SeeingEyeBlog

My family and I go skiing every year in Lake Tahoe, making the trek from Southern California up the 395 highway. On the return trip, we usually make a detour through Death Valley, where many interesting photographic subjects lie. One one of these trips, we visited the old Harmony Borax Works.

Borax mining in the mid- to late-1800s was what started the Death Valley economy, and, having been there, is probably the only reason anyone ever decided to live in Death Valley. Borax was mined on the surface of the valley, but needed to be dissolved in boiling water, and then cooled, in order to purify it. The ambient temperature was so hot in Death Valley that the water wouldn’t cool down enough for the borax to recrystallize. Unable to purify it on site, they hauled the raw borax South, to Mojave. That’s where the image of the 20-mule team comes from.

So how does this relate to the Chrysler Natrium? The Chrysler Natrium was a concept car that used a certain hydrogen fuel cell that carried its hydrogen not in compressed form, but as Sodium Borohydride (NaBH4). (See this article from 2002). A direct borohydride fuel cell takes in a stable white powder and generates electricity, water vapor, and borax (NaBO2). The genius of the system is three-fold:

• First, the hydrogen is stored in a chemically stable compound. All that is necessary to separate the H2 is to dissolve the powder in water. Compare this to a compressed H2 tank which would explode in a crash, not to mention expensive and heavy.
• Second, remember my first paragraph about where Borax is found? Death Valley and the American Southwest in general have some of the largest deposits on the planet. Death Valley is to Borax what the Middle East is to oil. So we become the net providers of this new fuel, and decrease foreign oil dependance (as a percentage of fuel needs).
• Third, unlike other hydrogen systems, the Sodium Borohydride needs no custom infrastructure analagous to gas stations in order to be adopted. Borax is essentially soap–laundry detergent. It’s on the grocery store shelves right now in a slightly modified form. So just add packets of NaBH4 tablets to the inventory of the 7-11 you already buy your gas at. The infrastructure is already done. Better yet, the waste product NaBO2 can be traded in each time you buy a new tablet, so it can be sent back to be reconstituted into NaBH4. Trading in old Borohydride could lower the price of the new fuel powder.

So where did the Chrysler Natrium disappear to? The above linked article proudly announces that Millennium Cell was one of the partners in the venture, but today Millennium Cell is focused on laptop batteries. The Chrysler project was obviously abandoned, but why? My guess is that it system worked a little too well, which made oil companies nervous, which caused a lot of top-level shakedowns at Chrysler in ‘02 after they revealed the Natrium. The automotive/oil ship is too big to tack. For my part, I can’t imagine a better scenario where your tailpipe is spewing water vapor and soap. What other vehicle can be washed with its exhaust?

In light of my previous posts about my own car troubles, I’m wishing for a billionaire like Paul Allen or Steve Jobs to pump some serious capital into developing the system for cars. My motives are not fueled by global warming panic or oil company paranoia, I’m just sick of paying $90 to fill my gas tank every week, and I think the technology is viable and smart given the current international economic situation.

Takes a lot of willpower.

Luckily my roommate got home before the Villaraigosites found my ill-parked Jeep (a fire hydrant ticket in LA is a week’s pay). Together, we decided to parallel park the impotent beast between two other cars.

My advice when parallel parking is to make sure your engine works. As it was, we had to attempt the stunt three times, and had to do the back-n-forth maneuver once roughly in place. Doing the back-n-forth maneuver without power steering or a gas pedal is not recommended unless you’re using the exercise to build muscle tone. Of course, there are other ways to build muscle tone.

The unfortunate part about this parking situation is, it’s a Monday morning street cleaning zone. So I have another Villaraigosite onslaught coming at 8am tomorrow. I will need to do a 3-point turn and re-parallel park tomorrow morning.

What is it with me and my Jeep, that we constantly end up without a spark in the engine. Not a week prior, it drove flawlessly for two miles to the store, and then after 15 minutes of sitting, it couldn’t be aroused. And again tonight, on my way to work, it can’t get it up again.

This time I was filling up with gas at a station a half-mile from my house. I couldn’t believe it was happening again. Jeep Grand Cherokees must need viagra after 10 years of service, because this hunk of metal can’t get it up reliably. It’s so bad that I’ve started driving around constantly with my bike in the back, just in case this type of crap happens again. Sure enough, I was right.

I tried hooking up my portable jump-start battery to see if I could get her started, but it still wouldn’t even try to turn over. It was exactly the same symptoms as last time, when I thought it was my alarm system. What am I supposed to do a half mile away from home sitting next to a gas pump?

Well, the ground is level, no hills, so I decide to go for it. I usually expect the unexpected, like the time I didn’t have a ride home from Burbank airport, and no cash on me. I decided to walk 20 miles to West LA.

I can honestly say that it was one of the largest oxygen debts my body has incurred, as I pushed my heavy SUV a half mile back to my house. These vehicles are light enough that you get excited about actually being able to move it at all. Yet they are so heavy that you can’t generate hardly any speed with one person’s torque.

My greatest fear at this point is the Los Angeles parking enforcement, those mindless Villaraigosite zombies that would take candy from a baby. There was nowhere to park once I got to my street, so I had to set her down next to a fire hydrant.

My feelings right now can be summed up by Michael Drayton beautifully at the end of the 11th Sonnet of Idea:

You do bewitch me ; O, that I could fly,
From my self you, or from your own self I !

And also, for some reason, Ringo Starr’s Don’t Pass Me By was echoing in my head the whole time I was pushing the fat tub back to port.

A phone call from the repair shop roused me from my fermented slumber (see previous post), and I listened groggily as he told me in his game show host voice that they charge a flat 2-hour labor fee to take out an alarm system. Around $162.

I was unhappy until his next sentence, when he told me I was qualified under the California Consumer Assistance Program to receive up to $500 in free diagnosis and repair regarding my failed smog test. I guess I’m getting a government hand-out which I usually don’t take, but hearing it from this particular repair guy made it sound like I won a game show. Having never won a game show, I’ll take the hand out.

It’s 11:15pm and I’m pulling pieces from my triangular wedge of Brie cheese like pulling teeth from an albino alligator. Along with sipping a particularly strong barleywine, it’s all I can do to keep myself from taking a baseball bat to some poor random inanimate object. Apparently today I was standing downwind of the fan. I’ve had a run of bad luck, but rather than sound like a country song, I’ll limit myself to articulating the straw that put me over the edge.

Today I went to work like any other day. I was doing a shoot for Major League Baseball, and I was having a great time (other than splitting my thumbnail from my thumb while setting up). Really, it was a good shoot, and I was working with some good people.

When we were done, the east-coast producer bought me lunch in exchange for some time-saving directions to her next shoot. We stopped and ate, building bridges for 15 minutes. Then when it was time to leave, I get in my car, turned the key and….please insert another 25 cents.

It didn’t even try to turn over. Something was locking out the starter completely. The battery was fine, and everything was running great 15 minutes ago. What could possibly have changed in that time?

Just then, (being parked near a Jiffy Lube), a ‘trusty mechanic’ came strutting over, heading straight for my battery terminals and disconnecting the positive. Had I been faster, I would have stopped him and told him that anytime the battery is disconnected and reconnected, the alarm system arms itself with no way to disarm it, save one dubious remedy known only to certain Mexican mechanics who reset the alarm the last time it was in for service, but couldn’t tell me how to do it myself (what a curious thing, that language barrier).

Anyway, this guy grabs my battery and disconnects it. Inside I could wash my windshield with him, but I politely ask, “Whaddya think?”
“Oh, you sometimes have to clean the terminals, you know on the battery.”
“Yeah, but the battery was fine 15 minutes ago.”
After spraying some handy aresol foam, “Ok go ahead and start her up.”

Just as I thought, a deluge of sound suitable for a torture victim in a Chinese prison. “Thanks for your help, but it looks like my alarm is locking out my engine.”
“Oh yeah, well it must be your alarm then, not the battery. Yeah, I’m sure that’s what it is.”

I kept his number just in case I needed to tap into his deductive reasoning skills in the future. I thanked him for his help, and smiled as he walked away. My smile faded as his whistling did, and I was left with the realization that he created a much bigger problem than I had 2 minutes ago.

But engine trouble wasn’t the least of my worries. I had a quarter million dollars in gear stowed in the back of my car, ready to be had by any moron who wanted it. I had to get it safe and worry about my car later. The producer, who luckily stayed with me, offered to bring the gear back to my place in her rented SUV. So we went ahead and re-packed the gear and headed back to my house.

Thank God I own a bike. After she dropped me off with the gear, it was time to search the web and try to find a remedy for my problem. My search came up fruitless, and after biking 6 miles back to the car, so did my wits. I couldn’t figure out the problem. Usually when your alarm goes off for the wrong reason, you just get out, stick the key in the door, and unlock the door with the key. Well, no dice with my car. It continued screaming rape in its high pitched voice, with all eyes on me. I disconnected and reconnected that bloody battery cable about a hundred times, each time with a different idea of how to disarm the alarm (I didnt’ receive a keyless entry keychain thingy when I bought the car).

After a violent emotional outburst remeniscient of a banshee, I called AAA. The tow guy came out and gave it his college try, but couldn’t make her purr either. She just squealed like someone faking an orgasm. 2 hours later she was still faking it, so we towed her back to a garage near my place.

At this point I was ready to take a bazooka or a tommy gun to this four-wheeled piece of crap. My entire afternoon was spent trying to undo the situation the good (but rash) Samaritan created in 15 seconds.

In the words of Walter of The Big Lebowski, “Ahh, f*** it dude, let’s go bowlin’.” That’s what I’d like to say, but alas, this is real life, and I have to wake up at 7:30 tomorrow to explain to the auto shop why my car is sitting in their garage with nothing wrong with it.

My albino alligator cheese wedge has now lost all its teeth, and is in the trash. My barleywine is in my stomach, having relocated to my brain, and I can no longer write coherently. I shall retire directly.