2022 Waukee North Track Meet

Waukee Northwest was supposed to be Caleb's 5th track meet but due to our lovely Spring weather (aka, late Winter 2.1) it only qualifies as his second.  The high temp while we were there was 48F degrees, with a stiff breeze and occasional rainfall.  It was delightful!

No matter, the lad only runs in two races as they have a large team and it is what it is.  Thankfully, his races are right in the middle of the meet, separated by only one race.  That is quite handy for days like this one where I was froze to the bone by the time we left.

This coming Saturday, May 7th is the state tournament and we're hoping for a sunny day with little wind.  The temp can be whatever as long as those first two qualifiers are met!  lol   

Like I have any say...   on to pictures from Waukee NW.

That's the lad in the middle of the picture in the yellow shirt with black shorts.  He's getting ready for his first race, a relay, after standing/sitting around for the previous hour.

He's in position 2, with Lucas starting things off and handing the baton to Caleb.  That's Caleb hitting the straightaway in the lead.

That's a better shot of the difference between 1st & 2nd place.

Now, I'm not sure what happened but (and I know it's nearly impossible to see!) the SEP (Caleb's team) is about to run out of the left side of the pic and the 2nd place lad is just running into the right side of the pic.

A little better evidence of the distance...  That's Caleb's teammate on the right side with the 2nd place lad not out of the corner yet.

They won that race by just shy of 13 seconds.

The second relay didn't quite go as swimmingly.  That's Caleb in 3rd place.

The 4th dude on his team closed the gap a bit but SEP (that's Southeast Polk, in the event anyone is wondering) finished 3rd in his second race.

 Overall,  SEP won the meet with a total of 135 points with Waukee NW coming in 2nd with 118 points.

Hopefully we have a good state tourney on Saturday and I'll post more pics at that time.

Net Zero - Life Without "Fossil Fuels"

With all of the talk about America and the rest of the world being net-zero in so-called fossil fuel emissions by some arbitrary date pulled out of one's nether regions, my mind has been going there a LOT and, as such, I thought that I would take a peek at what the world would look like at net zero after we've been "weened" off of the lucrative petroleum teat. 

And by the way, I'm not covering Natural Gas or Nuclear here, as my belief is once we would be dumb enough to leave the oil in the ground, everything else is pointless to our way of life.  So if we have no petroleum, we're going to need a LOT of batteries for the so-called "renewables".  

First things first, let's talk about the cobalt used for the lithium ion batteries used in our cellphones, electric vehicle batteries and the big Tesla battery banks and Powerwall systems that they've been placing about (as well as hundreds of other items).

The Democratic Replublic of Congo is estimated to hold ~70% of the Earth's cobalt deposits.  The mining of those deposits are divided into two segments, industrial (large scale) and artisanal (small scale).  Industrial mining in the DRC has oversight and regulations, artisanal does not.  As such, the small scale mining companies employ anyone they can find, including kids starting at 6 years old.

Lets see some quick picks to get your heart and mind straight about this:

In some of the mines,  they have to send in the smaller kids as the larger kids and adults cannot fit thru the narrow passages.

Looks like a bunch of fun doesn't it!?  For their efforts, the kids will make ~one to two dollars a day.  But that is significant enough wealth for them and their families to risk their lives.  They might get to eat when they get back home that night.

At the end of 2021, there were an estimated 10 - 11 million electric vehicles on the roads worldwide, not including scooters/mopeds/etc.  Estimates are all over the place for how many will occupy the worlds roadways by 2040; from 66 million to 230 million!!

At 66 million, cobalt extraction will need to increase by over 500% to cover the batteries for the vehicles alone, save for a very nice increase in efficiency.

Here's the funny, but definitely NOT funny part about all of this.

If we truly were to go net zero, leaving all of the petroleum in the ground, we're not going to have cars anyway, so who gives a rats back side if we have an all electric economy/fleet or not?!?  

Take a look at a list I put together with the help of the interwebs.  I tried to remove some of the nonsense items, combine several similar items and so on.  There will likely be some things that people will pick nits with, and that's fine.  

Here's some of the things that we will no longer produce without petroleum:

Adhesives

Ammonia

Anesthetics

Antifreeze (probably not much of a need for it without petroleum)

Antihistamines

Antiseptics

Artificial limbs

Artificial Turf

Aspirin

Awnings

Balloons

Ballpoint Pens

Balls - Golf / Football / Baseball / Soccer / Bball / etc…

Bandages

Beach - umbrellas / chairs / toys / balls / sandals

Bearing Grease

Boats

Cameras

Candles

Carpet

Cars - screw EV's, you won't be able to manufacture them!

Caulking

Cellphones

Clothing (as most of us know it!) / Clothesline

Computers - laptops/ PC's/ tablets/ military???

Cortisone

Crayons

Credit cards (Crypto? Remember, no cellphones & likely no job)

Dentures & Denture Adhesive

Deodorant

Detergents

Dice

Diesel Motor Oil (won't matter without tires…)

Disposable diapers

Dyes

Electric Blankets

Electrician's Tape

Enamel

Eyeglasses /  Soft Contact lenses

Fan Belts

Faucet Washers

Fertilizers

Fishing - Boots / lures / rods / fiberglass boats

Floor Wax

Food Preservatives (Shipping is tough, so who needs'em! You're growing your own.)

Footballs / Cleats / Helmets

Garden hose

Gasoline

Glycerin

Golf - Bags / Balls / Carts / Shoes

Hair - Coloring / Curlers / Dryers / Dyes / brushes / combs

Hand Lotion

Heart Valves

House - Paint/Roofing/most flooring/ appliances/ windows/  concrete/dishes/ and on & on & on!

Ice Cube Trays & the appliance to put them in

Ink

Insect Repellent & Insecticides

Insulation

Life Jackets

Linings

Luggage (can't go anywhere, so who needs it, right?)

Medical - shut it down! Imagine the hospital / doc's office      without plastics!!!

Milk jugs (wouldn't matter as it would be tough to get milk  to market…)

Model Cars (no adhesive anyways…)

Motorcycle helmets (wouldn't matter, no cycles to ride…)

Movie film

Music - CD's/ Vinyl/ Stereos/ Speakers/ phones/ Recording     Equip/ modern instruments

Nylon Rope

Oil Filters

Paint - Brushes / Rollers / sprayers

Parachutes

Petroleum Jelly

Pillows

Plastic (look around where ever you are right now!)

Purses (wouldn't need one as it's hard to go anywhere, &  you probably wouldn't have a job)

Putty

Refrigerators & refrigerant

Roller Skates

Safety glass / glasses

Shampoo / Shaving Cream /Perfumes /Nail Polish/Lipstick /  toothpaste & brushes

Shoe Polish (wouldn't matter as you have no shoes either)

Skis

Solvents

Straws (Thank GOD!!! They ruined the planet a few years  back anyway… terrorists!)

Sun Glasses

Surf Boards

Tennis Rackets

Tents

Tires - vehicles/bikes/lawn mowers/trailers

Toilet Seats  (won't matter as we'll be going outside into a  big hole)

Tool Boxes & Racks (not much to fix anymore, sooooo…)

Toys

Transparent Tape

Trash Bags (no trucks to pick up any trash, so burn    everything. Great for environment!)

TVs (doesn't matter to me as football is no longer…)

Umbrellas

Upholstery

Vitamin Capsules

Wading pools

Water Pipes (pex & probably copper)

Wire insulation

Notice any obvious omissions?

Without petroleum you cannot manufacture solar panels or wind turbines!!  Offshore wind, you ask?  Nope, even worse.  You still have to manufacture the entire structure but you also need nearly 19,000 barrels of marine fuel for a SINGLE STRUCTURE!!  Most offshore wind farms contain over 100 structures so that's 1.9 - 2 million barrels of marine fuel needed to erect the beast.  Solar power boats?  Sailboats?  Try it and get back to me.

The starting point for talks of a non-petroleum world does NOT EXIST.  Could it after another 30 years of using petroleum, and all of it's products, while we work towards an honest solution?  Maybe, but it's tough to see.

Humans are a resourceful bunch and have made strides in the past but we'll need the government(s) out of our way.  Sadly, it's those same fraudsters, devils & murderers that are pushing this steaming pile of bovine excrement down our throats!

Ugh...

One last thing.  Let's just pretend that we could still manufacture a usable vehicle without petroleum for the sake of this exercise.

Everything's electric in the world now, correct?  What is the cost of electricity going to be at that point?  Remember that no "wind farm" runs currently without 100% back-up of fossil fuels.  What happens when those are no longer used?  The electric grid will fail on a regular basis if not all together. Again, after another 30 years of developing infrastructure, we might be able to have something in place, but it's not looking good at this point.

Good luck in that upcoming winter too.

Idiots the world over...   God help us all.

And yes, I'm completely aware that China, India, Russia and Japan (currently building no less than 22 nuclear power plants!) have no interest in the net zero nonsense which just makes our U.S. leadership seem even more suicidal and, oddly enough, intentional against it's own people.

3 Buddies Exhausted After School...

 

Vaca 2021, Day 15, The Final Day

After the Hell's Revenge ATV tour last night, we all got out the clothes that we would be wearing for tomorrow and packed the van up, one final time.  I finished writing in my journal while finishing up the two beers that I had in the fridge.  It's late and we had to be up early!  

This is how our day started.  We were up EARLY so that we could be to the meeting place for our hot air balloon tour over Arches National Park at something like 5:15am.  The friggin' coffee places ain't even open yet!  This is standing in the parking lot of a gas station with a large parking area looking towards the East.  You can't see it in the picture, but the sunrise was shining thru one of the arches on that far mountain slope.  Pretty cool.

Wait, what???  We're on the road again?  What happened to the amazing balloon pictures?  Well, by golly, they were not to be.  They have a 'sighter' who goes out even earlier to the launch site and measures the wind and monitors other "things".  We were in the van on the way to the sight when that cat came over the cb radio (yeah, that's right!) and said "Too windy.  No launches this morning.".   So the van whipped an illegal U'turn (not much traffic at this hour) and took us back to our cars.  Honestly, none of us were upset about it as sure, it would have been cool to do, but we are all fried as this is day 15 of vacation and frankly, we all want to get back home.  Get back home and see some dogs!

So now, we're somewhat hellbent... wait, is that possible?  Is it possible to be 'somewhat hellbent'?  It seems that you would either be hellbent or not hellbent... doesn't seem like a lot of middle ground here.  I'm going to say that we're now hellbent on making it home today since we have an extra 4 hours to burn since we get no balloon ride.  That map is from our rental to our home, door to door, 1034 miles without accounting for gas and food stops.  I believe that my math at that time added up to 1055 miles by the time we got home.

I have no idea where a lot of these were taken.  Somewhere between Moab, UT and Pleasant Hill, IA.  How's that?  I think that Caleb was driving at this point as he hauled us out of the balloon parking lot onto Hwy 191 and once he got on I70, it was 80 mph for his first interstate driving.  He liked it WWWWAAAAYYYYYY too much!!!

The roads still look pretty well maintained so I'm guessing this is still in UT because when we crossed the state line into Colorado, the roads went to pot on us!  You'd think with all of that tourism money, they'd have some level of highway maintenence, but the roads themselves say otherwise.

This looks like Colorado now, but the roads still appear decent... hmmm?

The selfie queen and most excellent vaca planner on earth!

 And that's a wrap.  I didn't think there was much purpose in taking pictures after Colorado as we've all driven across Nebraska and, well...  I was driving again soon after this and would drive until about halfway thru Nebraska where Rob brought us the rest of the way home.  It was a long day of driving and we all had sore butts and low backs when we hit our driveway, but, WE'RE HOME!!!

Until next year...  Cya

The Old, Lazy Couple

Look at her cute little tongues sticking out!

 

Mid-April Nonsense...