New vistas, old practices
Kurt Joy, a New Zealand postgraduate student in Antarctic geology, took this pic while studying glaciers on the frozen continent. “Pee bottles in Antarctica are a way of life in the field,” Joy says. “All urine is collected and shipped back for treatment. Everyone uses them, male or female, and it’s quite an art to their use within a sleeping bag!” By comparison, he suggests, truck sleepers are quite roomy.
Side-view writing
Vanessa Leigh Hoffman began her new book, “Rear View Mirror” (available via Amazon.com or vlhoffman.com), in the cab of her fiance Joe Cicciaro’s 1988 Peterbilt. In the book, the main character learns he has a wealthy twin and is used by the Irish Mafia to get at said twin’s cash. On runs to Texas with tomatoes originating near Cicciaro’s and Hoffman’s home in St. Pete Beach, Fla., Hoffman found fodder for her books. “Meeting people at fuel islands, truck stops and at loading docks gave me inspiration for several characters,” she says. So next time you’re bargaining with a lumper and he offers you a deal you can’t refuse, watch out.
Cowpower instead of horsepower
Is that manure I smell or is your DPF on the fritz? At the February World Agricultural Expo in Tulare, Calif., reps of Lindsay, Calif.-based Hilarides Dairy announced the company is converting cow manure to fuel for generators and – you guessed it – big trucks. Rob Hilarides, a fourth-generation dairy farmer and the firm’s owner, earned a $600,000 grant from the California Air Resources Board’s Alternative Fuel Incentive Program for two heavy-duty diesel trucks that run entirely on biomethane. In a Wired story on Hilarides, Allen Dusalt of Sustainable Conservation summed up the energy potential of manure with this nugget (and no, he wasn’t talking about the proliferation of CARB diesel regs): “In California the manure is plentiful.”
