myumyumyu

The large summer event that I've been helping to prepare for at work is the annual Renewable Energy Fair. Each summer, REAP takes a couple of blocks of the Park Strip and turns it into a large festival with live performers, a beer garden, food vendors, and, of course, workshops and demonstrations about renewable energy, alternative energy, and energy efficiency.

The other day, I prepared some materials for a kids' workshop at the fair. It reminded me of preparing for CASPY! It was a little crafts project called "Wind Can Do Work," where kids put together a little windmill that lifts a paperclip weight. Of course, I assembled one myself to make sure that the instructions were straightforward and that we had all of the necessary materials. As the windmill turns, a string attached to the end wraps around a straw, and you add paperclips as weights and see how many paperclips a certain amount of wind can lift. Yay, physics! (W = F*d) Something that I actually do still remember!

Kids' workshop for the Renewable Energy Fair: "Wind Can Do Work"

Outside of work, I've just been enjoying my last few days here. We made sure to enjoy the good weather while it lasted, running each day, then eating dinner in the sunroom while watching the sunset. Here's a recent meal that Stella and I made:

Veggies for fried rice

Fried rice -- yum!

And the sunset that followed:

The return of nice weather

As I mentioned in my last post, we went to see the Batman marathon: all three movies back-to-back, from 6pm to 3am. It was a really awesome experience. It was really shocking and sad to hear about the shooting in Aurora the next morning though. We were at a Century 16 in Anchorage ourselves, and I was just in Denver last summer. It's really unfortunate to hear about these kinds of things. The movies were incredible though. It was great to see all of them together, since there were many details that we had forgotten about in each movie and that linked the three.

For those wondering how we fared in this 9-hour event, we went in very prepared! We had a full plan for our marathon. We bought po' boys (yummy Cajun sandwiches) from Gumbo House and brought cookies and banana bread that we baked the night before. With the calories and sugar, combined with general excitement about the event, I didn't even feel sleepy! With six of us (Stella, Jensen, Oisin, Carla, Natalie, and me) there together, it was just a giant party.

Not so beautiful, but most delicious oatmeal chocolate chip walnut cookies

Chocolate chip banana bread

Yesterday, I went down to Seward with Stella, Oisin, Geoff, and Iva, along with the other interns from the various energy organizations in Anchorage: the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, the Alaska Energy Authority, the Institute of the North, and the Renewable Energy Alaska Project. We got a tour of the heat exchange pump system that the Alaska SeaLife Center utilizes to garner heat from the water of the surrounding Resurrection Bay.

Pipes in the heat exchange system at the Alaska SeaLife Center

Heat exchanger

It's a cool project, and they said that they can get a coefficient of performance (COP) of approximately 3, meaning that they can get 3 units of energy back for each unit put into the system. Even though I wasn't an engineer, I could understand and appreciate the concept behind the heat exchange system (a guy on our tour decided that all of us who were not engineers probably struggled to understand anything that was going on and was extremely obnoxious in belittling half of our group).

Since we were already at the SeaLife Center, we also went to check out the animals!

Steller sea lion

In the afternoon, we went to AVTEC, Alaska's vo-tech center, for another tour. It was interesting to see all of the machinery that students learn about. There is also a wind turbine right outside the building. We had the opportunity to climb up the turbine!

Wind turbine at AVTEC that I climbed

Donning climbing equipment, I went in through the latched door, strapped myself in, and climbed up. It was pretty cool, though I realized that I have terrible upper body strength/am too fat, since I struggled to pull up my own weight. Normally, when people climb up the turbine, they would also be carrying several pounds of tools. Despite these sad realizations, it was good exercise and a cool experience to see the inside and top of the turbine.

Oisin and I are ready to climb!

Looking down during the climb up the inside of the wind turbine

We were supposed to head out of Seward around 3:30pm to get home by 5:30pm. As we got our tour at AVTEC, however, we found out that the Seward Highway (the only road back to Anchorage) was closed down. Apparently, someone had kidnapped someone and hijacked his car at gunpoint at mile 69 of the highway, and so it was closed in an effort to search for the car... Being in Seward, we were at mile 0, and Anchorage was 128 miles away, so we were basically stranded in Seward. Finally, a little before 5pm, we heard that we could get back on the road and headed home. It turns out that the man needed to use the bathroom and got out of the car, and the driver was able to get away with a spare key. They still haven't found the hijacker/kidnapper though.

It's now my last week in Alaska. It seems like the time has gone by both quickly and slowly. I'm ready to go back to the warmth and darkness of the east coast, though I do feel as if I've gotten used to living here, in a way.