Author Archives: Britton

Gasland Weld County Colorado

Some of our friends had recently encouraged us to watch the documentary Gasland and so we decided to check it out. It really opened our eyes to how much oil and gas drilling and production really goes on in our community, especially in Weld County which is our county. Of course, we had seen the industry as a part of the background that you don’t really notice, but after watching the movie, we began seeing all the pads and rigs everywhere!


Local Drilling Rig a mile from our house

The most controversial part of this drilling is the hydrofracturing process also known as “fracking” where they shoot millions of gallons of our precious water and various chemicals into the ground as deep as 8000 feet or more until it creates a mini earthquake that releases the natural gas that is trapped below. The toxic water sludge that comes back and is unfit for anything is called “produced water”. The chemicals are then vented from this water mixture and results in major air emissions as well.  

This industry brings in a ton of money to our county and we just sort of assumed that everything about it was well-regulated and watched. However, what we learned from the movie was that this industry is exempted from the Clean Air and Water Acts and could be much less safe than we had ever imagined. This is especially a concern for people in rural areas who have water wells as we saw in 2009 when people in Fort Lupton were actually able to light their drinking water on fire! The movie even highlighted some of the local people.


The sheer number of drill permits in Weld County (the saturated northeast section) is astounding as of June 2012!

Then just this week we heard news that Josh Fox, the creator of Gasland was coming to the University of Northern Colorado to give a presentation about the movie, so we thought it would be really interesting to hear him speak. We learned that Greeley is one of the last oases in Weld County not to be hydrofractured but that was soon about to change as well. UNC and the school district both signed on to allow for directional drilling and fracking under their properties. About 500 people turned out and want to see fracking banned or at least better regulated. Recently Longmont has completely disallowed fracking and other areas are implementing moritoriums. But not in Weld County. Weld County is a free for all and it is concerning to us because we live right near many of the wells and pads.


Director Josh Fox at UNC


With friends and a pretty full crowd!


Josh Fox even played some banjo!

So we decided to go out near our house and see what we could find nearby. Within less than a mile this is what we found:

Houses in the Background are in our Neighborhood

Cassie at a pad site (“produced water sign” click to enlarge)


Venting / Flare


Diagram of Fracking Footprint

So while the movie Gasland definitely had an anti-fracking bent to it, it does make you wonder just how much is being done to make sure it is safe and with the health and wellbeing of the community in mind first and foremost. We would definitely support more regulation and transparency in this industry that is literally in our backyard.

Colorado Lobster

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I had the day off today and as such I decided to go outside and see the world a little bit.  Since winter is nearly here they have shut down the irrigation ditches.  The ditches on our side of town feed off of the Poudre River.

Well I was walking along and I saw a crawdad or (crayfish) in one of the pools of water that was left behind.


Can you see it?

I used to catch these guys by the bucket load when I was a kid.  We never really did anything with them except to see how many we could catch.  I know that you can eat them, but I just haven’t ever tried.  Something about the mud and the fact I used to catch them in the sewers has totally turned me off to the idea of even trying them..lol.

So anyway I decided to jump down into the ditch and catch it.  It just felt like the right thing to do.


You can tell he lost a pincher at some point as one is larger

They are pretty interesting creatures.  They are fresh water crustaceans and are indicators of a non-polluted environment.

 

Moving to Puerto Rico Checklist

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Lately Puerto Rico has really been in our mind. We are MORE THAN READY to move mentally/emotionally. So we have been thinking about getting ready to move physically. We wrote up all the things we will need to do in the next few months so that we can just up and move there. A lot of this is a general checklist for moving pretty much anywhere, but some of it is specific to moving to Rincon Puerto Rico.  After living somewhere for so long (Greeley) there are things we just don’t think about much.  We have lived here in our first home for 10 years.  Things like car titles, using up old stuff, medical and school transcripts/records , making sure we have Social Security cards, etc.  Also we don’t really have an “address” to ship stuff to, so that will be something to figure out.

For those of you who have already made the move to Puerto Rico (or elsewhere), are there any other things we should think about/take care of before we ship out?

  • Banks (change over address and ensure future bank cards are delivered to us)
  • Open new Bank Account inPuerto Rico
  • Cars (get titles together, sell)
  • Buy new car inPuerto Rico
  • Go thru all Stuff/Junk (to friends/family, charity, sell or toss). *Question: How much should we take with or replace?
  • Find new homes for the chickens
  • Get Kitty’s vet records and learn what it will take to bring him with us on the airplane
  • Get house cleaned professionally (carpet, bathrooms, kitchen, etc)
  • Put remaining properties under managment(2)
  • Host a going away party!
  • Put together all personal / professional records
  • Call insurance agents to cancel car insurance and change home policies to rental and update address
  • Sell assets we can’t manage from afar
  • Use up old stuff and don’t buy new stuff (Frozen food, cleaners, canned food, bathroom supplies, etc)
  • Look for boxes and pack up / label and have family ship to us when we get there
  • Buy airline tickets and line up rental car for appx 1 month while we look for a new car
  • Find new homes for our plants (coffee, banana, orchids)
  • Get tax documents together for 2012 filing
  • Update address with property tax assessor, 401k, IRA, etc
  • Setup things we need down there (we already have water and electric.  Mayyyybe internet?  Cell phone? )
  • Find new server / hosting for website and promote

We have been thinking about this a lot more lately as it appears we will be moving our date up.  We don’t have an exact new deadline but we figure we can take care of a lot of these things now in preparation.  Stay tuned for posts on many of the items in the above list!

A Year and A Day? Or Do it Anyway?

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Well I have just about rounded out my stressful on-call week and I turn the pager over on Monday.  I had a Saturday upgrade that went flawlessly, which is a good feeling and proof of my accomplishments thus far in learning an entirely new language (TACL) as well as all the intricate goings on for the custom applications the company I work for has developed.   Most of the information isn’t attainable except thru doing and it’s been the most challenging position I’ve ever taken on.  It will feel  WONDERFUL to hand over on-call come Monday and have my after work life back for a week.  To do things like see the sky, mow the lawn, do the dishes…You know, the basics.  I took on the challenge for a few reasons, one was because I knew I could do it and another was for the experience of doing it.  Not to just say things are “stressful” but to know how that feels.  Not only to say I took on a challenge but to go thru that expeirence and come out on the other side of it.  It may just be that it’s time to let those experiences go, and take on something new again.


What the Feeling of Freedom Might Look Like

This is an interesting feeling for me because when I can go for a walk and see the sky it feels…well I feel totally and comletely free again.   The juxtaposition of these two mental states is drastic.

This past week has been challenging not only for me, but for Cassie as well.  I’d say we have come the closest to pulling the “GTFO lever” we have been so far.   This is a good thing, as it means we are ready not only financially but also mentally for the transformation/graduation into our new lives.   We are at the point where our minds are picking out signs from the universe that our new program has been developed and is ready to run.

“The program has been developed and ready to run“: I have had the strange belief that our environment is simply a software program since I was little and that when a person goes on vacation, it is just a new “level” in the game.   When you go to new places it takes time to get there because it has to be created or developed before you arrive.  All the people, places, plants, roads and everything in your story that makes up our reality has to be created first.

So I think the program is set.  We have decided that we can stick it out longer if we want, but if we continue to have these discussions at a serious level that we have been, that we can go at any time.   One of the signs the universe has given us lately is a video we saw online (thanks Claire!).  It speaks to us because there are so many reasons that we can come up with to wait and plan more, and save more, and talk about more but really when you get down to it, we should just DO IT ANYWAY!

If you’re paralyzed by the voice in your head,
It’s the standing still that should be scaring you instead.
Go on and … do it anyway.
Do it anyway.

check it out the video below:

The comments made on the previous post are wonderful and we thank those who give us feedback!  We don’t really have a reason not to, except that we don’t want to give up the opportunity for saving more “goal fodder” as I call it.  Otherwise known as money.  That however has become less important, especially when work gets us down in the dumps.

Call it surrender, but you know that it’s a joke
And the punchline is you were actually never in control
But still, surrender anyway…

We want to leave on our own wishes with a feeling of preparedness and that we are looking forward to our new lives, not that we got pushed out by our old.  We will continue to push forward, it’s getting close though…Very close! We have set a drop dead date of October 15, 2013 which is a year and a day from today. I think we have come to the conclusion that it can be any time between now and then! So watch out world, here we come!