Over the years, in conversations about sports, I have always identified myself as a biker – a mountain biker. Not a particularly competitive specimen, I lack the colorful outfit and fancy bike, but I do enjoy very much taking my 17-year-old Simonelli bike on a challenging single-track out in the woods. We’re just a 10-Minute […]

Lots of stuff is brewing. I started a Mr Brew keg – 2 gallons of Märzen – I am very curious how that’s going to turn out. I also have 50 gallons of biodiesel settling in the basement. I am running low on methanol – need to make a run to the Roxboro Dragway for […]

After a few chilly days, temperatures were back to the 60s F (almost 20 °C) today, and so we went out to the Little River Park. Laura went for a run and when she got back I rode the bike trail. Jacob and Julia rode their bikes and played in the playground. I helped Jacob […]

Here are some more pictures from our weekend at the beach January 14/15! Sunday morning was gloriously warm and sunny; in the afternoon clouds rolled in, which made the light for our trip to Cape Lookout quite interesting.

Today, on the way home from work, the Jetta passed its 65,000 miles marker (and the airbag light came on). That means, it’s been running on mostly biodiesel for over 27,000 miles. :) Yippee!!

No -this is not Southern Florida or South Africa – this is Atlantic Beach, NC in January! Looking at the weather report for the Martin Luther King holiday weekend, our friend Susan decided to head out to her beach house for the weekend. When she asked if we wanted to come along … well, we […]

Last year had a couple of surprises for us, although most of these have yet to be completely realized: we found a new house, but we have yet to move there; we began planning our trip to Togo (and Ghana) for the upcoming July; and the Democrats won back the U.S. Congress. One of the […]

Busy, hot day today at the Eno Festival – but lots of fun! The festival was well attended and we had a constant stream of people with questions about biodiesel: “Can I use it in my car?” – “Where can I get it?” – “How is it made?” – What do you do with the […]

It’s spring and the wildlife in the woods is going – uh – wild! Chipmunks The cats are out hunting every day. They catch frogs, lizards, shrews, and chipmunks. Yesterday I saw Deha, the Siamese, in the driveway, hovering over what I thought was fresh kill. So I went to see what she got, and […]

Yet another cold front moved in today, and the temperature dropped 20 degrees Fahrenheit in one hour. This cold front spawned some severe thunderstorms and at one point a 15-Minute hailstorm that almost covered the ground with chick-pea-sized hail. I like the effect of the hail in the flashlight in the picture above. More pictures […]

Yesterday, I got a huge, 82 gallon used waterheater from a guy in Raleigh. This gray monster is going to be the cornerstone of my biodiesel homebrew operation, as I am planning to turn it into a appleseed reactor. I also have begun filling a 250 gallon storage tank with used fryer oil. I scored […]

Oh yeah, baby! Veg Power rules! Grease be with you!

Julia makes it all the way to the top of “The Rock” at yesterday’s Earth Day Celebration at Duke.

Last weekend my dad visited us and since we were doing a bit of sight-seeing, I figured a trip over to Chapel Hill would be fun. I had not visited my alma mater in a long time and this time of year the old campus at UNC is just gorgeous (despite a huge amount of […]

Don’t know exactly what’s come over us, but recently Laura and I have been listening to some of our records. You know, vinyl records, the black, 12-inch wide disks with grooves all over them. You put a needle on them and they produce a scratchy hiss with some music. You put one of those things […]

Last night we did our post-solstice ritual and torched our christmas tree. The tree was still way too green – we should have let it dry out more. Still, it was quite a firework ….

What a year: Nature terrorized humans with hurricanes, earthquakes and floods. Awareness rose of the threats of a global flu pandemic and global warming. Terrorists killed innocent people around the world. Human rights abuses, government secrecy and spying were uncovered in the U.S., in Europe and in many countries around the world. The new pope […]

We woke up this morning at 5:30 because Julia was not feeling well, and noticed the woods behind our house were burning. Across an area of about an acre (roughly a third of a hectare) the leaf litter on the ground was burning and the fire was rapidly spreading in a wide swath across the […]

I like my cars with a hitch. I have a small utility trailer that I use to haul garbage, furniture, cinder blocks, firewood, and other stuff that I don’t want inside the car or that does not fit inside the car. Over the years I found the trailer-car combo much more efficient than owning a […]

It’s a beautiful late summer day in North Carolina, gasoline costs $3.20 a gallon, and I reached a personal fitness milestone today, by biking 3 miles around the property in under 30 Minutes. Not that anyone rally cares, but that’s where I was at last Winter, when my bike broke (the free hub). It took […]