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| 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!
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| 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?
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| 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!
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| 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.
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| "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
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