Chris N’ Kitty

Its been a while since I posted here but as many of you know we recently returned from a 5 day trip to Mexico City. We figured that is worth a few words:

The trip was part of my volunteer work with The Climate Project via HP. In short, HP sent me down to Mexico City to present to our employees as part of Environment Day. With my airfare paid for Kitty and I decided to go down a few days before the event and explore the city.

Thursday
We started the trip out with accommodations in the Centro Historico district right across the street from the Alameda Central (a large park). After a stressful cab ride we got checked in and headed for the city square, also known as the Zocalo. It is the second largest city square in the world after Red Square in Moscow. We got there just in time to watch the soldiers lower the giant flag:

After our little sight seeing stroll we grabbed some dinner and crashed at the hotel. We were both pretty tired after leaving home at 4:30 A.M. for an early flight.

Friday
On Friday our sightseeing began in earnest with a trip to the famed Anthropology Museum but the real adventure started with the Metro (subway) ride to Chapultepec Park where the museum is located. The Mexico City subway is the largest subway in the world and it move 5 million people daily. During the morning rush hour they have separate cars for women only and we soon found out why. The trains depart every few minutes but each arriving train signals a shoving match to get into or out of each car. Once in the car you find yourself smashed against other people on all sides. The shoving seems to be all the more uncivilized because the men know there are no women on the cars. Except in our case with Kitty riding with me. It was not an experience she’d like to repeat.

After grabbing some breakfast in the upscale Polanco neighborhood near the museum we found our way to the museum. Its one of the largest anthropology museums in the world with most of the placards in English and Spanish. We also rented some of the recorded audio tour guides. We saw hundreds of interesting artifacts and by the end of our visit our heads were full of the human history of the Western hemisphere. Some of our friends in the city would later tell us that most natives start visiting the museum in elementary school and that they really start to appreciate the content after their 5th or 6th trip. Here are a few photos from the museum:

After the museum we headed back to the Polanco neighborhood to meet with a fellow Climate Project presenter, Gerardo Pandal. Gerardo is a Mexico City native and he was kind enough to give me a number of useful tips on presenting to a Mexican audience. We then grabbed a slightly less crowded metro ride back to Centro Historico and our hotel.

Saturday

Saturday morning we awoke early once again this time to travel about an hour north of the City to Teotihuacan. Teotihuacan is the site of an ancient city built between 100 B.C. and 250 A.D. The city lasted until the 7th century and was home to 200,000 people at its peak. When the Aztecs later arrived in the valley the assumed Teotihuacan had been the home of the gods.

Our trip to Teotihuacan began with a subway trip to the north bus depot. However, we soon discovered that the second subway line we needed was closed for maintenance. After some confusion and communicating with friendly cop (it seemed like there was a cop on every corner) by pointing at a map we learned that there was a free bus operating as a replacement for the closed line. Shortly there after we got to the bus station and boarded another bus for the trip north.

We had the ruins almost entirely to ourselves for 2 to 3 hours before the first tour buses began to arrive. Below you can see photos of the two largest pyramids and many of the smaller structures. Conveniently, the Anthropology Museum had a whole section on this ancient city so we had a good idea what to expect. The site also had a very nice museum of its own.

We had expected to spend the whole day exploring the ruins but by lunch time we’d seen everything we cared to see so we caught an early bus back to the city. We took advantage of the early return to walk the Reforma, one of the City’s main avenues. During this stroll we saw the Revolutionary Dome with its Soviet style statues, the Statue of Independence, part of the Zona Rosa district, and several cool chair sculptures that line the park in the center of the seven lane Reforma.

Sunday

We spent Sunday morning exploring the city square in more depth before checking out of our hotel and moving to a new hotel in the Santa Fe district near HP. We spent a couple hours exploring the ruins of Templo Mayor. Templo Mayor was the religious center of the city for the Aztecs before the Spanish invasion. After the Spanish captured the city they destroyed most of the Aztec’s temples and used the stones to build the Cathedral and other nearby building. In the 1980s work on the city’s subway uncovered lost ruins of Templo Mayor and a campaign to unearth many of the ancient structures began.

After Templo Mayor we visited the Presidential Palace, the Belles Artes (opera hall) and the Museo Mural Diego Rivera. All of these buildings contained murals from Rivera and other famous Mexican artists.

Monday & Tuesday

By Monday we were both exhausted and our bodies seemed to be tired of the city’s air pollution. Plus, most of the city’s tourist attractions are closed on Mondays. So we spent the morning at the hotel and I prepared for Tuesday’s presentation. In the afternoon we visited Latin America’s largest shopping mall which was full of upscale, and largely European, merchants.

Monday evening we had dinner with my HP colleagues from the Santa Fe site and their wives. This was one of the highlights of the trip and we had an outstanding time. We spent at least 90 minutes at dinner. The food was terrific and the conversation lively. Here is a photo of the group after dinner:

Tuesday morning we headed to the HP site at about 9:30 for my presentation at 11:00.  Below is one of the posters describing the Environment Day activities at the site.

The presentation went great!  We had about 100 people in attendance and they all seemed very attentive throughout the presentation.  Thanks to the tips and slides from my friend Gerardo I was able to add a fair amount of Mexico specific content to the presentation.  I received a few questions in front of the group and then had about half a dozen people ask me questions individually after the presentation.  Overall I think the message was very well received and the audience seemed motivated to take action.

In conclusion it was an amazing trip, we saw about as much as we possibly could in five days, made some new friends, and hopefully motivated some people to help solve the climate crisis.  We’d like to go back to spend more time with the people we met.  Additionally we’d like to visit the Coyoacan district with it’s Trotsky and Kahlo museums and the floating gardens of Xochimilco.  Given its proximity to the U.S. the city is definitely worth visiting.  The only downsides was the pollution, which was unexpectedly hard on our eyes, and our stomachs didn’t always agree with the food.  By the time we go back hopefully we’ll know a bit more Spanish too!

I get to drive it too but its more or less Kitty’s car. Its sweet and yeah, I’m a little jealous.

Despite the Holiday Blizzard all the Browns and Watsons have arrived in Fort Collins. Yesterday we unpacked Corein’s stuff and hung out around the house. Today we went to Church twice and had a birthday lunch at Johnny Carinos.

More photos of on the right via the Flickr links.

I took these before we started digging (more in the Flickr stream on the right). The City of Fort Collins has now declared a state of emergency.

Storms have to have names these days to make it easier for the newscasters to talk about them. My favorite has always been the east coast blizzard in the late 90’s that Al Rocker refereed to as “Blizzardo Diablo”. Apparently, this is the Holiday Blizzard. My guess is that we received 2-3′ today but with the 20-30 mph winds we have some serious drifts.

It took me over 2 hours, with help, to get the truck out of the neighborhood so I could rescue Kitty at CSU. They only plow the main roads in Fort Collins. Tomorrow is a snow day for us!

My latest news is that I’m heading out to Nashville in early January to attend training on how to present Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” as part of The Climate Project. I’ll certainly have more to say about the training and the topic of global warming in the future.

To many people the term “black gold” refers to Texas T, a.k.a crude oil but its also the name of a new documentary about coffee. I bet you didn’t know that coffee is the 2nd most widely traded commodity in the world. Second only to crude oil. Black Gold the movie follows the leader of an Ethiopian coffee farm co-op as he seeks a better price for their coffee. In the process the viewer sees the devastation caused by the drop in coffee prices over the last 15 years and the unfairness of the system. Not to mention the insane popularity of coffee and related drinks in the West.

I spent a couple evenings this week promoting the movie’s screening in Boulder by posting flyers for the movie and Oxfam’s Make Trade Fair Compaign at local fair trade coffee shops. Last night I got to see the film. It was thought provoking, disturbing, well filmed, and a story well told. Do you know where your coffee comes from?

A few weeks ago we flew down to Las Cruces to see The DNM. It was also NMSU’s homecoming weekend and the X-Prize Cup was being held out at the airport. We saw a lot of Dave and had a great weekend. It always feels like coming home when I arrive in Las Cruces. We saw the game, did some hiking, ate a lot of fine New Mexican food, and generally bummed around.

One of the odd parts of the trip was when we headed out to the airport for the X-Prize Cup. I had heard of the X-Prize before but I didn’t know much about it. I knew from my last trip to LC that southern New Mexico is the planned home of the first commercial space port. However, I was amazed with the scale of the projects being promoted by the X-Prize and the sheer amounts of cash involved.

I don’t doubt that this supposed new “space race” will yield yet more technology that will change our lives down here on the ground. However, I have to wonder if the world couldn’t find a better use for this money and effort. And whether we as a global community are adequately balancing our R&D investments. I guess that isn’t a new question or a new problem.

I’d like to propose an S-Prize for innovations in sustainable living. Now if only I had a few million dollars to throw behind the idea.