The Little Changes...

I had a new boss once that told me, "you sure do handle change well." The new boss had taken over from the old boss whom everyone liked and decided to change everything. At that particular point in my life I was only on my second career but in the cold hearted glare of global corporation strategies had actually worked for at least six different companies. I had seen a lot of Monday mornings where people came to work reinventing the wheel. 

I'm kind of like that new boss when I talk to people about wind power, solar power electric cars and so on. Most are not inclined to handle change all that well and see no reason to convert to some other way of doing things and don't think it will work. In the case of alternative energy they are kind of right in the fact that it won't really work completely as we need it to like it is now but that does not mean it will never work. On my recent drive around the country I spotted various evidence of folks making alternative energy sources work for them. 

Here's a sail boat I photographed from the ramparts of Castillo de San Marcos which were completed in 1695 overlooking Matanzas Bay in St. Augustine, Florida. As a good contrast of the old and the new note the wind power propeller at the stern of the boat. The camera shutter froze the fan but I promise you it was spinning it's little heart our generating those kilowatts.  

       

As I have been contemplating adding a portable solar suitcase to our RV there's a lot more to this than meets the eye. An appliance will have some info it the owners manual about how much power it draws and then there are equations on what kind of battery you need to collect, store and deliver the juice. As a tuba player I don't really have to know all this but I have a son that is an engineer and a couple of son in laws good at math that will tell me what I need.  

So what's this guy running? Maybe a coffee pot? A fan? Could be charging and running a laptop on which he does remote consulting work that pays $100 an hour. That would certainly be low overhead costs and go a long way on making that sailboat payment. 

Driving through sunny Florida we saw a couple of fields of these solar panels. Seemed quite large and with the sunny local weather it should do well but it does take up land and other nearby areas were crops and hay production. People and animals have to eat. Something to work out.        

At the Fort Pickens National Seashore Park the bathrooms which had all flush, hot water as well as washer and dryer convivences had a roof lined with solar panels. I don't know why I did not take a photo of this. Maybe I felt self conscious standing outside the bathrooms with a camera but I have never shied away from taking a photo of an outhouse before.     

A priest told once as I helped him set up a Christmas Manger scene, "don't put the donkey too close to the front, they will think you are a Democrat." I know what you are thinking. Old Mudbelly, he's an all warm fuzzy tree hugging if it's mellow let it yellow donkey down front kind of guy. On our cross country trip we spent $528.37 on gas. That's .22 cents a mile and the bikes on the rack saved us a few bucks in addition to contributing to some heart health traveling inside the parks where we stayed to see the sights.

That new boss changes things quick some times but I've seen evidence of slow change coming and it's happening now.