The Obligatory
"Play safe. Ski only in clockwise direction. Let's all have fun together."
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
San Diego Earth Day
I went to San Diego on Sunday for San Diego Earth Works, a giant Earth Day celebration at Balboa Park. It's billed as "the world's largest environmental fair," and it was pretty freakin' huge. Lots and lots of people, lots and lots of dogs, and lots and lots of great vegetarian food. Of course, I was instinctively drawn toward the apple cider area.
The festival had a great mix of new green tech demos, environmental action groups, foods, musicians, and pretty much just a giant mix of great things. One highlight was a collection of green cars. Some of them were retro-space-age looking biodiesels, others user-created hybrids. The U.S. Navy was showing off a fully hydrogen-cell based car, but by far the coolest car on site was a consumer model 2005 Honda Insight, slightly modded ... to get a mind-blowing 87 miles per gallon.
The owner of the car added a few more electric batteries, some ultra-aerodynamic paint, and removed his side mirrors - replacing them instead with cameras he could control from inside the car. The end result is a normal-looking consumer quality car that can drive from Los Angeles to Seattle on a single tank of gas. And this is just one guy who did this on his own. The technology is here. Just imagine if auto companies started actually manufacturing cars like this. Those $4/gallon gas prices wouldn't seem so bad, would they?
Of course, this being such a large festival, there were greens of all stripes - from the California State Park System and the Sierra Club to naked campers, Scientologists (huh?), and back-to-earth agrarian collectives. Drum Circle Hippies and, in designated "protest" areas, Born-Agains and anti-abortion protesters.
For the record, the people I talked most to were the California State Park rangers and the guys who sold the awesome apple cider ... who, as it turned out, were a back-to-earth agrarian collective. Go figure.
After hangin' out there for a few hours, I headed to the Cabrillo National Monument for a little bit of light hiking and some maritime history. It also had some pretty sweet views of the city, and down the coast all the way into Mexico.
The Cabrillo Monument is also notable for having this in the gift shop.
Now y'all know what to get me for my birthday.
OK, not really. But still ... pretty awesome.
Check out a few more pics at Flickr.
The festival had a great mix of new green tech demos, environmental action groups, foods, musicians, and pretty much just a giant mix of great things. One highlight was a collection of green cars. Some of them were retro-space-age looking biodiesels, others user-created hybrids. The U.S. Navy was showing off a fully hydrogen-cell based car, but by far the coolest car on site was a consumer model 2005 Honda Insight, slightly modded ... to get a mind-blowing 87 miles per gallon.
The owner of the car added a few more electric batteries, some ultra-aerodynamic paint, and removed his side mirrors - replacing them instead with cameras he could control from inside the car. The end result is a normal-looking consumer quality car that can drive from Los Angeles to Seattle on a single tank of gas. And this is just one guy who did this on his own. The technology is here. Just imagine if auto companies started actually manufacturing cars like this. Those $4/gallon gas prices wouldn't seem so bad, would they?
Of course, this being such a large festival, there were greens of all stripes - from the California State Park System and the Sierra Club to naked campers, Scientologists (huh?), and back-to-earth agrarian collectives. Drum Circle Hippies and, in designated "protest" areas, Born-Agains and anti-abortion protesters.
For the record, the people I talked most to were the California State Park rangers and the guys who sold the awesome apple cider ... who, as it turned out, were a back-to-earth agrarian collective. Go figure.
After hangin' out there for a few hours, I headed to the Cabrillo National Monument for a little bit of light hiking and some maritime history. It also had some pretty sweet views of the city, and down the coast all the way into Mexico.
The Cabrillo Monument is also notable for having this in the gift shop.
Now y'all know what to get me for my birthday.
OK, not really. But still ... pretty awesome.
Check out a few more pics at Flickr.
Labels: travel
that one guy you know, 7:54 PM
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