About Steve

Steve's grateful to have spent another year in great health.

But he's pretty worried about climate change and spent 2015 trying to reduce his personal carbon footprint. Using less electricity & natural gas, eating less meat, and biking instead of driving is all pretty easy. Avoiding air travel is tougher. Luckily he and Lisa were able to take several long low-carbon vacation adventures that didn't involve flying.

It turns out there are tons of low-carbon activities Steve truly enjoys, like:

Zero carbon kayaking on the SF Bay,
eating healthy snacks, with Justine

Zero carbon biking around Chicago on rental DIVVY bikes while Lisa attended an energy conference

Zero carbon views of the California Coast

Low carbon board meeting with Eric's biofuel bus

Prior to the big trip, Eric & Steve replaced the head gasket on the bus. A major project and quite scary
(who wants a broken bus stuck in their driveway?)
but we got it all back together and it started!

In the higher-emissions category, Steve borrowed Tim's diesel tractor to build a parking pad for Eric's bus.
He had a great time figuring out how to use the front loader and box scraper, leveling the pad and adding base rock. Then a new gate, electric outlet, water faucet and... ta-daa! A full service RV parking pad!

A zero carbon sunset with an amazing wife who
puts up with Steve's growing list of psychoses

About Steve Steve's grateful to have spent another year in great health. But he's pretty worried about climate change and spent 2015 trying to reduce his personal carbon footprint. Using less electricity & natural gas, eating less meat, and biking instead of driving is all pretty easy. Avoiding air travel is tougher. Luckily he and Lisa were able to take several long low-carbon vacation adventures that didn't involve flying. It turns out there are tons of low-carbon activities Steve truly enjoys, like:
Zero carbon kayaking on the SF Bay, eating healthy snacks, with Justine	Zero carbon bike rides with friends, in the rain
Zero carbon biking around Chicago on rental DIVVY bikes while Lisa attended an energy conference	Lots of zero carbon hikes, and not shaving
Zero carbon views of the California Coast	Zero carbon canoeing among the Cyprus trees in the bayous of Caddo lake state park with Lisa
Zero carbon bike ride up Mount Hamilton in San Jose on a beautiful day	Low carbon running group trips
Low carbon board meeting with Eric's biofuel bus	Low-carbon tele-commuting
Prior to the big trip, Eric & Steve replaced the head gasket on the bus. A major project and quite scary (who wants a broken bus stuck in their driveway?) but we got it all back together and it started!	During the bus trip Steve spent a lot of time processing the veggie oil: moving the stuff around with a fuel transfer pump, monitoring the process, cleaning the centrifuge, fixing leaks, etc.
Vegetable oil can be annoying when it leaks all over the back of the bus when a 55 gallon drum cracks somewhere in eastern Colorado	Clean up completed! Thanks to Lisa's quick spotting, we only spilled about 10 gallons. But it seeped into deep corners in the back of the bus. Yuck.
In the higher-emissions category, Steve borrowed Tim's diesel tractor to build a parking pad for Eric's bus. He had a great time figuring out how to use the front loader and box scraper, leveling the pad and adding base rock. Then a new gate, electric outlet, water faucet and... ta-daa! A full service RV parking pad!

Another home project was to find and fix the leak in our pool. At one point it was leaking 200 gallons per day. But finding a leak in the bottom of a pool turns out to be very difficult	Steve finished a new yard art project for the refurbished front yard: his first sculpture made of steel (not very low-carbon but fun to watch in storms)
Zero carbon wading in Arkansas' Cossatot river with his best dog Sirius, who Steve misses dearly	A zero carbon sunset with an amazing wife who puts up with Steve's growing list of psychoses
Steve's now tracking his lifetime GHG emissions, and not flying in 2015 had a big impact: So enjoy your own zero-carbon activity right now: go for a walk! (But leave the cell phone behind -- even text messages have a carbon footprint)
Main - Family - Justine - Eric - Lisa - Final