WORLDFIRE - Chapter 1

Liftoff & Breakdown

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead (1901-1978)

Our story begins in Colorado under a dark cloud of gloom. Seated on my couch on a cold winter evening, I watched the low February sun sink behind Boulder’s iconic red sandstone Flatirons, replaying in my mind the conference call I had suffered through earlier in the day. The soft glow of the computer screen beckoned to me to get up and check my emails, but I didn’t have the energy. My normally sunny disposition had set; the darkening winter sky mirrored an inner climate of despair.

The year was 2010. On the call had been climate activists I respect, desperate for legislative traction in Congress and seeking support for a bipartisan bill that played into the politically popular, but delusional, view that we have until 2050 to slash fossil fuel emissions. While light years ahead of most climate bills in Congress, it was still cheerleading for legislation that even its champions admitted needed strengthening out of the gate–not exactly my idea of a winning strategy in the face of an existential emergency. Sensing the futility of raising such concerns on the call, I listened in for as long as I could stomach it, then I quietly hung up the phone.

My eyes gravitated to the poster above my desk, a copy of the April 3, 2006 cover of TIME magazine. TIME had issued a special report on global meltdown with the headline: “BE WORRIED. BE VERY WORRIED.” I was. For years, I felt like I had been watching a slow-motion disaster movie unfolding in front of my eyes, with all of the extras walking around oblivious to their impending doom. Only this wasn’t some Hollywood movie set. This disaster was real, and we were the extras.

Leading scientific experts like NASA’s James Hansen had been shouting from the rooftops for years that carbon emissions had to be slashed, but Congress and the White House weren’t listening. Former Vice President Al Gore’s 2008 strategic initiative to transition America to 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2018 was already all but forgotten. Eco-visionary Lester Brown was releasing the fourth edition of his book, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, when the world should have been busy implementing the first. And I had just spent five years of my life trying, and failing, to galvanize the wind industry to step up and lead a green industrial revolution. Nothing seemed to be working.

The horrors of the oncoming climate train wreck made me want to scream. Untold human deaths; mass species extinctions; crop failures leading to famine; the spread of infectious diseases; acidifying oceans; dying coral reefs; melting polar ice caps; rising sea levels; drowning island nations; increasingly lethal heat waves; and ever-deadlier droughts, storms, floods, and wildfires. For too many years had my heart been haunted by the cries of Mother Earth. Too many tears had I shed for the lost years, lost chances, and lost lives. Filled with fear for the fate of a little boy in my life, I agonized over what climate chaos portended for him. Desperate and demoralized, I asked myself for the umpteenth time that night just what it was I was supposed to be doing.

It was then, as my eyes drifted to my bicycle leaning against my living room wall, that the answer came to me in a sudden flash of inspiration: get on my bike and ride to Washington, DC championing a green energy moon shot: a U.S. goal of 100 percent renewable electricity in a decade. Years spent working on grassroots campaigns had shown me most people would at least hear you out if you met them on their turf. In this case, that turf was thousands of miles of “flyover country,” a part of America too often ignored. Maybe Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court were climate comatose, but I still had faith in Main Street, America.

As the idea began to take shape in my mind, the dark cloud of despair hanging over me vaporized. Energized by the vision, I jumped up from the couch, dislodging my happily napping cat from my lap. I was so excited, I wanted to leave right then and there, but knew there was much to do before I would be ready. Fortunately for me, some basic reality checks never kicked in. Far from the stereotypical Boulder uber-athlete, I had a six-pack beer gut, not six-pack abs. My 48-year-old knees were used to propelling me around town, not thousands of miles across the country. My bike was a ten-year-old commuter with cracked fenders and a squeaky chain (because it was too small and caused my knees to splay out when I rode it, a friend jokingly nicknamed it “Baby Bike”). And I was hardly flush with cash for such a major undertaking. Despite all this, I was prepared to pedal all the way to Washington, DC, even if I had to do it on Baby Bike. As it turns out, I would end up launching the adventure in a vehicle worthy of the green energy moon shot theme: a carbon fiber, electric-assist recumbent trike that looked more like a rocket than a bike.

I eventually settled on September 12–the 48^th anniversary of President Kennedy’s famous Rice University “moon shot” speech–as the launch date to issue a moon shot challenge of my own: a U.S. goal of 100% renewable electricity in ten years. I chose the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL) Wind Technology Center as the launch site to honor the mission-critical work NREL is doing to facilitate a green energy moon shot.

There, on a hazy Sunday afternoon, the “Ride for Renewables” officially lifted off in the shadow of towering wind turbines just outside of Boulder, Colorado. Donning my American flag bike jersey, I hopped into my rocket trike and blasted off. Cheered on by a group of close friends, I pedaled the first five miles of the ride into Boulder, my jumping-off point for the long trek east. In the first of countless serendipitous encounters that would come to characterize my journey, my first interview subject actually came to me. No sooner had I pulled my canary yellow capsule into a lit-up parking lot to collect my thoughts than up walked a guy curious about the trike. Solar Today magazine editor Seth Masia just happened to be on the list of Boulder experts I was hoping to interview for my YouTube channel.

I pulled out my smart phone and here is what Seth shared: “The fact is that wind power and solar power have been mature technologies for many years and they are at grid parity now. They are competitive with coal and oil, and all it takes is political will to turn this country around, get us off our dependence on foreign oil, get us off our dependence on coal, and do things right for a change.” When I asked him what he thought of the ten-year renewable electricity goal for America, Seth reaffirmed everything I was riding for: “It’s practical. We could actually do it if we wanted to. If we had someone like JFK pushing us to do it, we would do it.”

The following morning, after staying up half the night finalizing a national press release distribution trumpeting the ride, I learned that the Jumbotron in Times Square had flashed a photo of me and my young friend, Alden Matsch, in the rocket trike with the headline, “Renewable Rider, Tom Weis, Championing Green Energy ‘Moon Shot.’” That was something I never thought I would see. The Boulder Reporter ran a story called “Mr. Weis goes to Washington – by bike,” which quoted me saying: “Nobody can tell me America can’t do this. We have a long history of fresh, entrepreneurial thinking that uniquely suits us for this historic task. It is time for us to once again step up and help protect the world.” Reporting that “the ride and goal are backed by prominent environmental and business leaders demanding urgent action from Congress and the White House in response to a deteriorating global climate,” the article included this declaration from author and founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben: “Congress and the President need to endorse this bold goal now.” Other supporters quoted were David Blittersdorf, CEO of AllEarth Renewables; Jim Walker, former president of the American Wind Energy Association; Phil Radford, Executive Director of Greenpeace; Lester Brown, President of Earth Policy Institute; and actor and activist Ed Begley, Jr.

The morning of my departure from Boulder dawned bright and sunny, reflective of my happy mood. Before leaving, I affixed the Stars and Stripes to my flagpole. I flew the American flag because I am a patriot. I flew it to honor democracy and the uncommon courage of our founders, even with their imperfections. For mine is not a blind love. I see Lady Liberty’s flaws quite clearly. I love America enough to want her to realize the promise of her full potential.

From the heart of Boulder, I rode the first several miles east with my dear friend, Marti Matsch, who joined me on her bike. Shortly after saying our goodbyes, I made a pit stop at Boulder’s 186-megawatt coal-fired power plant. Sitting in my trike in a parking lot across the street from Xcel Energy’s coal plant, I reflected back to almost a year before, when a family-friendly “Day of Climate Action” organized by the group 350.org had myself and some 200 other Boulderites on our bikes pedaling from the heart of downtown to this same plant, calling for an end to the coal burning. That day, I spoke on the stage after Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) and Director of NREL’s Buildings and Thermal Systems Center, Chuck Kutscher. Describing my comments as “militant,” a local reporter observed that I “castigated all around – Xcel Energy, Governor Ritter and Congress – all of them for not doing enough or going far enough.” If speaking the truth is “militant,” I plead guilty as charged.

Six months after that, the call of our consciences would find me and three other local residents–Eric Ross, Kate Clark, and Erik Bonnett–taking another kind of action at that same Xcel coal plant. Since nothing else seemed to be working, we decided to climb up and occupy the utility’s giant coal pile, where we proceeded to unfurl a giant banner spelling out “Renewables Now.” I will never forget the sight of a convoy of police cars with lights flashing descending on our position. As reported in Boulder’s Daily Camera: “’It’s time to end the coal burning at this plant,’ Tom Weis said via cell phone from his perch on top of the coal pile. ‘This is Boulder, Colorado, and we need to be powered by 100 percent renewables.’” Upon seeing the Denver Post article listing our ages (23, 25, 27, and 47), I remember my friend Marti joking that the casual reader could easily have interpreted the headline as, “Family arrested at coal plant protest.” Part of what drove me to do what I did that day is something Al Gore said in 2007 that caused me to wonder why he himself wasn’t doing what he was urging young people to do: “I can’t understand why there aren’t rings of young people blocking bulldozers,” Mr. Gore said, “and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants.” How can I ask of others what I am unwilling to do myself?

Maybe you are still wondering why I would engage in nonviolent protest I knew would land me in jail. Comprehending that requires an understanding of climate science, so let’s quickly review the basics. Weather, defined as “the state of the atmosphere with respect to heat or cold, wetness or dryness, calm or storm, clearness or cloudiness,” is what we experience on any given day. Climate, defined as “the average course or condition of the weather at a place usually over a period of years,” is weather averaged over time. “Climate change” means changes to the climate over an extended period of time as a result of “global warming,” which is defined as an “increase in temperature of the earth’s atmosphere that is caused by the increase of particular gases, especially carbon dioxide.” The greenhouse effect is the Earth acting like an actual greenhouse. Pollution in the atmosphere allows the sun’s rays in, but like glass in a greenhouse prevents much of that heat from radiating back out into space, thereby heating the air. Think of it as a heat blanket. More pollution means thicker blankets and we have been piling on lots of heat blankets since the Industrial Revolution.

Now not all heat blankets are bad. Without naturally occurring greenhouse gases, Earth would be too cold for humans and most other life forms to exist. Manmade pollution thickening the blankets is what makes the greenhouse effect so lethal. The three thickest heat blankets are carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, with the three primary pollution sources the energy, transportation, and agricultural sectors.

The thickest of the three is carbon dioxide. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have increased by roughly 50% since the Industrial Revolution, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels, which accounts for about 3/4 of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Once emitted, carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere from centuries to a thousand to tens of thousands of years.

The second thickest heat blanket is methane, derived primarily from natural gas and petroleum systems, landfills, livestock, and manure fermentation. Methane is at least 84 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide during the first 20 years after its release, but only persists in the atmosphere for about 12 years, after which it begins breaking down into carbon dioxide and water. Atmospheric concentrations of methane have more than doubled since pre-industrial times.

The third thickest heat blanket is nitrous oxide. It is derived primarily from nitrogen-based fertilizers, traps heat nearly 300 times more efficiently than carbon dioxide, and stays in the atmosphere for an average of 114 years.

Here is how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ranks greenhouse gas emissions by economic sector globally: Electricity & Heat Production (25%), Agriculture, Forestry & Other Land Use (24%), Industry (21%), Transportation (14%), Other Energy (10%), and Buildings (6%). This is how the EPA ranks U.S. emissions by sector: Transportation (28%), Electric Power (25%), Industry (23%), Commercial & Residential (13%), and Agriculture (10%). According to the EPA website: “Percentages may not add up to 100% due to independent rounding.”

We’re almost done with the science primer. Putting these pollutants into parts per million parlance, prior to the Industrial Revolution humans enjoyed a safe and stable climate that had a concentration of approximately 280 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Today we’ve shot past 420 ppm, a level not experienced in at least 800,000 years and a level that is rising 2 to 3 ppm annually. Here’s why this is a crisis: leading climate scientists have declared 350 ppm of carbon dioxide as the upper boundary for safety for humanity, with others suggesting an even lower safety threshold of between 280 and 300 parts per million, meaning we are already well into the danger zone. Yes, the climate changes over geologic time, but what makes today’s changes an emergency is the accelerated rate of change. What in the past happened over thousands of years is now happening in decades. Earth is currently on pace to heat ten times faster than any known climate shift of the past 65 million years. Human-caused air pollution has put the climate on steroids.

Translating this into temperature terms, global temperatures have risen a little more than 1° Celsius (about 2° Fahrenheit) since the start of the Industrial Revolution. That may not sound like much, but it is enough to throw the Earth dangerously out of energy balance and is already contributing to mass species extinctions and countless human deaths. David Wasdell, Director of the Apollo-Gaia Project, explains it this way: “The Planet acts a little bit like your own body... If your temperature goes up by three or four degrees you are getting into life-threatening stress. Five degrees you are probably dead, three-and-a-half you may be going into delirium. If your temperature drops by about two or three degrees, you are suffering hypothermia. You have a very narrow temperature scale within which to operate. Your body is very sensitive to small changes in temperature. So is the Planet.” Think about how miraculous it is that your body functions so intelligently without you having to think about it. Gaia functions much the same way. Just as with our bodies, if the living planet absorbs too much pollution, she becomes sick. Earth has a dangerous fever and every year that passes, we fall farther behind in the race to treat her.

That is why I was willing to go to jail for occupying that giant pile of coal. 

Pedaling away from Boulder with the hot morning sun beating down on my face, I was happy to see the tall stacks of the coal plant shrinking in my rearview mirror. Before long, I was climbing a series of rolling hills that gave me my first real taste of the trike fully loaded down with gear. The uphills were a challenging slog, but after several months of sedentary planning, it felt good to be breaking a sweat. I felt free. My destination was The Wild Animal Sanctuary near Keenesburg, a world-class refuge for traumatized captive wildlife, where Pat Craig, the kindhearted refuge owner, had generously invited me to spend the night on their grounds. I was eagerly anticipating an unforgettable night in my tent drifting off to sleep to the roar of lions and tigers and bears. But it was not to be.

Speeding down a long hill on Highway 52 toward Keenesburg on a shoulder littered with debris, the steering column of my trike suddenly began shaking wildly, forcing me to pull off to the side of the road. My first panicked thought was that the steering mechanism was broken, which would have left me totally dead in the water, but it was just a flat. Yet here I was, only 26 miles from home and I already had my first flat tire. Standing there on the side of the road, shaking my head in disbelief, I felt just as deflated as that tire. Draining me further was the discovery that my adjustable wrench was a tad too small to remove the tire. Anyone who knows me well will tell you I am not the mechanical type, so checking for that little detail unsurprisingly failed to make it onto my pre-launch to-do list. I kicked myself for not being better prepared. Fortunately, thanks to the uncanny foresight of my friend, Paul Alexander, I had purchased inexpensive roadside bike assistance (who knew such a thing even existed?) and called for a free tow to the closest bike shop in the nearby town of Frederick, which happened to be open.

When the owner of Shalom Bikes, Angel Berdiales, pulled off the rear tire, it revealed bigger troubles than a flat. Where the derailleur screwed into the rear fork, the threads were badly stripped, probably due to a sloppy original installation. It was only a matter of time before it would have shaken loose, leaving me broken down possibly far from any bike shop. My pedaling was clearly done for the day. After pondering my problem, Angel came up with a creative solution. He applied some weld bond to set overnight with the intention of drilling a new hole and rethreading it in the morning. Despite my emergency backing up all his other bike jobs, this ex-pro cyclist was determined to get me back on the road.

While all of this was happening, a friend of Angel’s, Roland Voss, had ambled into the bike shop, and hearing I was stranded, kindly offered me a place to crash for the night. Roland told me why he wants to see a green industrial revolution and how we might reform our corrupt political system: “I keep on wondering why I see all these roofs without any solar panels on them… Every roof in America should have solar panels. If we want to become independent from foreign countries that don’t like us, we need to have solar panels in this country, en masse. Not just a couple of ‘em that we have around here.” To Roland’s point, it has been established that rooftop solar panels alone could meet roughly 40 percent of America’s electricity needs. Returning to politics, Roland said, “I wish our Senators and our Congressman would finally get around to actually taking this serious… I think that we should have a mandate where Congressmen and Senators are wearing jerseys, much like the NASCAR racers have, telling ‘em which sponsors they have. Who’s paying them this time? Evidently, they’re not here to serve people. They’re here to serve big business.”

When Roland dropped me off at the bike shop the next morning, it appeared the trike was fixed. Feeling optimistic, I hopped in for a test ride in the alleyway, but the second I shifted gears the back wheel plopped right off. The weld bond solution was a bust. Then in what was fast becoming a comedy of errors, we discovered the chain was too short, so Angel added two links to loosen it before advising me I would have to get a new carbon fiber fork shipped out from Germany. Knowing this might take weeks, which would put my entire expedition in jeopardy, I told him that wasn’t an option. I had already launched weeks later in the season than I had hoped to, and this would push my DC arrival into winter on a trike that wasn’t snow-worthy. And there was no way I was slinking back to Boulder with my tail between my legs. I told my “pit crew” we needed a better solution.

After pondering it some more, Angel announced he had an engineer friend who was good at solving problems like this. So he dialed up Ted Altshuler, who just happened to be available. We loaded the trike onto a trailer Roland just happened to own and rolled down the road to Old School Industries where Ted (also a fellow cyclist) took one look at the rear fork and had his employees fashion a special screw and washer that solved the problem. Ted even gave me an extra screw, just in case. And he didn’t charge me a dime. I couldn’t thank him enough. Crisis averted.

The following morning, I pedaled the six miles back to where I originally broke down and continued east, picking up breakfast-to-go at a sandwich shop along the way. Relieved to finally be back in the saddle, I thought about the setback as a metaphor for the journey we now need to take as a nation to arrive at a 100 percent green grid in ten years. We’re going to have setbacks, but so what? This is America. I couldn’t stop thinking about how amazingly generous Americans are, and how adept we are at solving problems. Between Ted and his crew, and their creative genius, and Angel and his friends, and their dogged determination, it was a poignant reminder to me that when Americans pull together, we can do pretty much whatever we set our minds to do. Anyone who doubts this needs to meet my friends in Frederick, Colorado. If not for that fortuitous flat, who knows how far I would have made it on my journey. Because of it, I had a trike more roadworthy than when I began. That flat was a blessing in disguise. American ingenuity had saved the day.

Meanwhile, back in Boulder, my hometown newspaper, Boulder Weekly, was busy distributing copies of their paper at newsstands across town, which I was surprised to later learn featured the Ride for Renewables on its cover. Here are excerpts from “Man on a mission,” which did a great job of capturing the spirit of the excursion:

“Towards the end of 2009, Tom Weis was a man growing weary, watching the pre-Obama promises of a cleaner, more sustainable future slip away, bit by bit. As the enthusiasm brought on by the idea of a quick U-turn in energy policy was replaced by ever-deepening despair over the realization that even the most minimal environmental changes could be decades away, Weis’ life work as an activist and political organizer was beginning to look like grains of sand in a desert sea of apathy and opposition… Instead of feeling sorry for himself and for the movement he’d nursed along like a sick friend, Weis was reinvigorated to get off his ass and do something, even something a little crazy, to get the people of the United States as invigorated about renewable energy as he was… [he] decided he would put his money where his mouth is and pedal around the country showing everyone he could, friend and foe, that there are other options than the status quo of hydrocarbon-based fuels. ‘I truly believe once they understand the true extent of this crisis, they will demand bold action from our so-called political leaders in Washington, D.C.,’ says Weis. ‘I’ve always thought the environmental movement spends too much time talking to themselves. The same goes with the two major political parties. This isn’t about whether you consider yourself an environmentalist, or a Republican or a Democrat. We all need clean air to breathe, fresh water to drink, healthy food to eat and a stable planet to live on.’

To a lesser extent Weis is also out to confront what he sees as a political system hijacked by special interests and cash-induced apathy. ‘This is about taking back our power from unaccountable corporations who are running the show in D.C.,’ says Weis. ‘The way to get this country back on track is by rallying Main Street America with a bold, exciting vision of what America can be.’ Weis’ message is a simple one: 100 percent renewable energy for the United States by 2020… He wants to make ambition a bigger part of the discussion and says it’s exactly the kind of thing America is known for.

Since he’s riding across the country to promote a slightly futuristic idea of energy production, Weis thought it best to make the trip in something a little more eye-catching than an ordinary bicycle. Enter the German-built Go-One Rocket Trike, a stable, three-wheeled bicycle with an electrical assist motor contained inside a hand-crafted, carbon fiber shell that looks like the cockpit of a fighter jet… ‘It represents human ingenuity, it’s a conversation starter, it’s cool, and it’s fun. People smile when they see it. Saving civilization is going to be a big job, but there’s no reason why it can’t also be fun. Who wants to be part of a depressing cause? It’s time to bring some joy back into the planetary protection movement.’ That movement, Weis says, needs more than just the usual suspects to succeed. Ordinary Americans, he says, can make a big difference in the energy debate, and getting them on board is a critical part of his trip… ‘I’m riding across the country so I can connect with the American people one-on-one.’

Weis is the first to admit that his chosen path is one wrought with adversity. Along with the conversion of the car-loving masses and the monumental task of reorienting energy policy, there is also the small matter of actually pedaling about 2,000 miles through 10 states. Boulder, of course, is filled with people that could make such a trip with, if not ease, minor difficulty. Weis, by his own admission, is not one of those people. ‘I’m no Boulder elite athlete,’ says Weis. ‘I’m just a middle-aged guy who’s had it with Washington, D.C., and wants to see real change...’ Still, he’s confident he’ll be able to hit his goal of riding 60 to 80 miles each day, through sheer force of will if necessary… Weis says he hopes to meet with as many members of Congress as possible and even President Obama. After that he’ll return to Colorado by train, with no solid plans. ‘I have no idea what I will do when this is all over,’ says Weis. ‘I just know it’s something I need to do, so I’m going for it.’”

Feeling very much like a man on a mission, I had the wind at my back all day and happily soaked in the sights, sounds, and smells of Colorado’s eastern plains. There is a beauty to traveling by bike that cannot be experienced from the confines of a car. In a car, you’re protected from the elements. On a bike, you’re part of the elements. The steady stream of smiles, honks, and thumbs up I received from fellow cyclists, motorcyclists, truckers, and people in cars would become an invigorating part of my daily life. While still early in the trek, I was struck by how strongly the green energy moon shot goal was resonating. Almost everyone I had spontaneously spoken to about the goal enthusiastically supported it and wanted to see it happen.

But the real star of the show was the vehicle I was using to deliver the message. Rarely would a day go by without passing cars pulling over to the side of the road with their drivers snapping photos of the trike as it rolled past. The picture-perfect ambassador for my journey, the rocket trike possessed a magic all its own. There was just something about it that dropped the walls people usually have up, making it easy for me to talk with them about the need for a green energy moon shot. I would soon learn that many of these people, like me, had also lost faith in our political leaders to deliver for the American people. Americans like Jerry Martinez from Fort Morgan, Colorado, who I met in a strip mall parking lot. Here is what Jerry had to say about the ten-year renewable electricity goal: “I believe it’s a goal that we should already have obtained by now. Here we are in 2010 and we should have had this in 2000, but we know that our government’s being controlled by lobbyists, both Democratic and Republican parties… just get it back to where they work for the people… let’s get back on track with what is important in this country and get off foreign oil and all that.”

Later that day, on the outskirts of Fort Morgan, I encountered a perfect metaphor for my journey: a coal train blocking my progress. Not content to just sit and wait, I employed a metaphor of my own by circumventing the stalled train with an easy detour down country roads. Finally rolling into Fort Morgan around dinnertime, my first stop was The Fort Morgan Times. Parking the trike out front, I strolled into the newspaper office, bike helmet in hand, and gave my standard elevator pitch, before asking if a reporter was available. Times staff writer Dan Barker turned our subsequent conversation into a great story called, “’Rocket’ tricycle bringing message to Washington.” Writing that “America has the technology for a 100 percent renewable energy electrical grid, but it lacks the political will,” the reporter captured my inner sense of panic with this quote: “The stakes could not be higher for our kids.”

Afterwards, the newspaper staff kindly tipped me off to free public camping in the nearby town park. After topping off my tank with a hearty Italian dinner at a nearby restaurant, I pedaled the few blocks to the park, which it being a weeknight, I had mostly to myself. I pitched my tent, then sat with my back against a beautiful tree and worked on my blog until I grew too tired to write. With a 97-mile ride day being just what I needed after such a slow start out of the gate, I drifted off to sleep that night a happy man.

Rising early the next morning, I quickly struck camp and got a caffeine jumpstart at the aptly named Peppy Coffee in downtown Fort Morgan. The staff was all smiles as I pulled up to the drive-thru window. When a young woman handed me my drink, I asked if I could videotape her for my YouTube channel. Speaking about the green energy moon shot goal, Chloe said: “I think that would be awesome.”

From the coffee shop, I rolled down the road to the Brush News-Tribune, which generated another good story called, “High-tech cyclist pushes green energy on national tour.” From Brush, I rolled past miles of cornfields baking in the blazing sun on my way to Akron, Colorado, where I was fortunate to catch Washington County Commissioner Bruce Johnson at home. Bruce and I had met years earlier when I was helping a wind company assess a possible wind project on Colorado’s eastern plains. Bruce gave me a tour of his impressive residential geothermal system that circulates fluid through buried pipes. The U.S. Department of Energy describes how geothermal heat pumps work: “The technology relies on the fact that the earth (beneath the surface) remains at a relatively constant temperature throughout the year, warmer than the air above it during the winter and cooler in the summer, very much like a cave. The geothermal heat pump takes advantage of this by transferring heat stored in the earth… into a building during the winter, and transferring it out of the building and back into the ground during the summer.” Even more common than geothermal heat pumps are air source electric heat pumps, an efficient technology that moves ambient heat in and out of your home, cooling it in the summertime and warming it in the wintertime. They may not be as sexy as solar panels or wind turbines, but paired with renewables, heat pumps can help free us from our dependency on fossil fuels.

From Bruce’s place, I made a stop at the Akron News-Reporter, which ran another nice story on the ride. Bruce had smoothed the way for me by calling ahead to the next town to alert another reporter that I was en route. Cheryl Patterson, owner of the Otis Telegraph, drove out to meet me and get a shot of the trike before the sun went down. When I asked her about camping options in town, she kindly offered up her backyard. So that is where I ended my day a short while later, ecstatic to have 87 more miles behind me. The Patterson “campground” came complete with a washer and drier and a hot shower. After getting cleaned up and tossing my ripe-smelling riding gear into the wash, the Patterson family treated me to dinner at a local Mexican restaurant.

The next morning, Cheryl and her husband Jerry again generously treated me to breakfast downtown, after which, to my delight, Jerry accompanied me on his bike for the first mile out of town. Then it was back on Highway 34 alone, pedaling east across the wide-open prairie, where I battled strong crosswinds all day. I made it my regular practice to pedal down the Main Street of every town I encountered that was within a few miles of the main artery to meet as many local people as possible. The heartland towns always revealed themselves through their telltale water towers.

Toward the end of the day, I rolled into the picturesque little town of Wray, Colorado, where I encountered my first wind turbine of the trek. Built for the Wray School District, I knew about it and was eager to see it. Getting there meant pedaling up some steep hills and gravel roads on the outskirts of town, but I finally arrived at the base of the white tower and took a video of it spinning gracefully above me. A quick call to the head of Wray’s Chamber of Commerce revealed that the turbine had begun as a teacher-student project. They did some fundraisers, generated some momentum with the backing of the school board, and the rest is history. Nearly one megawatt in size, the school turbine produces enough green energy on average to power 200 homes annually. It also provides a steady stream of income for the local school district. Pedaling away, I thought about how exciting it would be if green-minded students and teachers all across America started tapping Mother Nature’s power like this. In areas where there’s sufficient wind, every school would benefit from having its own wind turbine, just as almost every K-12 school in America can also prosper from installing solar panels. I would later learn that one enterprising school district in Arkansas, the Batesville School District, saved enough from its solar system and energy efficiency upgrades to turn a $250,000 budget deficit into a $1.8 million budget surplus in three short years (they used the massive savings in utility costs to raise teacher salaries an average of $2,000-$3000 per teacher).

At this point tired, I was happy to find my campground practically next door to the turbine and rolled up the gravel driveway of the Hitch’n Post Campground & RV Park eager for some rest after 54 more hard-earned miles. After paying inside, I picked out a campsite and went about my nightly routine of setting up camp. The first order of business was always uncoiling the 6-foot cable from the rear fork and locking the trike to something immovable, in this case a picnic table. Next was setting up my shelter. Knowing my tent like a trusted friend, this never took me long. If I expected rain or cold, I would add the rain fly. On this particular night, I left the mesh top open for an unobstructed view of the stars. The last order of business was always blowing up my air mattress, which got tossed into the tent along with my sleeping bag and mini pillow.

After changing out of my sweat-soaked riding gear, I boiled some water on my cook stove to hydrate a freeze-dried dinner of Louisiana red beans and rice, which I devoured in minutes. In what would also become my standard after dinner routine, I found an electrical outlet, plugged in my battery pack to recharge it, and using my phone as a Wi-Fi tether for my computer, fired up my laptop to recount the highlights of the day. This usually involved writing a blog for my website; uploading photographs; posting updates on my social media pages; editing and posting videos to my YouTube channel; writing summary descriptions for those videos; and responding to emails. After a long day of pedaling, this “office work” often taxed me to my limit, but it had to be done no matter how tired I was or I would forget key details of the day, for the next day had its own unique story to tell. When it came time to turn off my headlamp and surrender to sleep, it was rest well earned.

Gazing up at the stars from the comfort of my tent perched high atop Colorado’s eastern plains, I reflected back on my earlier decision to heed the call of my conscience. Although I no longer had a home or a means of supporting myself, I felt very much at home and supported. I was right where I was supposed to be, doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. I was on purpose. I was at peace.

NOTE: The written form of WORLDFIRE is the authoritative version. Any inadvertent errors in transcribing the recordings are mine and mine alone.