Diary of a Mad Scientist

I went to this great event at Biofuel Oasis today.

The Oasis, our local worker-owned biodiesel distribution co-op, has been running a series of events every Monday night in June called Driving Still Sucks. The events all promoted different aspects of alternatives to driving.

The ladies at Oasis started this project because they got sick of hearing customers talk about the fact that now that they’re on biodiesel it was all perfectly OK and there was no guilt associated with driving.

Somewhere around that time this phenomenon was happening, somebody in the press did a write up about Berkeley Biodiesel Collective, and somewhere in the usual mistranslation that the press does, the biodieselers were quoted as saying that the collective’s unofficial motto is Driving Still Sucks. Everybody in the collective found that absolutely charming and adopted it fully afterwards, even though it was of course not really true at the time of the interview.

The Driving Still Sucks series included the following events:

Monday June 12, 5 - 8 PM: Everything You Wanted to Know about Biodiesel but Were Afraid to Ask:
which included “answers to burning questions about biodiesel” (they must’ve had the mystical answer to “what do you do with the glycerine” printed up in giant letters in the back)

Monday June 19, 5 - 8 PM: Rearrange Your Life to Drive Less: Creative Strategies
* City CarShare
* Public Transportation & Bike options
* Telecommuting: How to convince your boss to let you work from home
* Live near where you work, Work near where you live: Drive l day per week!
* Yummy food and drink

And tonight’s event focused on “Do It Yourself". What this meant was that the speakers were primarily from the city gardening and farming community, and there was a cute potluck of tasty treats from people’s gardens, and homemade alcohols, at the end of which the Oasis collective toasted their newest full worker-owner members, two women who’d just passed the truck driving examination and would start doing Oasis fuel deliveries locally.

Urban farming really means a lot in our area. I recently heard about someone who was moving here from the East Coast to get a job as a school gardens instructor, which is one of those typically wonderful Berkeley progressive institutions that you take for granted until you find out that someone has moved from East Coast to come do it. The school garden programs movement is just one small aspect of the powerful urban farming movement in this town (considering the price of real estate here, it’s a challenging thing to do, by the way). In fact, there are several food businesses which have grown out of the school gardens and use gardening movement-it’s entirely possible to eat fresh produce all year round and for all of its have come from one quarter mile away, grown by teenagers in one of the programs.

Anyway, Jennifer solicited me to come talk about beekeeping. Jennifer, who knew that I’m not crazy about going to biodiesel 101 events around here anymore (I’m sick of talking about beginning homebrewing and ‘have I heard of diesel secret’ at the moment), suggested that I could even be anonymous.

Jennifer and I have this kind of funny thing going on about the oasis. My boyfriend lives around the corner from the oasis, which means that I’m constantly stopping by when I need to find Jennifer and she’s too busy to return phone calls. Unfortunately for me, the Oasis sometimes has a fairly large crowd of customers hanging around, including the types that are there just to talk people’s head off, and I"m always wary of the possibility of getting ensnared by one of the talkers.

I was over there one day when Jennifer was off shift, and she was trying very hard to escape her own customers as well, while someone else was actually working the shift. We’re having some intense conversation in front of a few customers who seemed interested in chatting, and she kept announcing to everyone in the room that she was offshift and trying to leave. That was either wishful thinking or some kind of superstitious warding off of the evil eye. Anyway, as we were on our way out the door, the person was actually working the shift called out, “Bye, Jennifer, Bye, Mark". At that point a chatty customer turned around and said,"wait, is your name girl Mark"? Jennifer and I shot a glance at each other, and I turned around with an obviously lying tone of voice and said “no, I have no idea what you mean!", and we ran out the door laughing. Ever since then, it’s always this joke with her about not mentioning me by name when I’m at the Oasis in front of customers.

Anyway, the event tonight meant that I showed up with a small empty beehive to show and tell, and a jar full of honey, and there right in front of the oasis was Jim, who has goats in North Berkeley, along with a small portable pen with two adult nannies and several adorable baby goats. Someone else was there to talk about keeping chickens in the city, someone else was talking about water systems and recycling gray water, Chris Schein had a truck full of plants for sale, there is a natural plaster and nontoxic painting company with some inspiring speakers telling us all about getting petroleum out of the inside of your house and cutting down on indoor air pollution, and I fit right in. I got up in front of everybody, announced loudly that my name was Stellar (an actual nickname from the past), and said something like ‘I don’t know anything about this biofuel stuff but I’m here to talk about bees’, which solicited laughter from the one third of the audience who was in on the joke. It was awesome thing to do public speaking about something completely unrelated to biodiesel homebrewing for once. I

I think we’re almost ready to test out the GC’s. Actually, only one of them. One has the wrong motherboard to run the type of injector that’s needed for the biodiesel test- we got the injector, and will eventually find a motherboard (the type to sorta upgrade an HP 5980 to a Series II I think) for cheap, but till then, one’s going to run school experiments at Concrete Community College and one might be ready to set up for biodiesel analysis there.

We’ve been working on it about once a month or once every six weeks, and it’s taken forever to find all the little piddly parts. I’m piecing it out and its still cheap, but it definitely would have been too complicated for me to figure out without professional help.

And the little missing stuff is a pain to track down on a budget- for instance, we’ve had an FID detector since the beginning but finding the needle valve and o-ring that allows you to run the make-up gas that’s needed for the biodiesel analysis means spending about $150 for two tiny and relatively simple (but proprietary) parts.

Anyway, on Thursday we’re going back into the machines and trying to actually see if the dang thing works. We seem to have all the plumbing at last.

I’m just coming down off of several weeks of hell and mental anguish that revolved around finishing up the farm biodiesel plant design. I got commissioned to design a system for some farmers, exactly what I’ve been wanting to do all year. We have decided to put together a really tiny little pilot plant, with the idea being that it would be mobile, and that the farmers could sell it off when they wanted to upscale. There were a variety of reasons why ‘tiny little’ made sense for them, although it was not what they ultimately intend to install.

I decided to change everything around 100% after what I learned on my last trip out of town. I’d gone out to Asheville to teach a class and to do some consulting for Blue Ridge Biofuels. They have designed a teeny little pilot plant very similar to one of my designs, which I think means that I get to leapfrog that teeny little pilot plant stage in the pursuit of our farm plant, as they have one on-line exactly like what I would have built. BRB were having some very minor problems, which we were able to troubleshoot pretty quickly, and I learned a tremendous amount from seeing the thing in action. I have a few friends in the small producer world right now who all have similar size little systems, all of which were set to go online this summer, and being able collaborate amongst ourselves has been phenomenally helpful. I actually modified my theoretical system when I met Rob Del Bueno and talked about systems earlier this winter, bringing mine more in line with what he’s building, so that we can collaborate over troubleshooting if problems come up. of course the other side of that is that if the designs turn out to be mistakes, then we have two people with the same problem in their plant, and the same problematic equipment to replace- it’s kind of an ‘all eggs in one basket’ approach.

I’ve been thinking about codifying the sort of informal friendly collaboration that I’ve been involved in, into a farm-scale plant listserve- no one who is in the process of building a system seems to want talk about their progress in public, partially because of the regulatory/code compliance issues involved, and partially because they don’t want to look foolish if they make mistakes, so unfortunately there’s not a very detailed public discussion going on, even though the technology involved is very simple and there aren’t the major issues with competitive disadvantage that exist with larger systems that use proprietary technologies.

I decided that there is no reason for me to put another tiny little plant into the world.

I’d assigned myself a series of different design constraints, and spent a couple of weeks designing two different kinds of plants that fit those differing constraints.

One of the design constraints was that I wanted to make sure the system fit inside of a shipping container. That’s what Rob has done as well. In fact, I think there are an awful lot of theoretical plants sketched out on Whiteboards out there in the world, all designed around fitting the process equipment inside of a shipping container, and plunking the shipping container down next to a tank farm full of oil. Mine is no different. Shipping containers are fantastic little portable buildings, but they have extremely limited dimensions which makes a plant an interesting design challenge. Of course with a big enough tank farm and continuous process technology (not something I’m interested in tackling), you can squeeze a million gallons a year out of one of these things, but that requires a few million dollars also.

I stared at graph paper for weeks trying to figure out how to squeeze the maximum gallons out of a 40 foot shipping container using commonly available equipment. I came up with a rough estimate of a theoretical 250,000 gallons a year, still pilot plant sized but large enough for the niche projects I"m interested in. Next project is seen how well it works in reality.

Biodiesel Community Conference:
July 14-16, 2006
Golden, Colorado
Colorado School of Mines

The grassroots biodiesel community’s summer conference this year focuses on biodiesel co-ops, biodiesel groups, grassroots biodiesel education efforts, and the technical details of all of the above. Well even tell you what pump we use, and what our bylaws and volunteer motivation efforts have looked like.

History:
In the past three years the American “small-scale biodiesel” activist community has been organizing winter conferences (all preceding the meetings of the National Biodiesel Board’s annual winter convention). Different groups have organized these grassroots events with the focus being on educating biodiesel consumers and activists working with or within the biodiesel industry, and encouraging us to act as watchdogs over biodiesel sustainability.

Local Biodiesel: A Biodiesel Co-ops Conference

This summer conference in Colorado ignores the larger industry issues and focuses instead on the nitty-gritty details of how the grassroots biodiesel groups accomplish their work.

There is no single answer to “How do I start a biodiesel coop” so we instead gather members of several successful biodiesel groups into one room to tell the story of how THEY started and run their biodiesel efforts, and what they’d do differently with hindsight.

The conference is primarily an opportunity for discussion, networking, and story-sharing. We’ll talk about what pump we use. We’ll talk about wrangling volunteers, brokering truckloads of commercial fuel, disposing of glycerine, dealing with frozen fuel lines and cold reactors, organizing educational events for your community, staying motivated as an organization, recovering methanol, and, most importantly, we’ll talk about it WITH you, not at you.

The conference is centered around networking and discussion, rather than dry speeches, and there will be a tremendous amount of organized networking.

We’re organizing ‘discussion tables’ by topic at lunch and breakfast (imagine your favorite online biodiesel discussion forums- live), and the official presentations leave a lot of time for discussion/question and answer with the audience. We’ll leave room for regional networking opportunities so people from the same area can brainstorm ideas on working together. Bring your photos and equipment to show off.

People are coming from South Africa, Colorado, all corners of the USA, Canada, and elsewhere. There is dorm housing available so you can camp out and talk late into the night with fellow conference attendees, and two meals a day are included in the registration fee. We have a rideboard to encourage ridesharing and so that you can find others from your area who are coming.

List of speakers and topics:

-Methanol recovery for homebrewers (Maud Essen and Terry Zeman, St Louis Biofuels Club, Missouri)

-Disposal of Sidestreams: Wash Water, Magnesol, and Glycerine (Matt Rudolph, Piedmont Biofuels Cooperative, North Carolina)

-Cold Weather Strategies for Biodiesel Users (panel discussion)

-Biodiesel Distribution Experiences (panel discussion including Kai Curry of Biodiesel Blue Distribution, Minnesota, and members of Biofuel Oasis, California)

-Gas Chromatography Testing of Biodiesel (Bob Armantrout, Rocky Mountain Biodiesel)

-Excise Tax and Legal Issues Affecting Small-scale Production of biodiesel (panel discussions)

-Biodiesel Calculator and Batch Tracking Software demo (Rick Harrison, Omaha PSD Club)

-Magnesol and other washing alternatives (presenter TBA)

-Putting Together a Biodiesel Educational Event (panel discussion)

-Teaching Homebrew Classes (Jennifer Radtke and Maria ‘Mark’ Alovert and other presenters TBA)

-Quality Testing and Quality Control factors (Maria ‘Mark’ Alovert, Biodieselcommunity.org)

-Involving Women In Your Biodiesel Group (Maria ‘Mark’ Alovert, Biodieselcommunity.org)

-Oil Collection Strategies (presenter TBA)

-Feedstock and competion for WVO- Co-op strategies? (presenter TBA)

-Working with Volunteers (Matt Rudolph, Piedmont Biofuels Cooperative, and others)

-Case Studies presentations from biodiesel educational, homebrewing, and distribution co-ops and groups :

NW Biofuels Network (Washington),
St Louis Biofuels Club (St Louis, MO),
Berkeley Biodiesel Collective (California),
Breathable Bus Coalition (Washington),
Alameda Biodiesel Coop (California),
Boulder Biodiesel (CO),
Wilson College biodiesel group (Pennsylvania),
Yoderville Biodiesel Coop (Iowa),
Austin Biodiesel Coop (Texas)
Biofuel Oasis (California)
Utah Biodiesel Coop (Utah)

-In addition to the formal presentations, we’ll have some mini-workshops and lunchtime ‘discussion tables’ to assist in networking (for example, cafeteria tables labeled by region or specific topics, so you can meet others from your region or area of interest)

For more information, final schedule (to be released July 1), and to register, please see http://b100.org

Registration Info:
$60 for conference registration, includes breakfast and lunch Saturday/Sunday. Friday night’s Biodiesel 101 presentation and networking party is free and open to the public.

Saturday networking party: $5 donation requested

Dorm rooms: $22 a night, available Friday night through Monday morning. The dorm rooms are gender-segregated at Colorado School of Mines, so we unfortunately can’t accommodate couples.

Final Conference schedule will be posted July 1 at http://b100.org.
Hours:
Friday, July 14: Biodiesel 101 Presentation, 6 pm
Satuday and Sunday, July 15-16: Breakfast and mini-discussions: 8-10 am, conference presentations 10am-5:30 pm
Saturday night networking party: 7-10 (check website for updates on exact hours)

Registration deadline is June 30! Please check http://b100.org for updates or possible late registration.

Rideshare board: www.b100.org/rideboard

To contact us, please email conference@b100.org

Resources:
US-based biodiesel co-ops
http://www.b100.org/coops
Biodiesel Power: a book about Piedmont Biofuels in Pittsboro NC:
http://biofuels.coop/book.shtml
The Biodiesel Blogs: a view of the day-to-day in grassroots biodiesel:
http://www.biofuels.coop/aggregator/
Online Biodiesel Resources listing: educational websites:
http://www.biodieselcommunity.org/onlineresources/
Biodiesel online course from Iowa State University:
http://www.me.iastate.edu/biodiesel/Pages/biodiesel1.html
Biodiesel Handling and Use Guidelines- NREL (.pdf)
http://www.nrel.gov/vehiclesandfuels/npbf/pdfs/39451.pdf

Homebrewing Biodiesel:
http://biodieselcommunity.org and http://biodiesel.infopop.cc
Biodiesel Library:
http://www.b100supply.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=category.display&category_id=12&CFID=366554&CFTOKEN=85585064

Theoretically my tour is over.

I’m here at home, with nothing scheduled. I have a lot of possibilities for classes coming up, but none of them are super soon.

HALLELUIJAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It was an insane, completely frantic five months. I was rarely at home for more than two weeks. In February and March I was gone almost the entire month. And as I’ve already said, all of that involved getting on planes every few days.

The day that I updated my web page with the words ‘my spring tour is over’ (a few weeks after the grueling SLC classes) I e-mailed Graydon with this great sense of ecstasy.

Biodiesel Conference:
Right now things are about to get insane again because the biodiesel co-ops conference is coming up. (www.b100.org) We have a fantastic lineup (previous post). I have the feeling that the whole thing is going to be a bit like biodiesel sleep-away camp for geeks. The co-op conference gets to use some of the dorm rooms at the college that is hosting us, which means that people will be hanging around for hours after the event chatting. A very important point of the conference is to promote networking, for people to get to know each other, for them to share ideas and for projects to cross-pollinate. Also, we are including breakfast and lunch in the conference registration costs, which means that in addition to eating cafeteria food at an engineering school, will probably set up specific discussion tables to encourage further networking. For example, you can come to the conference and eat breakfast at the Southwest Regional Biodiesel table, move on to catch the discussion at the ‘glycerine disposal’ discussion table at lunch, and maybe even muster up the courage to facilitate the ‘get rich quick with a commercial biodiesel plant’ discussion table the following morning. Just kidding about the getting rich quick.

Local Biodiesel: A Biodiesel Co-ops Conference, July 14-16, Golden, Colorado

Colorado School of Mines
www.b100.org

Topics to be presented include the following:

-Methanol recovery for homebrewers
(Maud Essen and Terri Zeman, St Louis Biofuels Club, Missouri)

-Disposal of Sidestreams: Wash Water, Magnesol, and Glycerine
(Matt Rudolph, Piedmont Biofuels Cooperative, North Carolina)

-Cold Weather Strategies for Biodiesel Users (panel discussion)

-Biodiesel Distribution Experiences
(panel discussion including Kai Curry of Biodiesel Blue Distribution, Minnesota, and members of Biofuel Oasis, California)

-Gas Chromatography Testing of Biodiesel
(Bob Armantrout, Rocky Mountain Biodiesel)

-Excise Tax and Legal Issues Affecting Small-scale Production of biodiesel (panel discussions)

-Biodiesel Calculator and Batch Tracking Software demo
(Rick Harrison, http://omahametropsd.org/bdcalc/Index.htm )

-Magnesol and other washing alternatives (presenter TBA)

-Quality Testing and Quality Control factors
(Maria ‘Mark’ Alovert, www.biodieselcommunity.org)

-Involving Women In Your Biodiesel Group
(Maria ‘Mark’ Alovert, www.biodieselcommunity.org)

-Oil Collection Strategies (presenter TBA)

-Feedstock and competion for WVO- Co-op strategies ? (presenter TBA)

-Working with Volunteers (Matt Rudolph, Piedmont Biofuels Cooperative, and others)

-Case Studies presentations from biodiesel educational, homebrewing, and distribution co-ops and groups :

NW Biofuels Network (Washington),
St Louis Biofuels Club (St Louis, MO),
Berkeley Biodiesel Collective (California),
Breathable Bus Coalition (Washington),
Alameda Biodiesel Coop (California),
Boulder Biodiesel (CO),
Wilson College biodiesel group (Pennsylvania),
Yoderville Biodiesel Coop (Iowa),
Austin Biodiesel Coop (Texas)
Biofuel Oasis (California)

-other presentations and participants to be announced

-In addition to the formal presentations, we’ll have some mini-workshops and lunchtime ‘discussion tables’ to assist in networking (for example, cafeteria tables labeled by region or specific topics, so you can meet others from your region or area of interest)

Conference logistics:
Price:
$60 registration, includes breakfast and lunch on the 15th and 16th

We still have a few dorm room accommodations available for $22 per night.

To register for the conference please see www.b100.org.

To connect with others from your area who are traveling to the conference please see www.b100.org/rideboard
(Golden, CO, is near Denver)

Speakers:
if you would like to do a presentation at this event, or facilitate a discussion/panel/lunch table discussion, please email us.

contact info: conference@b100.org

Eventually everybody from the class drifted away, and even Graydon got up off the floor, regained his senses, cleaned up with me and took all the liquids and the consolidated glop to be disposed of. I had use of the space till that evening, and my brain was in no mood to go anywhere. Again, it just amazes me how tiring it is keeping track of 34 brains and intensely following just who understands what (they must be just as tired following everything I"m saying!), and trying to think on my feet, how I should rephrase it when it doesn’t make sense to them.

After class I enter limbo where I can barely function, the thought of getting up off the floor is agonizing, and the little observer in the back of my head is amazed that I’m still alive when my brain mostly resembles an exhausted blob of Jell-O..

Several cups of caffeine later, I can usually clean up from the class.

After Graydon left and I no longer had to formulate sentences, I came to my senses, mindlessly played with lab supplies for while, spending a couple of hours sorting everything for the New Hampshire class, packed everything up to mail, and was finally out of there 12 hours after class had started.

Then I went to the airport and picked up the boyfriend.

Tom and I had planned a short camping vacation in Utah. This is one of the trips where I had two classes back-to-back on consecutive weekends in opposite sides of the country. Considering how exhausting a day and a half long class was, this wasn’t a terribly good start to this trip.

At this point, I’m so jealous of my time that I prefer to do to cross-country trips on two consecutive weekends, and fly home for three days in between. It’s actually worth my time to do that, rather than spend a week on the road with two classes at either end. When I spend 12 days out to teach two classes, it often feels like the Jell-O brain never goes away the entire time-hotels, airports, waah. waah, waah. It sometimes feels like stepping into some kind of sci-fi alternate universe for while.

But Utah is a world famously gorgeous place, and we wanted to do a brief scouting trip, checking it out for longer future camping expeditions. Tom used to live in Salt Lake when he was a very different person, so we floated around town the next day investigating his memory lane. Just walking around downtown with Tom on Saturday night made me very happy after the Jell-O brain finally went away, as it was finally a break from the class routine. Like, I was not rushing off to Wal-Mart to do something related to supplies for the next class. Again,waah, waah, waah, I can’t really complain about traveling to teach, no one’s holding a gun to my head to do it. I think tons of people would give anything to be me right now and do exactly this for a living.

Our first stop was supposed to be Zion National Park, and we had originally kicked around the idea of doing a tremendous amount of driving for four days, checking out the North Rim of the Grand Canyon for a day, then some other national parks on the way north. The idea had been scouting sites for a camping trip that Tom is gonna do later this summer. Luckily, we came to our senses and nixed several of the destinations before investing too much time on the road.

The whole concept of a vacation is completely bizarre to me. When I was growing up, no one in my family went on vacation.

was a little bit concerned that it wouldn’t feel like a break at all, considering that it’s happening right in the middle of my-traveling job work week, and my traveling job does involve quite a bit of driving around between the classes.. I think I was worried that we’ve spent a lot of time in stores, getting outfitted, and that there’d be too much time on the interstate, or in chain stores, as we were flying in with insufficient supplies for some of what we want to do..

Too many parts of the US no longer have a local flavor- 10 years ago, car traveling involved stopping at flea markets, little tiny local junk shops, eating in little diners and shoot in the bull with the locals (well okay that was the East Coast. They don’t have diners on the West Coast). Local flavor is mostly gone though. I think on this trip I realized, from the lack of junk shops in what would otherwise have been a prime cheap-rent territory for this activity, that the junk shops have all moved to eBay. Granted, that means that I sure enjoy my online time, browsing junk from across the country at 2 a.m. unfortunately, there’s an awful lot of conversation that’s missing with the demise of the flea markets and the goods’ move to the Internet. Not to mention that the prices have gone way up.

I was very pleasantly surprised to the couple of localism experiences in the next day and half. Before we left Salt Lake, we picked up some food at what we thought was going to be a health food store, but which turned out to be a weird gourmet imports store called liberty Heights market. It was amazing. They seemed like they had a direct line to some granny back in the old country (Italy, Spain, etc.). It’s kind of telling that shopping there was what made me finally realize I was on vacation, rather than at work on the trip. This was definitely a place that is not found at a local mall near you. It’s kind of pathetic that my expectations are so low that merely finding a unique local store is enough to make me feel like I"m having a good vacation experience. You know, it’s that lack of social life thing. I don’t even think about actual interesting, human interactions that I might have been having on vacation, having somehow turned into a tourist in the strip malls and big box stores.

Along the same lines, we accidentally stumbled into a really bizarre little motel in a tiny old West town called beaver city. Eagles roost motel was composed of these teeny little casitas which were brought there in the 1930s after the Hoover dam was completed several hundred miles away. They had been housing for the workers at the time. They came equipped with a tiny little garage, which were sized just right for some guests Harley, no way anyone’s truck or SUV could even begin to fit. I wasn’t sure what Tom would think-the place could be viewed as either very charming or really run down. Again, the fact it is not a Styrofoam Motel 6 turned the whole thing into entertainment. It really helps that the proprietor, a biker guy whose wife ran the attached antique store, was exceedingly nice, obviously loved his quirky little business, and was just a downright character. Asked us how long we were staying, and told us that they sometimes have campfires and sit around singing songs with guitars with some of the residents who rent efficiencies there in the summer. And we figured all that out in about 5 minutes while he was showing us around. He initially had walked up to us while we were pointing and laughing at this bizarre messed up electrical situation on the outside of the office-there was basically romex and conduit chasing each other around complete circle, not attached to anything anymore. He used the opportunity to point out the 1930s heritage of the place and tell us the whole story of the Hoover dam workers. It was obvious of the plumbing was put in prior to any concerns about water conservation-it was the a most powerful shower I’ve had in a long time, Kinda like playing in the fire hydrant on a hot day. Anyway, it seems like the perfect place in the middle of nowhere to go spend a few weeks writing.

Well, the rest of the vacation was cut short. We got to Zion, got a campground, went on a great hike. I had a “recovery from Lyme” milestone, on the hike, when I realized that there’s no way I could’ve enjoyed it or even had the energy to do it three weeks earlier, especially obvious when we found ourselves running the last part of the trail Zion is a park, which means that you park outside the place, or get a campground, then write a free shuttle bus from one trailhead to another, with various amenities (this keeps thousands of idling cars out of the park, a very good thing in my opinion). It was a perfect place to go for me, as I’m still very unsure of my energy, and haven’t been able to go camping in two years. We had dinner at the kind of fancy lodge there- and Tom must have somehow picked up food poisoning. Climbing Angels Landing the next day was out of the question, when he unexpectedly started throwing up. He thought he’d be alright, went back to the campground to rest, and sent me on my way to do some of the other trails on my own. By the time I got back to camp three hours later, he’d been unable to keep water down, and was so dehydrated that he couldn’t even move his hands properly anymore from loss of electrolytes. I threw everything in the van and drove to a random town in southern Utah to drag him into the emergency room for rehydration via IV. I’ve never actually seen anyone turned quite that shade of green before.