Was cruising the blogosphere and saw many things, and read some spectacular stories, but this was truly a subject worth sharing.
More later today........gotta shred the gnar while the sun shines.
xoxo
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
Carolina dreaming
Saw that the NE TN MTB crowd was riding Overmountain Victory Trail this past weekend.
Greg and Allen had some pretty sweet video
Alans video of OVT is here, and he has some pretty cool perspective with the seat post mount
Gregs is here, and he is rocking the fork mounted video.
Wilkesboro and Kerr Scott Lake is the New Tsali of mountainous bike cycling, if you have not been there you should definitely go. The folks with Brushy Mtn Cycling club put in a ton of work in them there hills.
Makes me miss home immensely. Last night I put the pen to paper and plotted and planned for this next year.
Al and I have traveled out west the last few summers, and have not been home in a coons age. So if fuel stays low, I think we may try to get home in August.
That way I can act like a fool for a day
That is if our parents love us enough to give us some gas money. hint hint wink, wink!
Last year Mom tried to bribe us into coming home by paying fuel and entry into the race of my choice as long as it was close to NC/TN, and like a moron I went to ID instead.
FAIL.
Greg and Allen had some pretty sweet video
Alans video of OVT is here, and he has some pretty cool perspective with the seat post mount
Gregs is here, and he is rocking the fork mounted video.
Wilkesboro and Kerr Scott Lake is the New Tsali of mountainous bike cycling, if you have not been there you should definitely go. The folks with Brushy Mtn Cycling club put in a ton of work in them there hills.
Makes me miss home immensely. Last night I put the pen to paper and plotted and planned for this next year.
Al and I have traveled out west the last few summers, and have not been home in a coons age. So if fuel stays low, I think we may try to get home in August.
That way I can act like a fool for a day
That is if our parents love us enough to give us some gas money. hint hint wink, wink!
Last year Mom tried to bribe us into coming home by paying fuel and entry into the race of my choice as long as it was close to NC/TN, and like a moron I went to ID instead.
FAIL.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Another week
Just got back to the house, Me and Brute-nasty rolled out to the River trails for some night riding. It was really warm, and we both had a grand time. Thats a 2-a-day for both of us, as we both got our run on at 6am this morning. Big Al is working late, and I am killing time till she gets home. Just turned on some Cake (Fashion Nugget) to jam to.
Thats better.....gotta make some spring rolls for dinner. Think I will make a few with a pork and kim-chee filling just to keep things crazy.
Weather is sposed to hold through Sat. Saturday her Al-ness has to go to continuing Ed in Topeka. That means I get to ride my mountainous bike-cycle all day. sweet!
As of tomorrow Al will no longer be with Gaia, rather she has decided to go it alone.
Lotus Health Works is her new business
Ok thats all I got.
Thats better.....gotta make some spring rolls for dinner. Think I will make a few with a pork and kim-chee filling just to keep things crazy.
Weather is sposed to hold through Sat. Saturday her Al-ness has to go to continuing Ed in Topeka. That means I get to ride my mountainous bike-cycle all day. sweet!
As of tomorrow Al will no longer be with Gaia, rather she has decided to go it alone.
Lotus Health Works is her new business
Ok thats all I got.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Look what I found
I found this manifesto that I wrote in October of last year attempting to give some perspective to the global issue of food prices and hopefully get some dialogue going. Alas I never put it up on here and it has languished on my jumpdrive for months. I really do not approve of the demonizing of corn, grain anything by the media or anyone else that has never had to make there living off the land. The most unsustainable thing about agricultural systems is that they are forced to feed 6-7 BILLION mouths
Ok, first I would like to address the concept of food as fuel in reference to the ongoing debate of how corn influences the price of other commodities. First, corn is not food. Corn has not been food for about 20 years. That does not mean that we do not consume corn, but rather that we use corn indirectly for many different things that happen to include food products. Rather, corn (No. 2 yellow dent corn, the most ubiquitous grain in the world) is a feedstock for cattle, swine, poultry, ethanol plants, HFCS (high fructose corn syrup), corn starch, and thousands of other end uses. Corn does not sit around plotting how to make people fat, it does not conspire to influence market prices nor does it contribute to the decline of rural communities, it is just corn. Grain is the reason we stopped being hunter gatherers. It allowed us to stay in one location and know that we would have adequate food reserves to last the winter. It is the stuff civilizations are made of. It keeps for extended periods of time; it is portable, fermentable, and consumable.
In the last few years it has been in high demand as energy prices have climbed. As energy prices climbed it became more and more profitable to produce bio-fuels, and thus ethanol plants were able to spend more money to buy corn (enter the laws of supply and demand). This increased demand in the market meant that animal feeding operations were squeezed as far as how much corn they could afford to compete for in the open market. So many of the feeding operations turned to other grains to help formulate a balanced ration, thus creating greater demands for these other grains (wheat, soybeans, sorghum) which also helped drive up the costs of grains in general. So lets look at the changes in grain prices of a few different grains in the past year based on prices published in The NY Times Futures index (10-21-08).
Grain Current Price $/lb Lifetime High $/lb this year
Corn .07 .15
Wheat .10 .23
Rough Rice* .15 .22
Rough rice is un-hulled rice that is not fit for human consumption until it is milled thus adding to the cost of a staple food.
Based on Dec. delivery.
Think about those numbers…..in the past year we have seen commodity prices double and fall back down again. However, did we see the cost of a loaf of bread hit $6 dollars? No, bread stayed around $2.79 (here in KS) throughout the year. So what is the big deal?
Well, in nations that are classified as having extreme levels of malnutrition depend greatly upon whole grains like rice and sorghum for nourishment. These grains are consumed directly, and are not milled and turned into a value added product(bread). So while millers and bakers may have been able to adsorb the increase in wheat, in developing countries, the super poor (living on less than a dollar a day) are faced with the fact that their primary food product just doubled in price. It is not a pleasant situation. To get a good idea of how hunger changes spatially over time check this out.
http://www.fao.org/faostat/foodsecurity/FSMap/flash_map.htm
The discussion about how our nation addresses hunger in other countries is best saved for another day (when we talk about farm programs). Bottom line, the costs of farm commodities have largely mirrored that of our crude oil over the past year.
Energy Current price Lifetime high(within last year)
Light Sweet Crude 74.39$/barrel 148.03
Heating oil 2.22$/gal 4.28
Natural Gas 7.21$/mm btu 14.54
So this begs the question, which went up first, the price of energy or the price of food commodities? There are a lot of different economists that have lots of initials after their last names that are arguing about this so I will let them sort this out. Just wanted to give you all some numbers and perspective before I jump in and start beating the bio-fuel drum.
Bio-fuels are nothing new. The prototype internal compression ignition engine that Rudolph Diesel designed ran on peanut oil. Pretty much any oilseed crop (soybeans, canola, peanuts, sesame, safflower, nuts etc) can be pressed for oil, and the resulting meal is generally fed to livestock or slathered on a loaf of bread, complimented by jam and a glass of milk (peanut butter). Bio-fuels from oilseed crops are a great way to make use of all of the parts of a grain. That is not to say that corn ethanol is not readily utilized, rather it is just not as simple and low tech as the pressing of oil seeds.
Now the idea of cellulosic ethanol has raised lots of questions as to how efficiently we can expect to produce a biological fuel in a previous article found here:
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10250420
One of the quotes that I found rather disturbing was this one.
“Obviously, farmers benefit—if governments allow them to keep the gains. In America, the world's biggest agricultural exporter, net farm income this year will be $87 billion, 50% more than the average of the past ten years. The prairie farmers of the Midwest are looking forward to their Caribbean cruises.”
That statement is a little misleading, and I will tell you why. Over the last ten years grain prices have been extremely low. How low, you ask? I can remember selling old crop corn in 2004 for $1.50 per bushel. That means that then corn was selling for about 1/5th of this year high prices at that point in time. Needless to say, the early part of this century was not a good time to be in grain production regardless of whether or not you participated in federal farm programs (ie. Subsidies, which are whole nother can of worms).
Farming is not a guaranteed source of income. The only people complaining about high grain prices are those on salary, whose income is static year to year. Some years will be better than others. This year is going to be one of the years that pull a lot of producers up out of the red on the balance sheets. I had an Ag Econ. Professor tell me once that the greater the risk (of an investment), the greater the reward. This was when corn was $1.50, and I told him he was full of crap. Well, turns out he was right (Which is why he, Fayte Brewer, is the president of Purdue Alumni Seed Co.) Over the long term, farming is a very risky business, and I doubt that anyone that has ever had to sit across from a banker when grain was $1.50/bu and land payments were due will begrudge high grain prices.
From a soil fertility stand point I think that cellulosic ethanol has a place in American agriculture, however it also has the potential to defile our nations natural resources. High biomass crops like switchgrass, photoperiod sensitive sorghum, sweet sorghum, and even sugar cane, all remove huge amounts of phosphorus and potassium from the soil. Research that has been done here in KS indicates that up too 300 lbs of P and K can be removed per acre. If these nutrients are not replaced after cropping it is commonly referred to as nutrient mining. Nutrient mining is not such a big deal if there is an excess of the nutrient in the soil, however it is a problem if you are dealing with marginal land, like ground that was taken out of CRP (Conservation Reserve Program). An area that could benefit from this high level of nutrient removal is surrounding confined animal feeding operations (cattle feedlots, swine facilities, or poultry houses). Most states require these confined animal feeding operations to file a nutrient management plan to comply with currents laws (so they do not apply too much crap). One of the problems with this is that over long periods of time soil nutrient levels can reach excessive levels (>700 ppm) after long periods of manure applications and increase the risk of runoff and the entailing eutrophication. Cellulosic ethanol, with its high levels of nutrient removal can help to remove these excess levels of soil nutrients, however these crops still require large amounts of nutrients
Ok, first I would like to address the concept of food as fuel in reference to the ongoing debate of how corn influences the price of other commodities. First, corn is not food. Corn has not been food for about 20 years. That does not mean that we do not consume corn, but rather that we use corn indirectly for many different things that happen to include food products. Rather, corn (No. 2 yellow dent corn, the most ubiquitous grain in the world) is a feedstock for cattle, swine, poultry, ethanol plants, HFCS (high fructose corn syrup), corn starch, and thousands of other end uses. Corn does not sit around plotting how to make people fat, it does not conspire to influence market prices nor does it contribute to the decline of rural communities, it is just corn. Grain is the reason we stopped being hunter gatherers. It allowed us to stay in one location and know that we would have adequate food reserves to last the winter. It is the stuff civilizations are made of. It keeps for extended periods of time; it is portable, fermentable, and consumable.
In the last few years it has been in high demand as energy prices have climbed. As energy prices climbed it became more and more profitable to produce bio-fuels, and thus ethanol plants were able to spend more money to buy corn (enter the laws of supply and demand). This increased demand in the market meant that animal feeding operations were squeezed as far as how much corn they could afford to compete for in the open market. So many of the feeding operations turned to other grains to help formulate a balanced ration, thus creating greater demands for these other grains (wheat, soybeans, sorghum) which also helped drive up the costs of grains in general. So lets look at the changes in grain prices of a few different grains in the past year based on prices published in The NY Times Futures index (10-21-08).
Grain Current Price $/lb Lifetime High $/lb this year
Corn .07 .15
Wheat .10 .23
Rough Rice* .15 .22
Rough rice is un-hulled rice that is not fit for human consumption until it is milled thus adding to the cost of a staple food.
Based on Dec. delivery.
Think about those numbers…..in the past year we have seen commodity prices double and fall back down again. However, did we see the cost of a loaf of bread hit $6 dollars? No, bread stayed around $2.79 (here in KS) throughout the year. So what is the big deal?
Well, in nations that are classified as having extreme levels of malnutrition depend greatly upon whole grains like rice and sorghum for nourishment. These grains are consumed directly, and are not milled and turned into a value added product(bread). So while millers and bakers may have been able to adsorb the increase in wheat, in developing countries, the super poor (living on less than a dollar a day) are faced with the fact that their primary food product just doubled in price. It is not a pleasant situation. To get a good idea of how hunger changes spatially over time check this out.
http://www.fao.org/faostat/foodsecurity/FSMap/flash_map.htm
The discussion about how our nation addresses hunger in other countries is best saved for another day (when we talk about farm programs). Bottom line, the costs of farm commodities have largely mirrored that of our crude oil over the past year.
Energy Current price Lifetime high(within last year)
Light Sweet Crude 74.39$/barrel 148.03
Heating oil 2.22$/gal 4.28
Natural Gas 7.21$/mm btu 14.54
So this begs the question, which went up first, the price of energy or the price of food commodities? There are a lot of different economists that have lots of initials after their last names that are arguing about this so I will let them sort this out. Just wanted to give you all some numbers and perspective before I jump in and start beating the bio-fuel drum.
Bio-fuels are nothing new. The prototype internal compression ignition engine that Rudolph Diesel designed ran on peanut oil. Pretty much any oilseed crop (soybeans, canola, peanuts, sesame, safflower, nuts etc) can be pressed for oil, and the resulting meal is generally fed to livestock or slathered on a loaf of bread, complimented by jam and a glass of milk (peanut butter). Bio-fuels from oilseed crops are a great way to make use of all of the parts of a grain. That is not to say that corn ethanol is not readily utilized, rather it is just not as simple and low tech as the pressing of oil seeds.
Now the idea of cellulosic ethanol has raised lots of questions as to how efficiently we can expect to produce a biological fuel in a previous article found here:
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10250420
One of the quotes that I found rather disturbing was this one.
“Obviously, farmers benefit—if governments allow them to keep the gains. In America, the world's biggest agricultural exporter, net farm income this year will be $87 billion, 50% more than the average of the past ten years. The prairie farmers of the Midwest are looking forward to their Caribbean cruises.”
That statement is a little misleading, and I will tell you why. Over the last ten years grain prices have been extremely low. How low, you ask? I can remember selling old crop corn in 2004 for $1.50 per bushel. That means that then corn was selling for about 1/5th of this year high prices at that point in time. Needless to say, the early part of this century was not a good time to be in grain production regardless of whether or not you participated in federal farm programs (ie. Subsidies, which are whole nother can of worms).
Farming is not a guaranteed source of income. The only people complaining about high grain prices are those on salary, whose income is static year to year. Some years will be better than others. This year is going to be one of the years that pull a lot of producers up out of the red on the balance sheets. I had an Ag Econ. Professor tell me once that the greater the risk (of an investment), the greater the reward. This was when corn was $1.50, and I told him he was full of crap. Well, turns out he was right (Which is why he, Fayte Brewer, is the president of Purdue Alumni Seed Co.) Over the long term, farming is a very risky business, and I doubt that anyone that has ever had to sit across from a banker when grain was $1.50/bu and land payments were due will begrudge high grain prices.
From a soil fertility stand point I think that cellulosic ethanol has a place in American agriculture, however it also has the potential to defile our nations natural resources. High biomass crops like switchgrass, photoperiod sensitive sorghum, sweet sorghum, and even sugar cane, all remove huge amounts of phosphorus and potassium from the soil. Research that has been done here in KS indicates that up too 300 lbs of P and K can be removed per acre. If these nutrients are not replaced after cropping it is commonly referred to as nutrient mining. Nutrient mining is not such a big deal if there is an excess of the nutrient in the soil, however it is a problem if you are dealing with marginal land, like ground that was taken out of CRP (Conservation Reserve Program). An area that could benefit from this high level of nutrient removal is surrounding confined animal feeding operations (cattle feedlots, swine facilities, or poultry houses). Most states require these confined animal feeding operations to file a nutrient management plan to comply with currents laws (so they do not apply too much crap). One of the problems with this is that over long periods of time soil nutrient levels can reach excessive levels (>700 ppm) after long periods of manure applications and increase the risk of runoff and the entailing eutrophication. Cellulosic ethanol, with its high levels of nutrient removal can help to remove these excess levels of soil nutrients, however these crops still require large amounts of nutrients
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Coon Dog confusion
This weekend Brutus went into coon dog mode. The only problem is that he kept treeing squirrels on our mountain bike ride.
The vermin in question.
Then we saw this on the drive home.
Both Brute and I felt a little better about ourselves after seeing that.
The vermin in question.
Then we saw this on the drive home.
Both Brute and I felt a little better about ourselves after seeing that.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
SECA VS Amoeba
Well my beams shots really sucked, or perhaps its just my camera that sucks. Regardless I got no beam shots. However tanner and I did play around and compare the pros and cons of the SECA and the Amoeba.
SECA Pro's
700 lumens
multiple settings to prolong battery life. he only high beamed it twice on the ride
Has a strong spot beam and lots of good light spill
Has excellent heat sinks to keep the light cool.
Cons
Sometimes it took a while to cycle through the light sequences.
Was not very well thought out as a helmet light
Is kinda bulky.
is over 500 bucks
Tanner keeps his mounted on his handle bars.
I Kept mine mounted on my helmet.
Amoeba Pro's
520 lumens
Light
Bright my Ameoba has primarily a spot pattern that seemed to throw light just as far as the SECA, and still has good light spill to the perimeter.
Relatively inexpensive
Cons
It has two modes: On and Off
The fact that it is helmet mounted gives my attention deficit disorder free reign at night.
It is probably not a good choice for a handlebar mount unless you went with a flood beam.
The reflective optics of the SECA are more user friendly and cast a better "shade of light"
We did kind of wonder about how the amoeba would dissipate heat without a great big heat sink, but as of yet I have not had the light head really heat up.
Bottom line:
If you want to see things a long way off, without any frills or excess weight, and be able to operate for extended periods of time the amoeba is the bomb. If you want one light that does everything well and has excellent "light quality" the SECA is what you need.
SECA Pro's
700 lumens
multiple settings to prolong battery life. he only high beamed it twice on the ride
Has a strong spot beam and lots of good light spill
Has excellent heat sinks to keep the light cool.
Cons
Sometimes it took a while to cycle through the light sequences.
Was not very well thought out as a helmet light
Is kinda bulky.
is over 500 bucks
Tanner keeps his mounted on his handle bars.
I Kept mine mounted on my helmet.
Amoeba Pro's
520 lumens
Light
Bright my Ameoba has primarily a spot pattern that seemed to throw light just as far as the SECA, and still has good light spill to the perimeter.
Relatively inexpensive
Cons
It has two modes: On and Off
The fact that it is helmet mounted gives my attention deficit disorder free reign at night.
It is probably not a good choice for a handlebar mount unless you went with a flood beam.
The reflective optics of the SECA are more user friendly and cast a better "shade of light"
We did kind of wonder about how the amoeba would dissipate heat without a great big heat sink, but as of yet I have not had the light head really heat up.
Bottom line:
If you want to see things a long way off, without any frills or excess weight, and be able to operate for extended periods of time the amoeba is the bomb. If you want one light that does everything well and has excellent "light quality" the SECA is what you need.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Amoeba....they're just little fella's
Whoa! This little thing is tiny. and bright. I am gonna grind some gravel road tonite with Tanner, who just got a new SECA so we will see how they compare
The reason that I went with Jay Buthmans product was that he uses non-proprietary batteries so a extra 3 hour Lithium ion battery only costs 40 bucks. Plus Jay made be a cool little back up power adapter so that if I ran out of juice I could use a 9 volt battery to get me back to the car. I will take the rest of the pics tonite and also get some beam shots.
I got a 520 lumen light with 9 hours of battery power, the quick charger, handy dandy power adapter for 9volt, and the mounting stuff for $310. Its pretty sick.
The reason that I went with Jay Buthmans product was that he uses non-proprietary batteries so a extra 3 hour Lithium ion battery only costs 40 bucks. Plus Jay made be a cool little back up power adapter so that if I ran out of juice I could use a 9 volt battery to get me back to the car. I will take the rest of the pics tonite and also get some beam shots.
I got a 520 lumen light with 9 hours of battery power, the quick charger, handy dandy power adapter for 9volt, and the mounting stuff for $310. Its pretty sick.
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