David Blume on Waiheke - almost!

A monumental stuff up, were Bryan Innes' words. David was supposed to arrive today at Auckland airport, and Don was there at 5:30am to meet him.

No-one who looked at Davids ticket, including David himself, got his arrival date right. American Airlines don't put the arrival date beside the time of arrival. David was shocked to find he has 23 hours layover at LA Airport, something he described as being his worst vision of hell.

So our planned lunch and evening meetings with David went ahead anyway and I suspect they were more fruitful as a result of the conversations we were able to have. We may not have got down to the nitty gritty if we had been focused on David's presence and words - knowing we could put that off till later.

By the end of the lunchtime gathering four of us (Don, Pete, Kathering and myself) agreed to form a core group to lead an initiative with a goal ofdoing something practical by way of an example. We agreed we would beg, borrow, buy, or build a still to distill enough alcohol from local biomass (could be wandfall fruit or plant material), to drive a car around the loop road of Waiheke Island.

Then at the evening event, which was held in the Tivoli bookshop - a small venue that was filled to capacity, we progressed the conversation further. I began the evening with a brief description and highlights of my recent road trip around North island TT's. Then screened the TT slide show with music. This was followed by an hour long interview by Jania Donaldson on Peak Moment TV, of David Blume speaking about alcohol as a fuel.

Here is that interview in two parts:

We had a glass of wine and some discussion by way of intermission.

Then the discussion continued. One person in the audience spoke about his still that he uses to mae Grappa and then almost as an aside, we were told by the owner of the bookshope where we were meeting, that this man had driven across the island in his little 4X4 Suzuki, that runs on a hydrogen petrol mix. That got people going!

We ended up going out and looking at the luminous blue light of his hydrogen splitter under the hood as the engine ran and bubbles came up out of the clear filter housing containers that provides hydrogen to the air intake.

Watch this space. I hope to see you at the Eco Show, where you can participate in a number of Transition Towns workshops, and listen to David Blume in person, who should by then have recovered from a 24 hour layover in LA!