Wrap up.

                Understanding what it means to live by a certain set principle, especially one that is uncommon, means that your thoughts must not waiver from your commitment. If you lose focus your commitment will simply drop. Sometimes you can fall very far from where you want to be, and it can be very tempting to want to drop everything and simply forget. However holding on the commitment to remember your principles, and remember why they are important is critical to any ideological success. understanding why you established your ideals in the first place, is incredibly important to who you become even if your plans are not perfect. I began to understand this more in depth during the final days of the experiment.

                My father called me on Thursday asking me about how everything at school was going. I told him everything was fine, but I made no mention of the experiment. My family understands that I have a tendency to do things a bit off the beaten track, but I felt that it would be better to tell them about my experience with the experiment after it was over. They worry a lot and I know it's only because they care deeply, but I knew the mention of vegan in any context would certainly bring up the eleventh or twelfth ( I can't remember which) telling of the tale of my grandmothers anemia after a short go of being a vegetarian. My grandmother is perfectly fine, but I can understand why they might worry.

                My father told me that he had bought me bus tickets to come back to New York for Passover and that the family had chosen to have its Seder on the second night just to accommodate me so I would not have to miss Friday classes. I thought at first that that was one of the nicest things they could do and was very happy not only to be going home for the holiday but to be with the family. Then I remembered the experiment and realized it was definitely in some trouble.

                The bus ride from D.C. to New York is supposed to take four to five hours and modern diesel buses usually contain a double 24 volt electric battery which is four times larger and energy costly than a regular car not to mention the energy that went into extracting the crude , and filtering it into diesel. In addition I would need to take the bus twice. Two four hour trips crammed in a bus may not sound like luxury but to an energy poor fellow like myself it is way outside my means. This would cost me as much as a week of electrical salary , but how could I say no it would be impossible they had changed everything for me. I decided to go not knowing how I was going to fix this issue.

                I arrived on Friday night and after some hugs and talk of college life I went to bed that night thinking of what I could do to fix how much energy I spent. I had the Idea to buy a fifty dollar pollution allowance to make up for some of the impact my bus ride. I figured that the price would simply be a tax for breaking my promises to the experiment. So it turns out that two twenty dollar bus tickets are going to cost me around ninety dollars. The next day we took a twenty minute drive to my Uncles house for a Passover Seder.  Seder is the Hebrew word for order because everything about the dinner has a particular order in which we do it. I began to think about the importance of order in terms of the experiment and why it is so critical.

                If you are going to maintain any kind of new order it must be your first priority. Your plans can be quickly disrupted by lack of order so you need to have this focus and presence of mind to effect real change in your life. Living purposefully can only be achieved by a mental order of sorts that prioritize commitment first and achieving set goals immediately after. Only then can really be able in any capacity to change yourself and your world. That is one important lesson I gained from this experiment. As for the Passover dinner itself which would cost me three hours of sun I ate it because if a Jewish mother slaves over a hot stove for any amount of time unless you have a death by guilt wish your going to eat it.

Day Three

                I have been a solar panel for over 72 hours now and I am  beginning to get the hang of it.  I am finding that It is not too difficult to make most adjustments to the low energy alternatives in daily life. Stairs are not too much of a hassle to deal with ,seeing as, the most I have to climb at any given time is four flights or less. The main difficulty with stairs is dealing with the psychological effect of forgetting something that you needed back in your dorm room. My frustration  seemed disproportionate to the actual amount of energy I needed to expend to get back to my room.

                I remember getting all the way down stairs just to have that mind sputtering thought of " Did I lock my door? I'm sure I did. Ugh. you know what to do." four flights later and I was back at my door confirming that I had locked it in the first place. I was mad at myself and gravity at first, but then I realized It was not actually that difficult to double check and in the future with more access to electricity it would be even easier. So if nothing else I believe this experiment has made me more calm about forgetting something that is easily corrected and that there is no reason to waste sunlight on that kind of frustration.

                Eating vegan also presented some new interesting challenges. I have decided that the only way I could possible live within my energy means is to eat only vegan. The dining room on campus (TDR) is very vegan friendly and I am enjoying trying foods I would not normally eat, however I have been hungrier than I usually am. Once I found myself daydreaming about the things I used to eat and before I realized it I had doodled an entire roast turkey in my calculus notebook ( please don't tell professor Vandyke).   When meal times come however I am actually pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoy it and there are many veggie substitutes to my typical foods that I am becoming accustomed to.  

                The only other issues I have with maintaining my energy level are accidental slip ups on my part. It is easier to manage one thing that you want to change in your life however when you need to consider the electrical implications of everything you do you are bound to make mistakes. While talking to a friend who lives on my floor I accidently followed her to the elevator and before I knew what  I had done I burned an estimated half an hour of electricity. While sitting in my dorm room in the dark I absentmindedly grabbed at a piece of leftover and stale Halloween chocolate and that undoubtedly cost me some sun. Similarly while enjoying a warm shower the thought of wasted watts leaped into my head and I spun the shower handle the coldest possible setting (frostbite).

                 After I had thawed out a little I went back to my dorm room where my roommate, who quite reasonably does not understand the experiment fully, asked "hey since its night do you just have to stop?"

I said through chattering teeth "No I stored some energy during the day."

"ok, but  what exactly is this teaching you?" He said.

"lots" I said and I really did mean that. Between thinking about each action I did and my reflective bike rides I had discovered that if one made the conscious effort to act, acting  was all the more possible and if I knew how I impacted things around me I was more careful in how I consciously acted. That is going to be my new end goal simply to be more conscious and careful and hopefully that is what I will gain from this project.

Today was the first day  of the experiment and it was a perfect day to be a solar panel. There was not a single cloud anywhere in D.C. and the climate was just right. My alarm from my cell phone woke me up but since it had enough battery I did not need to charge it and start spending energy right away. I opened the window shades and begin charging for the day.  I grabbed my keys and went to the door and once it was open it hit me. A million watts of florescent hallway lights that have been on all night because of my dorms outdated electrical system. I move quickly to the bathroom to avoid using two much of this light but then I slow down because I realized it would be impossible to accurately measure how much electricity I am using relative the entire building and where I was standing. The best I can do is try to estimate my daily totals. I brush my teeth using cold water and toothpaste because hot water is now a luxury I will need to plan accordingly to use.

                I headed back to my room and got dressed, and walk down four flights in Letts hall to go to class which is in a windowless room where my powers were limited. After class I decided to get some breakfast so I went to the usual line where hot food is served in the dining room. I think nothing of it until I saw the actual food right in front of me and I hesitated and said to myself, wait I don't know how much energy went into any of this. I saw mostly eggs and omelets but there was sausage, bacon, home fries, pancakes and French toast as well. I sensed the silent rage of the impatient and voracious college students behind me so I quickly picked what I thought was the most energy efficient food, the home fries,  and moved on. I chose some cereal and soy milk as well as some locally grown strawberries and sat by a window and ate.

                 The dining room selects mostly local fruits and vegetables which is defined as being within forty five minutes away by car or truck. the typical car runs on a 12 volt battery and depending on how many amperes or units of electrical resistance are at play use a certain number of watts. So to the best of my estimates A locally grown raw vegan meal will cost me about an hour's worth of sunshine. A hot vegan meal will probably be about an hour and a half. A vegetarian meal that includes cheese and eggs will most likely use two hours and non local and carnivorous will be three hours and up. Everything was going fine until I finished my breakfast and realized I was starving. I toasted an English muffin and used the only available spread, butter( because eating a dry English muffin only gets you a short stay in the nearest hospitals dehydration ward). I take note of this and understand that that little stunt I just pulled cost me an extra hour of sun power.

                Two of my three classes were inside in windowless rooms, but my sustainable earth teacher, after a long look at the quad, agreed to our request to have class outside. I was overjoyed, I had not had class outside for the longest time and it benefited my experiment greatly. An hour using no light bulbs or air-conditioning and a bonus hour in the sun to charge as well as enjoy the aesthetic beauty of the quad. it felt really good healthy even. After that class I grabbed a vegan lunch to conserve power and went to go for a bike ride. I pledged to go on a thirty minute bike ride each day to enjoy the outdoors and reflect on the experiment. During this ride I felt as if even if I did not have control of all the energy around me I had enough of a say to feel the impact I was making not so much in the environment but to my own personal existence.    In total today I was gaining energy for five hours and my bike ride gave me a bonus of an hour but I ate three and charged my computer which I count as an hour. In addition I estimate that I used three to four hours of lighting and air conditioning so I almost broke even in my eyes and that is what I consider a successful day.