The Dharma of Aquatic Speed
The Dharma of Aquatic Speed
Communion with God on Recreational Watercraft in Plumas County Plus Hydro Wars, Wild Swimming, and a Golden State Reconquista
The rush of going fast on water is a celebration of the pure joy and freedom of living boldly — Unknown
Faster, faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death — HST
Speed is the ultimate modern experience — Ballard
The world of speed is the world of the absolute, of the immediate — Virilio
I spent a good chunk of July at one of PG&E’s campgrounds in the Lassen National Forest, at the base of the Sierra Nevadas. I won’t lie and say I love camping — I grew up a suburban latch-key kid with no rustic guidance and little aptitude for outdoor recreational activities. And while I spent many summers at my grandparents’ lake cottage, it wasn’t exactly The Revenant there. I struggle with tents and I hate using outhouses. And I don’t hunt or fish, because, as my wife says, I’m an insane PETA person. (Not true, but she loves to razz me about it).
There is, however, one aspect of camping that I’ve grown addicted to:
Jet skiing.
Few things in life compare to going 60 miles per hour across glassy water on an alpine lake, in the shadow of an ancient volcano.
Jet skiing makes the headaches of camping 100% worth it. I sometimes talk about limit experiences, e.g., phenomena that push one to the boundaries of their physical, psychological, and spiritual limits, and jet skiing has the capacity to tap into that, in exhilarating fashion.
Serendipitously, the following thread appeared on X during my jet-ski adventures:
The thread touches on two important things for me:
Its events take place in Michigan, the state where I was born and sometimes dream of returning to (a home on Lake Huron?); and
It highlights sobriety/recovery, which many of these jet-skiers embrace via adventures on the Great Lakes.
I myself have been alcohol-free since April 2015, I recently phased out all cannabis use, and I’ve weaned myself off a host of pharmaceuticals in recent years, which has been difficult. I recommend jet skiing as a tool for anyone in recovery.
The ride is more than just an adrenaline rush, though it’s certainly that. It generates feelings of hyper-vitality; all thoughts become super-charged. Everything feels possible, all goals within reach. Mega-appreciation for friends and loved ones swirls around. Hopes and dreams crystalize. Charisms activate.1
I felt patriotic vibes and a sense of unity as well. Not in a schlocky United Colors of Benetton way, but in a frenzy of feelings related to American mythos and providence. I saw bald eagles (which is a good omen, some say). And I had weird, star-spangled premonitions of a summer-night oration by the man whose warrior instincts and poise would dazzle the world a few days later, on July 13 at 6:11 p.m.2
The speed, aesthetics and acrobatics of jet-ski racing are hypnotic, as any quick YouTube search reveals. But nothing rivals the thrill of having your own grip on the handlebars and accelerating the throttle across a smooth blue surface, or riding headlong into oncoming waves, especially if you catapult yourself into the drink. In those moments, you will know what it feels like to ride energy, and you will feel gravity’s pull in an intoxicating way.
Below is the shoreline from our campsite; the slightest hint of sunlight would creep in as orange-pink hues around 4:30 a.m. behind those foothills, and the lack of light pollution allowed for several hours per night of star-filled skies.
HYDRO
PG&E, the owner of the campsite, has 38 recreational locations in California. Ours sat on a reservoir in Plumas County, which was formed by the Canyon Dam on the North Fork of the Feather River (the main tributary of the Sacramento River). The dam is also owned by PG&E, and combined with the reservoir, supplies water to the 41-megawatt Butt Valley Powerhouse and summer flow to six downstream hydroelectric plants.
It’s been a summer of hydro proximity — my son and I recently wandered the grounds at Bonneville Dam in the Columbia River. Here are some lampreys I filmed there:
THE FOLLY AND PERIL of AN ALL-RENEWABLES GRID
Relatedly, Substack author and hydro expert Jack Devanney has a new post up that looks into the specious claims of renewables advocates regarding the feasibility of an all-renewables grid. At issue is a controversial 2015 claim from clean-energy proponent Mark Jacobson et al that an all-renewables grid is do-able given certain hydro capacity assumptions.3 The claim was dead in the water for several years, no pun intended, until the state of New York recently cited it to buoy its contention that no new technologies are necessary to offset the intermittence of renewables en route to the state’s net-zero goals.
But, per Devanney, the assumptions of Jacobsen et al rest on a premise that “instantaneous” hydro capacity, i.e., the maximum amount of electricity that can be generated at any given moment, could increase by a factor of 16.
Using the Columbia River as a reference point to consider Jacobson’s claim, Devanney notes that the instantaneous capacity of the river’s Bonneville Dam would need to be increased by a factor of 10. But…there is no more room for generators at Bonneville.
“The current overload capacity of Bonneville is 1130 MW,” says Devanney. “When Bonneville is going all out in late summer, the river falls like a rock, at least a meter per day. With ten times as many turbines, the river will drop 10 times faster. And as the river drops, Bonneville puts out less power. The only way you can materially increase the 12- hour discharge capacity is to not only install a whole bunch of new turbines, for which there is no room, you must build a higher dam.”
However, building a higher dam is fraught with logistical problems, namely, what happens to the railroads on either side of the river, not to mention Interstate 84 and multiple river towns? According to Devaney, the original dam structure raised the water level so high that there was a profound impact on the development of local infrastructure. “To go higher would start a war,” he says. “And that only gets you through one day.”
In short, the Columbia River appears to be maxed out, as are most of the first world’s hydro resources.
ECUADOR
I’m gearing up to attend the 2024 Nowhere Summit in Ecuador this summer, detailed by Alex Petkas here. Speakers will include Samo Burja, who I’m excerpting two pieces from below.
Live Versus Dead Players: “…a live player is a person or tightly coordinated group of people that is able to do things they have not done before. There are two attributes that are necessary for a player to be considered live: tight coordination and a living tradition of knowledge…What are signs that a player is alive? One strong sign is a player doing things outside of their expected domain — in a new, unexpected domain — which indicates that they can figure out new things for themselves…Another sign of a live player is exceptional individuals gravitating towards them. Such individuals tend to be good at assessing others, and will tend to seek out others who are also exceptional. If they cluster around a person or group, there is something exceptional about that person or group.”
How to Find the Frontiers of Knowledge: “…seek out communities of practice; find out who is excited by what you want to learn. This community may or may not be very well-connected, but above all it should be relatively narrowly focused on the practice of some activity that its members constantly relate to…another indispensable mechanism of transferring deep expertise is the master-apprentice relationship…if your payoff is knowledge, you will soon be able to reason for yourself if the relationship is worth it…If you are thinking about entering an institution, you should seek a very specific culture of professionalism, one that seems to match the task at hand, rather than what amounts to mutual sabotage.”
Per Alex:
Technological, political, and societal change are happening at an alarming rate. There are huge, asymmetric opportunities for network-institution builders that simply did not exist 5 years ago…We want to equip ourselves - and you - to participate in the network revolution going on behind the scenes, which you may periodically see the results of in the news cycle…People who make the most of the network revolution (which is happening, whether you and I like it or not), are going to be best positioned to serve their countries, communities, businesses, and families. Those who don’t wont. The issue is urgent. Hence, we’re building a network of network builders.
WYOMING/WILD SWIMMING
Nashville entrepreneur Nick Gallo has a nice writeup about the Wagon Box in Wyoming, a fun and mysterious place I’ve visited twice this year. (I’ve since become a member.) A friend compared the Wagon Box experience to visiting Twin Peaks and I appreciate that sentiment.
I first visited in January, and before boarding a plane to fly there, I watched an arc flash illuminate the night sky in my city, likely due to a substation explosion. This set the tone for a strange and beautiful weekend in which several of us smashed through a creek's icy covering and jumped in to the glacial run-off water for a violent rearrangement of our relationship with everything.
I will write more about the Box in a future post, as it has become near and dear to my heart.
CALIFORNIA ENERGY POLICY
The California Policy Center has an instructional new piece up called Taking Back California. Its section on energy proposes:
Greater use of advanced hybrid vehicles that utilize variations of combustible, carbon-neutral fuels. These fuels can be synthesized by electrolyzing hydrogen and combining that product with carbon dioxide waste streams that are derived from flue gas. In turn, this could be used to synthesize liquid hydrocarbons that are carbon neutral.
Greater use of advanced hybrids that make hyper-efficient use of gasoline or natural gas to fuel combustion engines, in tandem with smaller, less-resource-intensive batteries that power electric motors.
Retrofitting all the natural gas plants that legislators and regulators want to shutter so that they can more efficiently harvest waste heat. This process is known as combined cycle power generation, wherein a natural gas power plant features a gas turbine that turns a generator, and subsequent exhaust heat is harvested to heat water that turns into steam, which drives a second turbine.
As the Center points out, modern CCGT designs can already get more than 60% of the natural gas energy that goes into a power plant back out in the form of electricity. And new combined cycle technologies will increase that efficiency to more than 80% via the replacement of steam with compounds that harvest heat from the first turbine at much higher temperatures.
A salvo from the piece:
If the politicians running California explored all new technologies, including innovative solutions that still permit clean and ultra-efficient combustible fuel for electricity generation and transportation, nuclear power, hydroelectric power, including pump storage, along with solar, geothermal, and biomass, working families and businesses there would again have access to abundant and affordable energy. Taxpayers and ratepayers would not need to spend hundreds of billions to subsidize offshore wind, nor would they have to support expensive extremes to deploy utility-scale battery storage. These are practical ways to achieve energy abundance, and it could rely primarily on private investment. These solutions would also cause less disruption to the environment, both in California and around the world.
I dream of “taking back California” — by empowering new coalitions and bold “live players,” in the words of Samo Burja — to fix multiple conundrums, mostly with regard to energy, and to cleave the fat off the state’s utopian machine, which is powered by pretty lies, reckless aspirations, and empty gestures. As noted by Burja in his piece “How to Find the Frontiers of Knowledge,” a noticeable feature of dysfunctional institutions is a leadership core that does not want to hear the truth. As an example, Burja relates the story of Richard Feynman’s critique of NASA’s administrative process.
He writes (emphasis added):
After the Challenger explosion, NASA called on Feynman to find out what had gone wrong with their bureaucratic process. The issue, he found, was that the leadership didn’t want to hear bad news from the engineers, because they wanted to push through as many flights as they could in order to score PR wins. And the Challenger mission, with a schoolteacher on board in an effort to demonstrate that space was to be for everyone, was an important PR flight. Leadership didn’t want to hear the truth, even though the engineers themselves were still acting professionally and some parts of the NASA bureaucracy were still functioning well. The Challenger went up in flames, and the Space Shuttle remained expensive.
California has reached a critical clash-point. Its institutions are like dying stars, rife with cancerousness. Capable and intrepid voices need to tell powerful regulators and decisionmakers that someone (why not us?) is here to rescue them from the consequences of their desires, which are dragging us all into hell.
Ephesians 6:11 has been making the rounds on social media — “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.”