Push it just a little bit harder

Push it just a little bit harder, originally uploaded by mike1727.

1 km in 42.6 seconds. Good start, but I faded badly at around 750m. Still, a good way to get the blood pumping at lunchtime, enough to get me on the leader board for a bit and plenty good enough for some team schwag- a pair of shorts and a shirt.

Via the STACC Blog:
Part of liftshare, BikeBudi aims to match up cyclists riding the same route. It's an excellent way to build up commuting groups (which was how critical mass got started) and for experienced riders to help new riders gain confidence on the roads. It's an excellent idea.

The compost heap's gone critical. .

The compost heap's gone critical. ., originally uploaded by mike1727.

The compost heap is cooking away nicely- in fact it's steaming.

A quick probe registered temperatures around 62C in the centre of the pile- that's 143F, which is plenty hot enough to kill weed seeds and other nasties, and indicates that the carbon:nitrogen balance is about right.

Cornell university has a page on composting physics which describes the temperature characteristics of decomposition.

Material choice is key- the last load (which was around a 30cm layer over 1sq m so about 0.33 cubic metres) consisted of:

• 2 grass boxes grass clippings (form a recently-fed lawn so probably high in N)
  1 shredder box (40cm*15cm=0.045 cubic metres) of shredded paper (bills, very satisfying)
• approx 4 kg spent coffee grounds
• approx 3kg kitchen waste (veg peelings, coffee grounds, teabags and paper kitchen towels)
• 1 large cup Garotta compost accelerator.

No leaves this time, unlike previous loads.

This was mixed together, on top of (but not mixed with) an already-composing layer of much the same material. No added water this time since the grass clippings were fairly moist.