Family Stuff
Very few health issues this year (Eric got his tonsils removed, Steve had a minor running injury) so we all had very active years, culminating in our first family runnning race at the end of December! We did a 17k trail run in Woodside that involved a few thousand feet of climbing to the top of the local mountain range. This was Justine's farthest running race to date and we all enjoyed it.
Two new additions at home: an electric motorcycle called the Vectrix which was donated to us and dead upon arrival but slowly nursed back to health, and a fun mobile in the back yard with huge colored hoops that spins in the wind.
Very little rain this year so we got to spend lots of time outdoors exercising, entertaining, and just enjoying the nice weather.
The local cast of HEA staff hard at work at world-wide headquarters. The majority of our dozen or so staff members are remote.
Lots of camping and hiking trips spread throughout the year, including a wonderful week of hiking
between all the High Sierra camps with good friends in September.
Eric visited Justine in Colorado and went backpacking with one of her friends in the Rockies. Lisa, Justine and Eric cross-country skied to Glacier Point in Yosemite in the Spring. Steve missed that trip but went to the same place in the Fall with some running buddies.
We got a cool new tent that sleeps four adults and two 80-pound dogs.
Quite a variety of ground transportation methods were utilized, including car, bus, train and biking.
Another fun RV trip this year: 4100 miles across 6 Western States!
This time we took route 50 (The Loneliest Highway in America) across Nevada to Utah and
on to Colorado where we picked up Justine after her last class.
Then down to Mesa Verde near the Four Corners, and then north through Utah on to Idaho and Oregon then
back home through the remote & largely empty northeast corner of California.
GHG emissions were our second lowest on record, continuing a gradual downward trend.
We continued to avoid air travel -- historically our largest source of emissions -- whenever possible, and our two electric vehicles & increased bike travel helped reduce gas consumption. A major component of our CarTravel emissions stem from our big end-of-year RV trip, which this year accounted for about a third of our annual total; last year we had an older RV with worse gas mileage and it accounted for nearly half!
So far we have found no reasonable way to track GHG emissions from food and purchased goods, but Lisa continues to move us gradually away from meat (with its very high carbon footprint) toward her ever more enticing vegetarian delights.
Conversion
factors used:
1 kWh of PG&E electricity = 0.5 lbs
CO2e
1 therm of natural gas = 13.5 lbs
CO2e
1 gallon of gasoline = 20 lbs
CO2e
1 passenger mile of air travel = 0.49 lbs CO2e
100 cubic feet (748 gallons) of domestic cold water in SF Bay Area = 2 lbs CO2e