The Poverty Jet Set

Just took this photo on my lunch break. Strange how something so ugly can be so beautiful.

Arthur Magazine’s blog Magpie has been fantastic reading for the past few months. At least once a week I find something fascinating being delved into with reckless abandon. It’s fresh and interesting. I highly recommend you checking it out if the mystical, the psychedelic, the musical, the dreamy, the progressive political strike your fancy.

Today, they post about The Miss Rockaway Armada a group of self-made Mississippi River pirates floating downstream from end to end on a crazy raft made of recycled, reused and repurposed materials. Fun! Here’s a quote from the gang:

We want to create: to invent a new sustainable way to travel, to demonstrate different ways of living and moving that are friendlier to the environment and to each other, to indulge in that essential urge to make something out of nothing. We want to meet people: to learn from new folks along the way, to teach what we know, to share our art, our music and our performance, and to make new friends. Finally, for adventure: to reclaim and reinvent the old American urge to strike out and discover the vast, mysterious land we inhabit and see it for ourselves.

I love adventure, but I really love cool weirdo stuff like this. Living passionately is the only way to be!

One of my favorite film festivals in the world is MountainFilm (I’ve attended 7 of the last 8 years!). It’s more than just a film festival, it’s a celebration of the indomitable human spirit. In an era of post-terrorist cynicism, these folks bring together some truly positive thinkers and media makers.

They’ve really been on the move over there in Colorado, launching a great new blog and making a bunch of big announcements today, including announcing their new festival director, David Hollbrook (.pdf). Congrats, David!

The next festival is their 30th(!) and it’s happening May 23-26, 2008. Lord knows I’ll be there. I’m one of the lucky ones who gets to work tech up in the projection booth at the festival and shake hands with all the amazing people they invite to speak. I got to meet one of my heros last year, Paul Hawken, and chat it up for a good five minutes while we worked on setting up his program. But it’s really that kind of festival. Hang out, chill with awesome folks with big ideas, change the world. You know. Fun.

If you’re a filmmaker and you’ve got work you’d like to exhibit in Telluride, head over to their Call for Entries form. They’re looking and they’ve got a $10,000 prize purse! Also, they send their films on tour, so check and see if they’re coming to your town soon. Chances are they are.

Not that Audrey and I want to leave Philly any day soon (we love it here!), but this article in the New York Times (with accompanying video) makes me salivate.

Portland and I have a long, mythological relationship. I’ve only spent a grand total of sixteen or seventeen days there spread over four or five visits and passing-throughs. But it’s always lurked around my mind as one of the greatest cities in America, embodying so many ideals I want in a lifestyle. Biking, sustainability, art, music, proximity to wilderness. Oddly, even though I’ve gone on and on about “someday soon I’ll be moving to Portland” during the travel years of my twenties, I never have. And I wonder if I ever will. Once, in the fall of 2002, I even packed my car, ready to move, but somehow through a strange twist of fate, ended up in Philly for a year before moving back to Colorado.

Who knows. Maybe I’ll get my stint in Portland yet.

(photo by Seetwist)

Being that I am a big advocate of riding a bike to save gas, every now and then in our lovely suburbanized America, we can’t avoid using a car. (News flash: those of you think you’re saving the environment by driving a hybrid: you’re not.) Today, I got this email from my grandfather’s buddy in the oil and gas industry. Not sure if this is a spammy email forward making the rounds, or if he really actually knows this dude, but it sounds good.

Behold, a geek’s guide to saving gas (other than driving less!):

1. Fill up your car or truck in the morning when the temperature is still cool. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground; and the colder the ground, the denser the gasoline. When it gets warmer gasoline expands, so if you’re filling up in the afternoon or in the evening, what should be a gallon is not exactly a gallon. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and temperature of the fuel (gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products) are significant. Every truckload that we load is temperature-compensated so that the indicated gallon age is actually the amount pumped.

A one-degree rise in temperature is a big deal for businesses, but service stations don’t have temperature compensation at their pumps.

(more…)

Really, a bicycle is the vehicle of the gods, in my opinion. The most sustainable, healthy, and fun way to get around. In an age of Peak Oil, this is an awesome little way to show why biking rules. I just read about this great meme on the Nau blog: stickers, t-shirts and patches to show your love for your non-fuel consuming, human-powered vehicles. I had the idea for a sticker for the downtube of my bike: “Zero Emission Vehicle“, but I might just get one of these. Dig it. Go get yours and support the cause Zero Per Gallon website here.

And let me leave you with this lil’ poem from Jonny5, the purveyor of the project:

BIKING KICKS ASS
• Biking is fun. Biking is fast.
• Biking is quiet. Biking is cool.
• Biking is healthy. Biking is simple.
• Biking costs less for us.
• Biking costs less for our cities.
• Biking costs less for the planet.
• Go ride a bike. And spread the word.

Behold, glacier wave surfing. Oh yeah, it’s exactly as you imagine. DeepwaterFilms gets heavy into it as world champion big wave surfers, Garrett McNamara and Kealii Mamala ride into a monster tsunami created by Child’s Glacier in South-Central Alaska.

I’ve seen these glaciers up close while I was adventure guiding in Alaska and I can tell you, surfing like this is completely insane. But totally awesome. Speaking of Alaskan surfing adventures, have you ever seen someone surf the tidal bore on the Turnagain Arm? I have. It’s also awesome. Nothing cooler than a ten-mile tidal wave.

Ride ‘em while you can, folks. We’ll be out of glaciers in a few years.

Hat tip to Vagabondish.

I’m a huge fan of Edward Abbey, of course, but particularly his book Desert Solitaire. In it, Abbey vehemently laments new construction of roads into Arches National Park in Utah while he was a Park Ranger. An outspoken advocate of keeping wilderness wild, Abbey hated watching the wilds over run by exhaust- and filth-spewing machines (see quote below).

This is a really shocking map graphic (click image to enlarge) from the U.S. Geological Survey showing how little of America remains truly wild - and roadless. It makes me very, very sad, and I’m sure Abbey is rolling in his grave. I’d tell you to go to the wilds now before they disappear, but I suppose that’d be advocating the very act that destroys wilderness. If you do go, remember to Leave No Trace! And maybe walk or bike there.

Just don’t be one of the “fat pink slobs who go roaring over the landscape in these over-sized over-priced over-advertised mechanical mastodons are people too lazy to walk, too ignorant to saddle a horse, too cheap and clumsy to paddle a canoe.” (Ed Abbey)

Thanks, Adventure Blog for pointing this out.

Since I recently blogged about my sister Rebecca and mentioned her eco-friendly, fairly traded maternity clothing line, Schone Maternity, I called her to see how she was doing. Things were not looking good. She was overloaded with work being a one-woman operation, fearing the debt her business was racking up, and stressed out about screwed up orders from her factories. It ain’t easy running your own business, that’s for sure.

But then this morning, she sent out a wonderful email that I just had to share and write about! First of all, her line is being featured in next month’s O (for Oprah) Magazine! WoWza! Check page 170 in the upcoming October issue! And see photos above - the new photos from her Spring ‘08 line. Hot!

And then she got some uplifting encouragement from one of her clients. She says, “I met a customer (buyer for a store in Hawaii) yesterday who actually hunted me down- she only visited the showroom because she wanted to find my line! She asked me when I’m going to start a regular fit line because as she said, ‘obviously you’ve got natural style, I’m sure any line you do would be amazing.’ Nice to hear, I need a little ego boost every once in a while ”

Sometimes, when things look so hard and futile, those little nuggets of encouragement make all the difference. My sappy note for the day: go out encourage someone you know. They’ll appreciate it.

If you fancy the ‘humanity as virus’ theory propagated in pop-culture by the likes of The Matrix and 12 Monkeys, I’m sure you’ll be sweet on this new book: The World Without Us.

What will our world look like if we disappear in an instant? How long will it take to wipe our mark from the planet? Not long, it turns out. It’s a fascinating look into the fragilities of human-made creations and systems. But also a great reminder that, heck, environmentalism is a human-focused pursuit. The Earth is gonna do fine without us. I like that thought. Frees me from the shackles of recycling anxiety, if nothing else.

(thanks for pointing this out, Audrey!)

Technorati Tags: experiment, books, worldwithoutus, environment, sustainability

This one’s for your, Erich! What an amazing space. I am definitely going to build one of these in the near future. By hand.

[thanks BoingBoing]

Technorati Tags: sustainability, city life, strawbale, boingboing, diy, freedom, housing, howto, art, offthegrid

Don’t get me wrong, I read the damn thing every single day, clicking on over in between work jams to check up on what the world is talking about (can we even call it ‘news’ anymore? or was ‘news’ always only what people were talking about?).

So today, they have this article that goes on and on about how antlers in fashion and design are the next big thing. God, this is a stupid article. They get various annoying New York designers and fashionistas to chime in and give their two cents on the symbolic nature of antlery and what it means about society at large. If that weren’t enough piss you off, because who can stand New York art elite telling us what’s hip in the first place? most of the people equate the trend to an off-shoot of the eco-chic groundswell.

Nature — or the appearance of embracing nature — is chic these days. Judging by the direction of fashion and home décor and of-the-moment restaurants and shops, you might mistake Manhattan for Montana.

Are you serious? Isn’t it obvious that dead megafauna hanging from the walls is more anti-eco than anything? And let me tell you, most New Yorkers do NOT know anything about Montana outside of Big Sky. If you’ve spent any time in a ski town like Telluride, for example, where I lived for four years, you’d see that antlers are exactly what megarich ski mansions THINK the West is about. Cutting down massive trees in old-growth forests, then bulldozing a few acres for their 15,000ft trophy homes they only come to for two weeks of the year and hanging a ‘cute‘ antler chandalier. So eco, baby! So rustic, Bob!

Okay, and for the record, the trendy antler thing, well, my best friend Norm started it all on Halloween of 2002 when he wore a 15-pointer on his friggin’ chest to a party. People were FREAKED OUT. They’d be giving him high-fives today cuz he’d be the hippest dude there. But, see, we’re past all that silliness. The only antlers you’ll see near us is on a can of good old workin’ class Schmidt’s Beer (so workingin’ class, they ain’t even got a web site!).

Technorati Tags: antlers, trends, fashion, sustainability, funny, schmidtsbeer, NYTimes, povertyjetset, philosophy

I just read an incredibly interesting article about the revolutionary thinker Stewart Brand in the NY Times. It talks about his new ideas on the environmental movement, a group he divides in two: the romantics and the scientists.

Mr. Brand predicts that his heresies will become accepted in the next decade as the scientific minority in the environmental movement persuades the romantic majority. He still considers himself a member of both factions, just as in the days of the Merry Pranksters, but he’s been shifting toward the minority.

“My trend has been toward more rational and less romantic as the decades go by,” he says. “I keep seeing the harm done by religious romanticism, the terrible conservatism of romanticism, the ingrained pessimism of romanticism. It builds in a certain immunity to the scientific frame of mind.”

I find the idea really interesting. It’s been a nagging sensation in me for a while now, this idea that eating organic and drinking filtered water won’t save the planet. I mean, it’s obvious, but we do it anyway. But I love what he says, too, about energy, for example. I find myself on the brink of this very same thinking…

“It is one of the great revelatory bets,” he now says. “Any time that people are forced to acknowledge publicly that they’re wrong, it’s really good for the commonwealth. I love to be busted for apocalyptic proclamations that turned out to be 180 degrees wrong. In 1973 I thought the energy crisis was so intolerable that we’d have police on the streets by Christmas. The times I’ve been wrong is when I assume there’s a brittleness in a complex system that turns out to be way more resilient than I thought.”

I guess we’ll just have to do our best. Wait and see. And try not to be overly romantic about organic mineral water from Fiji.

I’m still dreaming of building an off-the-grid cob house on a mesa in the desert, though. No one can convince me that I can’t ward off the apocalypse on my own!

Technorati Tags: stewartbrand, endoftheworld, environment, povertyjetset, sustainability, idea, apocalypse, psychedelic, 60s

Man, am I psyched to be home! After a short stay in Salt Lake City with Audrey’s parents, it’s good to be breathing clean, fresh, Philly air!

Check it out:

This is the air pollution hanging over the Salt Lake Valley right now. It is literally the worst air pollution I have ever experienced. And that includes places I’ve been that are considered the to have the worst air pollution in the world: Mexico City, Los Angeles, Bangkok.

They say it’s an “inversion“. Because it’s surrounded by mountains, similar to LA, the cold air sinks and traps air from rising up and out and thereby preventing it from ‘cleansing’ itself (or more appropriately, sending the pollution into the wilds).

The inversion is like a orange, black and grey blanket over the city. Literally, it blocks your view after half a mile. No kidding. It is disgusting. The whole place is wallowing in it’s own shit. And that’s no exageration! Sure is sad.

I’ve met a couple long-distance bicyclists in my day. An interesting lot, to be sure. I’ve always day dreamed about biking across America (Paul, are you reading this?). Just for kicks.

One time, I had a conversation with this guy Dieter, the owner of a youth hostel in Dawson City, Yukon Territory that I was staying at. Dieter had this world map on his office wall with a thin, black line snaking its way up and down the continents of the earth, ending in that far, far corner of Western Canada. I asked him is those were his travels. “Yep,” he said. “My travels on my bike.”

If you ever find yourself in Dawson City, go say hello to him and stay at his hand-made youth hostel. It’s one of the finest hostels I’ve ever been to. Complete with Yukon-style “showers”, log cabins and super excellent international vibe. Not to mention near 24-hour daylight in the summer. You’d have to be pretty hardy to get up there in winter. Tends to be like 30-below most of the time.

Here’s a photo of Dieter, lookin’ fabulous in 1980 in the mountains of Columbia:

But I’m getting side-tracked. What was I was going to post about was another intrepid traveler, Tim Harvey. I was just reading about Tim, who just completed an entirely human-powered expedition to circumnavigate the planet that took him over two years. So awesome. That’s a photo of Tim at the top of the post. I wanted to share Tim’s story with you because this morning I saw a really inspiring interview with him during his last days on his trek. Unfortunately, I can’t embed the video, but you should really have a look. Click this link to watch it. Super, super stuff.

Technorati Tags: heros, concept, freedom, bikes, environment, inspiration, povertyjetset, travel, biking, adventure, escape, nomad, dawsoncity, timharvey, canada, video, radical

My good friend Greg Babush recently posted a great ode to his choza, a crazy little shack near Telluride, Colorado that he’s lived in on and off for the last few years. I love the story and his photos. Reminds me of the times I’ve been up there and hung out, down that sketchy little path along the insanely steep embankment, feeling all Kerouac-in-the-firetower-esque.

Jeff and Ursula, my friends who own the property, have a totally off-the-grid home, too. The choza is on their land. They’re truly Poverty Jet Setters themselves, having just taken a couple-month trek to Central Asia just this past year. Good people.

Have a look.

Technorati Tags: adventure, choza, community, concept, housing, offthegrid, povertyjetset, sustainability, telluride

Treehugger just posted a great diagram today detailing a hypothetical instant disappearance of all humans on earth. It’s really amazing, have a look:

Technorati Tags: apocalypse, endoftheworld, environment, magdalenus, povertyjetset, people, sustainability

This is what I’m thinking:

[From Treehugger]

Technorati Tags: magdalenus, droppingout, povertyjetset, architecture, design, endoftheworld, offthegrid

Now that motorcycles are becoming cheaper and easier to aquire than horses, nomadic peoples of the high plains of western China and Tibet are looking a whole lot more sci-fi than lo-fi. I’d love to go hang with these fellas sometime soon. They look like they got it together. [Link.]

Technorati Tags: china, mobility, tibet, povertyjetset, nomad, motorcycles

It doesn’t get better than this, folks:

Technorati Tags: produce, freeganism, creative, povertyjetset, freeganism, sustainability, trends, supermarket, wisdom, waste