Diary of a Mad Scientist

I handed off the Nice Van for some routine maintenance belt replacements to my friend Bill, who’s been working on my vehicles for the past year while I didnt’ have a functioning right hand. Everything went smoothly and he had the belts and squeaky pulley replaced in a few days in his off time from his regular mechanic job.

Until… some old lady coming out of the Buddhist temple across the street backed into the open door while Bill was hanging out of the vehicle, and came close to ripping Bill in half. Not to mention that my pretty van’s drivers’ side door is now destroyed.

arghhh……….

I had a fantastic class with the beginners’ section of the Boot Camp I’m doing this week. We had a small group (unlike the damn advanced class which is completely filled to the gills) .

The beginners’ class actually had a decent ratio of women to men- something like 1/3 of the class were women. Usually the ratio is something like 1 woman to 29 men, or 0:30, or something equally bad. The equipment section of the class was pretty much dominated (in a good way) by a woman with multiple sclerosis who used to be a plumber and directed the proceedings with skill.

There were also a pile of guys from the Alternative Fuels class at Santa Rosa Junior College- I’ve met their teacher, Mark Armstrong, in the distant past, and he regaled us with stories about bad fuel of all types, rescues of people with Bay Area Biofuels goo stuck on their fuel filters, and assorted other technical fun and games. Another woman in the class used to be one of the BABF customers, and didn’t have any problems on the same crappy fuel, which meant that we got to really delve into what can or can’t (probably) happen with quality/offspec fuel and your vehicle, which is a major interest of mine these days. It was great having several people who’d experienced this stuff first-hand to illustrate the points I was trying to make.

We had a Fuelmeister owner who in some ways was right down there with the total beginners (scary) since the FM folks sell you such an atrocious understanding of the science of biodiesel along with their overpriced piece of crap machine. We set him straight.

We had a friend of Anton’s- Anton Berteaux is a moderator of our local NorCal biodiesel list, Burnveggies, and he’s a total caveman as far as his biodiesel production technique, doing things that he learned ‘from the bad old days’. He’s the infamous ‘dangle a heating element wired to a cut-off extension cord’ method of heating oil, works with an open reactor, etc. When we discussed this in class (anton’s friend knew better than to do these things of course) Anton became some what of the butt of the safety jokes. Sorry, friend Anton.

I got another sample of Bay Area Biofuels goo dregs for my offspec fuel project- the stuff is cloudy and has white things floating in it. I was really excited to meet a woman from Marin who’s organizing a couple of interesting eco events I’d like to present/table at- I usually don’t get excited about Earth Day type events, or music-festivals-with-informational-tabling anymore, but she’s got a really unique new perspective on organizing events that fits into my vision of useful Skillshares and so forth.

Changes:

This week is a rush of elation and feelings of change. I just got done with a semi-revision of the book last week, which has been consuming all of my remaining brainpower for the past two months. I’m caught up on many of the most pressing backlogged emails. I’d been organizing this beekeeping gettogether and it happened successfully last week, so that’s not on my plate anymore either. It’s weird not having to work on the computer all of a sudden. All of this coincides with the end of the weird mercury chelation backfire and of my getting my energy back.

Exiting the world of Book Editing coincided with another change that compounds the feeling that I’ve rejoined the Outside World and am no longer focused only on things at my desk and inside my house - The Boyfriend took off for Africa for a few weeks (for work) on the day I got done with The Book, which sharply delineated the cut-off point between my ‘month off’ at home in January, and the start of a whole new life of actually getting outside the house this week, having to see other people in order to feel social, etc. I

was just mentally climbing out of my computer when he was starting to mentally climb into his suitcases for the trip- I suddenly had free time and he was slave to the schedule all of a sudden. And I’ve had this feeling that I’m back in the physical world after my Book Editing Hell experience, and I barely remember how to function in the real world now.

Down the street, two of the Biofuel Oasis ladies are having their own Intensive Course (a class on how to start a biodiesel filling station). We talked quite a bit before their class, when I was starting prep for Mark’s Week In Hell. It’s a weird comforting feeling that this teaching thing, and the organizing stress of it, is going on elsewhere in my neighborhood at the same time. It’s an antidote to that feeling of not having enough peers that I sometimes experience.

Today was recovery day- man, do I love to sleep in my amazingly comfy bed and boy am I in love with white down comforters and whomever invented them. Tonight began what’s known as Mark’s Week In Hell- I have a huge amount of prep to do for the advanced class this weekend, as folks are coming from way out of town for it. I have a large stack of new lab equipment to get running, and a bunch of welding up of things to do before the weekend.

I’m going to do some major work on the processor trailer- there’s room to get it into the shop this week, so I’m painting and re-decking it in time for the class. It rotted pretty heavily on the Rustbucket Tour of 2004. I’ve got some major replumbing of a system to do for the latest and greatest Appleseed system.

Since I’ve been sick and inured for the past year (luckily the hand injury finally went away), I’ve really ‘lost it’ as far as basic strength and stamina goes, which really affects things when it comes to working in the shop. I’ve never, ever experienced strength inadequacies before.

It gets tiring to go move things around or unload my truck after class. My muscles have simply atrophied in the past couple of years, I gained a lot of weight, and for the past year I haven’t done much welding or muscling around of heavy stuff. I can’t do pull-ups anymore at all, which is really alarming as I’ve always thought of myself as very athletic.

I used to say, when people asked me how I as a fairly small woman can do construction, that “I’ve never met a board I couldn’t lift"- as there’s nothing in renovation carpentry that requires huge muscles. It’s really disturbing to suddenly encounter a world I can’t lift. I am finally feeling well enough to go to the gym again- my motivation has certainly returned as I’ve been feeling better the last week or so.

I’ve got visitors this week/weekend- Specnaz is coming from out of town as are several other biodieselers I know from the conferences or from my travels.

I’m trying to find housing for someone coming to the Advanced Class, we’re trying to talk Graydon Blair into coming to town for part of the Advanced Class as he’s in California briefly, I’m writing up a proposal for farm plant stuff, trying to wrangle the dates of my spring tour. I’m trying to keep up with some of my old friends whom I’ve been neglecting- my best friend is heading to Palestine with his ex-South African girlfriend, to start shooting a documentary about Israeli apartheid, and we had to catch up before they take off for the impending war zone in the region.

Somewhere in the midst of this I’m supposed to move- our house is on the market, will probably sell while I"m out of town, and Jennifer Radtke and her roommate/landlord asked me to move in to their mini-urban-ranch near my shop.

After the class on Sunday I hung out with one of the Oasis ladies and tried to convince her to come work on her homebrew processor at my shop while I work on the trailer, then made my way to a hot tub party thrown by people I don’t know- I’m on Tribe, a social networking site- think Myspace but for freaks/hippies/Burning Man folks- and the monthly hot tub soak party is kind of a tradition that networks through that site. Climbing into a super-deep hot tub full of warm water and interesting chatty strangers was a great way to get biodiesel off my mind right after the class.

There were some serious talkers at the party and I used my super ninja warrior mind skills to get them to talk about themselves so much that no one asked me what I do for a living. It’s not like I was being a wallflower- I gave quite a good impression of being a funny, outgoing person- but I managed to change the subject every time people started asking me about myself. Its a successful social evening when biodiesel never comes up. Jennifer Radtke would be so jealous if she knew what I just did.

I think I’m really good at becoming invisible when there’s a talker around and I, for some reason, don’t want to talk about biodiesel. Evasion maneuvers. Tom was amazed once when he witnessed a long conversation where a guy kept trying to ask me about myself and my motivation and my projects, and I kept redirecting the conversation. The guy with all the biodiesel questions for me would get out on tangents talking all about HIS own interests in biodiesel- and I managed to duck out of all of his questions about what it is that I do in it just by redirecting the conversation to him. Psychology is fun).

I got home and wrote more proposal, and more class advertising, and, and, and… It’s insane how much I did in the past 24 hours. My to-do list is just as varied as my to-done list this week.

I wrote about this already, but the mercury removal process and it was a resounding disaster and the doctor yanked me off of it with a late-night phone call after reading an email I sent about what was happening. Glad I"m doing this under a doctor’s supervision.

I wasn’t doing anything particularly unusual or ‘woo’- just standard chelation drugs that are used when somebody has high metals in their body due to industrial exposure.

Anyway, the process completely floored me- I was barely awake for about four days while taking the drug, then took 10 days or more to even remotely recover my half-normal energy.

I’m starting to wonder whether my really serious Lyme crash at the beginning of January was actually due to Lyme disease or whether it was a reaction to the heavy metals test that I got done right then- here’s a somewhat hysteria laden website that discusses the crash and the same drug that was used in my test (I wasn’t actually chelating with DMPS). I’m back to normal, just in time for the insane classes I’m doing in the next two weekends. I’m looking forward to getting out of the house!

The doctor pulled me off the chelation stuff and I’m back to a holding pattern of “repairing my metabolism” and trying a bunch of other natural things in the hopes that it will go smoother next time. I’m probably not do take another chance on it until I have some more free time to “check out” for a week.

It’s fairly common for people with Lyme disease to have high mercury toxicity, and supposedly there is evidence that the Lyme bacterium sequesters mercury as part of its immune-suppression strategy. I haven’t actually read any studies that support this, but it’s a common observation by people who treat Lyme and other chronic illnesses. Either we get extra sick with the Lyme as a result of having this toxicity to begin with, or the Lyme suppresses our ability to normally eliminate toxic metals.

Either way, I know exactly where the stuff came from. Drat! I absolutely love sushi, and for the past few years have eaten and made a lot of it, including the supposedly dangerous tuna. In fact, it’s been a great comfort food at times when I’ve been really ill in the last years-my last two boyfriends both made sushi quite frequently and I’ve woken up out of a Lyme fog quite a number of times to someone bringing me some lovingly prepared methylmercury sushi to bed. Goddammit that society’s poisoned the damn fish!

I am conducting a research project on biodiesel quality and am seeking samples of any poor quality or offspec biodiesel that is known to have caused vehicle problems, along with a short email interview in which I will ask some details about what kind of vehicle trouble you experienced with this fuel.

The fuel can be commercial or homemade, although I am especially interested in poor quality commercial biodiesel, because one shipment is likely to have caused problems for multiple users, and multiple instances of mechanical trouble caused by one batch of fuel may make it easier to find the exact cause of the problem. If you have purchased commercial fuel that caused problems and can help identify other customers in your area who purchased the same ‘bad’ fuel I would like to interview them as well for this project.

If you did not keep a sample of your fuel but experienced problems that may be due to quality, I am interested in any information you have about how the fuel behaved, what problems it caused, and how you deduced that the problems were caused by bad fuel.

In the past year a National Renewable Energy Laboratories study on commercial biodiesel found that a large percentage of the fuel sampled did not meet ASTM specifications for biodiesel quality, and in the past two years there have been several high-profile cases of fleets who recieved offspec or contaminated biodiesel and experienced fuel system or engine problems.

Quality control is still poorly enforced in this rapidly-growing industry and in the past year some interesting research has come to light about the exact mechanisms by which offspec fuel can cause trouble. Some of these theories are still speculative and I am interested in real-world examples of fuel system or engine trouble along with actual samples of bad fuel, so as to compare different forms of contamination.

The results of this survey and any data from fuel samples collected will be published on the Web this summer.

Please forward this announcement to anyone who might have info for the study.

Please contact me via email at alovert@b100.org

Localizing Biodiesel: A Biodiesel Co-ops Conference
July 13-15, 2007
Colorado School of Mines
Golden, CO
www.b100.org

The second Biodiesel Co-ops Conference is slowly taking shape. We’re expanding to three full days- Friday morning through Sunday night, July 13-15.

We’re working on some other infrastructure arrangements to make it easier for people to attend.

For updated information, such as announcements when registration opens, please sign up for our low-volume email announcements list at www.groups.yahoo.com/group/biodieselconference

If you would like to help organize the event please sign up at our organizers’ list at www.groups.yahoo.com/group/coopconference

More information will be at our website soon: http://www.b100.org

This is a technical conference for volunteer/advocacy groups, small-scale producers, farmers, ‘homebrew’ producers, and educators, and a strategy conference for other local-scale biodiesel advocates. The event presents biodiesel groups and co-ops from a ‘case studies’ perspective, telling in their own words the real-world challenges that biodiesel advocates have faced. The technical side of the event includes detailed discussion of topics such as quality control, organizing volunteers, setting goals for volunteer groups, methanol recovery, funding sources for educational groups, safety in production, side streams disposal, and equipment design.

Attendees are encouraged to learn how to make biodiesel at the event- we run ‘remedial biodiesel’ test-batch classes in the lab, where you can get your hands on the actual process, and some attendees are bringing process equipment to display. We build in a lot of ‘down time’ for mingling and conversations, so as to provide experienced biodiesel producers and advocates with time for off-line networking. Meals and dorm rooms are available, with the tourist downtown of Golden and some hiking trails just blocks away from the conference site. There is a networking party on-site on Saturday night.

Some of the presentations from last year’s conference are located at
http://www.b100.org/presentations
some photos of the event are located here: utahbiodieselsupply.com

Conference presentation themes (or ‘tracks’) will include:

Case Studies
Distribution
Education & Advocacy Groups
Homebrewing Biodiesel & The Law
Biodiesel Feedstocks

Strategies For Community-based Biodiesel Groups:

In recent years, biodiesel has become an attractive option for individuals seeking a renewable alternative to petroleum. However, what many see as a fuel with great potential for imminent development continues to elude many American consumers. The greater biodiesel industry targets fleet customers rather than passenger car drivers, or focuses on selling low-level blends of biodiesel in petro-diesel fuel rather than pure biodiesel (B100).

Often, would-be users of B100 have no choice other than to take matters into their own hands at the neighborhood level; organizing as cooperatives, small businesses, nonprofit organizations, or simply hobbyist clubs. Although a decentralized, cooperative model of fuel distribution is an exciting prospect for many people, actually making it work in today’s economy has proved difficult.

Learn what different groups are doing to bring biodiesel to their communities and how they have overcome some of the challenges faced. This conference presents speakers from many different types of biodiesel groups and small biodiesel businesses. Sessions will be question-and-answer and discussion-based, covering the nitty-gritty details of how these groups have operated from both a technical, equipment, and organizational standpoint.

In panel discussions, we will present ‘case studies’ from many different types of biofuels groups, including in-depth analyses of the strategies they used, some of which that have been successful, others of which may have struggled, failed, and evolved.

This is an exciting opportunity to learn about the ‘grassroots’ biodiesel movement in the US, and how you can get involved in developing a successful cooperative biodiesel movement in your own community!

The conference will include optional dormatory housing and on-campus meals, and we will strive to set a low cost for the registration fee.

We hope to see you at the event or on the organizing committee,

Maria ‘Mark’ Alovert
Graydon Blair
John Bush
Jon Meuser

In other news, we’ve been making progress on the 2007 Biodiesel Co-ops Conference. I’m writing up some literature/website updates for it, and remembering how INTENSELY fun and fantastically useful it was. It’ll be even better this year since we’re holding it at the same place, and know our way around the college organization now, and have a better vision of how the event should run. Our core committee worked very well together and we’re starting to conference-call, group-email, figure out structure and vision and all that jazz. I love getting a nice long head start on things like this.

For the past month I’ve been working my butt off trying to update parts of my book that are sorely out of date. Homebrewing technology has gotten much more efficient in the last few years, and I haven’t done a major update in a long time other than correcting some numbers now and again without running a ‘new edition’. I have articles in the last edition that are from 2002 or earlier.

Writing is like pulling teeth sometimes. I’m absolutely amazed at how long it takes to phrase something on paper compared to explaining it in front of a class. For instance, it’s 4:30 in the morning right now- I’ve been up all night, having slept all day- and I have just spent two hours on an overview of washing, a subject that I usually cover in class in about 30 minutes. I guess a small amount of hand waving and terrible sketches with whiteboard marker actually goes a long way. I think I would have been a good Italian, judging by how much I rely on talking with my hands.

In other news, the damn thing is just about done. I thought I was done a few days ago, but the absence of updated washing and drying started glared at me when I started layout. I think I’ll be done with it tonight, that is, if the latte I just made, at 4:30 in the morning, does right by me. On the one hand, I hate the editing marathon that’s part of this process. On the other hand, I feel such as sense of accomplishment every time the damn thing’s done. I’ve gotten so little ‘accomplished’ lately while dealing with Health that this should boost my sense of self-worth a bit.

In the past month, everything has been constantly interrupted by my health battle- I have been quietly raging, feeling like I’m watching the world pass me by. I was supposed to be building things, sewing things, wiring things, building up a new bicycle, and otherwise enjoying being home, but it’s all been shelved by the damn Lyme bugs for the past month.

As I’ve said multiple times this month in the blog, I started out in late December with a major Lyme crash, spent about 10 days crawling through hell clutching my pills, trying to get better, was in fantastic shape for about 2 1/2 weeks. I felt so great that I went out dancing with Jennifer Radke last weekend- this initiated a major setback for a few days. I recovered from that mini-crash just in time to experience a whole new level of Hell with mercury chelation. I lost a few days this week not being able to get out of bed, because I’ve finally started the drugs to get mercury out of my system. It’s kicked my ass- I literally have been so tired that I’ve been unable to focus on reading for more than five minutes without slipping into sleep. Then I slip off into sleep and get soaked in sweat- that’s a good thing while detoxing, but I don’t have the energy to walk 1/2 a mile to the gym and do the sweating in the sauna.

Luckily, falling asleep is at least easy, since I don’t really get out of bed in the first place. I’d hate to imagine what this is like for someone who still has a job or kids to take care of!

The metals chelation program also means that I have to eat weird-extremely low-fat diet for a few days, eat a lot of raw foods, and take other supplements for the detox process constantly. I had no idea I could get such bad cravings for avocado and eggs-me and low-fat really don’t get along. Good thing I’m not awake very much to experience this or to watch The Boyfriend eat normal food. He brings me food with the thinnest, homeopathic slivers of avocado on it and I pitch a mock fit like a cranky 4-year old (with the sailor’s mouth of a Girl Mark).

Luckily, me having a class in Houston coincided with the ‘feeling great’ phase of things, and I think I have a pretty good handle on how to continue the improvement (the mercury detox is once every two weeks for a few months, oh how fun- I hope it gets easier than this!).

One major positive note is that I was in a lot of pain for about a month, which in the last week has gone away COMPLETELY with the use of herbs. I’m just about at my wits’ end with boredom, too- , what I really need right now is a social life, so that I can think about something other than biodiesel, my book, and my immune system, but my energy level is so bad that I can’t really go out and have a social life.