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December 1, 2013 by Michael Behar

OnEarth | Fall 2013

Something in the Air Download PDF

The health risks of leaded gasoline are a thing of the past, right? Wrong.

It’s impossible to have an uninterrupted conversation with Kelly Kittleson in her home. Kittleson, who lives in Hillsboro, Oregon, is a single mom with four kids. But her children are not the distraction. The two youngest—a boy, age 2, and a girl, age 4—sat quietly with us at the kitchen table. They hardly made a peep while we chatted. Instead, about every five minutes, a low-flying plane screamed above the rooftop. “They are constantly going over all the time,” Kittleson complained. “It’s crazy. When I first moved here, it felt like they were going to crash into our house.” Continue reading →

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November 2, 2013 by Michael Behar

SKI | NOVEMBER 2013

Sky-High Vacations? Download PDF

Recreational marijuana is legal in Colorado. Is that good news for ski resorts?

Last winter, about 1.3 million people traveled to Colorado to ski or board. All in all, it was a decent year, with visits to winter resorts up about four percent over 2012. And yet, with an ongoing drought, an aging skier population, and a recovering but still uneasy economy, Colorado ski towns and resorts are always trawling for new tactics to attract business. Is pot the answer? Continue reading →

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September 15, 2013 by Michael Behar

Men’s Health | September 2013

Barefoot Running Stumbles Download PDF

The irresistible promise: Ditch your padded sneakers and run faster with fewer injuries. So why is the minimalist running craze causing maximum pain?

The 2011 L.A. Marathon was going well for Joseph Gabriel. After 26 miles enduring a cold rain and gusty winds, he was still on pace to break four hours—his goal after four months of training. But as he turned onto Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica, with the finish line in sight 300 yards away, he felt a sudden tug above his left ankle. Continue reading →

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August 14, 2013 by Michael Behar

Air & Space | August 2013

The Other Guys Download PDF

NASA needs a space taxi. The likely pick is SpaceX—but don’t count out Colorado-based Sierra Nevada.

Standing beside Dream Chaser, it’s hard to ignore its resemblance to the space shuttle. It’s smaller—only 30 feet long from nose to tail—and the wings are upswept and canted. But in overall shape, the kinship is clear. Still, the company building this vehicle says it is not trying to make Shuttle 2.0. “We’re not fixing all the shuttle’s problems,” avows Jim Voss, the avuncular vice president of Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Space Exploration Systems division. “We’re an evolutionary step from the shuttle, taking everything we learned from it and applying that to our vehicle to take [spaceflight] to the next generation.” Continue reading →

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August 6, 2013 by Michael Behar

Virtuoso Life | September/October 2013

How to Launch a Spaceline Download PDF

Your ticket to the stars

If you’re the founder of the world’s premier commercial spaceline, finding a CEO with firsthand experience isn’t possible. So when Richard Branson began hunting for an executive to lead Virgin Galactic, he searched for a candidate who had not only dabbled in all realms of spaceflight, but also one whose imagination was as boundless as his own. Luckily, Branson met George Whitesides. When Whitesides, 39, joined Virgin Galactic in May 2010 as president and CEO, he had already served two years as chief of staff at NASA. His duties spanned the agency’s 150-plus ongoing missions—from probes to far-flung galaxies to satellites that survey our changing climate. Before NASA, Whitesides directed the National Space Society, a grassroots advocacy group that champions efforts to colonize other planets. He’s done stints at two space-tourism firms—Zero Gravity and Blastoff Corporation—and was an advisor to the FAA. From his multifaceted career, Whitesides says he’s learned, above all, that spaceflight requires unrelenting perseverance: “You have to go into it with commitment and stick to it.” Think you have the right stuff? Here are the next five steps. Continue reading →

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July 18, 2013 by Michael Behar

OUTSIDE | JULY 2013

Snowstradamus Download PDF

Joel Gratz is a Colorado skier who puts out winter storm alerts that track the essentials: where exactly the snow will fall, how much, and when. As fellow weather nerd Michael Behar finds out, it’s wonderful when it works.

Joel Gratz is making me nervous. It’s midmorning on a snowy Colorado day in March, and we’re riding the Sun Up triple chair in Vail’s Back Bowls. Gratz has scooched his butt to the very edge of the seat, and now he’s thrashing his right arm to and fro, determined to capture a few flakes with his mittened fist. Whenever Gratz talks about the weather—snow especially—the 31-year-old meteorologist can forget where he is, speaking in a nonstop stream. “I usually just tune it out,” says his girlfriend, Lauren Alweis, who is skiing with us.  Continue reading →

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June 23, 2013 by Michael Behar

Men’s Fitness | July 2015

Stress ThumbnailWhen Stress Doesn’t Suck Download PDF

What you think is killing you should actually make you stronger.

“You seem tense,” my iPhone texts me, and suggests I take a brief meditation break. Is it reading my mind?

No, it’s just a message from the two-inch-long gray orb attached to the waistband of my jeans, called Spire, which monitors my respiratory rhythms and alerts me whenever it senses a period of rapid, shallow breaths. Spire was invented by Neema Moraveji, Ph.D., a computer scientist who directs Stanford University’s Calming Technology Lab, where his team has studied prototypes like Mail0, touted as “the world’s first calming e-mail client,” as well as Morphine Drip, an app for injured athletes stressed out because they can’t play. “We’re also trying to bring natural elements into sterile work environments,” says Moraveji. “This includes outfitting desks with real grass.” Continue reading →

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April 1, 2013 by Michael Behar

Mother Jones | March/April 2013

Whose Fault? Download PDF

Scientists had long suspected frackers caused earthquakes. But when a dead fault unleashed a 5.7 on Oklahoma, it rocked seismology to the core.

At exactly 10:53 p.m. on Saturday, November 5, 2011, Joe and Mary Reneau were in the bedroom of their whitewashed and brick-trimmed home, a two-story rambler Mary’s dad custom-built 43 years ago. Their property encompasses 440 acres of rolling grasslands in Prague, Oklahoma (population 2,400), located 50 miles east of Oklahoma City. When I arrive at their ranch almost a year later on a bright fall morning, Joe is wearing a short-sleeve shirt and jeans held up by navy blue suspenders, and is wedged into a metal chair on his front stoop sipping black coffee from a heavy mug. His German shepherd, Shotzie, is curled at his feet. Joe greets me with a crushing handshake—he is 200 pounds, silver-haired and 6 feet tall, with thick forearms and meaty hands—and invites me inside. He served in Vietnam, did two tours totaling nine years with the Defense Intelligence Agency, and then, in 1984, retired a lieutenant colonel from the US Army to sell real estate and raise cattle. Today, the livestock are gone and Joe calls himself “semiretired” because “we still cut hay in the summers.” Continue reading →

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March 7, 2013 by Michael Behar

Virtuoso Life | March/April 2013

This is Your Captain Speaking Download PDF

As Virgin Galactic’s passenger flights near, we take a look at the key faces and technologies behind the world’s first commercial spaceline.

When he wants to relax, David Mackay, 55, flies an Extra 300L, a performance aerobatic aircraft, doing vertical rolls and knife-edge spins. This helps him stay sharp at his day job: chief pilot for Virgin Galactic. At the moment, Mackay is flight-testing WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo—the mother ship that will shuttle tourists to 47,000 feet, and the rocket plane that will decouple there and blast into sub-orbital space—and is scheduled to begin flying tourists to space next year. The Scotland native made his first flight in 1977. “I did it with the University Air Squadron, which gave students experience with the armed forces,” he recalls. After graduating, Mackay joined the Royal Air Force (RAF), flying a Hawker Harrier GR3, a fighter known for its unique ability to take off and land vertically. “I always wanted to be a test pilot,” he says. “So as soon as I had sufficient experience, I applied to test pilot school.” He remained in the RAF as a test pilot until 1995, when he left to fly for Virgin Atlantic, and then, in 2009, joined Virgin Galactic to become the world’s first commercial spacecraft pilot. Continue reading →

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January 16, 2013 by Michael Behar

Skiing | February 2013

The Skis That Mike Built Download PDF

What could be more satisfying to a lifelong skier than handcrafting his own boards? A couple of flesh wounds, a few noxious fumes, and some serious marital strife later, you start to get an answer.

Not long after moving to Colorado, I purchased a pair of all-mountain skis from a local shop. Initially naïve to the meteorological quirks of the region, I soon discovered that it’s no place for a one-ski-quiver. The wild temperature swings and big dumps that bookend long droughts demanded a more versatile portfolio. I’m a firm believer in trying before buying. Doing so with skis, however, only propelled me into a black hole of demo indecision.

Titanium sandwiches, pulse pads, multidirectional composites, sintered bases, triaxial braiding, double monocoques—ski peddlers love to spew technobabble. To grasp how design variables affect a ski’s performance, I needed a hands-on education. As a kid, whenever I got a new toy, I’d have it disassembled into its component parts within an hour. (I wasn’t nearly as deft at reassembling.) It’s impractical to reverse engineer skis like childhood toys, so I decided to take the opposite tack: I was going to build my own boards—from scratch. Continue reading →