Food for thought from Subway

Inspiration for the latest field report comes from a sandwich run to Subway.  Today at lunch, I took a closer look at those unassuming plastic Subway bags and paper napkins.

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Walking away from the register, my delicious sandwich and cookies are all tucked safely away in their Subway bag.  It's a nice package - it's easy to transport and even comes with a paper napkin or two.  

But do we ever stop to think about that plastic bag Subway sandwiches come in?

The future of plastic bags - the kind you get from places like Wal-Mart and the grocery store, is in limbo.  For example, the City of Austin has placed a ban on these kinds of bags starting in March of 2013.  There is a whole slew of arguments, background info, and details that go into that debate.  But, bottom-line, people are starting to acknowledge plastic bags and their consequences on the environment.

So, going back to Subway, I wonder what will happen to their packaging in the future (either near or distant).  What would happen if they eliminated the plastic bag from their whole equation?  HEB, the popular grocery store in Texas, is having to undergo training for their staff in preparation for the Austin plastic bag ban.  According to this article, they are incurring a pretty hefty fee.  I wonder how much it would cost Subway to train their employees to simply say ‘Would you like to forgo a plastic bag today?’  How hard could it be?  It sounds kind of like the ‘Would you like to Supersize that?’ … and that seems to be working pretty well.

Some Subway locations have already eliminated the use of the plastic bag.  While volunteering with Keep Austin Beautiful at a UT football game, I was introduced to a pilot program that tries to encourage fans to recycle and compost their waste, rather than mindlessly chucking it in the garbage.  The Subway in the food court on the north end zone did not package up sandwiches in plastic bags.  I don’t know if this was due to KAB encouraging them to eliminate the bags, or some internal Subway initiative.  But, everyone seemed just fine with carrying their sandwich away wrapped up in the Subway paper wrapper.  The effect: less waste is having to be processed.  Now that is a real touchdown! 

Moving to the paper napkin.  I noticed today that it said ‘Please recycle or compost this napkin’

Compost?!??

Building off what I learned at the KAB volunteer event, apparently food scraps and paper can go into a compost facility and be turned into good soil that can be sold for use in gardens.  The catch is, it has to be properly handled.  Say some food from dinner goes into the garbage.  I used to think ‘hey, food is food, it’s organic, won’t those bugs eat it and it’ll break down out there and turn into dirt?’  But, because there is no oxygen present in the landfill, it takes wayyyy longer than you’d think for even the most simple food to decompose.  That’s why programs exist to compost food scraps.  It keeps the food out of the landfill and it creates a useful product from the leftover food scraps.  Pretty cool, huh?  I've heard it referred to as nature's own recycling process :) 

There are cities out there that actually collect compost.  What??!?  Yep, just like there’s a bin for landfill waste and recycling materials, there’d be one strictly for compost.  Check out the progressive program like San Francisco's composting service offered by Recology.  San Francisco is credited with being America's greenest city and diverts 78% of its waste away from landfills.   Cities like Austin do not currently have a compost collection service, though.  One option is to collect your compost and either process it at your house via a backyard compost pile or you can collect it and take scraps to a nearby community garden (see this post for more info). 

A cool image of what can be composted! 

    

So, kudos to Subway for using recycled paper for their napkins and for eliminating the plastic bag (in some locations).  And, take another look at that bag.  When did the green leaf come into the picture??  Has that always been there with their Eat Fresh campaign?  

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In writing this blog, I came across a really neat collaboration between Recology and IBM.  Check it out!

Several lingering questions I still have:

1. If you put a whole bunch of bright green construction paper into your composite pile (along with other organics and food scraps), what will happen to all that green dye?  Will the resulting soil mix be ... green...?
2. Recycled paper seems to be more and more popular.  But, if all kinds of paper fiber products can go into composting and be broken down, how will that trend impact the recycled paper fiber industry?  And, is it more energy efficient to compost already processed paper fiber or to recycle it into another form of paper product?

The Power of: © !!!

Have you ever noticed the © at the bottom of websites, photos, or images?  A couple of months ago, I remember seeing a collection of nature photos on someone's personal blog.  What interested me more than the photos was the fact that on EVERY single photo, the photographer had imposed the © image along with their name and the year.  

How did they do that?  And, what does that mean?  

Finally! The Business Foundations classes I just finished at UT are paying off.  All it took for the idea of copyright to become less intimidating to me was a 15 minute class discussion on the difference between patents, trademarks, trade secrets, and copyrights.

To investigate more, I consulted THE source: The U.S. Copyright Office (well.. their website,  www.copyright.gov, at least).

Here's the scoop:

Turns out, anything you create, write, or produce is already copyrighted.  So, say you take a cool picture and you want to put it up on your blog.  It's copyrighted!  Bam!  You didn't have to do anything at all besides produce the work.  It's like an innate copyright on the image.

So, putting the © 2012 Heather Hill at the bottom of the image has no legal power, but it does serve as a nice, friendly notice/reminder to people that Hey! I did create this image!  This work is mine! (and that I didn't just copy it from somewhere or someone else).

But! Before we get all excited and think all of our work is fully protected, know this:

If someone were to say ... copy your image, print it on a t-shirt, sell it to the masses, make lots of money, become a millionaire, retire and dig their toes in the sand for the rest of their life ... you wouldn't have any leverage against them for using your work UNLESS you have registered your copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office (small fee, fairly easy to do, can be done online). 

The way I'm looking at all this is:

• When you write a cool story, take a cool picture, create and sing a song, a copyright on that work is inherently born with it.

• If you want a gentle, friendly reminder to let people know the cool image or story is yours, feel free to add the © symbol, year of production, and your name.

• If you want legal power to file a lawsuit on someone who copies your image, prints it on a t-shirt, sells it to the masses, makes lots of money, etc. ... you need to have actually registered your copyright online with the U.S. Copyright office.  

Here's some backup from the guys in the suits.  These excerpts are taken directly from the Copyright Basics document published by the U.S. Library of Congress (which can be found here).

How to make the Copyright Blurb:

"The use of the copyright notice is the responsibility of the 

copyright owner and does not require advance permission 

from, or registration with, the Copyright Office.

Form of Notice for Visually Perceptible Copies

The notice for visually perceptible copies should contain all 

the following three elements:

1 The symbol © (the letter C in a circle), or the word 

“Copyright,” or the abbreviation “Copr.”; and

2 The year of first publication of the work. In the case of 

compilations or derivative works incorporating previously 

published material, the year date of first publication of 

the compilation or derivative work is sufficient. The year 

date may be omitted where a pictorial, graphic, or sculp­

tural work, with accompanying textual matter, if any, is 

reproduced in or on greeting cards, postcards, stationery, 

jewelry, dolls, toys, or any useful article; and

3 The name of the owner of copyright in the work, or an 

abbreviation by which the name can be recognized, or a 

generally known alternative designation of the owner.

Example: © 2011 John Doe"

When Copyright protection becomes effective:

"When the Copyright Office issues a registration certificate,

it assigns as the effective date of registration the date it 

received all required elements—an application, a nonrefund­

able filing fee, and a nonreturnable deposit—in acceptable 

form, regardless of how long it took to process the applica­

tion and mail the certificate. You do not have to receive your 

certificate before you publish or produce your work, nor 

do you need permission from the Copyright Office to place 

a copyright notice on your work. However, the Copyright 

Office must have acted on your application before you can 

file a suit for copyright infringement, and certain remedies, 

such as statutory damages and attorney’s fees, are available 

only for acts of infringement that occurred after the effective 

date of registration. If a published work was infringed before 

the effective date of registration, those remedies may also be 

available if the effective date of registration is no later than 

three months after the first publication of the work."

***Please note that these comments are my interpretation of the Copyright law and Copyright Basics document published by the U.S. Library of Congress.  I am not a lawyer; please consult one if you need any legal advice***

And thus, introducing the newest member of the family:

So, Bottom line:
While the  'hugs from heather :)'  text seems like it serves the exact same purpose (at least amongst my friends), the '© 2012 Heather L. Hill' makes things a little more formal :)   (...until I officially register the image... stay tuned :)

This Might Surprise You: A Story of Plastic Bags in Pictures

It all started off like this...

In February of 2012, I learned plastic bags were not accepted in Austin's Single Stream recycling program (story of discovery...here).  So, a collection of plastic bags ensued.  All colors, shapes, sizes, and purposes.  Eventually, things started to get a bit out of control.  Something had to be done:

The first step involved getting a better understanding of what we were dealing with.  Once all the bags were put on the table, it was quite an impressive sight.  This is the picture of two, average female consumers making a conscious choice to divert plastic bags from the trash/recycling bags over the period of four months.  This is what we had:

Impressive, huh?  

Digging a little deeper reveals a variety of plastic types.  Identified by the number within the recycling triangle, there were at least three different kinds of plastic in the pile.  There was #2 (HDPE), #4 (LDPE), and #5 (PP).   

Our pile was massive.  Once folded and organized, the random, chaotic pile was turned into a stack of plastic pushing 9 inches high.

The pile above is the nicer, thicker plastic bags from places like the UT Coop, Gap, etc.  That pile was NOT including the thinner plastic bags from places like HEB, Target, Walmart, etc.  Thankfully, we had a BIG plastic bag capable of holding all of the smaller plastic baggies.  

What if our table of plastic bags could go from something like this:

To something like this:

If TWO people could create THAT much plastic bag excess in FOUR months... think about how much plastic is used WORLDWIDE.  And most people don't even think about the packaging and bags they use.  Typically, bags aren't thought of as part of the 'product'.  While plastic has helped revolutionize the packaging industry because it is strong and light, it's creating a lot of waste in landfills.  But, back to what we CAN do with the plastic bags we already have...

After doing some reading on the different types of plastics, apparently certain types are not generally accepted by recycling programs.  Being a proactive recycler, I called up HEB.  After talking with the store manager about his plastic bag recycling program, it seemed as though any and all types of plastic baggies were welcome.  The more the merrier!  And, after looking up and down and all around the collection bin outside of HEB, no reference to plastic selectively could be found. 

The plastic bag recycling bin is the next step as our plastic bags go on to bigger and better things. But who knows, we might just come across our (recycled) plastic again =) 

Other links of interest:

Interesting plastic recycling facts from the EPA

PKG Packaging is an example of a company in California that is working to make eco-friendly packaging.



Update: August 3, 2012

All new bags, one month after recycling the other bag of bags.  Wow.

As I separated the two piles, I noticed 

• a lot of cereal bags.  This makes me think of in.gredients, the first zero packaging grocery store in Austin, supposed to open sometime this summer! :D
• more plastic Ziploc baggies.  I think this trend has to do with the fact that there are two people in the apartment now, and we're both taking our lunch to work.  We both like to cook and keep our leftovers and partially used veggies in Tupperware containers.  So, when we run out of Tupperware for lunch packing purposes, we go for the ziplock baggies  ...We should consider getting more Tupperware!  Or, even better, relieving a friend of their commonly unused Tupperware containers :D

Update: October 8, 2012

Just over 2 months later:

By far, hands down, without a doubt the most surprising thing since recycling plastic bags has been realizing just how many there are!  Our collection bag just keeps on filling up!  Two months later and we have THIS many plastic bags??  How??!!   Sorting through the collection before we take it to the recycling bin at the grocery store offers some insight into what the makeup of our plastic collection looks like.  We've done a pretty good job at almost eliminating individual Ziploc baggie usage as well as grocery store plastic bags, so most of what we collect nowadays tends to be food packing related.  There were lots of bags from bread (sometimes 2 bags for 1 loaf), tortillas,  veggie and fruit plastic bags from the produce section, pasta bags, and bulk food section bags.  Then there was some toilet paper plastic wrap and a massive wad of plastic film from the dry-cleaners.  It just all adds up to an impressive amount.  

This was Gloriana's first trip to recycle the bags.  She was pretty pumped :)

Let's see... any takers on when the collection bag will fill up again? :D  

Update: December 5, 2012
I'm starting to notice a trend in the time intervals between updates...

Bag Untouched

Bag Sorted Through .... Kind of :) 

  This is a pretty easy project to keep tracking, so... stayed tuned! :) 

Mason Greenstar

6/13/12 UPDATE:
This article was posted on the Mason Greenstar website!! :D
Link here: http://masongreenstar.com/content/heather-l-hill-graduate-student-university-texas-austin-shares-her-recent-visit-mason

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Their concrete masonry blocks are so light they can be tossed through the air with the flick of a wrist.  While the dimensions are a bit different than the traditional CMU, there is nothing traditional about this BLOX.  In this new technology, the concrete mix design consists of cement, water, recycled paper fibers, and eco-friendly additives.  Yep, the aggregate has been replaced with recycled paper fibers.  That is the whole motivation for this company, Mason Greenstar: making a building material that is innovative, competitively priced, and environmentally friendly.

More than a decade ago, Zach Rabon happened to see barges of recycled paper fibers floating down the river toward their final destination ... the landfill.  The passion to divert this enormous amount of waste from clogging the earth in landfills has led Zach on a 10 year journey of developing a mix design, securing patents on the technology, and undergoing extensive material and product testing.

Zach, now the founder and president of Mason Greenstar, the sole manufacturer of Greenstar BLOX, was well positioned to experiment with this new recycled paper fiber thing.  The owner of a ready mixed concrete plant in Mason, TX, he had the perfect testing ground to try out mix designs.  In 2005, Mason Greenstar was officially incorporated, cementing the idea into a viable venture.  Four years later, Mason Greenstar (now with Zach’s good friend Josh Hargrove, Josh's brother Matt, Zach's dad, Kent, and a handful of consulting engineers, lawyers, and small business advisors) was successful in securing patents for their mix design, their additives, and the process of making the BLOX.

In one day, they could manually make about 1,900 BLOXs.  This would equate to roughly one (2,000 sq ft) house's worth of material in two days time - assuming that the house was built in an area with no building codes.  One aspect to the method of all their madness is the fact that Mason Greenstar lives in Mason, TX.  In the heart of hill country, in the heart of TX, and in the heart of the US, the building codes are probably some of the most lax you'll find anywhere in the country.  Acting like a domino effect, the codes and regulations get more stringent as you head out towards the east and west coast.  Being in Mason (with no building codes) has allowed Zach and his team to fine tune their mix design and BLOX production.  They've built a group of family houses not too far from the plant (nothing is really 'far away' within Mason), and Zach's house was the first house to be built with the BLOX.  Through experimenting on their own homes, they've learned quite a bit about construction practices when working with their material.  Now, they have a handful of custom-built homes scattered throughout Texas and, most recently, Colorado. 

1,900 BLOX a day can only get you so far, and soon Mason Greenstar realized automated production was the key to their success in the future.  Automating their production process is beneficial for several reasons.  First and foremost - production capacity... pretty self-explanatory.  Second is the ability to get building code certification.  As they expand into the home construction market in all directions, they will run up against stiffer code regulations.  As you can image, bricks made by hand (each one unique and relying on a number of variables) simply won't get code approval.  Automation will allow for a standard, consistent product to be produced.  And third is the ability to place their focus on licensing rather than brute force manufacturing.  When they establish relationships with contractors who believe in their product and recognize that it is the next generation of green building product, Mason Greenstar can license the mix design and automated production process to them.  Mason Greenstar would get royalties for every cubic yard of material produced, the licensed contractor would get work in producing BLOX, and the area would get a green building alternative that diverts waste from the landfill.  That's a win-win-win relationship all around.

So currently, in June 2012, they are in the transition stage of going from manual production of BLOX to automated production.  Within the next several months, a small-scale production line will be produced and delivered by a Canadian company.  They specialize in making automated machines for exactly what Mason Greenstar does - making blocks in a wet-slurry process - and the process line will be designed specifically for production of Greenstar BLOX.  There is a massive, empty steel structure in Mason, TX that awaits this automation capacity.  And this massive, (pretty much) empty steel structure is where I found myself standing last week.

~~~

Mason, TX is smack dab in the middle of Texas hill country.  Coming from Austin means a two-hour drive west through fields of gorgeous wildflowers, breathtaking views of the hills, and well-kept ranches and farms.   The directions are super simple: take Mopac south to 71.  Go west on 71 till it merges with 29.  Keep going west. Turn left just before getting to Mason, where you see a Mason Greenstar sign.  There you go.  The drive is less on GPS following and more on enjoying TX hill country scenery.  Once the dust settles from driving down the dirt road, I'm ready to meet up with Matt and Zach.

Instead of an outstretched hand, I get wrapped into a hug by Zach upon my arrival.  Immediately it feels more as if I'm visiting a family as opposed to a big, stiff corporation.  Their office is so cool.  Literally.  Made of the BLOX, a small AC unit and several fans are all that's needed to keep the place cool.  There's hardly a 90-degree angle anywhere in the place, and as I'll tend to find all the structures made out of BLOX, it has an adobe/Southwestern style architecture to it.  Usually the office to a couple of people, today animals outnumber people in the office.  A dwarf caiman serves as the office greeter - he lives in a large, open-air tank/pond right as you come in the door.  Appropriately, he’s been named Greenstar.  There's also the iguana and bearded dragon that take up residence in Zach's office.

Matt is so generous with his time in showing me around the place.  On the site is the office, the ready mixed concrete facility, that big, (pretty much) empty metal structure, the area where they manually make and dry the BLOX, and stockpiles of raw material (sand, aggregate, etc).  As you'd expect, the area's kinda dusty, but, in a good way only civil engineers and construction contractors can get excited about.  Going back inside the office is a break from the sun and heat, and is where I get to meet the 2012 Distinguished Woman of Central Texas, Mrs. Peggy Rosser, who has just arrived on site for a meeting with Matt.  

Peggy works with the Small Business Development Center, with her official title looking something like: Rural Small Business Advisor for the Small Business Development Center at San Angelo State University.  In other words, Peggy is a helper, advisor, consultant, advocate, visionary, sounding board, and support system for young companies trying to get off and running.  She is a wonderful, warm lady, and getting to sit in on a meeting between Matt and Peggy is just icing on the cake to a wonderful day of seeing the facilities and visiting Mason.  Today, they are talking about details of a small business loan they are applying for to support the purchase of the automation equipment.  In the past, she has uncovered grants and award recognition that Mason Greenstar has won and she has been a very valuable consultant for Mason Greenstar as they move into the future of their company.  

It is easy to understand why Zach thinks this technology and product are about to really explode into the market.  His brainchild for the past ten years, he'll be the first to tell you there have been plenty of downs complementing their successes.  From constantly have to seek out grants and funding and new opportunities, to navigating the ropes of patents and business lingo, to defending their patent, this company has already been tested.  

So what does the future hold?  As we stand in the massive, (pretty much) empty steel structure on their site, Matt tells me how Mason Greenstar is currently conducting research and development toward working on a project with the Kimberly Clark Corporation.  The Kimberly Clark Corporation (KCC) is an international company that produces paper products common to us all - Huggies, Kleenex, Kotex, Pull-Ups, Scott paper towels, and more.  As a result of their manufacturing process, they produce a by-product of residual short fiber that, as a waste that can't be reused by Kimberly Clark, goes directly to the landfill.  KCC's plant in Loudon, Tennessee would be the first in the country to become a primary production facility for Mason Greenstar.  Once the automation line has been fine-tuned in Mason, the technology would then be able to be set up at Kimberly Clark's plant in TN to accept their residual short fiber for use in producing the Greenstar BLOX – an extraordinary example of collaboration between two very different companies working toward a more sustainable world.   

Seeing how Matt and Zach interact with the community around them and how passionate they are about diverting waste from landfills for use in building products, it's easy to get excited yourself.  As business partners and close friends, their small team has worked tirelessly on developing their product.  As a result, their company is now poised to really gain a footing in the green building product market.  As we stand in the massive, (pretty much) empty steel structure, imagining the automated production lines that will soon fill the space, it's hard not to get excited for the Mason Greenstar team, their product, and the future of green building materials.  

Book Review: Wild

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail

By Cheryl Strayed

Published: 2012

Read: May 2012

Wild is an awesome, captivating story.  Cheryl Strayed is a 26-year-old woman solo-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in the summer of 1995.  The way she writes the book makes you feel as though she is telling you her story through the quick-turning pages.  The reading experience is quite different than the first book review I wrote, with this book having fewer (almost none) LOL moments.  Instead, I was living the story while intimately understanding Cheryl's transformation as she grew not only physically, but more importantly, mentally and spiritually, while hiking the trail.  I simply could not put this book down.

Throughout the 315 pages, Cheryl keeps things interesting by weaving the trail hiking experience with stories from her past as they came up as issues and emotions she dealt with and conquered.  The motivation for hiking was to refocus her life after grieving the painful loss of her mother and the ensuing disintegration of her family and her marriage.  She was also breaking free of old bad habits  while building self-confidence to make herself whole again.

The way Cheryl makes the read feel like she's telling you her story personally is through her unique writing style.  I remember being a bit thrown off during the first few pages by the punctuation and sentence formatting.  Re-reading them now makes me realize it was just an adjustment period in getting to know Cheryl's voice.  

"It was the thing that had compelled [the trail creators and advocates] to fight for the trail against all the odds, and it was the thing that drove me and every other long-distance hiker onward on the most miserable days.  It had nothing to do with gear or footwear or the backpacking fads or philosophies... It had only to do with how it felt to be in the wild."
(Pg 207)

"I was entering. I was leaving.  California streamed behind me like a long silk veil.  I didn't feel like a big fat idiot anymore.  And I didn't feel like a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen.  I felt fierce and humble and gathered up inside, like I was safe in this world too."

(Pg 234)

"I've given you everything," [Cheryl's mother] insisted again and again in her last days.  "Yes," I agreed.  She had, it was true.  She did.  She did.  She did.  She'd come at us with maximum maternal velocity.  She hadn't held back a thing, not a single lick of her love."

(Pg 268)

Cheryl focuses on the right topics for the right amount of time.  You want to read every word, rather than feeling tempted to skip over boring, needlessly descriptive sections.  Her adventure makes readers (...at least me...) want to get out there and hike - to feel the blisters, the lost toe nails, the sweat-coated body - all for the purpose of experiencing the same transformation that Cheryl underwent.  The trail's physical demands forced so much focus on the physical and basic needs of life that the petty, irrelevant issues of Cheryl's past life were cast away, easily rolled off the side of one of the many mountains she traversed.  Hiking also built up her confidence to deal with the issues of her mom passing away and her wandering lifestyle.  

Things I think I'll remember most about this book:

(and things that will make more sense after reading the book:)

2nd skin

Boots and puffy toes

Boxes waiting at secluded post offices 

Literally living on next to nothing

Monster

Camaraderie from fellow trail mates

Food.  Fresh.  And cold Snapple

Cold sweat

Just keep going. 

While I naturally paint a picture of the scenes and events Cheryl depicts in the novel, there are some places she describes that seem absolutely beautiful.  Because they are actual places, I wanted to look a few of them up:

Crater Lake
(http://planetoddity.com) 

Mt. Hood
(http://www.discovernw.org)

Thanks, Luke, for recommending this book!  I loved reading it!!

Texas Hill Country

Hill Country is a common phrase out here in Texas.  Being in Austin, it's known to be 'West' ... with 'west' meaning pretty much anywhere west of Austin.  Being a lover of nature, I find it hard to believe that I've never explored any area of this state that promises 'hills'.  Before 5 pm on Sunday, May 6th, the farthest west I'd ever travelled was to the well-known Oasis Restaurant with my parents, which is on the east side of Lake Travis (about 20 minutes from downtown).

Come 5pm this afternoon, as I'm sitting in my new favorite coffee shop hoping that being surrounded by other people studying for finals will help me study for finals, I realize that I finally have some breathing room:  nothing is absolutely due tomorrow.  So, after getting to a good stoping point, I decide to satisfy the itch that's been building up every since I moved here.  I'm heading out to see as much of the hill country as I can before sunset.

Walking out of the coffee shop, I've got the names of 4 roads written on my inside palm.  After consulting mapquest, these will get me pretty far out, and then I can figure out where to go from there.  4 roads means 4 numbers, and something I've come to learn about TX is that the farther out you go, the more likely you're going to be on a FM#### road (FM means Farm to Market .. thanks dad for the tip before moving out here!: )

It takes about 20 minutes to get farther out than I've ever been before and I get a little giddy as I pass the sign for the Oasis...  new territory.  The welcome sign for Jonestown, TX is reassuring and exciting - this city is apparently the 'Gateway to the Hill Country'.

It's a gorgeous day.  The 90 degree sun on my skin is cooled off by the wind blowing through my open windows.  The roads I'm on are 40-55 mph roads, but they're hilly and windy.  I pass a rock/aggregate quarry.  Hidden behind trees, the short glimpse over my shoulder I get reveals a huge pit with no sign of a bottom.  There are other treats along the way.  Lake Travis, west of Austin, is a popular water-sports lake.  Last year, however, Lake Travis was in the news for a different reason - being bone dry in some parts and having a deficit of ~50 feet.  I've seen pictures, but I can't believe what I see driving by this afternoon.  Wildflowers are growing in the area that is obviously a lakebed: there are docks with boats in them sitting in a field of wildflowers.

There's a point where I crest a hill and my mouth literally drops and my breath is taken away.  The view of the hills is gorgeous.  Once I figure out why it impresses me so much, I realize that for almost a year, I haven't truly been on a hill top with a view of land around me.  There is something so captivating about cresting a ridge and seeing beautiful land for as far as you can see.

If there were any objective to this trip besides simply getting out there, it's to see the Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge.  It's the largest expanse of 'green' on my map anywhere near Austin, so I'm drawn to it.  Part of my drive takes me along the border and then through the Refuge.  It is a different kind of beautiful than I'm used to.  Instead of the lush trees and greenery of the East Coast, the trees here seem a little less dense and a little less tall.  The ground follows the same 'less lush' feel in the fact that it's dry and light-colored as opposed dark, fertile soil.  But, it's still pretty.  Wildflowers line most of the roads - purples, reds, pinks, blues, all so pretty.  And, getting out of the city means the views are farther reaching, meaning I can finally see large expanses of land again.

When I get tired of the cars behind me making me feel like I need to hurry up, I turn.  On the roads with only one lane in each direction, I try to at least go the speed limit while still stealing looks at the scenery.  It's a happy reminder of the difference between the joy of driving through gorgeous country versus simply getting through it.  There isn't much wildlife, actually, besides a few cows here and there, as well as a few horses.  I made a MapMyRide of the drive so that I'd be able to recall exactly where I went.

MapMyRide Map

It isn't till about the road going through the Refuge (the road through the green area in the picture above) that I feel like I can safely snap a few pictures.  When there is no car traffic for 10 minutes, I feel like it's safe to slow down a little bit.

Being out here is so peaceful.  Me, my car, good music, sunshine, and cool wind. Freedom.

Notice the trees.  I don't know what kind they are yet, but they're awesome!  Different than the kind back
on the East Coast... Kind of safari-like.

You can see for forever!  The flowers in the foreground are a little blurry, but they were so pretty.

  

It's also on the road going through the Wildlife Refuge that I start feeling nature calling on my bladder.  All the water from the coffee shop is catching up to me right on time, about an hour into my drive (I obviously know too much about my the size of my bladder.. hehe, I suppose a side effect of constantly having a water bottle with me).  One of the wonderful, terrible things about being out in the middle of nowhere, is that you're out in the middle of nowhere.

I find a decent looking gas station when I get back into civilization... aka Leander, TX.  The pit stop turns into kind of a break from driving.  After using the restroom and typing up a few notes back in the truck (truck), I notice there's now empty space in the tummy.  The Blue Bell ice cream sandwich back inside is calling my name.  It's satisfying knowing that this awesome adventure cost $1.50, with tax (plus 1/4 tank of gas... but that's not an immediate cost :P).  Eating the ice cream sandwich is an excuse to people watch.  I'm surprised when I realize almost everyone at the gas station is getting beer.  Either a six pack or two, or a big bag of those extra tall, cold cans.  It's Sunday.  Hmm.  Maybe it's the fact that this is the closest establishment for a long while, which draws in a lot of thirsty people...

Once in Leander, the drive pretty much runs through civilization the whole way.  Which, is a neat chance to notice the suburbs!  The land is fairly flat, and stone is everywhere.  White stone houses, buildings, and retaining walls.  Even neighborhood entrances are marked by a big flat-sided stone with the name etched in cursive.  I think it's a pretty kind of architecture, and, combined with the weather and the landscape, reminds me of being out West (the West US, not West TX).  There are also lots of drainage ditches on the sides of roads.  These are easy to notice because they look like big slabs of concrete laid over the land.  A mark of being in a dry area is that drainage, when it does rain, becomes a big deal.  The sudden introduction of rain to an area with parched earth that can't absorb much water usually means flooding if there aren't well-designed concrete ditches and drainage systems.

I can't wait to get back out there.  Maybe next time I'll actually have a chance to get out of my car.

The Hill Country gives me one last treat as I'm heading home and hit the highway.  The view in my rearview mirror is a rose/amarillo sunset.   

One of my favorites :)  (Just replace 'farm' with 'ranch' :)

Summer Reflections

Man how I miss Italy, 

the food, 

traveling with Celine, 

adventuring, and 

getting out there!

        

Even the small things get my wheels turning
Cooking up lunch :)

~~~~~~

They say you make true happiness in life.

I agree wholeheartedly.

There is NOTHING like homemade guacamole