For a laugh...

Ok, so I had to share this story.  A group of fellow students live 'out the road' a bit and are having a party tonight (which, unfortunately, I'm going to miss since I'm not back in town until tomorrow).  But, since life in Alaska is never dull, this is the email she sent out today about the party...and note that Juneau has gotten a LOT of snow in the past 48 hours, which always makes things interesting.

"Hey everyone,

Party is still on for tonight(!), but we don't want to make it too easy for you... 

Challenge #1: The long winding road through the woods that leads to our house is still pretty snowy. If you don't have 4WD or are not confident in your 4WD, we recommend you a) carpool w/ someone with 4WD or b) park at the end of  <street X> before our 1 lane road and walk to our house. It only takes about 10 minutes. There's a big turnaround circle at the bottom of the hill at the end of <street X> where cars can fit.

Challenge #2: There has been a brown bear hanging out by our house the past week. Enough said. Be careful. Kevin has offered to stand guard with a 12 gauge but you will have to bring him whiskey.

Remember, the good things in life don't come easy ;-)  Get ready for black bear pizza and deer kabobs!

Call me at <xxx>  if you get lost, stuck, or attacked by the bear.

-Jess"

 

 

What she neglects to mention is that the cell phone service out there is pretty sketchy, so if you do indeed get lost, stuck, or (heaven forbid) attacked by the bear, your call probably won't go through!

Steve's insane, and other random notes

Steve's certified insane!  :)  Actually, he's officially certified to teach the Insanity workout, but it's pretty much the same thing.  We got a group of friends together for a practice session before he does an official "try out" at the gym.  If he passes the try out, he can be hired to teach at the gym!  Go Steve Go!!

UPDATE!  Steve 'passed' his try out and starting on Monday at 5:30 am he's team-teaching the class!

Steve's holding down the fort in Juneau while I'm at a meeting in Seattle.  It's COLD in Juneau this week - highs around 10-15 degrees...so I feel a little bad that's it's pretty nice here (well, in the 40s and 50s, I think that's nice!).  Juneau is predicted to get a snowstorm Thursday-Friday.  It seems too early for cold and snow, after Thanksgiving would be better!  Steve said the power went out briefly at the Irv the other day, and he had to disconnect the water hoses so they wouldn't freeze.  We normally have them covered with electric heat tape, which works pretty well.  When he got off work, the power was back on but the spigot was frozen so he bought a blow torch to thaw it out.

Leaving Juneau on Sunday we departed to the east because of high winds funneling down the Channel.  I've seen other flights go that way, but it's less common because planes have to climb quickly then bank hard right to miss the mountain(s).  Being on a plane doing that was kind of creepy - I started counting how long it took between when the plane wheels left the ground and when the plane banked - only 20 seconds!  We were warned that there would be a lot of turbulence and there was - yuck - it felt like we were bouncing and sliding all over the place.

Antartica on your lunch break

Photo by D.Olsen.

A couple of weeks ago I was walking out of our shared office space and another student's screen saver caught my eye.  Flashing across his computer screen were the most incredible photographs of penguins, leopard seals, icebergs, and kayakers.  I stood there watching the slideshow, totally mesmerized, for several minutes before I realized I was going to be late for class if I didn't leave. When i got back several hours later Dan was at his desk and I asked him about the pictures.  Turns out, Dan is a kayaking guide in Antarctica in his 'spare time'.  Holy awesomeness batman! 

Penguins on an iceberg. Photo by D.Olsen.

This naturally started the wheels turning in my head, because there's pretty much nothing I like better than traveling.  And I'm always looking for new places to add to my travel wish list. So, I started an informal lunch seminar series at school where people can share their travel and adventure stories! There's a lot of students and faculty who've gone some amazing places, and everyone has a tendency to eat at their desk while work, so why not do something about that?

Penguins coming ashore. Photo by D.Olsen.

The seminars are informal, irregularly scheduled, and everyone's encouraged to bring a lunch so they don't feel like they are missing out on too much work time (have I ever mentioned that the building is entirely populated with workaholics?).  Yesterday was the first one, and Dan was the presenter.  He's a fantastic storyteller, and his photographs from several years of trips were incredible.  I've added a couple here, since he sent me some so I could make the advertising fliers.  Dan Olsen gets the photography credits!  Someday I am definitely going to Antartica!

Photo by D.Olsen

We have a couple of other people on deck for talks...Melissa is going to talk about her trip to Argentina, a different Dan is going to talk about his adventures as a biological observer on commercial fishing boats, and I'm hoping to get one of my professors to talk about his TWO treks to the summit of Denali.

"Hahaha...I could totally eat you." Photo by D.Olsen

In other interesting news from Juneau, a brown bear was spotted in the Valley (a local neighborhood), near our gym.  There are lots and lots of black bears in town, but not brown bears.  According to one guy Steve talked to, the last time there was a brown bear in town was 22 years ago.  There are brown bears that live out the road, towards and around Berners Bay (which is near our favorite hiking trail at Point Bridget), so it's not completely unreasonable for one to be in town, but it is unusual!

UPDATE - someone got video of the bear!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_KPKmF4mag

A bit of a detour

I've been carpooling to school with Emily this week because it's getting too cold for Steve to take the motorcycle (too icy in the morning).  Today is shaping up to be an absolutely spectacular day - clear and cold and sunny.  Which means that as Emily was driving us towards the lab and we got closer and closer to our turn, neither one of us was ready to head indoors, into our dark, windowless office.  So when she asked "should I just keep driving and go to Eagle beach for a walk before work?", I had zero objections.

WOW.  Fresh snow on the mountains, low tide at the beach in the foreground.  Way better than work.  :)

Hard frost and hiking

 

We've had several cold nights in a row, which makes me happy that we had gotten the carpet and carpet padding put in recently.  Just having that on the floors results in a +10 degree difference in the Irv, without changing the heat setting on the radiator.  Today, we spent most of this beautiful, dry, sunny day doing the last of the winterizing...putting plastic up on the final two (big) windows, dragging the studded tires out from under Irv so we can have them installed this week, and Steve rebuild the steps up to the porch.  Seca's been having a much harder time getting up - getting up from laying down, but also getting up the steps and she hesitates a lot on the steps.  I think it's her hips that are the worst - sometimes she's very weak and can't get her back end up.  So we're going to take her in to see if there's anything that will help. 

On Saturday Steve had to work, so I went for a long hike with Emily, a friend from school who's been our hiking companion before.  We did the Perseverance trail because it was sunny out and with all the fresh snow on the mountains, we figured it would be pretty.  It was.  Because the trail's in a deep valley and we left about 9 am, we didn't get direct sun in the valley for any of the hike.  That meant that the frosty leaves and moss stuck around for the whole trip.  It was very pretty, but cold!  I had a bunch of layers with me and as long as we kept moving we were fine, but it was only in the 20s in the valley.  Brrrr!

Hairy frost on the truck

I just thought this looked really neat.
It's frost on the side mirror of the truck this morning.