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Show B-1,5 The Park Record Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, June 14-17, 2008 Coffeepots and climate ball. I discovered that it took about 25 pounds of coal just to keep myself caffeinated over the course of a year. That amount of coal puts As I rode my bike north out of about 37 pounds of CO2 into the Fort Collins, Colo., the houses air. I understood, finally, how what thinned out, replaced by cows and I did every day affected the climate, horses. In one field between me the polar bears and, of course, us and the foothills, several pronghorn humans. antelope ran from me in a short So I switched my light bulbs to leaping spurt, turned and looked fluorescent, signed up to pay a back, then resumed their grazing. penny a kwh more to get renewable A string of steel power line strucenergy, bought a TerraPass, and tures, which always looked to me started paying more attention, like dressmaker dummies, crossed knowing that it wasn't enough. But overhead. I was pedaling my 18it costs .less to use fluorescent. It speed towards electricity, or costs less to drive less. These things towards an understanding of it, make less noise, take up less space, anyway. and help me understand, and sever, A few weeks earlier, I'd waksome of trie ties I have to global ened, as always, to the burbling of warming. my coffeepot. I'd made my way to One unseasonably warm the kitchen, turned on the light, evening I drove (guiltily, I'll admit!) poured myself a cup of coffee and up to the Colorado/Wyoming borsat down at the computer. As der, where there's a small wind always, something about a celebrity farm. It's on private property, surbeing naked, pregnant or arrested rounded by fields that were growwas on my home page. Sports highing dark under the sunset and rising lights, sports lowlights, weather and moon. There's a small diner up on a the Dow Jones. And, hill, and I went inside inevitably, something about and asked two old men polar bears or green energy, There were a bunch of facts about playing Lotto whether or new pictures of chunks of ice floating in vast blue seas. I the power plant about how much coal they thought I'd be shot if I headed across yawned and got up to refill my it goes through and where it comes the fields to the wind coffee cup. farm. One said someGlobal warming just felt so from and how it all turns into electrici- one might call the cops, ... global. I was relatively but he doubted that secure with my level of eco- ty. I was trying to copy the notes and anyone would shoot at consciousness. I rode my bike diagrams into my journal, but my brain me. So I ran across the to school, I had one of those field in my sandals, little knit grocery bags I used kept trying to bound away like the towards these great when I remembered to bring gracefully spinning it into the store, I'd gotten my pronghorn antelopes, much as it does towers silhouetted recycling system pretty much against a purple sky. down pat - wasn't that when someone uses words like 'cat- wondering if some of enough? I couldn't really get alytic converter' or 'hypotenuse' or the electricity being myself worked up about cligenerated while 1 mate change because I could- 'escrow.'" watched would be n't link my utility bills and ^ ^ ^ B I ^ ^ brewing my coffee in - road trips to the mountains the morning. I stopped let alone my coffeepot - to melting every-minute or so to catch my my journal, but my brain kept tryice and stranded polar bears, to ing to bound away like the prong- breath and pull tiny cactus spikes hurricanes and extinction. horn antelopes, much as it does from my toes. Finally I stood still, My apathy was based on my when someone uses words like listening to the barely audible ignorance. And eventually, perhaps "catalytic converter" or whoosh-whoosh-whoosh from the because I've been immersed in aca- "hypotenuse" or "escrow." propellers, watching small birds demia for some time, collecting colBut I added the information to flitting over the scrub and cacti in lege degrees like knickknacks. I my growing collection of notes, and the last of the light. started to feel ashamed of the not when I sorted it all out I found that knowing and the not caring. So 1 I was beginning to understand. Shane Bondi writes, bikes, reads decided to figure out how this 35- When my coffeepot turned itself and hikes in and around Fort year-old writer-cyclist-student- on, the energy arrived via a hilly Collins, Colorado. teacher's daily caffeine intake and scrub-covered route that began affected the glaciers, the polar at the Powder River Basin Coal This essay first appeared on May bears and the climate. Mine in Wyoming. I did a lot of 12, 2008, in High Country News When I arrived at the Rawhide math and found that every time I (www.hcn.org), which covers the Energy Plant on my bike, I expect- brewed a pot of coffee, I burned a West's communities and naturaled to find something menacing, like lump of coal the size of a ping-pong resource issues. By SHANE BOND1 High Country News Batman's Gotham City. Instead, I saw a small cluster of windowless beige buildings with one tall smokestack puffing a polite plume of smoke. The main entrance was blocked off, so I rode in on a winding packed-dirt road past signs saying "Controlled Access" and "No Public Admittance." At a small brick security checkpoint, a burly guy in a uniform came busting out as if he thought some sweaty chick in Spandex was going to blow the place up. I asked conversationally, my hands in plain view, "Have I done anything illegal yet?"' and he mumbled that I shouldn't be up here. He gave me the number of a PR person, and grudgingly agreed to let me go up to the blocked-off area, where there were information boards for the curious-minded. There were a bunch of facts about the power plant, about how much coal it goes through and where it comes from and how it all turns into electricity. I was trying to copy the notes and diagrams into Sunday June 15ih Starts the Silly Season! Colon cancer almost always starts with a polyp. Get the polyp early and stop colon cancer before it even starts. 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