postcards from alaska pt. IV

anchorage was really beautiful the first two days i was there (it didn't suck after, but it was overcast and drizzly). where i grew near the sierra nevadas in california, you have these rolling hills as you go up in elevation until you actually hit the mountains, so i find it's a different landscape for me to see a city which is fairly flat and then on the outskirts this giant mountain range. it was pretty cool.

i couldn't afford a room near the convention center (well, by the time i had the fraud alert removed from my credit card and was able to complete a reservation, i wasn't) so i was about 8 miles out of town. but even renting an economy car and staying there was cheaper than being downtown. the only thing i wasn't prepared for was the, sometimes exorbitantly priced, parking in downtown. i had looked up parking issues on the convention center website before i left and there was a blurb about garages, parking meters and parking on the street for free. i think the key here was the fact that the word "street" was singular because i couldn't find anywhere to park on the street for free, so i figured there must be one street available for free parking and they weren't telling you which one it was...

so the picture above is from the roof of the cheapest parking garage i could find. and the roof was the only place i could usually find a spot. as you can see it was a beautiful day, and as excited as i was to be at the conference, i was bummed it was indoors all day.

i never travel (outside of work purposes - research, conferences), and the fact is right now i can't afford it. but, i can afford it when it comes to my own professional growth. and i try to make the most out of it, that i can afford... one of the things i like about most conferences is that they do try to give people info/options for activities in the city where the conference is held. usually they have excursions that cost a little extra, and if there are talks you don't mind missing or aren't working on your own talk up until the minute you give it (not me...a friend, yeah a friend i know...). i rarely get to go to those, again, not to beat the very dead horse with no money, but i usually can't afford them. but they also provide activities/socials that are sponsored by the chapter holding the conference. one of the socials was at the Alaska Native Heritage Center. Catering companies constantly underestimate the drinking and eating power of fisheries/ichthyology/marine biology professionals as well as their junior professional underlings (grad students are notorious for being free liquor/food magnets) so the drink lines were loooooooooooong and the food lines were loooooonger. but once you got your food and could find a seat the presentations were amazing.

this is in the main hall and in the background you can see a map of alaska. each different colored section represents the different native cultures and the areas they inhabited (historically). because in spite of what
some people think, not all injuns are the same. just sayin...

then they did some songs, and drumming and dancing. it was wonderful. after the dancing they did some athletic demonstrations which were truly mindblowing. i will post those tomorrow.

postcards from alaska ptIII (but really from cali)

since i'm back but, as usual, behind.


this bad boy is a re-creation of the world record halibut that is hanging in the DELTA terminal of the Anchorage airport.

the sign in the corner says "World Record Halibut
9'5", 459 lbs, 31 yrs old
Caught by Jack Tragis
June 11, 1996
Unalaska, Alaska
City of Unalaska
581-1251"

here's the fish at dock


i don't mean to be all girly but oh man what a shame to kill it. THIRTY ONE YEARS OLD. it takes 31 years for a fish to reach that size. on the scientific side, when you consider the population dynamics, a fish species that reaches this size and that age would be very vulnerable to any kind of significant fishing pressure. I am not aware of the status of the fishery for this species in alaska(i guess i could look it up) but i can imagine it wouldn't be too bad if it's just open to sportsfishermen.

i suppose i'm the only weirdo that would be stoked to see this beast underwater. that would rock.

wow

a friend sent this to me.

go to google and enter "failure" and then hit "i'm feeling lucky"

i'm assuming this will only work for awhile but holy shit when it comes up...


(i'll update it later after the link has expired with the link it was supposed to go to...)

postcards from alaska pt. II

the flight from utah to alaska felt interminably long. like i said before i don't like to fly and i didn't know what time it was because i moved a time zone to utah and then back two more to alaska.

at my layover in utah i went to this pubSQUATTERS. and i drank some of this


normally i don't go for blondes, but i always make exceptions for retrievers. and of course anything that says "chasing tail."

was that out loud?

anyway, i love that they also had a "polygamy porter" and the slogan was "you can't have just one."

so i timed the layover just right, got my to go food and had a couple beers to calm my nerves, then got to the gate before my "zone" was boarding. they said the flight was going to be 4 hours and 45 minutes. i swear it was like 6. when i boarded i felt like such a hick because it was HUGE. the HUGEST plane i'd been on. i was in seat 44D and my seat was just behind the MIDDLE of the plane. of course being in a D seat i was in the EXACT middle between two people, and, well, i don't sit still very well. and i was exhausted, only three hours of sleep before this "surprise" conference (knew about it for a year - and every year i promise myself i'll be more organized for conferences...) so i would try to nap but, i have this reflex that keeps me from really falling asleep in public, in spite of how much i want to. i'll doze off, and for some reason (fear of snoring, drooling, what have you) i'll JERK myself awake. and that's just as embarassing (and jarring for those in close proximity) as snoring or drooling.

and then i was a bit bitter because i had gone to all the trouble of getting food before i got on the plane and then after i ate it, they BROUGHT food. and the sad thing is when you grow up poor, you feel like extra crap if you throw food away, so i've been storing this airline sandwich on ice in the hotel and carried it around with me today and i'm pretty sure it's going to kill me when i eat it tomorrow after i've put it back on ice again and hauled it around AGAIN...

don't ask.

for now i'm going to finish working on my power point because apparently in spite of sending mine in on time before the conference and then volunteering to mule several of the other speakers' talks on disk and delivering them, my talk is the ONLY one of the session not in the computer of the AV company. sthweeeeeet. so like a freak i figured i could work on it more...

postcards from alaska

well, i've been super-busy trying to get ready for this conference and now i'm here in alaska. this is the conference:
ALASKA CONFERENCE
when i booked my flight i tried to get on alaska through seattle but because i used my credit card to pay for my scuba tank fills in mexico and then my credit card company put my account on fraud alert but then didn't alert ME. so when i tried to book the trip the reservation wouldn't go through, but travelocity would put a "merchant hold" on that amount on my credit card anyway. so i unwittingly put three merchant holds on my card without receiving reservations. by the time i got the whole thing straightened out i couldn't get that flight so i got onto delta which flew from sacramento to salt lake city to anchorage. at the time i was just trying to grab the cheapest flight left and it wasn't until i was leaving for the airport i thought, what the hell? utah isn't exactly in the direct path to alaska.

as much as i hate flying it was amazing flying from sac to utah. i was lucky i got a window seat that flight and we flew over tahoe and the sierras. just amazing. the funny thing is when we flew over tahoe i was thinking damn look how big that thing is and then we got to utah and flew over salt lake and holy crap! tahoe's a puddle!