammount of cash and doesn't break even for almost five years (eight years since construction begins).

We also see the same story of depletion that I described in my earlier post. Haynesvlille wells typically decline by 80% in the first year! This accounts for the massive upfront bump of cash and the long, poorly productive tail. Bentek assumes that the wells are 100% tapped within 20-25 years, but the vast majority of that productivity occurs in the earliest years.

By contrast, the Geothermal well will easily produce for double the time of the gas well, and if managed properly, geothermal wells can produce sustainable outputs for very long times (the fuel source is radioactive decay in the earth or a magma body, which doesn't deplete at anything like the rate of a liquid reservoir).

One element I did not add into this equation is inflation. Geothermal developers generally get an increasing nominal price for their power as inflation builds. Here in Iceland, I heard that OR is lobbying for a power price increase of almost 25%, but that is because the socialized utility is almost bankrupt from overspending (see their fancy office in my last post). In the States, inflation is a big question mark. With everyone raving about double dips and Japan-style economics, I decided to leave that piece out for now. I'd love any insights on inflation though.

A disclaimer, as before: I'm a geologist attempting to become a self-taught economist. A lot of the people reading this know how to do what I'm doing better than I do, and I'd love to hear about any changes I should make.

Cheers,
Cully

Week 6: Marathons, Epic Meetings, and Hunger Explosions

2010-08-25T11:46:00.000-07:00

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.

Week 4: Olaf, Man of Iron

2010-08-14T13:15:00.000-07:00

The midnight sun enables Icelandic adventures late into the night. See a video below and a midnight photo of my new home town above.

During a recent late-night (mid-day?) hike I met a 47-year-old man named Ingi. Ingi invited me to a workout class at his gym. I arrived at noon the following day, ready for some weights or jumping jacks or whatever an Icelandic exercise class might entail. I found myself the junior participant by at least twenty years, and I assumed myself the fittest. How naïve.

The clock struck 12:05 and our stout instructor bellowed over his microphone,“taka afstöðu þína!” (take your positions). Ingi found me dazed in the center of twenty Icelanders hustling to their numbered exercise machines, free weights, mats, boxes, and ropes organized around our mirrored room's perimeter. Ingi inserted me into something I might describe as a “horse kick” exerciser. He said “this one is hard, it works your gluteous. Just stay with Olaf, the Man of Iron. He will make sure you get the good workout today!” I looked left. Olaf towered over his shoulder press machine, bulging with muscles and veins. He leaned over and inserted my weight pin into the heaviest setting. Grinning, he whispered to me, “þú ættir ekki að gráta í dag,” Which I later learned means, “you should not cry today.”

Suddenly the instructor turned on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” remixed to throbbing German techno. “Byrjun!” blasted over the music and suddenly Olaf began screaming and crushing out rapid repetitions of shoulder presses at maximum weight. The entire room full of middle aged Vikings erupted in violent screams and enormous physical output. The people frightened me. I felt somehow transported into a scene from Braveheart.

When “skipta stöðvar” blared over the speakers, we rotated. I ended my horse kicking and imagined simply walk to the pushup station next to me. Wrong. Before I could dismount my gluteus machine, Olaf was upon me. He shoved me aside and began pumping out repetitions twice as fast as I had. This man was probably 50 years old. He didn’t stop screaming the whole time we exercised. The middle-aged mothers didn’t stop screaming. Everyone screamed. The music escalated in intensity and volume until “The Final Count Down,” remixed with war sounds, literally shook the mirrors on the walls until I thought they would shatter.

It occurred to me that the Viking gene persists here. Olaf wasn’t exercising with weight machines, but rather besieging them. Instead of tricep extensions Olaf did overhead axe swings. When we ran up stairs holding weights, I envisaged him with a kicking and screaming woman on his shoulder. His abdominal workouts only honed his pelvic thrusts, which he would later direct at fleeing damsels on some flaming countryside. While I toiled with the bench press, Olaf reveled in mauling the skulls of Irishmen. Our most talented film directors could not replicate the bloodbath playing out inside this howling Viking’s mind. Olaf's workout occurred on the ravaged shores of Normandy circa 724 AD.

After our 34-station suffer fest (and my complete emasculation at the hands of superior athletes with C-section scars), we began a session of very aggressive yoga. A core workout followed, then dynamic stretching. When it was all over and the smoke cleared from the battle field, Olaf offered me a sip of his energy drink. I pictured Olaf calmly slitting the throats of several goats and mixing their blood with whey protein and electrolytes. He said something in Icelandic, which I internally translated as, “Drink this for the courage to pillage many settlements and cleave through Germanic Hordesmen. It will give you an amour penetrating phallus and the strength of Thor, God of Thunder!” I declined his generous offer and opted for water.

In other news, my host family took me to a black market fish store. We purchased illegal fish balls (like crab cakes... kindof) and many nefarious kilos of cod. Iceland's fish economy operates through an elaborate quota scheme. Our "fisk" was sold illegally and without an appropriation from that quota. Every Icelander can fish, but cannot sell without a license, which this fish operation lacked. The fisherman's wife dries fish in a converted Pepsi vending machine, stores many filets in a large deep freeze, prepares fish balls, and even bakes delicate cookies, all of which she sells to support her family. I felt very sneaky. When she offered a recipe for fish ball gravy, I though about writing a black market foods review - detailing the illegal capitalist restaurants of Havana, the rhino horn purveyors of Beijing, and the fish balls of Akureyri.

Educating Hank Johnson

2010-08-11T16:23:00.000-07:00

I've started writing an introduction for this post several times, but I've failed to adequately express myself each time. There is simply no way to introduce this. Just watch:

U.S. Congressman Hank Johnson

I honestly can't come up with the words to describe how I feel. Disappointed? Outraged? Plain curious about who voted for someone so unqualified...

This guy makes critical decisions for our nation. Congress, what the hell? You deserve that 12% approval rating.

Hank couldn't distinguish a watt from a joule, yet I'm sure he's voted for or against important legislation on energy policy. Just watch him throw out buzz words like "environmental" and "global warming" without even the faintest sense of their relevance to the situation. When pressed, he could tell you that global warming is "very serious," but could not tell you about the research that informs that seriousness, or the debate circulating around that research.

Congress has five engineers and 225 lawyers. Good luck. I've come to believe that some of our leaders (mirrored by parts of our population) lack the information fundamental to considering complex technical issues like reforming an energy system. Should we reform it? If so, how? I sit here imagining the a long string of baseless buzz words that might flood some senator's mind.

Hank's firm grasp of geology suggests that he could not possibly understand an issue like fossil fuel resource scarcity. Guam capsizing? Are you serious? I have to do something about this. People need to understand some fundamentals before they start arguing about policy...

Of course I could be misreading this whole thing. Hank could have the driest sense of humor ever, and Guam tipping could be his hilarious joke. Does this Georgian Democrat command hyperbole and sarcasm so deftly that I completely missed the punch line? Is my reaction a misunderstanding? Which is more dangerous, a powerful idiot or a powerful misunderstanding?

YouTube Hank a little more and his amazing sense of humor (and grasp of reality) begin to materialize:
Hank Discusses a Peer

The Discovery of a Corpse

2010-08-08T13:20:00.001-07:00

My jocular hockey-playing friends from last weekend took me to the Great Fish Festival in Dalvik this weekend. Dalvik lies 30 minutes north of Akureyri in the same fjord – a stunning waterside drive.

I’ve gotten close with Hinrick, a 20 year old guy from an island called Grimsey. Hinrick invited me to Fish Fest 2010 and introduced me to his mother in law, who happens to be the friendly mayor of Dalvik. She allowed me to camp on her lawn with Hinrik and eat her fish stew, which I found delicious and creamy.

The festival began as most do in Iceland, with redneck activities in a field full of camper vans and tents. We drank beers and told stories as the crowd swelled. By 10:00 I found myself sitting with fifteen friendly Vikings, and I could see hundreds of similar groups spread across the hillside. At 11:00 fireworks signaled the end of fish feasting and the start of aggressive partying. What ensued scandalized me. I report the following as a bewildered observer.

Icelanders party harder than anyone I’ve ever known. More alcoholic than Kiwis, harder than New Yorkers, and more committed to the festivities even than the Dutch. Nothing compares. One man was stabbed deeply in the back last night, and after fighting off his assailant the man went back to a bar for more dancing and Nordic screaming.

An unknown number of obese blondes invaded Hinrik’s camper van and proceeded with an orgy only inches from poor Hinrik’s unconscious head. Hinrik’s girlfriend, also present, shouted. Her protests yielded only a slightly quieter orgy, but not its cessation.

When I awoke in my tent the following morning I made my way across the street to brush my teeth and wash my face at a gas station. Behind the station I discovered what I believed to be the corpse of a dwarf. I hurried back to my friends for help. They came, and upon seeing the body lying next to a dumpster remarked, “Ye found a focking dead midget mon!” and howled with laughter for about forty five seconds.

I asked, “How do you know he is dead?” and they replied, “Well he ain’t moving much and ye don’t just choose to sleep on a dumpster do ya?” I said, “But why are you laughing? This is terrible!”

I thought, “these people are real bastards to laugh at a dead person. Why aren’t they calling the police?” I said, “shouldn’t we get the cops?” and they calmly told me, “nay nay, he will sort himself out.”

How the hell does a dead midget “sort himself out,” I wondered. I then discovered the Icelandic colloquialism of saying that someone “dies” or “is dead” when they pass out from booze. Quite a funny misunderstanding in retrospect. I checked to make sure that the small man was breathing, and he was.

After this I went to a local fish leather store at Hinrick’s behest. I found colorful arrays of scaly leather, but was generally unsure of what to think of the store. Why would I need colorful strips of fish skin? Apparently the shop supplies clothing designers, and the outlet serves as some form of advertising. Somewhere a clothing designer is making clothes from purple fish leather….

I ate breakfast with the mayor of Dalvik, Hinrick, and his girlfriend, and then drove my slurring hockey buddies back to Akureyri. They put me behind the wheel because the police breathalyzed every car on the way out of town. “I’ve got no chance mon, no chance at all. Can you drive a manual?” I said, “It’s 2:30PM, how can you still be drunk from last night?” and Orri replied, “because last night didn’t end until 10:00 this morning when Ole had a barbeque thrown at his head.” I said, “wow, is that why his face is bleeding?” and Orri replied, “Nay, he dodged the barbeque, but then they threw a bag of beer bottles and he couldn’t move fast enough!” Ole "died" shortly after this incident...

I drove, they slept.

This week I begin working on the International Deep Drilling Project. The goal is to tap supercritical fluids at pressures hundreds of times greater than the atmosphere’s and temperatures over 400C. I have finished a crash course in thermodynamics, geochemistry, power plant engineering, and local geology. I will soon begin working with geophysical data to assess the geothermal potential of an area and validate a previous study with new techniques. This project exposes me to the absolute frontier of geothermal drilling technology and many leaders in the industry.

I also interviewed the Chief Financial Officer of an Icelandic utility, and was pleased when he offered to email me copies of his financial models. I should be able to generate the graphs from my previous post (August 5th) with much more accuracy now.

I other news, I will run the Reykjavik marathon on August 21st when my family comes to visit me. I’m shooting for a time under three hours, which would be a personal best by almost 20 minutes. I completed a 17.5 mile run on Friday, and my times seem to be good enough to accomplish my goal.

Also, a power plant developer from the United States will be coming to Iceland in the next few weeks, and has offered to let me work with his team of engineers on a cutting edge new geothermal power plant northeast of Akureyri. It is the first of its kind, and looks to be the future of the industry for low temperature applications (which are ubiquitous in the American southwest). More to come…

Week 3: Fresh Lava, Puffin Barbeques, and Sparkling Disk Jockeys

2010-08-05T14:25:00.001-07:00

I ended last Saturday afternoon a bit lonely and a bit disappointed with my social progress. Sibbi and Disa had left me home alone for the weekend, and I glumly thought, “I’ve been in this country for two weeks and I haven’t met anyone my age.” I had ventured downtown to check out a concert, but just ended up eating a ton of ice cream. It was of low quality, and I considered making a post on www.cryingwhileeating.com, but decided against it. Disenchanted and cold (from the inside out) I wandered back up the 30-minute walk to my house.

I rounded a corner and noticed a trickle of water flowing down the side of the road. The trickle became a thin stream as I ascended, and the stream thickened with every step I took uphill. The stream followed me home, or rather, it led me home. The water coming downhill matched every turn I took uphill.

I made my last turn and saw the water’s source. A group of 20-something people had filled an inflatable pool with hot (geothermal) water. Geothermal water is pumped to every house in Akureyri, not heated in boilers, so filling this pool cost about 50 cents. The bathers sipped beers and chatted in the steam. This pool literally sat in front of my house – the son of the man who shares my duplex took the liberty of filling and overflowing the pool, hence the street’s new river emanated from my front door.

For some still mysterious reason I figured that the best way to get invited into the pool was to seem really American. Don’t ask me why. I just figured that blatant Americanism would start a conversation. I said, “howdy yall.” They all looked up. I thought, "I have made a grave mistake. I have triggered some deeply rooted Viking atavism. These Vikings view me as an intruder, and now I will die at the hands of bucksome blonde Viking women and their stout Viking men, drowned in the very waters I came here to study. I will be clubbed like a seal, speared like a whale. I know how these people operate...savages!"

Psyche. One of the Icelanders asked me to join. I felt like a freshman in high school again. The popular kids want to hang out with me! I ran inside and got changed. These “stout Vikings” turned out to be players on the Icelandic National Hockey Team. After an hour or so in the pool (and lots of questioning about my American heritage) they invited me inside, then to a house party in another part of town. Later we went to a nightclub where I think the average age was 19. My new friends Orri and Andri informed me that, “The most famous gay DJ in all of Iceland is playing tonight.” Yes, THE Paul Oscar presided.

Paul Oscar, decked in sequins, sweated and vibrated his way across the stage for six hours. After his last set, he pointed at me (the hockey players got us to the front row) and gestured me to the stage. Paul personally and singularly gave me a signed copy of his best-of album that says, “I heart U.” The party ended at 6:00 AM with sandwiches of cheese, beef, and French fries between béarnaise coated bread slices. I imagined translating the restaurant's name as, "Aggressively Seeking Heart Attacks."

I woke up at 2:00 PM the following day and rented a sail boat to explore my fjord. After sailing I got a text from Orri. He invited me over to his house with some other friends to barbeque puffin. Orri had hunted the semi-penguin-looking birds with a giant lacrosse stick. He plucked them from the air while perching on the edge of a massive cliff in northern Iceland. I got to see videos. We spent the evening cleaving dark puffin meat from breast bones, marinading, and finger licking. The bird is delicious! The night ended with vague plans for kayaking, rock climbing, and motorcycle riding next week.

The following day Sibbi and Disa returned, and we drove out to a region of fresh lava flows (photo at top of post, Sibbi featured) and geothermal power plants to learn the local geology and get a tour of a generating facility. We also checked out an awesome water fall (below).

Sibbi and Disa were very proud of my weekend exploits and social integration. I cooked a big meal of fish, risotto and salad to celebrate, and everyone went to bed burping happily. The End.

The New Manhattan Project Needs Greed

2010-08-05T13:11:00.000-07:00

Every time I visit a geothermal power plant I can’t stop thinking of the price tags associated with all the machinery inside. The wells alone cost millions, not to mention the turbines, cooling towers, piping, heat exchangers, regenerators, etc. Then you have to pay workers, insurance, and all kinds of other costs. Where does the capital come from? Who foots the bill if it doesn’t work? How do you convince someone to invest in an idea as absurd as, “I want to drill a hole several kilometers deep, then pump extremely corrosive and mineral saturated water to the surface, use it to boil another fluid, spin turbines, and sell electricity.”

I’ve been thinking about risk lately, in part because a banking crisis just hammered Iceland, so risk is a big topic here. Risk constitutes a major tenet of any investment consideration. Below are some pictures I drew; they illustrate concepts I feel are very important to (and very absent from) the current dialogue on energy. Namely, why do we have the energy mix we currently have?

1: Capital Flows in a Renewable Energy Project

2: Capital flows in a Non-Renewable Energy Project

These graphs (absurdly simplified) compare the costs and revenues of two types of projects. The first describes a renewable energy project like a wind farm. The second describes a non-renewable project like a natural gas well. In this example, both projects start with a $5,000,000 initial investment then fall to a lower level of constant operation and maintenance costs. The main difference is in the shape of the return curves (the operating cost for the renewable plant is also higher, but still flat in this example). These graphs attempt to show the consistent, enduring returns of a renewable resource and the declining returns of a non-renewable resource.

Notice that the bulk of total returns are tipped to the earliest years of the non-renewable project, whereas returns from the renewable project spread evenly throughout time. Gas wells have the highest productivity when they are initially tapped – gas pressures below ground are highest before any gas is removed, then the pressures (and productivity) decline with more extraction until the well is no longer economic to produce. Conversely, the wind will not decline with additional use, so returns remain steady through time. Obviously these curves would wobble and wiggle in real life - this is a theoretical model. Also keep in mind that these graphs do not apply a discount rate to either curve.

So, which picture looks more risky?

Investing is as much about not losing money as it is about making more money. Especially today, investors fear risk. A huge metric is the payback period of an investment – “How long until I get my money back?” The payback period often trumps long-term profits because the fear of loss outweighs the greed of gain. This dynamic often magnifies in a recession.

Your first impression might be that the consistent returns are less risky than the fast bump of cash followed by precipitous decline. However, from a payback period perspective, PPP, (am I an economist now that I’ve coined an acronym?) the natural gas well is less risky because your initial investment is returned more quickly. A lot of the people I interview talk about their investments in this way. They focus on payback periods.

Is this the right way to assess our investments in energy? Obviously the answer is yes for a short-term investor who doesn’t want to lose his or her cash. The risk averse energy investor (read: all energy investors) will generally choose the fastest payback period, which, according to the energy mix of the USA, happens to be a non-renewable resource over 90% of the time. But what is the right choice for a government? How about a government that is concerned by energy security, climate change, and sustainability? A dependable, non-depleting, domestic energy supply probably sounds great to most governments.

Click for video: The New Manhattan Project

Indeed the American government and many other governments incentivize renewable energy prolifically. Their schemes often defy logic and science. A critical difference between the original Manhattan Project/Apollo Mission and our current energy challenge is that government agencies spearheaded the Manhattan (US Army) and Apollo (NASA) efforts whereas our energy supply is almost entirely produced and controlled by the private sector. Some of my friends at Middlebury may have forgotten this, but we live in a capitalism. The private sector responds to one thing: $$$$. If we want to change the way the private sector invests in energy, we have to change the way they profit from that energy.

Listen to the intro of this podcast: Our last six presidents have failed to deal with the energy crisis despite acknowledging its import.

An effective incentive needs to deal with investors' fear of risk and their desire for quick paybacks - an issue I've never heard addressed by any politician. We've heard of many incentivization schemes. If Obama wants his new Manhattan Project to work then he will need to understand exactly what kinds of incentives the private sector will respond to. Just offering cash rewards like Senator Forbes proposes (above) may not be the ticket. The profit motive might be squashed by the risk fear. One solution is to reduce the payback period on investments in renewables. Here's my idea (and I'd love to know what you think):

1) The government stops taxing renewable energy investment and renewable energy power sales until a project's payback period is reached. 2) The government stops taxing salaries of people employed by renewable energy projects until payback is reached.

Absurd, reckless, outrageous! Ya, but I'm just a kid with a blog, so I get to think big. Even if only 20% of you agree with me, I'm still doing better than congress. Besides, is this any more absurd that a $24 billion dollar bill proposed by Senator Forbes? It's the same idea, just instead of handing you money at the end, the government stops taking your money at the beginning. Timing is everything... Obama and Chu seem like a reasonable team, but they are hardly Oppenheimer and Einstein. I'd rather not have bureaucrats choosing which projects to fund - leave it to the engineers and the capitalists to succeed and fail as they may, then tax the ones that survive after they begin profitably producing renewable energy for the long term.

The first piece of my idea should mean that payback happens up to 40% faster. The second piece should mean that renewable energy projects can pay their employees 30% less, but still offer them the same "after tax" salaries, further decreasing payback periods. I think this is a way to address the payback period preference without the messy business of handing out loans, grants, or cash. This tax break would essentially bump up the early revenue streams on renewable energy projects by the tax rate (actually it would lower the cost curve, but the amount is calculated off the revenue curve), thus decreasing the payback period substantially. The attractive long term profits in renewables might also become greater incentives once payback periods shorten to tolerability.

I argue that payback periods matter less to the government than to a private investor because the government has a longer investment horizon, and that this tax break can be viewed as an investment. The private investor wants his money back soon so that he can use it in another project. Theoretically, governments have infinite lifetimes, and they can wait for their money to come back as long as it does come back eventually (with due interest of course). Governments are in the position to make choices on the basis of long-term profits, not payback periods. The tax break is like a loan, which eventually repays, just on a longer time scale. This loan has the added benefit of reducing emissions, "domesticizing" the energy supply, and increasing sustainability - things that matter to government but remain absent in most economic models coming out of private investors' offices.

Obviously this reduced tax income for Uncle Sam means one of two things: less public services or higher taxes on the rest of America. I'd prefer just paying for it with cuts to Barney Frank's salary. But seriously, if the country actually wants to change the energy supply, then it's going to need to pay for it one way or another. At least this way the incentives are felt by both investors and the working man at the plant. When wind turbine techs stop paying taxes, eyebrows get raised. Hopefully the conclusion is that "these guys are doing a really important job for the country, and I'm happy to pick up the slack." Of course the other conclusion could be, "Let's kill this lucky bastard," but I have more faith than that.

Still not buying it? Well I'm not much for handouts either. Here is the real reason why the government might want to incentivize renewables with short term tax breaks. When we combine revenue and cost into one curve we get profit. Long term profits are where the government can make its money (after payback period, government starts taxing again, and continues taxing through the long term):

3: Long Term Profits in a Non-Renewable Energy Project

4: Long Term Profits in a Renewable Energy Project

If you are a government with the long term in mind, then it's clear which projects offer you the most blood to leach. These projects happen to be the ones that don’t emit much greenhouse gas. They also happen to be the ones that don’t deplete unsustainably. Give 'em a tax break now, and you can ride the wave forever.

This idea came from trying to think about how to leverage the strengths (and preferences) of government and private investors: long term and short term investments, respectively. Now, I admit that my handle on business tax code is pretty limited. If what I'm proposing makes no sense, then please leave me some scathing commentary so that I can retreat into the Icelandic hills. I'm working now to get real data from energy companies here in Iceland and back home in the States. I want to reproduce these charts to reflect reality. The only way to find out if I am right is by comparing my ideas to real numbers...

Viking Food, Super Critical Fluids, and Devil-Santa

2010-07-28T17:29:00.000-07:00

“Okay Cowlay, here is some reading to catch you up to speed. Should be pretty straightforward. I’ve flagged the sections you should read like this one on Fluid-Fluid Interactions in Geothermal Systems, and here is a short course on Experimental Studies in Model Fluid Systems. I’m sure you remember all your phase diagrams from undergrad, right? If you need to refresh your thermodynamics feel free to borrow any of my physics text books. Probably best to start with this easy stuff before you dive into the more complicated drilling reports.”

Heavy.

“Okay Coolie, here is the local delicacy I was telling you about. Raw smoked lamb haunch. Here, eat more. More! We will eat whale steak tonight also. Yes, and perhaps I can find some rotting shark. We typically eat it around Christmas – traditionally served with the Black Death, a very strong liquor.”

You can't make this stuff up. They eat sheep's face.

I went into the grocery store to find some granola and yoghurt. I don’t know what I bought. The granola was pretty straightforward because I could see through the bags into their contents, but the yoghurt remains a mystery. I bought a jar of something resembling vanilla flavored yoghurt, then ate several mouthfuls and enjoyed it. Now I fear to ask what this delicious paste might actually be. Rotting goat testicles with vanilla extract? Most likely, based on my gastronomic experiences thus far.

Yoghurt? Fingers Crossed...

I’d better grow a pair before I fly to China. No Kashi for five thousand miles.

After taking me to the home of a mentally handicapped girl with chickens, my host family took me to a store that celebrates Christmas year-round. The store always smells like Chirstmas, sells Christmas themed trinkets, candies, and gifts, and constantly plays mind-numbing Christmas music. A grinning bearish man punched a fistful of smoked lamb haunch into my mouth as I entered. In the basement I found a barely-comprehensible pamphlet describing Iceland’s Christmas traditions. They have thirteen Santa Clauses here, all born from a giant ogre mother (featured above) who boils children and eats them, especially around the holidays. The Santas, with names like “Bowl Licker” and “Sausage Swiper,” generally revel in daily youngster maulings. The thirteen Santas lighten up around the holidays and give savage beatings with about the same frequency as kind gifts and playful trickery (like igniting your long underwear while you sleep - tee hee hee, how playful!)

Raw Smoked Lamb:

After eating so much free lamb haunch, candied almond, and toffee, I felt obliged to buy a bottle that someone squirted molten candy cane into. Apparently I can fill it with vodka later to make peppermint schnapps, which I will swill urgently when Santa Claus comes to savage me late at night.

All I know is that I’m getting the hell out of here before Christmas.

Here's an article that makes me sound really self absorbed: Middlebury Campus Please Enjoy!

A Hole in the Wall

2010-07-27T16:18:00.000-07:00

Here's a photo taken of me after I hurled myself through "the hole," which serves as a natural wind tunnel (video below).

If taken ten seconds earlier or later it would freeze a frame of me tumbling down this jagged basaltic lava flow. The weathered rock slipped around with such incompetence that staying upright became almost impossible.

Wind Tunnel Mountain

2010-07-27T01:51:00.000-07:00

These videos come from a very windy excursion I took with an Icelandic Geologist names Hersir. Hersir took me exploring for geothermal energy on the Reykjavik outskirts, which include hardened lava flows, desert moonscapes, verdant hills and valleys, and recent craters of hydrothermal explosions. We saw two geothermal power plants, including the plant now contentiously owned by Magma Energy (see my previous post).

On top of Wind Tunnel Mountain:

Descending through a massive hole in a rock wall:

The blustery moonscape:

Week 1: Corn Field on the Fjord's Peninsula

2010-07-26T16:14:00.000-07:00

I’m bouncing along Route 1, the road that encircles Iceland, in the very back row of a coach bus. Always take the back row if it is a continuous row of seats; if you are lucky (or smelly) enough, nobody will sit next to you and you can stretch out in perfect horizontal bliss. I like to believe that I got lucky, but my sinuses are congested, so it could be my odor. Whatever the cause, I am staring at the big toe of my left foot as it pops out of my sock, which is happily resting three seats away. Someone muttered, “the ‘Kanne’ would take up four seats,” to which I silently replied, “yeah, but the Ameri-Kanne isn’t getting deep vein thrombosis on this six-hour bus ride.” There were only four people on the bus - take as many seats as your want! I stretched a little more and smiled and looked up at some window decals I could not read.

This is how I chose to shuttle myself from Reykjavik (translates to "Smoke Bay" on account of the hydrothermal ventings discovered by Viking settlers) to Akureyri (translates to "Corn Field on the Fjord’s Peninsula," apparently). For about 10,000 kroner ($80) I get a window seat looking out to fjorded coastline, moraine-filled valleys, and mountains sawed in half by the unyielding rivers. Quaint farms quilt my current valley’s trough. Only minutes ago I passed an Icelandic Pony stable – the only horse breed with five gaits, one more than the meager four speeds known to most horses.

So begins my quest for geothermal energy. This is a country bursting with geothermal resources. Learning to explore for hot water in Iceland is like learning to fish with an AK-47 and a barrel of cod. You can hardly penetrate the ground without eliciting some scalding eruption.

Steaming Earth:

Here in Akureyri I have plans both established and nascent. Tomorrow I meet with Bjarni Gautason at the Icelandic Geosurvey (ISOR), a private geothermal energy consulting firm that was spun out of a state agency almost a decade ago. We will attempt to correlate surface data with subsurface heat information to develop techniques for cheaper and faster geothermal resource identification.

I also hope to work on the International Deep Drilling Project (IDDP) – arguably the most advanced geothermal project in the world. An international consortium of firms and government agencies (the DOE in rank) are attempting to drill and exploit supercritical fluids under Iceland. Last June the project was delayed because their drill penetrated a magma chamber! The IDDP attempts to develop strategies and technologies for coping with the super-heated and highly acidic fluids found under extreme conditions.
Through both these projects, I aim to garner a better understanding of how organizations endeavor to build their power plants. How do firms and governments differ in their approaches, and which approach is most effective? My concept is that consulting firms and international consortiums will give me the broadest view of the geothermal industry – the introduction chapter of my Watson Fellowship.

My third month here will take me to Husavik, where I will work on a more specific and focused level with a single geothermal power plant. The plant in Husavik operates a Kalina Cycle Binary Phase turbine, which is the most advanced turbine currently employed in geothermal. Unfortunately the plant was also eviscerated by acidic waters during its initial operation, and is currently being refurbished. A perfect opportunity to see how thing fits together! Plans can change, but that is the plan for now.

One theme I've noticed here is the private-public clash. The majority of Iceland’s geothermal power plants and utilities are state-run, but Magma Energy from Canada is a new private player in the Icelandic electricity market. I met with several diplomats in the American Embassy last week, including the economic attaché, and began seeing the differences between private and public ownership of resources. Icelanders are fiercely defensive of their resources, their environment, and their autonomy. That defensiveness is currently playing out as backlash against Magma Energy, which bought the assets of a bankrupt Icelandic utility (financially decimated in the 2008 banking crisis here).

Magma’s deal involves a 60-year lease on a geothermal resource and an option for first-right-of-refusal on a second lease of equal length. “They have no incentive to manage the resource responsibly,” said my host in Akureyri. Locals worry that they will exploit the earth until it runs cold, and then skip back to Canada, giggling all the way to the bank. Also, a rise in electricity prices seems inevitable when private industry replaces a subsidized agency (electricity is virtually free here).

That's all for now. I am happily unpacked in my new home. I now reside under the roof of Sibbi and Disa. Sibbi (male) is an airline pilot and Disa (female) is a geologist at the Icelandic Road Works. They offered me a place to stay after a friend from Middlebury connected me (thanks Jared!) I pay rent by cooking dinners...

Not so Icy-land and the Midnight Sun

2010-07-20T19:42:00.000-07:00

I have arrived and am glad to report, in reference to my last post, that I am not at all underwhelmed with what I find here in Iceland. First, the landing ranks among the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. My plane glided over a thick and unbroken blanket of clouds for the last ninety minutes of flight. As we approached Iceland, the clouds began to dissipate until Iceland emerged as the center of a cloudless circle. Dipping down through the last cumulus patches, I saw flashes of a pockmarked moonscape with green hues suggesting some deep fecundity in the soil.

On the horizon I saw the midnight sun. This landing occurred at 11:30 PM, yet the sun still hovered some apparent inches off the horizon. It beamed a dark red and purple pallor across the sea, land, and clouds, and for one remarkable minute, perhaps owing to the exhaust from my jet’s turbine, or perhaps from Iceland’s magic aura, the boundary between sea, sky, and clouds dissolved. The horizon became a mélange of red, purple, and orange pastels with one texture flowing into the next. I became totally disoriented in this visually blurred moment – it lasted only several seconds, but I will not forget it. It was one of those things that a photo cannot capture, and I did not even bother an attempt at photography.

I disembarked, collected my bags, boarded a bus, called Carola (with some technical difficulty, ultimately resolved), and found myself standing in shorts and Otter Creek polo outside the Viking Village. The temperature, even at "night" is not so cold that shorts feel uncomfortable. Carola came to my rescue, and together we hauled my bags up a surprisingly long and steep hill to her house. I’m typing from my room high above the Viking Village with shades drawn to keep out the night’s sun. I was warned that the hot water from the faucet will scald me and stink of sulfur, both heat and smell owing to the phenomenon I intend to study here.

Tomorrow I will head to Reykjavik. Carola recommends the “whale blubber on a stick.” Yippee.

T Minus Two Hours

2010-07-20T19:35:00.000-07:00

In the week preceding my journey I scrambled to organize some final details. I set myself up with a number of ways to communicate internationally - a MagicJack, which turns my laptop into a mobile office phone, a Skype app on my iPad for inexpensive international calling through WiFi, and an international SIM card for my Blackberry with good rates on voice, text, and data in all the countries I will live in. I also blasted off a dozen or so final emails to line up some meetings in the American embassy in Iceland as well as a few potential projects in China.

On the 16th I flew to Boston after a really nice going away party organized by my parents (our backyard looked like a wedding reception with every surface covered in flowers from my aunt's garden, tiki torches and steak both in hazardous abundance, and friendships reaching back to grade school). My friend Dan and his girlfriend Marry picked me up at Logan when I landed. We shoved my rolling duffle, camping pack, and carry-on into Dan's Subaru and set off for Nantucket where I spent one last weekend with seven friends from Middlebury. We luxuriated on the beaches and surfed. It would have been nine friends, except one buddy fell asleep in Grand Central and missed his train, a circumstance that surfaced when his impatiently waiting chauffeur in Connecticut texted us the simple but entirely explanatory line, "I hate Ben." Those two never made it, but we had a great time despite their absence.

Before flying to Iceland, I spent two final nights in Boston in my friends' (Alex and Kevin) apartment. I got to talk with the founder of a California-based geothermal company (AltaRock Energy, www.altarockenergy.com/about.html) for about an hour on Monday, and my buddy Kevin also helped me meet a new friend, Dan, in the hybrid vehicle business. Dan hosted me to a great pizza dinner atop his Beacon Hill roof deck. We ate thin slices and drank smooth micro brews while a thunder storm rolled in some spectacular lightning fireworks over the Charles River. Dan has had a really interesting career in various parts of the alternative energy and clean tech industries, and he had some good ideas for contacts and projects in China through MIT.

I am currently typing onboard Iceland Air flight #634, headphones pumping MGMT, and fingers dancing on the iPad. I land at midnight, pop in my new SIM card to dial Carola, my host in Reykjavik, board a bus and tell the driver to let me off at "Viking Village," then meet Carola and walk ten minutes to her house. Of course I imagine an arrival scene of Viking marauders, drying fish heads, and exploding geysers backdropped by erupting volcanoes, all of which will be illuminated by the blazing midnight sun. Perhaps my imagination predisposed me to be underwhelmed. I recall my disappointment upon disembarking in New Dheli several years ago and not finding any of the stampeding elephants or snake charmers I assumed would be there to greet me.

That's all for now. My first week should consist largely of orientation, exploration, visits to the embassy, meetings with the economic attache in the consulate, and moving up to Akureyri, where I will begin a project with the Icelandic Geosurvey (ISOR, www.geothermal.is). I also hope to reconnect with a long-lost friend, Porter, who recently moved to Reykjavik to design video games.

Survived the Death Race - Next Chapter, Watson

2010-07-12T16:31:00.000-07:00

Headline Link: Nineteen people survive the Pittsfield Death Race

I spent the last five months living out a personal dream. Before I graduated in January, I secured a sponsorship from Long Trail Brewery in Vermont for the bicycle racing tour I mentioned in the last post. Long Trail agreed to pay for travel, lodging, food, race entry fees, bike parts, and some pocket money during my adventure. They also gave me some kegs to throw a party after a good result in the Tour de Gila in New Mexico.

The sponsorship became a reality when I approached the brewery’s owner in a bar one night. Some friends and I had wandered into Two Brothers Tavern in Middlebury, VT, and a friendly guy at the bar suddenly offered to buy everyone’s beer as long as it was Otter Creek or Long Trail. Turns out this man was Dan Fulham, a private equity guy who owned Long Trail and had just bought Otter Creek. He was promoting his beer in the local tavern.

After a few drinks, I proposed my idea to Dan. I started by telling him what I had already organized, “I’ve got a blog, an agreement with the Lance Armstrong Foundation to raise money for their cancer research and patient support, a direct deposit fundraising system for donations, twitter, a facebook event, an email list, and a full three months of racing planned all over the country.” Then I took a big sip of my Copper Ale and, with fingers crossed, said, “all I need now is a financial sponsor – I’m hoping to wear the jersey of a brand that I really believe in. I’d love to ride for LT if you’d help finance my project. I think I can really spread the word about your product out west, and you’d be helping me raise money to fight cancer.”

Dan loved the idea (or had drank enough not to care about a few thousand dollars), and agreed to pay for everything. It was a real “name your price” situation, and he told me to dismiss all the other sponsors I had approached. We signed our contract on the back of a bar tab, exchanged handshakes and contact info, and talked for about an hour before heading our separate directions. Dan came through on every promise, and I got to race in California, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, and Vermont.

I got a podium finish in the Sea Otter Classic, a handful of top ten finishes in Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico, and I placed fourth in the Death Race in Vermont. You can read about all the racing in more depth by visiting my other blog: www.deathraceforlife.blogspot.com. More important than the racing, I delivered thousands of dollars to the Lance Armstrong Foundation, which I hope will make a difference for their important mission. THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO SUPPORTED ME AND DONATED!

Now I'm hanging up the bike to begin the next chapter. On July 16th I fly to Boston to say goodbye to some college friends in Nantucket before I fly to Reykjavik, Iceland on the 20th to begin my Watson Fellowship. I am officially banished from the United States for one year beginning on the 20th.

Over the next twelve months, I expect to find myself in or around powerplants, oil rigs, financiers offices, wind testing sites, geology research camps, solar cell laboratories, coal mines, steel mills, factories, electric utilities, district heating systems, hydrothermal springs, and lots of places I can't imagine yet. My little mission is to learn about energy businesses and technologies, mostly geothermal energy, but I'll work with wind and solar power companies too. I'll see coal, oil, and gas along the way also. The idea is to prepare myself to make a real and positive impact on the energy systems we depend on. I know this sounds impossibly vague and directionless, but I promise I have some pretty specific plans and goals - the details will come in a later post. For now, suffice it to say that I will be spending a year outside the US studying and working with energy businesses (mostly renewables) in five or six countries.

(To my family and friends) My folks are throwing me a little going away party on Thursday, and I'd love to see anyone in Denver one last time before I head out. You all probably don't remember this, but we had a similar goodbye on the night before I left for my big west coast bike trip after graduating from high school. I thought about everyone that came to say goodbye very often, especially when I was freezing, terrified, hungry, or otherwise needing empowering memories. Well, that only lasted one month, and everyone I met along the way spoke English. What I'm about to do will last a year, and the places I'm going are pretty
intimidating to be honest. I don't speak many of the languages, nor do I understand the cultures I'll be living in. I'm confident in the plans I've laid over the last six months, still, a fond farewell could prove indispensable if I find myself choking down another dog-kebob in Beijing or testing geothermal gradients in "encephalitis avenue" in Indonesia.

If you want to say goodbye, or are just curious about what I'll be doing, where I'll be, or what I hope to accomplish, then please stop in for a moment on Thursday. You can have dinner, snacks, and/or drinks starting around 7:00 - should be informal with lots of good food and libations. Please let me know whether or not you can make it so we can plan accordingly.

I am retiring my Death Race blog, and I’ll be using this one to keep a log of my experiences on the Watson Fellowship. Please check back often to read about my adventures.

How Time Flies... Death Race 2010

2009-12-15T15:33:00.000-08:00

Ilhan and new friends from Cambridge (all super-brains) punting on the Cam (left)

I’ve been remiss, again, in my posting punctuality. I’ll bridge the gap quickly because I am more excited about the next few months than the last few. After returning from the Tour De France, I spent the rest of the summer training at altitude in the Vail Valley before riding in the 2009 Green Mountain Stage Race. Before the summer ended, I was also called into Pioneer Natural Resources, a Denver-based energy company, for a number of meetings and presentations to the geology and engineering staff. Pioneer was interested in my senior geology thesis’ implications for geothermal energy and coal bed methane prospects in Raton Basin, southern Colorado. In September I set off to hit the books at Middlebury – my last semester of college.

Over fall break I spent a week in the UK applying to exploration geology graduate schools, reuniting with old friends, and meeting new friends from Madrid, Caracas, Abuja, and London. I traveled with Ilhan, a Korean friend exploding with ideas and energy. We spent time in Edinburgh, London, Woking, and Cambridge. In London we stayed with our mutual friend Harry, and in Cambridge we stayed with one of my closest friends from high school, Brett, who is studying for a masters degree in International Studies. Ilhan and I ate the famous curries of Brick Lane, ordered in the bar where DNA was discovered, stood on the ancient Roman colonnade of the National Monument outside Edinburgh, and somehow Ilhan arranged press passes to the Frieze art Fair in Regent’s Park.

Now I’m back in Colorado to spend the holidays with family. The future holds big things. I’ll be graduating at the end of January, and I have a large chunk of time between graduation and my start date with Cambridge Associates or the Watson Fellowship (still waiting to hear back from the fellowship’s final round interview).

Between January and July I am planning a bicycle racing tour of the major multi-day stage races in the western United States. I’ll be hitting the Redlands Cycling Classic (California), Sea Otter Classic (California), Napa Valley Grand Prix (Cali), Tour De Gila (New Mexico), and Mt. Hood Classic (Oregon). I’ll also be mountain biking in Moab, Utah and Fruita, Colorado. I’ll spend the winter conditioning and backcountry skinning and telemark skiing in Colorado and New Mexico.

The six-month tour will all culminate in the 2010 Death Race in Pittsfield, Vermont on June 24. I was one of 100 people admitted to the race this year. The organizers “screen” entrants by requiring video submissions and inviting athletes to training camps – last year I did a 8-hour workout with the guys who run the race and about fifteen other athletes from around New England. The organizers put a video of the camp on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw_7J_LeVcA.

The death race is loosely defined as an “adventure race,” but basically it is a 24 hour slog with a series of mental and physical challenges. Historically, only about 10% of people finish. You can find more information about the Death Race at this website: www.youmaydie.com. Additionally, you can see videos and interviews with the 100 athletes in this year’s race (including myself) at this site: http://www.races.peak.com/deathrace/applications_for/2010. Some of the contestants are absurd, some are legit. There are a few Navy SEALS, marathoners, and Iron Men who seem pretty tough.

I’m planning to use the race as a fundraising effort for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, which I’ve raised money for in the past. I built a new blog to chronicle the six months, my training, racing, and adventures: www.DeathRaceForLife.blogspot.com. The blog will have a link for donations, photos, videos, as well as a forum for commentary. I've applied to become a grassroots fundraiser for LAF, so 100% of donations will go to their cancer fighting efforts. Every donation will also support and encourage me during the long hours of training and racing. Check it out!

Mt. Ventoux on Race Day

2009-07-30T07:46:00.000-07:00

This video will give you an idea of how crowded the race courses of the TDF were. I rode the 25km up Mount Ventoux before the Tour arrived. Half way up I met a Frenchman named Bruno wearing a California Republic jersey. He had a friend from Ireland; both guys were strong riders. We rode up the rest of the way together, taking turns leading into the 70km/hr headwinds on 8-10 percent grades.

Street Performers Under the Eiffel Tower

2009-07-29T19:06:00.000-07:00

Took this video just before heading upstairs for a dinner with a serious view.

Finishing the Tour De France

2009-07-29T17:57:00.000-07:00

If you want to watch the Tour, stay at home. The last two weeks taught me that people do not come to the TDF to watch a bike race. In fact, the millions of people who descend on France every summer actually come to partake of the world’s largest and longest party (cumulative). Turns out the race is really just an excuse to drink wine and blast music from your camper van in exotic mountainous locations.

I “watched” four stages of the TDF, but saw a total of less than one minute of actual racing. Each day I spent hours and hours waiting in thick crowds to watch the peloton rip by in three seconds. It was worth it, not because of the race, but because of the experience and the energy. I found more interesting people, spectacles, and cultures in this crowd than anywhere else I have ever been. The attached video of a Dutch roadside party offers only the smallest taste of what lined Mont Ventoux for literally 22 kilometers. The crowd in Paris was even crazier with over 1 million people lining the Champs Elysees!

I’ll remember the trip for other reasons... like raw beef. One huge perk of guiding bike trips is that you get to live the lifestyle of a vacationing 55 year old executive for a couple weeks. Foias gras, pate, beef tare tare, octopus, and lots of stinky fromage – I didn't pass the opportunity to try bizarre new (and delicious) foods! The food has been awesome. We even ate in the Eiffel Tower on our last night.

After the bike trip ended, I rendezvoused with Emma Drucker, a friend from Middlebury who worked as a nanny in Paris this summer. We visited our favorite impressionists at Le Musee D’Orsay, walked down the left bank and found a nice café tucked into a side street, then headed for the Basilique du Sacre Coeur. The basilica boasts one of the most impressive views in all of Paris, which we enjoyed for hours by carrying peaches and nectarines up the hill after a great diner in the bustling streets below. We ended our night talking life over mint tea and apricot hookah at a street-side café in the Fifth district. Another Middlebury girl living in Paris, Justine, recognized us and sat down to join the storytelling and laughter.

Eventually the café owner asked us to be quiet because it was so late and his neighbor was sick. We realized that it was actually 1:00AM, and I had missed the last train to the airport. The fast-thinking, French-speaking girls helped me understand the bus schedule and literally run to the last possible metro train headed for the bus station. I had to sprint and slide under a closing set of gates to exit the station, then hop on the last possible bus out of the city, which delivered me to my hotel at 2:25AM. I boarded my plane bound for Amsterdam at 7:40AM, then loaded into my Houston-bound connection at 10:10. It was a crazy, improvised blur of traveling, but I’m glad I didn’t cut my adventure short just to catch the early train.

I’m back in Houston now, spending a night with my grandparents before I drive my car to Dallas to pick up my family's new puppy. After Dallas, I drive for two days back to Colorado. Looking forward to the next big adventure – learning to finance and install solar panels in Vail!

I Was Winning, Until the Gendarme Caught Me...

2009-07-23T14:09:00.000-07:00

A quick video of me running next to an Astana rider during the time trials in Annecy on July 23. I was repping Colorado with my flag-cape and cruising along next to this rider until a gendarme officer (French national police) literally grabbed me off the street. You will notice me disappear in the last few frames... totally worth it.

The Big Problem

2009-07-21T15:17:00.001-07:00

I find myself in an excellent culture, which troubles me. The contrast with my own country concerns me. I repeatedly arrive at the thought that French people seem to lead more satisfying lives, on average, than Americans. I cannot help but ask why; through that inquiry I think I found an insight into a subtle cultural peril facing America and the world. Permit me this rant.

There are no billboards in France’s Savoie region. What’s more, there are no Wallmarts, Starbuckses, Holliday Inns, or Pizza Huts. Everything you find here is unique. Every shop is original. Every hotel, rated two stars or four, is independent. Every restaurant offers a specialty that is actually special.

Why? Because artisans define French culture. Further, pride in one’s unique artistry constitutes a central (and often misunderstood as arrogant) tenet of French culture. If you make baguettes in Savoie, then you are a bread artisan, and damnit you are proud to make the best bread you can. The same goes for the cheese maker, the pipe carver, the farmer, the butcher, the wine maker, etc.

What can America learn from this? What can I learn? I’ll generalize, but I think accurately. In America we also aspire to be the best at what we do, but by best we typically mean biggest. Be the biggest name in Hollywood. Move to the Big City. Make the biggest profits. Everything is bigger in Texas. Drive the biggest car. Build the biggest muscles. Executive penthouse on the highest floor of the biggest building. Biggest house on the block. Biggest client base. Venti coffee. Jumbo size. Think Big.

So what is wrong with big? Nothing, except for everything you have to sacrifice to get big. Americans are gypsies – skipping from location to location, job to job, career to career in search for big success. We gladly abandon our hometowns and local heritages (or what’s left of them after Wallmart obliterates every unique shop in town) in that pursuit of big fame and big fortune. I posit that increasing American individualism results from decreasing local culture.

Why stay in Detroit if Detroit is the same as Dallas or Kansas City or Cleveland or Scranton? Our metropolises suffer from escalating cultural confluence – big box stores, malls, and convenience centers are wiping away our character. The pursuit of big success drives us to big business, which all too often crushes little mom and pop, destroying any local flair that might keep a person satisfied with their local culture, thereby encouraging the person to abandon local heritage in pursuit of big success. If I am right, then bigness begets sameness.

Savoie reminds us that the pattern is not universal. There are people out there satisfied with their hometowns. Those people are content – happy even – to chose a humble trade and excel at it. French success is feeling good, not big. Part of feeling good in France is investing yourself in a strong local culture, place, food, and people.

My advice? Support your local farmer’s markets. Cherish the co-op. Celebrate cottage industry. Buy local. Think like Vermont. Resist big box stores.

It’s true that the local bakery doesn’t generate tax base like Super Target, nor will the local movie rental store boost GDP. Local will cost more also. However, I’ll gladly pay extra to preserve uniqueness, traditions, and diversity in America. They pay 60% tax or more over here – consider the co-op a self-imposed ethos tax. Let’s reincorporate artistry, not for the sake of the artist, but for the sake of our culture.

Of course I am overlooking something in this rant. America is a superpower exactly because from the outset we permitted and promoted the drive to big, individual success. It's called the American Dream. I still love that dream. I have my own American Dream to build renewable energy power plants - a decidedly big goal. However, let's not "make it big" at the expense of making it well.

Find your own artistry. Find a passion, not just something that will make you a big success. I struggle so much with this. I’m torn between “making it big” in the conventional sense and following a more personal calling. Perhaps France can give me the strength to say "big blows."

Arrived in France - Le Tour 2009

2009-07-18T14:09:00.000-07:00

Bonjour mon ami,

Yes, despite innumerable setbacks, I arrived here in France 48 hours ago. After being swindled by Dutch pirates at the airport ($400 to check by bike one-way on Royal Dutch Airlines) I flew to Amsterdam, then to Paris. On my second flight I traded iPods with a French college girl and listened to new music the whole way.

In Paris I boarded a train bound for Grenoble; however, severe jetlag induced a coma and I missed my stop. Regrettable. I approached the conductor, looking as pathetic, sleepless, and incompetent as possible. She researched the logistics of a re-routing to Grenoble, which would involve two additional train rides and a bus. I asked “will I need to buy another ticket?” which she considered briefly, then took to writing a long letter on the back of an envelope. She told me to present the letter wherever I encountered hassles and that my first ticket would cover the rest of my trip. I had to show the letter to a conductor in Nines and again to the bus driver in Valence; in both cases the man read the letter, looked at me with pity, and ushered me inside the coach. I haven’t translated the letter, but I imagine it reads:

“The American standing before you suffers from severe incompetence or mental retardation – which is unclear. He purchased a ticket to Grenoble, but refused to exit my train at the appropriate time. Doubting that he can pay for return fare, I authorize you to deliver him to his destination without further charge. Sincerely, HP346 J.

Anyway, I got to Grenoble, met my dad and good family friend Kurt Hoppe, and we drove to a rural alpine town where the hotels have no shower curtains, the cheese is local and abundant, and the mountains are intimidating enormous. We rode the famous Col Du Madelena today, which is steeper than any road I’ve ever seen in the states. The 11 mile ride took an hour and a half (dad took two and a quarter). Atop the pass we found something quite conventional in France – excellent food in unsuspecting and remote locations. Pizza, beer, coffee, orangina, chocolate baguettes, then off we went, sailing back down the hair-pinning descent. The rain began just as we arrived at our van, which we drove to a warm hotel and meal of salmon, cheeses, and kir (a white wine mixed with fruity crème).

Tomorrow, weather permitting, we tackle the infamous Telegraphique and Galibier – a pair of passes renowned for shattering professional cycling pelotons and inducing tears from lesser men (such as myself). My next message should have pictures from Le Tour De France 2009. Watch for me on TV too – I’ll be the one wearing a Colorado flag as a cape and running alongside Lance up Mont Ventoux! Wish us luck and good luck to you too.

Santé,

Cully

Feted Footwear Feasting Fowl

2008-04-28T03:32:00.000-07:00

On June 21 Sam, Rich, Ben, and I departed Milford Sound having just completed the greatest hike in the world. Rain streaked down the windshield of our ’87 Galant as I urged the grey bucket up successively steepening switchbacks. We slowly chugged towards a towering rock face; the steeply inclined Homer Tunnel hid from us until the last possible moment. In the rear view mirror, I watched in terror as a previously picturesque green valley transformed into some kind of ghoulish nightmare - black rain clouds descended on the scene and waterfalls erupted from both valley walls. My three stinking and dripping compatriots broke my panic by reminding me, “Relax Cavness, we just hiked the Milford Track.”

You see, when it rains in Milford Sound, it pours, and when it pours, the valley walls burst open with dozens of waterfalls. It’s biblical, really. Rainfall is averaged to over 11 meters and 300 days per year. The area receives so much rain that oceanic waters periodically convert to fresh water - so much rain that the Milford Track’s brochure forewarns walking through “up to a meter of water.” Fortunately, our four-day jaunt was graced by three days of clear skies; the torrential downpour didn’t hit until the end of our fourth and final day.

Despite the rain, National Geographic labels the 33.5-mile Milford Track as “the finest walk in the world,” and I wholeheartedly agree. Describing the Track is difficult, but imagine the Disney World of hiking. Instead of the Tower Of Doom or the House of Mirrors, I found myself tugging on papa Sam’s sleeve and begging, “Oh! Oh! Can we go swimming in Lake Mintaro before we see Hirere Falls!? Can I please stay up late to see the glow worms!?”

For me, Southerland Falls, New Zealand’s tallest waterfall, delivered the Track’s emblematic mental snapshot. There I scaled slimy rocks to stand beneath the 540-meter fall and look down-valley. Avalanches of vegetation pour into the gorge from every direction and Kea Parrots offer their shrill, piercing calls. It is a place where the Velosa Raptors of Michael Chriton’s imagination would be happy.

We spent our three nights on the Track in huts outfitted by the Department of Conservation (DOC) with gas burners, wood burning stove, eating area, and bunk beds. The track begins and ends with a ferry ride – no other means of access are available. The group of 40 that disembarked the ferry with us was the same group that we dined with each night and hiked with each day. Memorable characters include a fearsomely disciplined German man and his troop of equally ordered German kids (presumably his children). I don’t speak German, but I imagined the conversations going something like:

Father: “You will march or die here.”

Hanz: “Yes father, I know, but when may I have my ration of nuts and berries?”

Father: “You will scavenge your own, or die here.”

Hanz: “Alright father, but why have you poured water into my sleeping bag?”

Father: “To teach you resourcefulness, otherwise you will die here.”

Yeah, that’s probably exactly what they were saying.

The only real disappointment came on the second morning, when I awoke to find one of my boots missing. After some searching, I discovered it tattered and lacking its insole. Apparently Kea Parrots are renowned for shredding critically important pieces of equipment and pooping on things that you love.

Thankfully, Keas represent the greatest danger to humans on the Track. Indeed, the Milford Track would be impossible in almost any comparable rain-forest. Elsewhere, predatory dangers make the track’s universal access unconscionable. In the Amazon, Boa Constrictor will gladly squeeze the life from careless hikers. In South East Asia, Bangalore Tigers might shred the wandering tramper. Access to those jungles is restricted to only the most expert and knowledgeable. New Zealand's uniqueness is its absence of dangerous predators, snakes, spiders, and bugs. Nature (or fortune) has exchanged the Asp and Grizzly Bear for the Kiwi and Blue Duck. Dominica is the only other country I’ve hiked predator-free in a rain forest, and those trails are not nearly as manicured, well signed, or hutted.

Currently, I am relaxing back in Dunedin and housing Daniel, a friend I met on the Milford Track. Daniel is also German, although less stoic than the former group. He is riding his bicycle around the South Island of New Zealand before heading to medical school in Deuchland. Having taken a similar trip in America, I was more than happy to lend him my couch and show him around D-town.

Milford Track was only the beginning of an epic Spring Break; the remainder must wait for a later post.

Midnight Blackberry Mayhem

2008-04-10T21:58:00.000-07:00

Since my last post, I’ve been hitting the books hard. The work here comes in big, tsunami-like waves. The kinds of waves that make you fear for your health and social standing. Thankfully, last night was the end of work; I spent this morning catching a different kind of wave at St. Clair Beach.

The local surf break is just a 10-minute drive from my house. Today was an “epic sesh’ at the break; the swells were pumpin’ cleanliness,” and I managed to stand up on my first wave despite “dropping the falls and getting cycled” a few times. As you can see, I've befriended the local surfer population and assimilated seamlessly. I invested in a used board and wet suit weeks ago - worth every penny.

Other highlights include, well, highlights. "Highlights," are headlights you strap to your helmet for thrilling midnight mountain bike rides in Bethunes Gully and Forrester Park. I’ve been biking with the Otago Cycling Club for two weeks now. The Kiwi’s have a fondness for steep climbs and brake-free downhills on curvaceous trails that skirt bottomless abysses of rain forrest. Interestingly, chain gangs from local prisons build many of New Zealand's walking and biking trails.

Derek, a portly, cynical, and hilarious local, demonstrated the Kiwi love of freefall on Wednesday. I had dismounted and turned off my headlight to enjoy a deep and silent darkness below the aptly named “Slippery Slope Of Death.” I watched Derek’s headlight emerge atop the Slope as a gleaming point. The light descended rapidly, followed by the sounds of brakes locking and tires sliding, then the headlight flipped multiple times through the darkness until it came to a sudden stop meters below. “Mates, I’ve got blackberries stabbing my manberries!!”

I also rode a motor scooter, placed 10th in a duathlon, and went on a fishing boat to investigate mud. Those stories, however, I have deemed unworthy of your bandwidth. I did post some pictures though...

I’m off to enjoy a hearty bowl of soup cooked with love and care and instant ingredients by Annabelle, my Kiwi flatmate. She has blazing red hair and relentless spunk.

Tramping and Falling Great Distances

2008-03-25T03:45:00.000-07:00

The trick to a successful bungee jump is not overcoming the indomitable terror that awaits you at the edge of a 400-foot precipice, but in remembering to stay stylish after you conquer those nerves. Anyone can fall, but only Ben Kunofsky can hold a Super Man pose for 8.5 seconds of free fall. I chose a salute into graceful swan dive. Others went for a Heisman Trophy pose. The oddest was Rich Saunders, who neither yelled nor moved as he fell. Not a single peep or gesticulation, so for a brief moment everyone was concerned that his “mortifying terror of heights” shouldn’t have been taken so laughingly as we hurled his writhing body off the platform. Just kidding about that last part.

I spent my Easter holiday camping and hiking, or "tramping" on the scenic Kepler Track and repeatedly jarring my adrenal gland and pancreas in Queenstown. The week was my fondest so far in New Zealand.

The Kepler Track snakes through glacially carved mountains overlooking the foggy Lake Te Anu. The path is well manicured and padded by abundant mosses; the rain is frequent, but serendipitously relenting at critical moments; the sights are astounding.

A host of nine healthy and handsome twenty-somethings accompanied me. Most were American, most were college students, most were males, all were friendly to begin and friends by the end.

Queenstown represents my mental projection of the perfect resort town. In one day, you can Heli-Bike, River-Sledge, and bungee jump before eating some of the world’s finest hamburgers from Furgburger and then dancing up a storm at The World Bar, where drinks are served by the teakettle.

Jet boating thrilled me immensely – imagine flying through a picturesque canyon at 80km/hr, inches from dismemberment and disfiguration. Our driver was Kelty, a long time jet boat pilot with icy veins and the perfect badass image. Kelty piloted the 20-person, 500 horsepower rally boat around corners and through obstacles with robot-like control. He never flinched, even as we spun multiple 360-degree spins through bottlenecks in the canyon.

After all that, I’m pleased to be back in Dunedin enjoying a more amenable and sustainable lifestyle (for a few days at least).

The Most Unpleasant Car Ride

2008-03-09T16:36:00.000-07:00

On Sunday I awoke in a disoriented delirium. I found myself stuffed into the back seat of a sweaty sedan. Sam was at the wheel, hurtling the car around twisty bends on the moderately safe New Zealand highway. The time was 3:12AM, and from the middle seat, all I could see was a curtain of swirling fog. The experience mimicked some kind of nightmarish overdose. Allow me to explain.

Three days earlier, on Thursday afternoon, five men piled into an ’87 Mitsubishi Galant headed towards the “Wild Foods Festival” in Hokatika NZ. The drive would be just over 7 hours. Our spirits soared as we cruised through lush and rolling scenery. However, after an hour of driving, we discovered that only one tape existed within the car – “The Best Of Disco.” Daunted but still determined, we powered ahead to our intended destination. We pit-stopped for a brief tour of the Fox Glacier and associated photographic hilarity. By diner time we had arrived at our campsite and had finished erecting our tents. Then the binge eating began.

The Wild Foods Festival instantly doubles the population of Hokatika from 17,000 to almost 40,000, so you can imagine the town’s enthusiasm and energy during this weekend-long event - something like the excitement of a birthday for the middle child in a family of 12. On Saturday I ate the following: one piece of kangaroo, one piece of crocodile, one worm and almond truffle, a fried huhu grub, a stag heart sandwich, shark, a worm in a shot of Red Bull, kava juice, a snail, various exotic honey products, ostrich, rabbit balls, devil’s water, wild boar, and a host of “normal” foods. The 18-year-old drinking age boosted everyone’s culinary courage. Regrettably, none of the adventurous stomachs in our party consumed Viagra slushies, which were almost instantly sold-out. I was totally deflated.

After the festival, everyone (thousands) migrated to the beach. When the sun set and the light rain cleared, brightly burning bonfires illuminated the beach to both visible horizons. Each fire accommodated a cluster of about 30 remorseful digesters.

Our party decided, for reasons still unclear to me, to leave at midnight and drive 7 hours back to Dunedin. I entered a deep coma as soon as the car began rolling. At 3:12 I awoke to a horrible sensory onslaught. Five hung-over men filled the car with indescribable putrid gasses. Two of them slept on my shoulders. “It’s Raining Men” blared for the tenth time, and our driver had erupted in maniacal laughter. The ten foreign animals in my stomach had long since confounded my digestive system. My contacts had dried to my eyeballs, and the stiff back seat had somehow tied my lumbar into a square know. As a final terror, we were driving almost 120 km/hr into a wall of fog on a very twisty, very narrow road. “This is the most unpleasant dream ever,” was my first thought, but soon I realized “This is the most unpleasant moment of my life.”

Well, we made it back to Dunedin safely. I slept from 7:30AM to 2:00PM, and promptly began a thorough fasting regiment to cleanse myself of untold toxins and general bodily misuse. Feeling much better now.

The Last Cantaloupe in New Zealand

2008-03-02T18:48:00.000-08:00

I have been in New Zealand for almost three weeks now. Below are the highlights. In the future I plan to make more incremental additions.

My first weekend was spent camping on a saddle between two peaks above the Mt. Aspiring Valley (central in the south island). Sam Libby and Rich Saunders accompanied. Calving glaciers covered the surrounding crags; the sound of ice blocks crashing and exploding so close to camp was like sleeping in a thundercloud. For additional paranoia, we camped about ten paces from a 270-meter cliff dropping to the valley floor – the largest cliff in New Zealand. It was very windy at night, and in the morning Sam reminded me rather publicly of how I clutched him in sleepy terror, asking, “are we going to blow off the cliff!?” On the last morning, Rich spilled the remains of our food supply. We haven’t talked much since.

My second week was full of geology. One of my classes began with a weeklong field trip during orientation week. Instead of diversifying my cultural perspectives in the various bars around town, I was swept off to northern Otago to jump over electric fences, dodge cow patties, and climb mountains all in the name of geological mapping. The following week was spent creating a detailed geologic map of a 16 square km area, cross sections, stratigraphic columns, and a ten-page report. By the time formal classes started, one third of my grade was submitted. I slept very little.

I finished the project on Saturday night and drove four hours north with Evan Mikkelson. Our mission: to run the Christchurch marathon. We arrived late on Saturday night, ate peanut butter sandwiches, and slept in the trunk of a Subaru. In the morning we hurried to the starting line. Christchurch is known broadly as the home of all things extreme and sporty, so Evan and I expected a bonanza of activity and energy. We arrived to discover that the marathon was in fact a 17-lap race around a 2-km loop of the city park. Additionally, only 11 people were participating. Well, Evan won the first marathon he ever ran with a time of 3:26; his prize was a box of fruit containing probably the only cantaloupe and non-seasonal fruit on the island. As for myself, I was sleep deprived, running in shoes borrowed from my female room mate (2 sizes too small), and almost completely untrained. I also encountered gastro-intestinal problems on the same magnitude as my Indian experiences – explosive. I got fifth place with a time of 3:56 and was happy to receive a free vegetarian meal in the town center.

Currently I am happily recovering and binge eating in my flat.