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It’s been a trying week up north. Having a serious case of Blogger’s block, I’ve opted to take care of some projects that aren’t glamorous enough to be mentioned here. The upcoming week will be my last one in Michigan and then it’s off East for another adventure. So let’s see if I can keep it a productive one.

I noticed this week for the first time in several months that I needed to get out a blanket in order to sleep comfortably at night. That got to me and now I’ve started to notice trees changing colors. There are only a few trees that are getting an early start at Autumn but they are a welcome addition to the country landscape.

The VW van’s parts haven’t arrived yet. I’m sure that UPS has a section in their warehouse stocked with my boxes. We’ve done everything we could with the engine and are now sitting around waxing poetic. Here’s a pic of cylinder four for you gear-heads out there. Soon it will be controlling the explosion of $3 petrol. (Correction: $3.49 Petrol as of August 31)

The other night I was riding home during sunclipse and grabbed this pic

I take the sight of huge transmission-lines for granted up here as there is a giant hydroelectric plant located just south of Ludington that sends it’s distribution tendrils out in many directions. When I was out west several years ago the power-lines were the most disturbing part of the otherwise natural landscape. It seems to me that there has got to be a better way to distribute power. Similar in concept to the chest refrigerator which saves energy by design; our aging power system needs to be overhauled. (As well as Indonesia’s.) Technology has allowed for inexpensive, semi-portable power sources but these are not mainstream yet. After watching Morgan Spurlock’s Off The Grid episode in which the Dancing Rabbit ecovillage installs solar power in their duplexed grain silo I tend to believe the answer is local generation of power. Of course, like many things that would help the commoner, the infrastructure in place would literally lose power. Jared Diamond agrees that technology helps people gain and maintain control so I’m not very hopeful about a new way of power transmission until the current power shifts. I’m doing my part on the farm.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 28th, 2005 at 7:51 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.