We’ll be checking the Sandex forecast each day at about 1PM. If the Sandex is projected to be 100% (that is, if the temperature and relative humidity are both within climate-scientist Ole Fanger’s peak parameters for human performance), we’ll announce a location on Twitter for the next day.

The best way to find out about upcoming Coworkout sessions is to follow @coworkout on Twitter. The first session will, most likely, be at Longwood Gardens, just like last year — though we’ll wait for things to warm up a bit more than we did last year!

Last Friday, we held Coworkout at the Lanchester Scenic Overlook, which is a beautiful, grassy hill eleven hundred feet above the Conestoga and Brandywine valleys. The breezes blow, the hawks soar past at eye level and the windmill above our heads spins, generating the electricity that we used to power our computers:

Photo: Chris Young

Ahh, what a beautiful spot! What a pastoral idyll! Did I mention that sheep gambol across the grass, cropping it neatly? That birds sing in the undergrowth? That on the other hill, giant machines frolic, pushing hills of waste into position, then crushing those hills mercilessly underneath inexorable spiked steel wheels?

Photo: Chris Young

The Scenic Overlook is a finished landfill. Below the grass is six feet of soil, which covers an impermeable clay cap. Below that is years of solid waste, decomposing deep underneath the ground as anaerobic bacteria works on it. Every few hundred feet, perforated pipes are driven deep into the hill, through the cap, and methane gas is collected and sent down the hill. There, some of the gas is used to fuel an enormous natural-gas generator and turned into electricity, which is then pushed into the grid.

Some of the gas is sold directly to factories, who use it for power. For instance, when we were there, we saw on a display screen exactly how many BTUs of methane gas were currently being piped to the generator at a plant that makes Taco Bell cheese.

We learned all this from Lanchester’s executive director Bob Watts, who took us in his big, black hybrid SUV all around the operation. During the VIP tour, we learned all sorts of amazing things, like:

• The twenty-foot tall fences surrounding the active landfill that look like electrified zombie-incursion barriers are actually to catch plastic shopping bags before they can blow away down to the farms below. The fences are made from commercial fishing nets strung on tall poles.
• Regulations require that the active bit of the landfill (where the trash is actually dumped each day) must be covered every night. A big part of a landfill director’s job is finding stuff to cover the area. Soil is too precious and expensive. Chemical foam doesn’t last. Giant, bulldozer-deployed tarps are often used. However, if you happen to have ten thousand tons of kiln ash or even (get this!) a hill of shredded cars, that’s like catnip to landfill operators. They love finding that stuff to spread on their hills.
• Everything is money to a landfill. Trucks pay tipping fees to drop off their trash — we saw a big compression truck dumping a load, for which they’d pay maybe six hundred dollars. Then the landfill is capped and used to generate electritity. Shipping pallets are shredded, dyed, and sold as hardwood mulch. Everything that comes in to the landfill is turned into (at least a little bit) of money
• Many counties pay to operate their landfill, but Lanchester actually pays the county. Bob wanted me to be sure to mention that they just wrote a check for half a million dollars to Chester County!

During the tour of the active hill, a garbage truck backed up, lifted its tail, revved its hydraulics, and started pushing out its load. The driver rolled down the window, leaned out, and threw his Dunkin Donuts bag directly on the ground. “Hey!” we all looked at each other for a moment: “That dude is totally litter-… oh.”

My favorite part of the day was when Chris Young brought and hooked up his Commodore 64 — not an emulator, an actual, by-God Commodore 64 that’s been in his mom’s closet for years and years — to the windmill power supply and fired it up, loading Summer Games from the 1541 floppy-disk drive. IT WORKED!

Back in the eighties, before becoming a producer, Chris played Bryce Lynch, the teenage-nerd inventor of Max Headroom, which as far as I’m concerned is one of the most important seminal cyberpunk roles out there. So having Bryce Lynch up there, hacking on his antique computer and CRT, USING METHANE POWER, OUTDOORS, in something that’s arguably close to an APOCALYPTIC WASTELAND? That’s about as close as it’s possible to get to cyberpunk in real life. Sheesh! I’m amazed we didn’t all come home with spiky mohawks, laser goggles, and motorcycle-tire epaulets.

Photo: Chris Young

I’m grateful to Bob Watts for the tour. Lanchester is an interesting and amazing place, and if you want to learn about the waste chain, which is pretty damn short (your trash bag -> a truck -> the top of a hill in Honeybrook), and you want to see all sorts of amazing ways that Lanchester is trying to extract value from their waste, then by all means give them a call!

That’s right; until 2000, this beautiful spot was Hill A of the Chester County Solid Waste Authority’s Lanchester Landfill. They are at the forefront of green technology and electric reclamation. The electricity we’ll use will come from the windmill over our heads!

You can get more information on the location page here!

We’re kind of used to working without a roof by now, but we aren’t really accustomed to working without chairs yet. Though Jason and Randy seem pretty happy in this photo:

We also worked without power, but that’s because I am incredible fool, and didn’t ask, because I was scared of what the answer would be. You can read more about my shame on my blog.

We’ll definitely have coworkout again here, but I think we’ll look into getting some Crazy Creek chairs, which seem like modern functional analogues of zaisu.

Shofuso (“Pine Breeze Villa”) is a Japanese house built in shoin-zukuri style. I’ve ranted and raved on my blog about how awesome it is.

I’m not 100% sure that Shofuso will be a great spot for coworkout — can we find a good spot to sit? What about power? At the absolute minimum, we’ll sit down with our laptops on the veranda, work until pins and needles set in, and then we’ll move to Ohio House. But if it works out, it’ll be great.

Shofuso is careful to note on their website that groups under ten are welcome anytime, but groups larger than that should have a reservation, so please message @coworkout or comment this post if you think you’re gonna come!

You can visit http://www.coworkout.com/shofuso for information and directions.

The hardest-working blogger in West Chester, Mary Bigham of West Chester Dish came out to the West Chester KOA on Friday to write up the "He Said, She Said" feature for this week’s CC: section of the Daily Local News. In the feature, two folks go on a blind date, then afterwards talk to Mary and review the restaurant and each other. It’s great reading, and you always expect a train wreck.

Mary talked to the woman first, and OH MAN you cannot imagine a more distracting conversation. I mean, in the best possible way — there was drama! High comedy! Low comedy! Misplaced perceptions! Completely incorrect judgments! It all unfolded like something out of a Forties movie where people wear fedoras and talk quickly out of the side of their mouths.

The new issue oc CC: comes out on Wednesday and you can read all about it then.

So I raced out to the West Chester KOA this morning, and am all set up, enjoying the sun. Fortunately, a little bit of a breeze is starting, which is blowing away the biting gnats.

Come on out to the West Chester KOA Campground, and earn a Coworkout Nerd Merit Badge, which cannot be purchased or otherwise obtained!

Here’s Randy, having a conference call in our conference-call area by the river:

We’ll be here until 4:30, if you want to stop by! You can reach us on Twitter by sending a message to @coworkout.

We’ll be going back there this Friday (I want to be there and see the difference when the leaves are open.) If you’re interested in coming out, you can get directions here. Comment the page or message us at @coworkout on Twitter so we’ll know how many tables to lug over to the canoe landing.

See you there!

 

Once again, a place that I thought would be restful and uninteresting (in a good way) has turned out to be bursting with distracting awesomeness. It turns out there really is an aabandoned hospital for the criminally insane just over the hill. And abandoned railroad tracks that go through the woods to a graveyard filled with unknown people. And a COLLAPSED FELDSPAR MINE that used to be in the hill right behind us, that used to use old mine carts and everything. Which means that we are CLEARLY very close to an Indiana-Jones style undeground rollercoaster adventure, with lava and jumps over broken tracks, if we can only uncover the old mine entrance.

We’ll be here until about 4:30 PM; if you’d like to come out and join us, details are on the page here!

Here’s a screenshot of a video chat that Will Ronco made. Will’s sitting in his apartment in Boulder, Colorado, while the weather veers between snow, sleet, and freezing rain. Will, we’re sorry to taunt you with the AWESOMENESS OF THE WEATHER here in Chester County, PA.