Greener Pastures

Monday, January 23rd was the official public opening and ribbon cutting for the California Polytechnic State Universities Algae Field Station.  For the last year and a half I have been working with my advisor Tryg Lundquist evaluating the operability of High Rate Algae Ponds (HRAPs) for the treatment of municipal waste water and production of bio-fuel feedstock.  What started in 2008 with 4 tiny ponds run by one grad student, Dan Frost, has now become seventeen ponds run by several grad students and about a dozen undergrads.  My comrade, Louis, and I have spent the last summer and much of the fall quarter building this new facility--from the ground up, led by engineer and designer, Ian Woertz.

The Team

Lauren and I with the Ponds

The ponds are located on city land at our local wastewater treatment facility. The algae ponds are innovative and appealing because they are simple, use far less energy than the average treatment process and, in the end, produce a usable resource. 

This experience has offered me a great opportunity to gain both a greater understanding of engineered systems, especially in the field of water and wastewater treatment, but more importantly management and delegation skills that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.  Specific skills that I have developed include running an analytical lab, a small understanding of biologically driven treatment systems, data collection, and analysis.

Incredible, right?

Now comes the hard part. Last spring I was accepted into the blended masters program here at Cal Poly.  This program allows you to pursue a masters degree concurrently with a bachelors.  I was all set to produce the next HRAP thesis on nutrient removal when...I left the program.  

For years now I have known that one day I would graduate and at that time I would travel the world by bike.   In the last year my brother and I decided that we would do the first leg across the United States together before he was swallowed the following fall by medical school. My thousands of miles spent touring and the years spent volunteering as a mechanic at the SLO Bike Kitchen have both encouraged me and inspired me to really pack my stationary life up and bike into the sunset. 

This all became incredibly more complex when Lauren stepped into my life.  Never before had I considered the possibility that I would be able to share my world travels with someone else.  This issue, admittedly, was a result of my own stubbornness associated with a desire to have control over speed, duration, and type of traveling that I would be doing.  Lauren put all of these fears to rest with her own traveling ambitions, strong legs and even stronger will.

Now I was faced with a tough decision, travel with my brother and continue on to East Asia with Lauren without hesitation, or be bounded to research and a subsequent thesis sometime next fall, either at the expense of the summer trip altogether or my sanity before and after.  I wanted out.

The good news is, I haven't closed the doors for the opportunity for grad school in the future. I never thought I would say this (in fear of sounding like my lovely mother), but, good grades do pay off, and meaningful recommendations from the PhD smarties are even more valuable. I would just like to come back to it when I can dedicate my focus and my passion to my grad work--not to the open road. 

This trip marks the beginning of my new educational path, one of self discovery from the seat of my bicycle rather than the lab.  Lauren and I want to visit community level water and sanitation projects around the globe.  We want to know what is being done, how the conditions can be improved, and to raise awareness through reporting.

Stay tuned to see what we find.

4 Months 3 Days till departure.