Co-Pilot

I had the day off today!!! After being exhausted from working far too much i was able to relax today. I put in 16.5 hours on Thursday. I am pretty sure i have never worked more hours in one day, and i think i made more money on Thursday than I ever have in one day. It feels good. Enough about that.

So last night i had some people sitting at my bar at the top of mt Roberts and one of them is a pilot for a float plane company that gives float plane rides. They were still sitting at the bar when my shift was done so i sat down and had a beer with them. Now i am starting to realize that i can get pretty much any tour in the area for free because i work for Goldbelt. I can get some through Doc Waters as well but more through Goldbelt. Goldbelt sells everyones tours and then they let me on for free since i work for Goldbelt. So this pilot tells me i can get on for free as long as they have an open seat. So i am like heck yea i am going to do that tomorrow. I had plans for a hike but Lu canceled on me. So i went down there today and hopped on a float plane called the wolverine. WOW, ALL FOR FREE. i love it.

As we are boarding this little float plane, that carries 10 people including the pilot, i hear the pilot say someone has to sit in the co-pilot seat. Now you better believe i was ready to throw Grama aside and hop in there. Luckily for everyone i got the seat. I don't know if everyone else was afraid or what. Well i aint afraid... So i sat down and started checking out all the gauges and dials and all. WOW

The take off was amazingly smooth, it was raining as we took off and as we landed. The scenery was absolutely breath taking. I was so giddy. I couldn't hold back. I am sure the captain and others were like why is that kid laughing his ass off and smiling so much. There were mountains everywhere. The route that the plane took went like this:

Take off from the wharf (downtown Juneau) and head south to the Taku inlet and we flew up the Taku inlet and on top of the Juneau ice field and then back around and up the channel. Some things you should know...The Taku glacier is in the Taku inlet (obviously) it is the only glacier from the Juneau ice field that is actually growing instead of shrinking. The plane route is here
Make sure when you view these maps that i have made that you click on the button that says satellite (if its not on satellite already) in the upper right corner. Depending on your browser and stuff it might pop up as a cartoon map. Those are satellite photos and are beautiful to look at by themselves.

It was amazing, i was totally flipping out. Tears came to my eyes more than once. There were beautiful little pools of bright blue glacier water sitting on top of the glacier as we flew over it. Dodging the mountains with the plane was awesome and seeing the ice field was something i had really wanted to see. Apparently you can see the ice field from the top of Mt Juneau too so i will see it again. There was some gorgeous blue water that i got some good photos of. Sitting in the cockpit was really cool too, i had a way better view than everyone else. It was really loud on the plane but they had headphone that had a little speech about the area. i took those off and turned on my ipod. Sufjan was singing in my ear the whole time, and since it was so loud no one heard my singing or other random giddy noises that may or may not have come out.

The flight was smoother than most commercial flights. i couldn't believe it. Landing was like butter. WOW what a great time.

Wedding Cake

Hey there. So i have been really actually crazy busy with work. The other bartender from the tram (mt Roberts) is in Chicago for 10 days for a wedding. That means i am picking up more hours and working at Doc Waters as well. Monday i had a 16 hour day and Thursday i will have another 16 hour day. Once she gets back from Chicago i will be able to slow down, for now the cash is flowing. I did however finagle yesterday off, only for a very important reason:

So a few weeks ago i was out for drinks (at the Alaskan of course) with my coworkers from the tram. Keep in mind I have only known these coworkers for a months and a half now. Two of them that i was with are a traveling couple, they have literally traveled everywhere. Lu Anne (an Aussie) and Curtis (from NJ) are really great. They tell me that they are getting married in a few weeks. I tell them how great that is and i am so happy for them. They mention its going to be a small wedding with some family and friends flying in to Juneau. They also mention they don't have a wedding cake yet and are looking for someone to bake them a cake (they were thinking of maybe a friend doing it). I think to myself, well shit i would love to bake you your wedding cake, I'd be honored! So i purposed and it went from there. She told me she wanted a carrot cake, easy enough. So i found a recipe and she gave it a trial run and we went with it. So yesterday i had to get off so i could bake the wedding cake and get to their reception.

Everything went okay baking the cake. I didn't have measuring spoons to use so i improvised and used my eyes. I did have 1 huge 2 cup measuring cup, that was it though. I spent the entire afternoon baking this cake (3 cakes actually). I did think to myself(in the midst of it) I have never in my life baked a carrot cake before. He he. It's not rocket science, its cake.

I wanted to use 9X9 pans which is what the recipe called for, but the grocery store was out. So i was forced to use 8" round. This lead to the sides hanging off a little bit, to make sure the top cake didn't break in half i (again improvising) cut little pillars out of a banana and stuck them in there. I garnished it with walnuts and carrot slices and picked wild flowers for the top; i picked a bunch to try some different ones out. Some of them weren't as wild as others (shimel's garden, he he). In the end i went with a purple iris.
They got married out on this peninsula at the Shrine of St. Theresa and rented a nice little lodge to sleep in and have the reception.

Here is the recipe i used, i did change some things, used brown sugar instead of white and put way less sugar than it called for. I added honey and golden raisins also.

The cake turned out great!! I had compliments by the majority and Lu and Curtis gave me a nice card and a bottle of Chardonnay. They were very appreciative. I was very happy and honored to do this for them. It felt really good to bake some good friends their wedding cake. We work together quite a bit and have become good friends.

I think they got some better photos, i will get those and post them up.

I work an absurd amount the next few days but have Saturday off and i am sure i am going to do something fun then. Probably a hike.

Summer Solstice

Yesterday was summer solstice and after work some of my coworkers and i went out to the beach and i took some photos to give everyone an idea of how bright it is in the very early morning. these photos were taken between 2:30 AM and 3:45 AM. Sitting on the log is Adam, Leila and myself. :)

Whale Watching

Yesterday i went into the whale watching tour shop across from the tram (where i work) and asked about their tours. How much? For how long? Any guarantees? Price: $110, 3 hrs, half your money back if you don't see a whale. Then i asked about discounts because i work for Goldbelt Co. (not proud of that). She told me i could get half off. I can do $55 to whale watch. So i go in there today, they had just enough room for me, and i sign some waivers and their like OK your set. How much do i owe you. They say, it's free for you. WHAT!!!...Free (the best things in life are free, riding bicycles, hiking mountains, ect.) Yes, so i got a completely free whale watching tour. We left out of Auke Bay, which is a nice bay 10 miles north of downtown. The tour took us north in to the Lynn canal. Lynn canal is actually the biggest fjord in North America. Most everyone knows what a fjord is but what i didn't know is that fjords (if it is a true fjord) were all formed by glaciers. The glaciers have moved rock and earth and everything into those formations of steep and deep landscape because they are so heavy. Really, really cool. So we are headed north toward the Lynn canal (i am sitting in front on the boat) and we're driving around and a long ways up the guide and i see a humpback whale breech (fly out of the water and make a big splash). I was the only tourist to see it!!! Luckily my father and uncles taught my how to spot animals when i was young (thank you to them), But it was a long ways away. So we cruise up there to watch him. We got within 80 yards of him and he was blowing water like crazy and swimming around. After a bit we headed south to look for more. We saw quite a few more and one of them was swimming right at us and got about 30 yards from us and dove strait down, stuck his tail way up in the air and was off. That was really cool. We also saw some sea lions. The picture above are sea lions with Herbert glacier in the background. Herbert glacier is the glacier i hiked to last week.

Here are some more facts about whales that i learned doing some reading and on the tour: Humpback whales mate and give birth in the winter in Hawaii every year and then swim up to south east Alaska to feed for the summer. They are mammals of course but i guess i had forgotten that they have to come up to the surface to get air, but they can hold their breath. In south east Alaska they have humpback whales and orca whales (killer whales). It is pretty hard to see orcas due to how fast they swim (up to 45 mph). The tour guide said they see them about once a week, but they are on the water 12 hours a day 7 days a week.
As you can see in the photo above humpbacks have a very small dorsal fin, i never knew that. They are slowly losing it due to evolution. Norway, Iceland and Japan are the only countries that still allow whaling (whale hunting).

I didn't get very many photos, i would much rather watch the whales with my eyes rather than watch them through a camera. They were magnificent. I wish one would have poked his head out so i could see his face. Most of what i saw was their back and tails. I will see more soon though. They were everywhere in the canal. I saw probably 5 whales close up and then another 7 off in the distance. I know the photo looks kinda lame but it's really hard to get a good shot when the boat is moving and the whale is swimming away. deal with it.

I mapped out the boat route and where we saw most of the whales using Google maps
I hope people know that you can zoom in and out and move around with these maps
too see this route click here.

Today marks 2 months away from going home. It is going fast. I am really trying to make the most of it. Everyday i have off i try to do something fun.

Also tomorrow is summer solstice. Happy summer to everyone, the environment shapes our lives way more than we know. I hear it has been uncomfortably hot in MPLS. That's too bad suckers. ha ha. It was 75 here today (dry heat).
All for now-Chao

Herbert Glacier

A few days ago i was able to hike out to Herbert Glacier. This glacier is about 14 miles from downtown Juneau. This hike was my favorite yet. I went with 3 of my co-workers (LU, Curtis and Justin), as we were pulling up we saw a black bear running in to the woods, that was pretty cool. So the trail starts out really easy and then once we got close to the glacier it was pretty crazy. We were on some really rough terrain. We had to hike over a ton of huge boulders. I got some really nice pictures, we found some more ice caves, one that was huge and too steep to go in. The last photo is the ice cave in the back round and it is really dark and deep. I really wanted to explore in it though. We didn't get to go right up to it because we were on the wrong side of the glacier run-off, which is basically a rushing river. We couldn't cross the river because it was too crazy. So we are going to do it again and start on the other side of the run-off. Most of the glaciers around here are receding 70 feet per year, but the past few years it has been over 100 ft per year. I have been told stories (and been shown) of how much bigger the glaciers use to be by natives here. The hike was really challenging and fun. My co workers and i had a great time together. The sights are stunning and i really feel like i am falling in love with the landscape here. It feels like i have cravings to see the beautiful forest and mountains and everything around. I am connecting with it all.

Wish i had more time to write, gotta go
the Mountains are calling my name

Preserverence Trail

Today i had the day off. I have been wanting to hit some more hiking trails but most of the fun ones have too much snow on them still. Mount Jumbo and mount Juneau both have too much snow on them. So i decided to hike the Preserverence trail. Here is my route The Perseverance Trail is the former road/trail taken by miners working the Silverbow Basin Gold mine. This was a really nice easy hike. I got rained on the whole time and was somewhat cold by the end of it. It was about 50 degrees out and when your totally soaked that gets pretty cold. The area that the trail brings you to is where the city of Juneau gets its drinking water. The water is all glacier run off. The trail is basically on the inside of a horseshoe shaped mountain side. So when you get to the end there are just mountains everywhere except behind you. Really beautiful. There was a lot of fog and the clouds were pretty low. I got some good photos despite the rain. I didn't see any wildlife which was disappointing but thats how it goes. I kept my eyes out for mountain goats, i am told a lot of times you can just stare at a mountain for a bit and pick them out standing on ridges and clearings. There are supposed to be a lot of bears on the hike to the top of mount Juneau so i will see some then.

Also, I had been playing with the idea of picking up a second job...so last night i decided to grab some late night food at Doc Water's pub, i asked them if they were hiring, they said yes...and this morning i went in and got a job. Bar tending and serving, heck yea. This does mean i will be working a ton, but what ev. The staff seems really cool, better than at my other job. One of the managers is from Duluth and she knows people from MN work hard, definitely harder than the people from Juneau. Maybe thats why she hired me.

Paying Rent's for Suckers...

...and I'm a sucker.
Well for unspeakable reasons i am living in an confined apartment with a room and everything. I lost a small piece of my soul giving up my campsite. Pretty disappointing. I don't think I really gave up though. i might go back in a month. We'll see how things pan out. I now live on Douglas island. Douglas Island is about 16 miles long by 5 miles wide. I live only 3-4 miles from downtown Juneau. I found a place through Juneau Empire the local newspaper. The rent is expensive but what ev. You can see photos of my campsite in the above post. They include the floor i built and my view. I also have one of my dining room/living room (which includes a big wooden spool and 2 buckets) I threw that spool on my shoulder and hauled it so far. Also my roof (huge tarp) and tent are shown

So i am living here for now. I live with a really nice guy named Dana. He is really super nice. He makes french press coffee for us in the morning. I think that he thinks that i am super poor though (who doesn't these days). He offered me a bunch of clothes (which i turned down of course)and even gave me a gift certificate to the local health foods grocery store for $75!!! i can hardly accept that. Seriously.

Well thats all for now,
Peace