Category: travel
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and now it can be told
Loyal readers will remember that last summer we cruised to Alaska, and some very secretive things were happening on that cruise that I could only refer to rather cryptically. Well, with the airing of last nights episode of Top Chef the story can now be told.
We were on the set for the filming of the Quickfire challenge onboard the ship! Although the filming took several hours, we got less than 1 second of screen time. But here we are! Brian and I happened to be in a pretty good spot as the camera flashes past us several times. The ladies we were talking to turned out to be from Wisconsin, in fact from right by our cabin! The two in the print shirts actually got an additional 2 seconds of screen time along with their comments on the food.
Jane, Brian, and I all made it on again towards the end of the challenge. Sadly there is no sign of Holly.
Of course since this was all way before the show started we had no idea who any of the chefs really were. I do remember really liking Sheldon's lettuce cups as well as Stefan's little potato soup cup. I could swear that I remember seeing Kristin on the ship, so maybe she got to come along since she would be competing in last chance kitchen in Juneau.
Right now I'm looking forward to the finale. I'm not sure who I want to win the most, with Stefan and Josie gone all the villains are off the show. I think it would be awesome if Kristin makes it through LCK and gets to compete against Sheldon or Josh in the Finale. Thats Josh, by the way, in the first photo.
the debary institute
Its been a great J-Term. A trip to Vail for some Skiing, and a trip to Florida to solve the worlds problems with great friends at the DeBary Institute. For those who do not know, the DeBary institute is a newly renowned think tank with roots in the Bone Lake Global Institute.
We arrived on Friday and spent a wonderful late afternoon enjoying the hospitality and home of our host, Tim Peter.
On Saturday we toured Stetson University in the morning.
Later we repaired to Smyrna Beach, it was a bit windy but we enjoyed it all the same.
The culinary highlight of our trip was dinner at the Swamp House Grill and Tiki Bar. We enjoyed some lovely alligator bites as appetizers:
(Yes, as the famous frog said, they do taste like chicken)
After dinner we sat around enjoying the music of Mark Moore.
Sunday was Football (European and American) and then Golf day.
Dinner was provided by Gregory and Brad who made a charming seafood alfredo.
Monday morning we left the house at 5:50AM. The temperature was 62 degrees. Five hours later we arrived in Cedar Rapids where the temperature was -2. Thats a big swing for a monday morning.
Already looking forward to next year!
vail 2013
I just got back from four awesome days of skiing in Vail and Beaver Creek.
The Colorado resorts have a really cool new way of handling the ski passes, instead of clipping a tag on your jacket you now get a credit card with an RFID chip in it. Talk about a ski pass that appeals to the Geek in me! But whats even better is that every time you go on a lift, there is an RFID reader that grabs your ID and logs that lift ride. So now at the end of the day you can go on to a website and see how many vertical feet you skiied that day. Very cool. Over our four days of skiing we did just over 95,000 vertical feet! If we'd only known how close to 100k we would get we surely would have had a shorter lunch break on day one!
Since snow started late and has been a bit sparse since Christmas there was a lot of snow making going on. The mounds of snow created by the snow machines remind you of a Dr. Seuss drawing:
I'm pleased to say that my skiing has really improved thanks to my Solomon BBR 8.9 skis. I've started to call them my magic skis because I can even do the moguls! Here's a picture I took of craig at the top of one particularly narrow and moguly run. Note that I got down first with enough time to turn around and snap some pictures.
Here's another shot of Craig just before he jumped off the cliff. Note once again who went first to take the picture: :-)
All in all it was a great four days of skiing with the guys. Can't wait until next year.
euchre etiquette
How do you know you have an enduring friendship? When after more than 27 years as friends, and seven days of traveling together you can play Euchre – couple against couple – and still be friends at the end of the train ride from Seward to Anchorage. Now you might think that a simple card game means nothing, but there a few members of our party of 4 who are a little on the competitive side.
The controversy in this story came after our third missed bear siting on the train. “There’s a bear up ahead on the left side of the train… No now its on the right… no, now its on the left…” This is some kind of weird plan by the conductor to get the train rocking back and forth, or something to get the people in the back cars of the train to drink more. So, here it is dear readers, as we are all in a state of frustration over bear sitings, the up card is a heart, I’m holding three diamonds (but no bowers). Everyone passes, and it comes back around to me. I bid diamonds. This is when the trouble starts. As it turns out, Holly has both red bowers and only passed because she had better diamonds than hearts. Needless to say we get set, and I launch into some kind of self righteous tirade about “maur passing” just to set us. This scenario plays itself out three times again over the course of the train ride… Now last night I might have said some mean words about Holly’s card playing ethics, but today in hindsight, and in the spirit of type 2 fun, I can see that I might have been overly harsh in my judgement.
The card playing on the train was the culmination of a long day. The last day of a cruise is always a long hard day. For one thing, I think thats one of the things that all cruise lines suck at. You are an awesome person who must be waited on and pampered at every turn, until the last morning of the cruise. Then you yesterday’s news, who must get up early and off the ship as soon as possible, so your room can be turned over to someone new and wonderful who must be pampered at every turn. Or maybe I’m just grumpy that I’m not the new wonderful person anymore. In any case we love cruising and its ability to allow you to see great places in the world, all the while knowing that you have a safe comfortable place to eat and sleep each night.
We spent our day on a Kenai Fjord tour. We had another day of wildlife sitings. The new animals we saw today included Dahl Porpoises and up close views of Puffins and Stellar Sea Lions. The tour company was really good, it was Major Marine Tours. Its not the largest tour company in the marina but the service can’t be beat. When we got out into open ocean areas and the swells got large they were especially kind to the large number of people at the back railing “going for distance."
As I post this picture of the sea lions – whose population has been declining for the last several years – I am reminded of one especially redeeming quality of the day. SUN!! This is the first day since we left Minneapolis that we’ve had a sunny day.
After a long day, we arrived at the Anchorage train station at 10:30 PM. We got our luggage and the hotel shuttle picked us up for our ride to the hotel. Holly and I transported all of our bags to our room, while Jane and Brian stayed on the shuttle to go to the airport to get our car. We lucked out on the emerald aisle and got a good sized Dodge. At least its big enough to hold all of our luggage and all of us. We had envisioned a number of scenarios in which we stored our luggage at the hotel while we went North to Denali.
As I write this we are in our room in the Mckinley Creekside Cabins. Its not quite the same as our cabin on board the ship, but as Gabe would say, in Alaska, “Warm and Dry is more than you can hope for” We had a pretty good drive in the rain to get here, including a swell stop at the liquor store in Wasilla, and some fake pictures of where we imagine Sarah Palin might have lived. We got our tickets for tomorrows bus tour of Denali and then spent some time visiting with the sled dogs of Denali. We took the very scenic Rock Creek hiking path back to the visitors center and then headed out to Prospectors Pizza for a delicious meal.
Tomorrow will be another long day of hiking and bus riding as we go in search of Bear and Moose here in Denali National Park. We are hoping for another clear day so that we can see Mount McKinley.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Alaska
saying goodbye to namibia
Sitting in the lobby of the Hotel Safari this morning. We've checked out and are just hanging here until about 11:00 before we head to the airport. It seems like a lifetime ago that we checked in here, exhausted, and grubby after 39 hours of travel from the USA. Now we are refreshed, our bodies are on the right time zone and heading on to the next segment of our journey. Its really strange to think that I'm heading to Israel, while the rest of the group is heading to cape town. One consolation is that I'll be enjoying nice warm 90 degree weather, while they will be in Cape Town's winter at 59 degrees.
Last night we had a very nice dinner at Nampa and Matty's house. I'm very jealous of Matty's indoor wood fired oven. He had obviously been grilling meat for us all afternoon. Not only does it make delicious meat but it also heats their family room. It was amazing to hear the story of these two Luther College Alums. They were at Luther in the mid 90's, but by the time they found their way to college in the USA they were married and had small children. They are so grateful to the people of Decorah for their hospitality and help that they are always eager to open their home to Americans who are traveling in Namibia. We worked hard on their youngest daughter to convince her that she must come to Luther to go to college.
As I think about the two purposes of our trip, the philanthropic, and the cultural I am inspired to try to return someday, and to help to keep up the good work that EmpoweringLearnersNamibia has started. There is so much more we can do to help, and it really doesn't take much money to accomplish a lot here. For example a new Kindergarden school could be built to replace the 10x12 metal shack for about $5000.00 US.
almost back to windhoek
Well, here we are on the B2 not 55km from Windhoek and the Safari Hotel. Suddenly our coach makes a very bad noise and we begin to coast down the road. Joey looks rather concerned. We coast to a stop and pull over to the side of the road. One of the few places in all of Namibia where there is almost no shoulder. The diagnosis is dire, the clutch plate is out. Luckily its only 1:15 in the afternoon and we are close to our destination. David is on the phone getting another coach on its way. This bus that we've spent so many hours with is not taking us any further.
So far we are all in good spirits. The sun is out, the weather is nice. We are joking about our plight and assessing our provisions. In the cooler we have some apples, a half bottle of Riesling and one Windhoek light. Suddenly Joey says… "I need a beer!" We all crack up, we'd be happy to give Joey our last beer, he's been such a good sport with great humor this entire trip.
We are thankful that this little mishap happened here. When we think of all the places this could have happened. The middle of Etosha, the middle of the desert, Each of which would be hours and hours from anywhere likely to have the ability to come and get us. We'll be just fine, and this answers the important question of what to write about in today's blog.
UPDATE: We're moving again, in a lovely, highly air conditioned coach. Its just 2:55 so we were only delayed about 1:45. When the replacement bus got here we formed a bucket brigade and transferred the luggage from one to the other in no time. We're looking forward to arriving at the Safari and we'll still have some time to relax and refresh before we go to our dinner at Nampa and Matty's house.
you must really like to fly
"You must really like to fly" was the comment of the flight attendant from Scotland on our British Air flight from Heathrow to Johannesburg. What prompted the statement was my comment that I would have the curried chicken because "that was good last night." -- We'll return to the concept of good airplane food later. Its Monday. We left Chicago on Saturday. Two overnight flights in a row with a nine hour layover in London. I feel like I've been in the airport forever. Now we are waiting out our final layover in Johannesburg for the final leg of our flight to Windhoek. We are in Africa, but it doesn't really seem like it yet. We've got to get out of the airport and into the real world. The Empowering Learners trip is well underway.
Because we had such a long london layover we did leave the airport and take the tube into London. We walked around the London School of Economics with Josh Martin, and then meandered through the South Bank area having lunch at Giraffe. Yesterday was a hard day, the overnight flight with the 6 timezone change really messes you up. This morning was easier as we flew mostly north to south, crossing only one time zone. We are really thankful to the gate agent in Chicago who rearranged our seats on this flight so that we had the aisle seats in the middle section with nobody in between us. We were able to stretch out and get some decent rest last night.
About this trip. This is not just a trip for fun, this is partly a mission trip and partly a cultural experience. The trip is organized by Empowering Learners, a non profit organized by Ethan Schultz, and Ann Sponberg-Peterson. The goal is to bring 24 laptop computers and 50 calculators to the Oshigambo high school in Northern Namibia. We also carried along an assortment of Braille books, and Soccer balls to distribute along the way. There are a total of 12 of us on the trip and we got all of this stuff along with us in carry on and checked baggage, we are definitely going to be a lot lighter on the drive home than we on the trip here. Once we complete our business working with the high school we'll be visiting the Etosha Game Park and the Atlantic Coast in Swakopmund. More detail to follow.
For now we are safely checked in at the Safari Court Hotel. After two nights sleeping on airplanes and having our morning coffee in airports, we are all ready for a shower! As a group we will have a little break before meeting with our tour guide for the trip and then heading to downtown Windhoek for a meal at a nice German restaurant.
joshua tree national park
I think I said that the plan for today was to head to the Palm Springs tram, and do a little hiking at the top of the tram then enjoy a nice lunch in downtown Palm Springs. But two minutes before we walked out of the house we changed our minds and decided to go to Joshua Tree National Park. Since we both have boys named Joshua, and they are staying together while we are out here in California, it made sense for us to check out this national park. We are glad we did.
The south entrance to Joshua Tree is only about 25 miles away from Indio, so its a short drive to get to the park. But, once you are there you find out how huge the park is. We drove another 23 miles through desert scrub before we got to some of the really interesting parts. The Joshua Tree National Park is a mixture of climates, it is part Colorado Desert, and part Mojave Desert, microclimates abound.
Our first big stop was at the Cholla cactus garden, its weird how these pictures almost look like they are underwater photos of coral!
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In the national park there are these small mountain ranges that pop up out of nowhere that look like someone just drove in a huge dump truck and left a pile of rubble behind. In fact these are all granite, and formed from volcanic activity.
Because of all the different climates that are part of the park, the whole southern half of the park doesn't even have any Joshua Trees! You have to wait until you get to a little higher elevation which is in the north and west part of the park. Here's Jim and Karen standing under a very picturesque Joshua Tree.
The Joshua Tree gets its name from the mormon's who saw it and thought that it reminded them of the prophet Joshua stretching his arms heavenward. In fact the "tree" is part of the Yucca family. It has extremely sharp points on the end of the leaves which the loggerhead shrike (a bird) uses to kill its prey!
Our last stop in the park was a great little hike in hidden canyon. Here you can get a sense of how these little mountains were created out of blocks of granite. Its amazing to see the Joshua Trees along with the scrub oak, and Juniper trees just growing out of the rocks.
On the way home, we drove through the wind farm in the San Gorgonio pass. This is a great site for a wind farm as the wind blows here all the time. There are more than 4000 turbines here that generate enough power for the entire Coachella valley! There are turbines here of all ages, some very old and very small, some with two blades, for working in higher winds, and some very new and large turbines. Poor Jim, we discovered too late that you can get tickets for a tour of the wind farm!
cruise wrapup part ii
I've been back in Decorah for less than 24 hours, its been a little more than 48 hours since we got off the cruise ship in Valparaiso. It was great to get a good nights sleep last night after having an overnight flight from Santiago to Dallas. Boy do I wish I could sleep on airplanes.
The Celebrity debarkation process was about as painless as you could make it. We woke up, showered and dressed, got some coffee at the Cova Cafe, checked our email one last time, and then walked off the ship. Like Buenos Aires, the port in Valparaiso is not really designed for cruise ships, so we got off the ship and then took a bus through the containers to the actual terminal. We found our luggage right away and realized that this process was so efficient we still had about 45 minutes to wait before our guide, Mac, from La Bicicleta Verde It was a little odd this morning because Chile was supposed to go off daylight savings time at the same time the US was supposed to go on daylight savings. So, in one day we would go from being 3 hours ahead of home to just one hour. Strangely the government of chile decided at the last minute not to go off daylight savings time, so some people were really off. Mac showed up just after 9:00, and we got our tour underway. We started by exploring the hills of Valparaiso. Its an old shipping town, started when Nitrates were a big natural commodity that was shipped out of here. Before the Canal, and before artificial nitrates had been invented. So there are many beautiful old shipping houses owned by the british that have been converted into small hotels. Here you can see one last view of our ship from the hills:
We continued on past the first Lutheran Church in Valparaiso, and then had to avoid a pack of street dogs. All chilean cities are full of street animals that are well feed and mostly well behaved. The problem this morning was there was one female in heat and four males that were trying to get her attention. Things got a little violent, so we headed off in the opposite direction hoping to lose the pack.
Mac told us that the day before this whole area of the city had been without power. Now as you can see from this picture Valparaiso has a very modern system of electrical distribution:
We were told that whenever there is a power loss, rather than trying to untangle the mass of wires and fix the problem, they simply find an area of the city that has power and then run a new wire to the blacked out area from there.
After the hill tour we headed down the coastline to visit some of the beautiful coastal towns, suchas Vina del Mar. This would be an awesome place to come back and visit on a land tour. The beaches are spectacular, and there are some really awesome restaurants looking right out over the water. Mac got us number one at the most popular restaurant along this stretch. People literally line up outside this restaurant waiting for a table. Something that is unheard of in Chile. We started off with a couple of apetizers: Machas ala parmesan (razor clams smothered in a parmesan cream sauce.) The only way to sum up this dish is: To Die For! We also had Camerones pil pil (little shrimp scampi). Then for the main course we had freshly prepared fish. They have about 7 different kinds of fish on the menu, each one with several different preparations. I had Albacora (swordfish) grilled, and Jane had the Corvina (chilean sea bass) also grilled. We had a side of Arroz and thought we were in heaven. What a great last meal of the trip. Oh, lest I forget , I also had my first Pisco Sour. Pisco Sour is a great chilean drink made of a distilled wine (kind of like brandy) served with lime juice and simple syrup. Just one please!
After our delicious lunch we headed out to wine country. The Casablanca valley is between Valparaiso and Santiago. We stopped at the Emiliana Organic Vineyards, for a wine tasting and a walk around the vineyards. We had a great wine steward, named Joshua, who served us samples of their premium Emiliana Adobe line. This is sold in the United States under the Emiliana Natura label because of a trademark dispute with the Adobe software company. Please lawyers find something more productive to do with your time. The highlight was their Gewurtztraminer, its not nearly as sweet as the German Gewurtztraminers and was very refreshing. In addition to being organic they also practice Biodynamics (you'll have to look it up). This sounds like a lot of hokum to me, but you can't argue with the results.
Finally, what trip would be complete without some cute animals. The vineyard also raises Alpacas, which we learned are part of the Camel family.
With the vineyard tour over, our last stop was the Santiago airport. We had lots of time to kill, since we got there about 5pm and our flight wasn't supposed to leave until 10:05. Of course at 5:00 the American Airlines counters were not even open yet. Then at 6:00 when they opened it was a mad house. hundreds of tired cruisers all anxious to get home, and all accustomed to being pampered for two weeks were now forced to stand in extremely long lines like so many commoners. It was not pretty. An interesting thing about flying out of Santiago is that all the outgoing flights leave in the evening, this is partly because you want to time your flight to get in to the states at a decent hour of the morning. Say 6:00 AM or so. But all the incoming flights get in to Santiago at 7 or 8 in the morning anyway, so why not have an outbound flight at 10AM? By Chilean law, all outbound flights must have a complete mechanical inspection within 12 hours of their flight by a Chilean mechanical team. The reason for this law dates back to 1972 when the Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the Andes and resorted to cannibalism to stay alive. The Chilean legislature wanted to ensure that nothing like this would ever happen again so they passed this inspection law. The result is that the flights that leave in the evening are never delayed for mechanical reasons, because they've had all day to inspect and fix everything. Nice, makes you feel safe.
Well, that brings us as far as our last flights, which were pretty uneventful. A bit of turbulence somewhere between Santiago and Dallas is about the only thing worth mentioning. This was an awesome trip. Thanks again to all the great new friends we made on board the ship for making it a fun time!
