(Dan Dalquist and his daughter, Kari Bangtson, who was our featured speaker.)

Attendance today was 19 including guests Tori Roose, our scholarship recipient, and Kari Dalquist Bangtson our speaker.

At the outset of the meeting, Tori gave the members an update on her progress that was deemed very significant. It is gratifying to see the contribution we make to these scholarship student bear fruit.

After luncheon and some happy dollars we were treated to a video presentation of Kari Bangtson's biking tour of Scandinavia with her friend, April, to study alternative sources of energy and to assess the carbon footprint of four countries, Iceland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. She was able to accomplish this with the aid of a grant from "Funds for Teachers," and organization that funds teacher projects with the goal of getting people excited about teaching and also in keeping them as teachers once they are in the profession.

The entire land portion of the study was accomplished by Kari and her friend on their bicycles, bicycles complete with their panniers loaded with tents and all their supplies.

They began in Iceland where geo-thermal and hydroelectric energy was studied and observed. Te beauty of geo-thermal is the fact that the supported infrastructure is hardly affected: "Drill a hole and there it is and when you're finished, move on the another hole." Simple.

In Sweden, they concentrated on observing the massive organization supporting recycling of waste and deriving energy savings through that process. In this manner, one's carbon footprint is greatly reduced if almost nil.

In Denmark they studied Wind and solar energy and in Norway energy through ocean wave technology.

Key to all these systems, they learned, was fourfold: First, one must produce the renewable energy; second, one must have access to an energy grid; third, one must be able to enter the grid; and fourth, it must be shown to have a stable and sustainable price (and I suppose profit) level.

They finished their trip in the cycling capital of the world, Amsterdam, Holland. Kari showed a video of one of Amsterdam's bike parking garage, a four-story parking garage with literally thousands of bicycles parked side by side.

With the beautiful video shots of the Scandanavian countryside, Kari and April had to keep reminding the viewers with a disclaimer, "It's only partially about the bike."

All in all, it was a wonderful presentation and daddy Dalquist was mighty proud of his daughter from Colorado.