MN Wedding

Dan and I are officially married.  

We missed the people who weren't able to be there, but we'll be married again soon. 

Mount Rose, Olympics

I recently learned that a classmate from Woodstock is in Seattle.  Actually he's based in Fort Lewis, which is a military base about 40 minutes south of Seattle. We met up for dinner one day and then, of course, planned a hike for the weekend.

We went to Mount Rose, which is part of the Olympic Mountain Range.  Its about 3.5 miles STRAIGHT UP (no kidding, there were no flat parts!) and then 3.5 miles straight down.  I didn't think it would be so bad because of the North Cascades hike Dan and I did the other weekend, but this time two soldiers and a triathlete accompanied me.  That is definitely not a recommended hiking group.  I was definitely the weakest link, huffing and puffing the whole way up while those guys seemed to just saunter up the mountain.

Begging people to stop midway. 

The view from the top.  

P.K (BG's friend, I don't know his full name), BG (or Bibek, a classmate from Woodstock), Me, Petrice (a Mayo grad school colleague)

And then back down.  That was hard on the knees!

Renewapoo

As they say, one man's trash is another man's treasure.  My good college friend, Marc, and I have a recent obsession with biochar, a stable form of carbon, converted from biological sources.  In our case, we are interested in the conversion of <ahem> "poo", specifically the sludge that exits the municipal waste water treatment plant.  The thinking is that the process of making charcoal from common waste streams might be a way to a) generate energy, b) produce a beneficial soil amendment, and c) provide a way to sequester carbon in the soil.  Right now, the going rate for biochar is between $100 and $1000 per ton.  In the fledgling carbon markets, a metric ton of CO2 will cost you between $10 and $30.

Earlier in the summer, we took a tour of the Rochester Water Reclamation plant for a firsthand look at how the city processes its sludge to get a better sense of how viable it might be to process into biochar. After that, I was so excited, I decided to try to make some biochar myself.  Luckily, YouTube is a goldmine of info for do-it-yourselfers, so I basically copied someone's homemade pyrolytic biochar reactor, in this case, a so-called "top-lit updraft" or TLUD, made from paint cans and stove pipe from the hardware store. 

Water reclamation plant

And the first batch of charred wood pellets

For the next burn, I dragged the stove to St. Paul to give it a try with Marc.  Here we are for round 2 on a windy afternoon, trying to keep the smoke stack from blowing over.

Marc, examining the result of our second batch, only partially-charred batch this time.

 Bits and pieces of our growing collection of chemistry equipment, i.e. discarded kitchen implements.

For round 3, I enlisted the help of Sarah's cats, Felix and Oscar, and charred a handful of their... well, you get the idea.  Here is the result, converted to perfectly sterile lumps of charcoal.