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If nothing else, check out the Turkey-Gravy soda you can buy…

Tree Hugger or Killer?

Call the arborists - I’m a tree killer. Ecologists beware - nature hates me. Trees are committing suicide all around me. At this rate, 23 trees will perish as a result of me buying homes. Don’t call me a tree hugger - I’m a cold-phloem tree killer. Not only that, but I hire paid assassins to do my dirty work. Wake up one morning and the sawdust is flying.

In July 2000, my first victim was a large elm tree, who was growing around and came down with Dutch Elm disease. But the city tree health department stepped in with an ultimatum - hire a specialist or cut it down. I tried to be reasonable, telling them it was the disease not the tree. I told the tree to be careful growing and use protection. I even threw $1,000 at him for a 2-step program of pruning and chemical treatment. Here is a satellite surveillance photo of him growing over my house - he’s a big one…

But the addiction was too much for him - elm trees and dutch elm disease are like Republicans and Democrats - symbiotic combatants. Three years later, the city was back and I had to the face the music. It hurt my pocketbook more than it hurt him.

 

That same summer, a basswood next door was acting up, dropping large rotting chunks of trunk next to the house. I had to take him out fast, in the dead of night, before things got out of hand. $500 later, the lot was again much sunnier.

Now I’ve moved to Maryland and a new house. Monday evening, not 2 months since we moved in, I was looking out the window at a large tree in the middle of our backyard…

 

And I swear my eyes were playing tricks on me. It was windy and the tree was swaying a bit, but by the base of the tree, the ground was moving up and down. I looked again. I ran outside and stood next to it. Sure enough, the tree was rocking up and down and a couple of roots had pulled out. And it was aimed at our house. I hated to do it but a suicidal tree needs to be dealt with swiftly and efficiently.

 

I thumbed through the yellow pages looking for a tree man advertising “24 hour emergency service,” which on the face of it would indicated “24 hours” but in reality means “tomorrow sometime” for the most part. But I found a real professional who came out pronto, tied him off for the night, and came back the next morning to finish off the job.

 

 

So now I’ve spent $5,600 killing three trees in seven years. That’s $800/yr. At that rate, I’ll spend over $42,000 on tree assassinations by the time I die. And then they think they’ll get their revenge, encasing me in a wooden coffin. But I’m way ahead of them…cremation.

My Favorite 10 Minutes of the Day

I live in Maryland, about 6 blocks from the Washington DC border, and ride the metro from the West Hyattsville green line stop to work downtown. It’s about three-quarters of a mile as the crow flies, but I like to double it so I can go along a bike path away from traffic. It follows the Northwest Branch of the Anacostia River behind a bunch of apartment buildings and across a busy road, where there’s apparently a USGS hydrological monitoring station.

It’s all part of the Anacostia Tributary Trail System, which largely follows the rivers on top or next to the flood levees. It’s not particularly long or particularly gorgeous (between the trash, apartments, and busy road), but it gives me a chance to breathe before I start the day. And I’ve seen a good number of birds too:

Black vulture, Sharp-shinned hawk, Kestrel, Red-tailed hawk

Great Blue Heron, Green Heron, White Egret, Mallards, and Kingfishers

My favorite sound is the Kingfisher calling and the smell of fall…

Count Me In

Is it redundant to blog about the article “Count Him In” I wrote for Grist Magazine?
Count Him In

One of two individuals in DOE’s voluntary emissions program reports back

06 Oct 2006

 

I’ll admit it: I’m different from most people. I have energy savings goals for my house and car. I usually shop at a local food co-op, paying more than I have to for organic items. I even work indirectly with renewable energy for a living. It wouldn’t be that hard to be labeled an environmentalist, except I don’t like that word because it turns so many people off (we like “-isms” more than we like “-ists”).

 

Two years ago, someone sent me an email about the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration Voluntary Reporting of Greenhouse Gases Program. Wouldn’t it be funny, they wrote, if they signed up for the program, which was designed primarily for corporations? I thought, “Well, yes, it would,” and decided to sign up. (The person who suggested it never did.) Now I’m the most famous unknown you’ve never heard of: I can claim to be one of two Americans — out of more than 299,000,000 — who are currently participating in this national program. I am on the same list as Ford, AT&T, IBM, and 220 other companies.

What started out as a lark has grown into a story of contrasts, one where the United States’ major response to global warming consists of asking anyone who’s interested to register their greenhouse-gas reductions in a national database. The EIA program was started in 1992 by Congress as an effort to document the reductions that American companies would voluntarily implement. These participants could get credit for early actions taken on either the state, national, or global level. Fourteen years later, the U.S. is still promoting voluntary reductions.

The process of tracking emissions involves downloading software, submitting my information incorrectly, working with a staff person at EIA to correct it, and then contemplating my five metric tons of direct greenhouse-gas reductions. (I use the present tense because each of the last three years, I’ve managed to submit my information incorrectly. I have a spreadsheet and I know what I want to report, but the translation to their software just isn’t intuitive.) What is five metric tons? It’s 11,000 pounds. And according to the U.S. EPA, it’s equivalent to taking an average Toyota Corolla off the road.

The EIA staff members who work with participants to get accurate numbers and calculations are very nice people, who have been nothing but helpful in pointing out and helping me correct the errors of my data ways. But the data is all self-reported, as far as I can tell. There is no threat of an audit. I tell them how much I saved and they accept it, as long as it’s logical. I set my baseline and calculate my own reductions.

Let’s say in Year One, I emitted 10 tons of carbon dioxide, but in Year Two reduced it to five, thus saving five tons. If I stay at five tons emitted in Year Three, what should I report? No reductions, because I set a new baseline at five tons? Five tons of reductions, because my baseline is still the original 10 tons? Should I have used a lot of carbon to inflate my numbers one year and then reduced them significantly for the reported savings? If I start a family and our emissions go up, do I report the gross amount, or can I claim to be emitting even less on a per-capita basis? There aren’t clear rules one way or another.

As a result, the data quality in the EIA program isn’t robust enough to have monetary value in carbon dioxide trading markets. There are emerging carbon-trading markets in the U.S. and Europe, but the EIA data is unsuitable without independent verification. This spring, the European trading market lost more than 60 percent of its value because of a lack of trust in the data.

Still, the European market, which falls under the Kyoto Protocol agreements, seems stronger than the voluntary version in the U.S., the Chicago Climate Exchange, which has far fewer shares trading at a lower price.

It would be interesting to think about a day when all global carbon emissions have value because society finally sees that it’s in our best interests not to ignore global warming. One baby step might be to at least require data submission from emitters over a certain size. Many states are doing this already. Some states are also either suing the federal government or beginning to regulate greenhouse gases themselves. While it’s progress of a sort, this will create a patchwork of regulations, resulting in dissimilar costs for companies or products across state borders. It remains to be seen if these progressive states will be able to hold the political line against the argument that they are putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage.

As for the average person, events like Katrina and this summer’s heat waves are beginning to inspire concern about climate change. Recurring droughts and wildfires in the West bring the creep of anxiety to residents who don’t remember seeing anything like this before. Scientists will attempt to be technically correct by saying that any one event can’t be correlated to the long-term picture, but really, if we get people concerned for a potentially statistically spurious reason, does it matter? At least they’re engaged.

But what will that engagement look like? Will people be willing to accept higher prices because of a carbon tax? What about a carbon tax coupled with a repeal of the income tax? What if it included free health care too? What about a “carbon credit card” that requires you have carbon credits in your savings account to buy gas?

There really is no silver bullet on the horizon — we are buying time as advances in technology, energy prices, supply constraints, and government policies interplay with one another. The big question will be at what point they all intersect, and whether it will be soon enough to make a difference. Meanwhile, I don’t think EIA’s registry is priority No. 1 for the other 299,000,000-plus people in this country.

At times, I struggle with the relevance of my tiny actions. But I’ve come to the conclusion that they are necessary to build grassroots support for larger issues. I want to jump straight to a carbon tax with an inverse reduction of the income tax, but we’re really still at green pricing and light bulbs for most people. Eventually the light bulbs add up — I’ve got to keep that in mind.

Solar Kismet is between renewable-energy jobs on his way from Minnesota to Washington, D.C. When he has time, some of his thoughts find their way to Solar Kismet, his everything blog. Contrary to most people’s first impressions when they hear he uses less than 100 gallons of gas per year and less than 100 kilowatt-hours per month, he owns a car and doesn’t live in the dark.

Virtual Minnesota

I kind of miss Minnesota…these should all refresh regularly (and sometimes the view changes as the cameras are moved so the description isn’t always exact):

I-35W northbound looking at downtown Minneapolis (MNDOT):

Downtown Saint Paul from Dayton’s Bluff:

Duluth Harbor / Lake Superior:

Moose Lake near Ely:

Pet Peeves

So we moved to DC and bought a house. Apparently when you buy a house, your name and address automatically becomes part of the “send us all your crap” mailing list - mortgage insurance, welcome to the neighborhood from your local store, etc. Getting off these things is maddening - one even told me to “get a life.”

The other great thing about moving is changing all of your addresses and setting up new services for electricity, gas, phone, etc. Inevitably you have to call customer service and they always ask you to enter your account number, phone number, SSN, etc. But EVERY SINGLE TIME when you get to an actual person, they ask you for your account number! Why?! I just entered it, sometimes twice. When I ask them why, they say it didn’t “register” or something. Well, why ask me to type it in?! That’s maddening too…

My final maddening thing involves using online resources to buy, sell, or give away used stuff - Craigslist, Freecycle, etc. You make an appointment to have somebody pick up or to go and pick up something, and they never show. Why?

Do you remember Hanson, the band, that played “MMMBop”? Well, we were all set to buy a TV Stand and microwave from their mom in Arlington, Virginia and she ditched us. We had rented a U-Haul to pick up a bunch of furniture and she was on our list, but she never responded by email, never picked up her phone, and the next day said that they were home and we should have just stopped by…right.

If environmentalism went mainstream…

If environmentalism is going mainstream, what will I have to worry about next? What fringe should I join instead? I run with small herds not big ones! I’m not somebody doing something different anymore, I’m doing the same as my neighbor, which is nice in politics but not in being unique…I guess it’s a problem I’ll have to deal with but I don’t think it’s a big problem just yet…

From Grist Magazine…

“Wake Up and Smell the Progress”

Why won’t America’s environmentalists accept positive developments?

By Lisa Renstrom and Bob Perkowitz

10 Aug 2006

There are winners, there are losers, and there are people who just don’t get it.If you’ve been paying attention, you know that in spite of the best efforts of tens of thousands of dedicated environmentalists and the spending of literally hundreds of millions of philanthropic dollars, the environment has been losing.

Not to stretch a point, but if America’s environmentalists were more effective, we might not be suffering from the wars and trade deficits our dependence on oil brings. We might not be spending quite so much — the highest percentage of GDP of any country in the world — on health care.

Face it: environmentalists have been outgunned and outsmarted. But there is hope. Things are starting to change. Powerful people with black hats are trading them in for green capes.

Topping that list is the popular evangelical minister Pat Robertson. He publicly stated last week that, “We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels. It is getting hotter, and the icecaps are melting and there is a buildup of carbon dioxide in the air.” That alone has to give one pause. Could it be that the scientists were right?

Then there’s Frank Luntz, spinmeister extraordinaire of the authoritarian Republicans, recently admitting that, “It’s now 2006. I think most people would conclude that there is global warming taking place and that the behavior of humans are affecting the climate.” Say what?

If that isn’t enough to challenge your worldview, try Wal-Mart. No paragraph is long enough to contain the cultural and environmental destruction of their massively efficient consumption and international worker exploitation machine. But that self-same Wal-Mart is embarking on a comprehensive sustainability program that includes emission reductions and organics — the whole shebang.

And finally we have the Sierra Club, America’s preeminent environmental organization, daring to endorse a Republican senator, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island.

The conversion of Robertson, Luntz, and Wal-Mart and the leadership of the Sierra Club are beyond the cognitive dissonance resolution capabilities of some environmentalists. All these people getting in touch with reality is more progress than some progressives can understand, much less support.

Here in Grist last month, John Sellers and Barbara Dudley, two credentialed environmentalists, lamely took revenge on Adam Werbach for his support of Wal-Mart’s greening efforts. Nearly two years ago, Adam spoke out in the “Death of Environmentalism” controversy, daring to criticize the movement for its myopia and ineffectiveness. Unable to argue that the movement actually was effective, Sellers and Dudley finally found grounds on which they felt they could challenge Werbach.

Then, in his “Centrism is for Suckers” column in the New York Times on August 4, the otherwise respectable Paul Krugman slugged the Sierra Club for its Chafee endorsement. Republican moderates like Chafee have repeatedly put their fingers in the levees to slow the Bush/Cheney/Inhofe/DeLay/Pombo flood of environmental destruction. Krugman’s criticism is counterproductive.

 

Moan and groan if you want. We’re heading over to Wal-Mart.

The Pepco Energy Bill Shuffle

[Update: We've lived in the house for almost a year now and our bill averages $30-40 per month, even with the rate increases we've seen, which is obviously much less than $168 and gives credence to something strange happening (since we've moved in, it's basically been a flat-line, even in the summer with air conditioning).]

I moved to Maryland and after trying to understand electricity deregulation and why I should switch to someone other than the default company, also known as the ironic “SOS” supplier, took the default, Pepco Energy. Click here to read why I didn’t switch.

We bought the house August 1, 2006 and moved in August 28, 2006. We got the August 2006 bill (August 1 - September 1) and apparently used 1130 kilowatt-hours (kWh) at a cost of $167.91, while we werent’ living there.

I paid 14.4 cents/kWh to Pepco and 14.9 when you add in the taxes (the average price in Minnesota is 7.7 cents/kWh). This was an “actual meter reading” (5351 to 5464 on the meter, with a meter multiplier of 10).

I just about choked because:

• I used that much electricity at my Minnesota home in a whole year;
• We weren’t living at the house and the only things running were 2 lights on timers, the refrigerator, the dehumidifier, and potentially the central AC (but the thermostat was set at 85 F);
• When I checked the meter to estimate September’s usage (about half-way through September), we were on track to use about 25% of that…

 

I metered the fridge and dehumidifier using a Kill-a-watt and estimated their monthly use to be 140 kWh. The lights used about 21 kWh. The AC should have stayed off most of the time because of the high thermostat temperature. Somehow I had to find five times that electricity use to make up the difference.

 

In the process of calling Pepco, the automated system said the last bill under the old owner was $392 (choke again) and was paid July 18 (presumably the June bill). I wondered if maybe in the transition between the old owner, me, and the meter reading was messed up. I thought I’d contact Pepco and ask to see the July 1 and August 1 meter readings to clarify what’s going on.

So I called Pepco and left my number on their automatic call back system, since I didn’t feel like waiting 4 hours on hold (literally). Nothing. A week later I called back again, doing the same thing (2 hour wait). Nothing. I emailed them. Two weeks later, nothing. I emailed again. Nothing. I sat on hold on a Friday for 30 minutes and got tired of it. I think it’s reasonable to think that 3 phone calls and 2 emails over 3 weeks should produce a reply.

So I contacted the Maryland Public Service Commission and filed a complaint about not being able to contact them. This isn’t a complaint about my metering issue, which is the actual problem, but a complaint about being able to talk to someone about my problem. Within 2 hours, I had a complaint resolution number and the PSC forwarded my complaint to the utility. That was 3 weeks ago with still no response.

I emailed my state representative to express my displeasure at electricity deregulation and that maybe some performance standards should be met by Pepco. He concurred that deregulation and my problem with Pepco wasn’t ideal. He might be able to contact someone he knows at Pepco. What has a company come to when I have to contact a legislator to get to talk to customer service?!

Mysteriously, a replacement bill arrived today that is for the same time August 1 - September 1 time period but is dated October 6. They now indicate that I used 900 kWh in August and gave me a credit of $32.95 from what I paid before, also based on a “actual meter reading” from 5374 to 5464.

 

My September bill also arrived online and I used 240 kWh for the month we were actually living in the house, an 890 kWh reduction from bill #1, and a 660 kWh reduction from bill #2. Which bill should I believe? These “actual meter readings” seem fairly subjective. It’s a mystery how the use reduction was calculated - they haven’t told me and appear to prefer communicating by revised bills.

Should I request a third?

UPDATE: What you can do if your electricity bills seem too high…

1. Get data on your electricity use through a home energy audit. You can do one yourself or hire a professional - the Kill-a-watt listed above is an easy tool to use in the process. Plug in an appliance for 2 days and record its electricity use, correcting for seasonal variations, i.e. refrigerator use is fairly constant (a little higher in summer) but a dehumidifier runs more in the summer. Never underestimate the potential of things you don’t think about to use energy when they are off - anything with a remove control, anything with a black or white transformer box on the cord (chargers of any kind for electronics), etc. Big things: dehumidifiers, refrigerators, electric water heaters, and air conditioners (summer).

Resources: a. State of Maryland Energy Information, b. Alliance to Save Energy Online Energy Audit, c. Electricity Audit Spreadsheet (scroll up on both sheets)

2. Reduce your electricity usage. If you don’t have fluorescent bulbs and you’re still complaining, you’re an idiot. Since the questionable August meter reading, we have used 240 kWh in September and 210 kWh in October.

3. If you still have a problem, contact the Maryland PSC to file a complaint using the data you find. f you don’t have data, you don’t have a case - it’s anecdotal.

 

Europe Trip Report: Bowling Moses and the World Cup

Here is my 15 word summary of Europe for those in a hurry:

- France: smells like urine/museum overload
- Italy: smells like sewer/church overload
- Croatia: smells like ocean/hiking overload

Now you can look at all the pictures here (click on Slideshow to get the descriptions).

For those interested in the details, read on…

We went to Paris first after an uneventful flight where I didn’t get enough sleep because of the free movies that I’m intent on watching to maximize my air travel experience. Not too long ago, all you got was a movie screen 30 feet away and sound only if you paid $5 for headphones. Now you get your own TV screen with movies, games, flight data - the whole nine yards. It’s great for inducing more jet-lag than necessary by making you tired when you arrive because you didn’t sleep.

We arrived around noon, an hour late because our plane had to turn around in Detroit on the runway - they forgot some “paperwork.” And of course, there was a heat wave in Paris and of course, the subways aren’t air conditioned. So we sweated for an hour - drip down the inside of your shirt kind of hot. We got to the suburbs where we were bumming a free place to sleep with a friend of a friend but shortly we set off again for “downtown” Paris to march around until dark - to fight the jet lag you’ve got to reset your clock by staying up. It’s painful. I fell asleep outside of a bar on some steps near the Notre Dame while the World Cup was going on. And then someone woke me up to ask for a cigarette in French - I don’t get that logic…”Hmm. Bar full of people. People on the street. People sitting in tables. I know, I’ll wake up that tourist dude who’s sleeping.”

So we marched around Paris for 4 days, seeing museums and monuments and eating some food.

I’m just not a big city museum-type I don’t think. I made it through the Picasso museum in 10 minutes.

We took a picture of a lady laying out for a frisbee at the Louvre…

Karin imitated a fat baby at some famous museum…

I fell asleep at Notre Dame…

Karin partied with the gazpacho in a cup lady…

…and then we flew to Italy.

Italy…Pisa…Tuscany…It was busy and not as rural as I expected, and it’s easy to get lost, while trying to avoid hitting eighteen wheelers coming at your on razor thin curvy roads. The small town we stayed in was fine, if you enjoy a dog barking at 5 am on the dot for 10 minutes, followed by roosters…also included for 2 of the 6 nights was a local rock band practicing the Rolling Stones really really loudly. I’m not sure how the others in the town of 10 stand it…So we marched around to churches in all the small towns, eating gelato like fiends, enjoying the heat again, and to amuse myself, looking for bowling Moses in the churches. Seriously. Moses goes bowling consistently in paintings in churches in Italy and Croatia (top center).

Here’s a funky bridge that you might recognize from a NY Times article earlier in the year…

I think I like seeing how the average people live. Grocery stores are fun. Italy has superior shopping cart engineering - very smooth push with more lateral movement ability. They enjoy lots of things in bags (beets in a bag for instance), have about a million kinds of fresh mozarella that will knock your socks off, and have fun little machines for weighing your produce…

So then we took a train to the other coast of Italy and signed up for a 9 hour ferry to Croatia. They didn’t have any rooms (after we spent 15 minutes figuring out whether we wanted a bathroom and a shower with our private bed) so we bought “reclining chairs” rather than deck chairs. Deck sounded too much like sitting on top of the boat in the cold wind. Save the upgrade…We boarded 2 hours early to get our choice of chairs and ended up snagging 2 full length couches. We ate, I popped some dramamine and the next thing I knew, it was Croatia. I couldn’t have written a better voyage experience.

Croatia was hot as well. We arrived at 7am and started looking for a place to stay, bailing on a guy with smoky rooms who was referenced by the NY Times around the same time (the tradition in Croatia is to either look for a “sobe” sign, which means room, or go to an agency and they can find one for you - hotels are expensive and not as common). Instead we headed out of Zadar and straight for a national park on the ocean. A nice dip in the Adriatic and then we went hiking (did I mention that it was hot?).

Croatia is an eastern block hybrid of Greece and Italy with coastal mountains - olive trees, grapes, islands, heat, ocean, etc…We took a hike…10 miles horizontally and a mile vertically. We also got a surprise tour of a cave that was supposed to be closed by a nice park ranger with some German tourists…

…and then I convinced Karin that it was manageable to tackle another peak starting at 4pm. It was a tough hike - hot, steep, bad trails, rock scrambling - perhaps the most ambitious hike I’ve ever done. Did I mention that Karin was hesitant to start it? She had good reason but was a trooper. We made it all in one piece, but it was tough, and we were sore and tired afterward.

We then decided to go to an island off the coast of Croatia after riding the world’s hottest bus back to Zadar. There are tons of islands and we chose Silba, which the guidebook said had trees and was out of the way… (this is the north-central part of the coast)…

Unfortunately we didn’t heed the guidebook’s advice that the tourist agency closes at noon (we got there at 2pm) and it was somewhat incorrect in saying that there were plenty of rooms. We marched around for 3 hours trying to find a room. It was hot (have I mentioned that?) and about half the people we asked for help said “I don’t know,” and that was that. A waiter even made a bunch of calls for us in vain and we were preparing to sleep in the cemetary when we found one by the beach, where a German volleyball camp appeared to be going on…

The beaches in Croatia are great - crystal blue water…albeit with somewhat rocky shorelines…there are nice places to swim…

So after the island, we headed south to another national park with a bunch of waterfalls that got really really touristy after 10am. We had planned to take a series of boats up these lakes to see more and more waterfalls and get away from the tourists, but the park service at the south end didn’t know the routine for the north end and they weren’t scheduled so you could do it without a car…

We stayed with a lady in an apartment near the park ($40 for a 1 bedroom with a kitchen) who would talk our ears off for days if we let her…Her son plays basketball and volleyball for the Croatian national team “good good” but the pay is “bad bad.” Many of the small towns were affected by the war. About half are brand new renovations and the other half still have scars (these are bullet holes)…but it will eventually be paved over for tourists, who are mostly German right now…

And a bombed out church…

Croatia’s a funny place - there’s no real old school history like central Europe. But it’s neat in its own way. More people knew English than in Italy. It’s cheap. And Americans haven’t really discovered it yet (What did you think when I said we were going to Croatia?).

Another neat thing about the trip was going during the World Cup, which was going on in Germany. All of the cafes and bars would fill up during the games and it was fun to watch it with an appreciative crowd - I got kind of addicted to soccer and a coke…

Why I love ultimate frisbee…

I play ultimate frisbee. Not frisbee golf. Not frisbee tricks. Not throwing at the park for fun. Ultimate frisbee. (Would they really name it “ultimate” if you could walk to play it?)

Seven people trying to run, throw, and catch the disc in the endzone. The other seven try to stop you. No running with the disc. No fouls, picks, travels, or referees. Full sprints and long hucks. Quick cuts and layouts. Man-on-man and zone defense.

TBA, my men’s club team from Minneapolis, played in a Duluth tournament this weekend and got to the finals on Sunday (in an admittedly small pool). We were thrashed by the other team the day before. But we put it behind us and played hard, eventually losing 16-14. It was the greatest, most intense game our team has ever played. Other teams are realizing that we’ve got significantly better in the last year. It should be a fun summer.

But what makes this sport different? Everyone calls their own fouls and sometimes they even discuss it and change their minds. Sometimes they yell at each other. But everyone works through it. And at the end of the game, we cheer. On Saturdays of tournaments there is usually a party of some kind for the teams. And sometimes jumping in a lake too. We have over 10,000 of them after all.

After our heartbreaking loss, we threw off our cleats and sat down to make up a funny song recounting parts of the game to sing to the other team (to the tune of “Barbara Ann” in this case). And sometimes the other team cheers us back (”Burning Ring of Fire”).

Our team is kind of unusual that way because this “spirit” of the game is on a downward trend. But we like to keep the fire burning and sometimes it infects other teams. Nothing is better than a hard fought game that ends with two cheers. Nothing.