As part of my research project I have adopted the vegan eating plan for the duration of the time I spend working on the project. I estimate approximately 6 to 7 weeks. I call it a bit of practical research since it is always easy to come up with academic theories...sometimes not so easy to implement them. It is not that I have any doubt that a healthy vegan diet is possible, but is it actually doable for the average person (like me) in todays vertically integrated, corporate controlled food production and distribution system?
I set out to discover the shortest route to the East side food co-op. The West side co-op is closer but it is more limited so I wanted to have routes to both locations. My usual strategy is to use the car to find the place the first time so I know where it is, and then cycle it from then on.
Here is the car route/bike route from west Olympia to east.
My first grocery bill looked like this (below)... There are several items on it that I could have done without if I had a few kids and needed to spend that money on other items. The trail mix, for instance, could have been an extra few pounds of whole grain hot cereal.
It is a 2-1/2 mile walk from my apartment to The Evergreen State College and it takes me about 45 minutes. I tried to compress the walk down to under five minutes and I got The Watercolor Walk. I suppose I could just as easily have titled it "my crummy software can't speed up video clips without blowing them out" but Watercolor Walk has a nicer ring to it.
Sometimes it is necessary to get a complete change of scenery in order to get a new perspective. With my "introductory" quarter at school behind me things are just going to get more and more intense so it was now or never for this trip. This setting gave me the sense of focus and clarity I needed to chart a course forward. Of course it has rained non stop every day since I have been back so that sense did not last but!... I wrote it all down! Here are a few slides of the island of Kauai. I spent most of my time on the east shore near Kapa'a.
Slide show notes: The animal first shown in a slide at 1:14 is a Monk Seal. These are an endangered species due to loss of food sources and global climate changes. It is very rare to see on of these as far in as Kauai but it is becoming more common as their habitat changes. When a monk seal is spotted like this a response team is dispatched to make sure it is ok and to keep people away from it. I had a long talk with one of the members of the response team and according to him, a gun-happy poacher killed two of them last year just for the fun of it. There are only a few thousand left. The one I saw is a pregnant female taking a nap after a long, long swim.
The chickens and roosters are all over the place on Kauai, running wild. There seemed to be a lot more roosters than hens so I don't know if the hens get used for dinner more often but the cock-a-doodle-doo of the roosters goes on all day long. This is a non-native species but I guess it is not considered invasive and they don't seem to cause any ecological harm. No one seems at all concerned about the big chicken population.
