Bright Lights, Big City

3.5 days in Denver, CO – just enough time to hang out with a bunch of USGS/EPA/state agency folks at the National Monitoring Conference, eat eat eat good food, go on a couple of runs, get a haircut at the Aveda Institute, check out Coors Field for the tail end of a Rockies game, and did I mention eat?

 

I’m a little like a kid in a candy shop when I travel, especially to big cities…I couldn’t stop thinking about how the city of Denver has nearly as many people in it as the entire state of Alaska.  Denver International Airport was (is, actually…I’m still sitting here as I write this) huge and impressive.  There were kids from Greenpeace trying to stop and talk to people as they were coming and going.  Having my big backpack made me a target for them, and I still kick myself for not asking them how successful they are.  I am probably one of the more amiable folks they could talk to  - I work for a water quality nonprofit, fairly liberal, etc etc.  But there was no way in a million years I was going to talk about any of that then and there.  I had just traveled from Homer – hadn’t eaten in probably 12 hours, had slept for maybe 3 or 4 intermittently.  Isn’t that how people are in airports (well, at least before you pass security. then you would have a completely captive audience sitting and waiting for delayed planes to arrive.  I am currently a case in point on that front)?  Anyways, back to Denver….I had a room in the Downtown Sheraton, and even in my incredibly hungry tired and cranky state I was pretty excited about the fancy-pants hotel!  Sheraton is doing a “Clean and Green” campaign, where you can opt to not have your room cleaned daily during your stay.  In exchange, they give you $5 for each day that you opt out to spend in the hotel restaurants.  The rooms manager assured me that no housekeeping staff had lost their jobs over this, but I’m still convinced it is a labor issue far more than an “environmental” issue that’s being addressed with this program. 

I love eating in the city.  Restaurants I ate at include: The British Bulldog (fantastic fish & chips, soccer bar that keeps score of the Premier League-see top picture), Mad Greens (or something like that, huuuuuge salad place – very cool, bottom picture), Illegal Pete’s (great burritos, great atmosphere), Osteria Maria (fancy schmancy Italian place, pretty good food), and the place the volunteer coordinators had dinner last night.  It was on the 16th Ave Mall, it was okay, it was expensive.  Thank you, EPA, for paying for my meals!

The 16th Ave Mall is a “pedestrian mall”.  Um, yep. It’s kind of that, but really there are free shuttle buses that go both directions up and down the mall every 3 minutes or so.  Sooo…it’s kind of like a lovely street with a lot of shops, restaurants, interesting people, pedi-cabs, horse-drawn carriages, and shuttle buses on it!

And Coors Field.  I almost didn’t go to the game – dinner went late, and I peeked into a bar to see that the score was 12-0 Rockies (playing Arizona), top of the 6th inning.  But then I could see the lights of the stadium, and knew I just had to go in.  I love baseball – I love the suspense, I love the atmosphere.  My only regret is that I was too full from dinner to get fried dough.  Sigh…..

There’s also great sculptures throughout the downtown area.  This one, in Writer’s Square, is called “Self-made Man”. 

Next stop – Boston!

Springtime

It must be spring!   Look at all of the cleaning that has been done -  Ben really did a nice job cleaning a little while ago, even sucking out the dead flies from the ceiling lights! (sorry, Dad, no windows were cleaned – I think we need you for that chore!)

In addition to the cleaning, Ben launched his boat this month!  She’s yet without a name, but she’s beautiful and we were able to sneak over yesterday in lovely weather to Glacier Spit with Mike, Josiah, Bo, Lia, and the dogs.  Here are some pictures from the launch and yesterday’s trip:

Backing her down the launch ramp.  Ben’s still in need of a real trailer, but this one managed to make it from the sawmill to the harbor without a hitch! (no pun intended…).  Jeff’s driving, Mikey’s on the tailgate, Ben has the line, and Steve & Susie (Ben’s parents) are looking on.

Champagne passed to the captain and poured over the bow (who knew a bottle of champagne would fit so nicely in the drink holder by the steering column?)

Checking the engines,

     

Engines Checked! Success!

Bo and Lia, hanging out on the bow as we headed towards Glacier Spit yesterday afternoon…a beautiful day on a smoooooth boat ride over. 

  

There was dog snuggling, hiking through snow to the lake (for all but Mikey who brought his sleeping bag and some book), and roasting dogs and making s’mores over a fire.  A lovely evening.

   

And back on the home-front, it’s break up season!  Meaning, mostly, that our driveway is variably drive-able.  Here’s Mike’s Subaru, Ben’s Subaru, and my Subaru lined up at the base of the drive.  Ahhhh, Spring – I love it.

In Transit.

I’m always intending to update my blog – really, the intention is there!  But you know what they say about good intentions and a road to hell… Thankfully I trust that ya’ll can understand that when a girl spends as much time in front of a computer for work as I do, she tries to avoid too much computer-time when out of the office.  So now here I am, a captive audience in the Anchorage airport at 11:49pm, in transit to Outside.  (Outside = anywhere not in Alaska)(yeah, weird, huh?)  First stop is Denver, CO where I’ll be attending and participating in the 7th annual National Water Quality Monitoring Conference.  I love conferences, I really do.  It’s good for the soul and the brain to get outside of your world and be reminded that other people do your kind of work, too!  And they have new and different ideas!  It generally is an invigorating experience.  On Thursday afternoon I’ll fly from Denver to Boston – WOOHOOO!  I’m terribly excited about this, as I can’t wait to see: my mom, grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousins, dad, donna, deb, justine, katie, alexa?, aaron?, amanda?, sally?, tom?  oak trees, fenway and the red sox, maine, the pioneer valley, the atlantic ocean, buildings built before 1750, bueno y sano, breaking new grounds, I-95 – I know, it’s ridiculous.  What can I say but I suffer from a deep nostalgia surrounding most periods of my life, my growing-up is no exception, highways and all.. it’s a whirlwind trip that will no doubt leave me wanting more.  Like NYC – I cannot believe I’m heading to the east coast and I’m missing New York and the good beautiful people there.  Next time, next time.

Spring or Winter….hard sayin’, not knowin’

I know, it’s silly to talk about the weather.  Too cold, too warm, just right, etc etc.  I’m not going to bitch and moan, only recognize how gullible I was just a few weeks ago.  Snow all but melted away, green grass out my window – I put my skis away and geared up for a solid running season.  We began Friday Night Fives (5k at 5pm on Fridays, starting at Two Sisters), I happily ‘donated’ my registration fee to the Nordic Club in Anchorage and decided against driving back up there for the 40k Tour of Anchorage (which was today – hope ya’ll had fun up there!).  Well, it was entirely novice and (mostly) I knew it. This past week we’ve had blizzarding conditions – they cancelled school on Friday!  WOAH!  Snow.  Lots of snow.  So, I’ve brought my skis back out, put my running sneaker insoles back in my xtra tuffs, and admitted that I was wrong.  It’s only March.  It’s still winter. 

An early sign of spring, however, is that Chris (my super-rad-smokejumping-little-brother) began the move back into workin’ summer mode.  Which means not only do we get to visit with him for a few days before he heads to Fairbanks, the household dog count goes from 2 to 3.  Only a 1-dog increase, I know.  But it’s a lot more dog.  A Lot.  Sheamus is pretty funny, though, and we’re happy to have his big head and dopey beautiful blue eyes back in the house. 

This is a TERRIBLE picture.  However, it’s the only picture I have of my brother and I, and so here it is.  Chris graciously joined me on a day-trip to Seward.  7+ hours of driving, mostly in blizzard conditions, I worked for several hours, we had lunch with Jen and hung out for an hour or so at the SeaLife Center (Thanks, Jen, for the comp tix!).  I toured the Seward harbor for work, Chris drank coffee, and then he played with a lovely harbor seal before we left.

 

Chris successfully made it to Fairbanks and is settling into life again as an AK Smokejumper.  He does have a blog (it’s linked over on the right), but he’s worse at updating it than I am.  Maybe he’ll get bored up there and throw up some pictures – maybe even the ones I took of him cooking some *incredible* shrimp and grits for Ben, Blaine, Katie and I!  When did he become such a cook?!  I love it.

In Sunday news, I went for a morning ski with Kaya and Shaemus…it was beautiful, snowy, and quiet. 

 

And then we stopped by the sawmill to see Ben, Jefe, Steve, Pemba, and China – and of course, the new boats!!!!

Those boys do good work.  I am terribly impressed and excited and smitten with these boats….(Ben’s is in red/blue, Jeff’s in yellow/gray).  The day was rounded out with a little bit of dog-roughhousing at the sawmill and then the beach.  This evening I dusted the leaves of our plants. Can anyone tell me tricks to avoid big broad leaves gathering inches of dust on them?  It’s a fairly laborious task to wipe down each leaf, though they look so much better now – I can only imagine that breathing is also a whole lot easier. 

 

snow mountains = ski!

This isn't going to be Mexico Part II. I apologize, and wonder if I'll ever get around to putting that up here. We'll see...we're already over 9 hours of daylight in Homer, and that sort of change is not terribly conducive to more computer-blog updating time than I already spend at work. However, it was pouring rain the other day, so you never know when I might feel housebound and inspired.

For now, however, I'm just avoiding working on grant proposals in Girdwood! It's 9:30pm and I'm sleepy tired. I drove up last night for a three day Level 1 avalanche course through the Alaska Avalanche School.

You might say, but Rachel, you aren't really much of a downhill skier, are you? And, well, it's true. I'm a complete novice. However, I am enamored with the idea of backcountry skiing, and spent the initial $$$ to buy a set of used randonee/alpine touring gear. That being said, I'm absolutely not going to be driving up to Girdwood to lay out the additional cash to practice skiing at Alyeska (though I had a ton of fun up here a few weeks ago with friends!). So the place to practice will be the place I love - in the mountains. Which happens to be an area where avalanches occur. It's true. Sadly it sounds as though three people were killed today - two in Turnagain Pass and one above Eagle River. Those who know me know I'm not too much of a wicked big risk taker. But even with that being said, some pictures of these avalanche releases don't look too out-of-my-range:
(from the Chugach National Forest Avalanche Advisory website: www.cnfaic.org)

So here I am, in a three day (and I mean full day - 8am-7pm) class about how, why, and where avalanches happen. Just a few photos from today:

Head towards the light…. (a.k.a. Mexico, Part 1)

I was determined to leave Alaska during the holiday break this year, having not left the state on a ‘vacation’ for a couple of years.  The choices were either to head back to New England to see family and friends (always a good option, though maybe not the best one in the middle of December), or head to warmer climes.  Ben conceded that it is indeed freaking dark here in the winter.  Very dark.  As such, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to head south, head towards the sun, head towards the light.  So for just  over 2 weeks we soaked it up in Mexico, traveling from Mexico City to Oaxaca City, then down to the Pacific coast to play in the ocean for a bit. 

   There are very few pictures of me through this entire trip.  I am the one with the camera, and the one with a love of taking pictures.  Therefore, there are a fair number of pictures of Ben looking at things, or trying to do something while I snap away.  Here’s one from our bathroom, as we were both trying to pack at 10:00PM the night before leaving.

I really wanted to go into Mexico City.  I began to regret that desire a little as we flew over the largest city in the world – the rosy smog blanketed everything as far as you could see, and it was thick.  But I had reserved us a room in the neighborhood of La Condesa, at the Red Tree House.  What a **great** place!!!  Aside from having a killer headache from the altitude, I really enjoyed our brief time in Mexico City.  We ambled about that evening (Wed, Dec 9th), getting lost and watching people walking their dogs, repairing furniture, going about their business.  In the morning we walked up a ways to the metro station and took the subway to the bus station to catch a bus south to Oaxaca City.

   Taking pictures on the way out of Mexico City.  I really didn’t do it justice.  One of my favorite things about flying over the city was just how colorful it was.  A sprawling mass of city, but with a veritable rainbow of color everywhere you looked. 

The bus to Oaxaca took 6 hours.  We watched Transformers, the first one, in spanish.  It is really quite terrible, but much better than the second one.   Then there was some sappy movie with John Cusak that I couldn’t hear well enough to make out the plot from my haggard and rusty understanding of Spanish.  We were watching some spectacular battles from Prince Caspian as we pulled into the bus station, around 6PM, in Oaxaca City.

We found a really nice place to stay, Las Mariposas, a bit north and west of the Zocalo, or central plaza.  No matter that we were a ways off of the central plaza – there was another park just up from us with a carnival in town, and parades with full horn sections and amazingly loud firecrackers everywhere at all times.  No, seriously.  Always.  And everywhere.  I’m not exaggerating. (much)

Anyways, these folks know how to fiesta!  Lots of celebration, lots of Catholic masses, lots of small children dressed up.  Dec 12th was the festival for the Virgin Guadalupe – a major deal.  On the bus ride down we had seen streams of people walking and biking along the highway on pilgrimage to Mexico City for Guadalupe.

    

 

On one day we took a local bus about 30 minutes out of town to a village where life largely revolves around weaving.  Most houses have looms in them, and there are fantastic rugs and a myriad of other woven products made and sold there.  We walked around town for awhile, noting how very quite it  seemed.  Wicked hot, we popped in somewhere for a drink and talked for quite some time with three (fairly drunk) boys who informed us that due to it being Guadalupe Day, most people were at home or somewhere preparing for the major fiesta to be held that night.  They were pretty adamant that Ben was a dead ringer for James Hetfield – right, of Metallica.  Sweet. 

 

Maybe if he had the leather pants, and was a bit more in touch with his rockstar side…

The amazing and elaborate nativity scene at our hotel…

Below are all pictures of the Zocalo – with the big cathedral and just heaps of people strolling about in the cool evening (Oaxaca is still high enough in the mountains that I would put on a long-sleeved shirt after the sun set).  Parades, fireworks, large paper-mache puppets were marched down the streets all the time.  It was really festive, really energetic.