My trip to the North Pole

I am not doing a good job of keeping my blog up to date, so in an effort to increase overall activity I am going to let quality slip even more.



I spent 3 weeks in Anchorage, Alaska in August/September this year, and experienced Alaska at its best. I don't remember if I wrote anything about that trip, but I'm not here to tell you about it. I am here to tell you about 2 weeks in December that I spent in Fairbanks, Alaska. That is a different story altogether.

I have pictures somewhere, of varying quality, and I will hopefully remember to add them later. For now, I am just going to hit some highlights:



1. The warmest it got the whole time I was there was -8 F. The coldest it got was -40 F.

2. There are still ravens/blackbirds that live in those temperatures.

3. They don't plow the roads when it snows. It is so cold that the snow doesn't get all that slippery, since it never melts, so their roads are just squished down snow.




4. I drove through North Pole, AK every day, and I stopped by Santa's House several times.

5. It is so cold that frost/ice forms on the inside of doors and windows and can build up quite a bit. It seems to all be based on humidity levels...

6. When you spit in -30 F weather, it does NOT turn to ice before hitting the ground. It hits the ground wet and freezes within seconds.

7. In -30 F, if you toss a cup of boiling water into the air, it WILL turn to snow-like particles and float down.





9. You plug your car in whenever you stop for any material length of time to keep the engine from freezing solid. At grocery stores people just leave their car running with the doors locked rather than turn it off.

10. Alaska is an expensive place to live because everything has to be shipped in.

Like I said, hopefully I will get some pictures to include here as well. (Look, I did!!)

The passing of Sandra Lynn Gresko

Heather has an open, well-known and well-documented relationship with her mom that is as close as any two people can be, in my opinion. So this is my turn to say that I loved Sandy, and it was with a deep sadness I watched her struggle with cancer and eventually pass from this life this year.

I hate funerals and the hardest part for me is the viewing. There is just something different between talking about someone dying and actually seeing their bodies vacant of a spirit. To me it is akin to the disparity between hearing about a catastrophe and witnessing it first hand. It becomes something you never forget, that reaches you at a different level. At Sandy's viewing I was overcome by sadness and I couldn't contain it. It was such a sense of loss, and I cried for her, and for her daughter, and for her husband, and their family, and for my family. And for me. I had not felt the loss so keenly prior to that moment, and I haven't felt it like that since, but I remember it, and it was overpowering. And to think that this awful experience of death is a part of life. Such sadness.

The day of the funeral was hotter than usual in Phoenix. Definitely too hot to wear a black suit, but wear it I did. I stood in the sun, next to my mother-in-law's grave, and thought about her, and how she was at almost every major event in my life over the last 13 years. There were babies born, kids' soccer games, my marriage, shopping trips to Costco, my family's sealing in the temple, my Eagle Court of Honor, my first full-time job, multiple surgeries and sicknesses. Our first apartment, the next 13 times we moved, Holidays including Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years, Easter, 4th of July, our birthdays and babtisms. There were times we disagreed, even argued, but in the end we were family. We got over it and learned to live with our differences.

Sandy's legacy lives on in each of her grandchildren who will carry the sense of self-worth and belonging that came from the unconditional love of a devoted grandparent. Thanks, Sandy for all you have done for me and my family. We will miss you. God be with you 'till we meet again.

Newark, NJ

So I spent some time in Newark, NJ, and I will just go ahead and put it on my list of worst places I have ever been. Near the top.

Unfortunately, New Jersey isn't a bad place from a natural scenery/climate point of view. It is just full of New Jersians. I will say that I am lucky that I am working with a group of helpful, hardworking people out there, so my opinion is not based on them, but more on the 2000-3000 people I drive past every day while I am there. The ones arguing on the sidewalk, fighting, selling drugs, standing around and doing nothing, playing checkers on the sidewalk, etc, etc. In other words, Newark appears to have a bunch of people in it that don't want to work for a living and just want the government to take care of them. And the hard-working people in Newark (who often live a long way outside of Newark) pay for it. It is rediculous. I think I have written about this before, so this is just a refresher in case anyone forgot where I stand on the "should Newark be leveled so we can start from scratch" question...

Anchorage, Alaska

No, I did not meet Sarah Palin.

I did however take two trips to Anchorage, staying a total of 3 weeks there. It was in August, so it was beautiful weather. Unfortunately I didn't see any moose or polar bears (Alaska icons), but I did see Beluga whales and a seal. And a lot of salmon fisherman. The last day I was there I had some time before my flight left, so I drove down the coast until I had burned half my free time. It was beautiful, and I even saw my first glacier, from a distance (I think).

I also experienced daylight until about 11 PM on those trips. This post may grow if I find some pictures to add, and the time to add them. But at least this wasn't left out now...

Legoland

Life is hectic. So how do you deal with it? I know how I do. I look forward to the next vacation. It sounds kind of cheesy when I say it (or write it), but it is the truth. I like having a plan for something fun to do with the family, and so far our favorite is the canned vacation to a theme park or other "touristy" location. There is a fair helping of irony to this, since I don't really like crowds, don't enjoy cities and spend a lot of time away from home already, but as I found in some of my earliest blog posts, there is something about being on vacation with the family.


So we picked up and went to Legoland. It is part of our commitment to lay off of Disneyland for a while. I have a goal of visiting all of the other major So Cal theme parks before going back.

One of the coolest things about Legoland is simply all of the lego sculptures. They truly were amazing. Everthing you see here is constructed out of regular stock Lego bricks.

Heather and I saw Hagrid, and both immediately went for a picture. Logan was our photographer on this trip, so we were able to get a few shots of just us.

We couldn't turn down Harry either.

Jeff and Rachelle's fam met us out there, and we ate at this great restaurant twice... umm, I forgot the name. Maybe someone can remind me? Anyway, we were there in between Collin's and Trenton's brithday, so they got to stand on their chairs and be recognized. The cousins were in rare form that night, if I remember correctly. Oh, to be young and so excited about life...

Taryn was a good sport. At Legoland, the little kids have to wait in line with everyone else so the parents can switch on the ride. She did pretty well, and as always, we love to take pictures of her.

Collin turned 11 on this trip. He is growing up on us.

Yeah, work it baby.

I think she has a thing for bald guys...

They did pretty much the whole Vegas strip. The detail was pretty cool. I did find it interesting that the are working hard to create recognizable characters out of their Lego guys, yet they didn't use the standard Lego guys in their model. They built people out of bricks instead. Weird.

We realized that we didn't have a jacket for Taryn anymore, so on the way out of town we stopped at our favorite store: the Disneyland outlet store and got her this Mickey jacket. She loved it, and it turned out to be a good idea because it was cold the whole time we were there. (Highs in the 60's in the second week of July??)

Another cool thing was the technic classes. You could sign up to come back and play with these robots. You plugged them into a computer, programmed them to do certain tasks, and then tested it on this special table. The boys loved it. I loved it. I only wish they would have just let us play on our own a while longer.
All made out of Legos. Pretty cool, huh.
They had some 3-D shows, one of which was Bob the Builder. Taryn really wanted to go see Bob, until she got there. Then she remembered how shy she is, and how big Bob is up close. Still, Taryn seems to pull us more toward characters than the other kids have.

Wow. look at our little family.
So one of the down sides of Legoland was that the rides left a lot to be desired. This is one of the few that Taryn went on, and she loved it, but overall the rides were a disappointment. They were all scaled down compared to DLand, and you can tell that they just didn't spend the money on them. The cheese factor was pretty high. But still, we can say we experienced it.

Jon Schmidt

Collin found this Utah-based piano-guy, Jon Schmidt a while back. I don't know how he heard about him, but he loved his stuff and worked his tail off to learn one of his songs. Over the last 6 months while Collin has worked on "Jon Schmidt" songs we went to a concert in Henderson where Jon performed, and have watched every you-tube video that mentions his name or his songs. I love to listen to Collin play, and especially when he is playing one of these songs, and I have found myself far away from my family, streaming music from Jon's website, and thinking about how it would be at home and hearing Collin play. Collin isn't a master of all of these songs yet, but he does pretty good, and he is learning what it is to have to perform them on stage. He makes a few more mistakes in front of an audience then he does at home, but I know that it is because he wants to do them as fast as Jon does. He is getting better all the time, and I am so proud of him. So I am going to post a video from a recent talent show. Taryn was making a fuss for part of the video, and Collin had to do his own page turning, as well as deal with nerves, so this is a little rough, but it is life.

So I came home for a week at the end of May/beginning of June, and then returned again to Okinawa. I was in Okinawa for the rest of June and the first few days of July (28 days total). Currently I am once again in the Kansai airport in Osaka, Japan, waiting for my connecting flight back to San Francisco. I feel like I have blogged more in this airport than in anywhere else in the world (not true, of course).

Anyway, I haven't posted anymore pictures of signs with goofy translation errors, or other cultural oddities, because, frankly, they all blend in for me now. I feel like I see more things as "normal" now, although there are some things that are still just wrong in my book, most of them being culinary in nature. (Why, oh why would you ruin a perfectly good pizza with ring shaped hunks of squid?)

So what I do have to report on is that I finally bought a new camera. It is still an inexpensive model, because I am a tight-wad. It is also a stylish blue color, that doesn't at all fit me, but that is also because I am a tight-wad (the blue ones were on sale. Apparently they didn't fit anyone else either.) So although the newness of Japan has worn off a bit, the newness of my camera has not, and I was on the lookout for something interesting to take a picture of.




So in airports across the world now there are designated smoking rooms. You get used to them. You smell them before you see them, and once you pass them if you just keep walking the smell goes away. Anyway, I was passing this one and walked by, and then stopped and went back and took a picture. There is an obvious problem here if you put "For smoking adults only." Where are the kids going to smoke? Some people are just thoughtless.

Anyway, so on this trip I went golfing for the first time in Okinawa. And the same thing happened that happens every time I go golfing. I lose horribly. I had a great time. I stated at least 10 times that I need to go to the driving range and practice before golfing again. As usual, I enjoyed the time outdoors and so the next day we went again. It was my first time on a small irons course. Nothing but par 3s, and I really liked that. The second time we went it was close to their closing time, so we did all nine holes in an hour and ten minutes. We jogged the whole way. Did my score suffer? Yes. Did it matter? No. So I heard a long time ago that if you video tape your swing, and then look at it, it is easier to see what you need to change (as opposed to having people constantly tell you how to fix it, which I haven't found totally helpful up to this point...) So I did that, and it was really educational. I decided against posting that video however. That would be a waste of bytes on some server somewhere.

What was cool is that the course is right under the incoming flight path to Kadena Air Base, and we saw a bunch of fighter jets throughout the round. They were SO close that we could hear the hydraulics that controlled the flaps and stuff. It sounded like a scene from Transformers. It was so cool. Unfortunately after the tenth fly-over I thought "I should get video of that." Too late.

So I am so glad to be heading home to see my family. We have been spread all over the place, and it is high-time we had some time together. Unfortunately, it looks like I will be back out in OKA a time or two this year, so we will have to make the most of the time we have together over the next few weeks.

I have a few other topics to post about, but I'll wait and work on those later.

What is that on your plate?

So I didn't take any pictures, but did have an interesting dinner. I love the Korean BBQ places; those are the ones with cutouts in the table with a BBQ stuck right there. My favorite are the buffet style, where you can go to a big open refrigerated buffet of raw meat, and heap up a bunch of raw meat to take back and cook at your table. It is most exciting because since I can't read Japanese, so I have to guess at what kind of meat I am getting.

Well we were at one such establishment, and I saw a plate of raw chicken, and thought that I might get a little chicken to go with my pork and beef. So I grabbed a couple of pieces and sat down to BBQ and eat my rice. Mark, who I work with, asked if I knew what that was. "Yep, its chicken." He smiled. Its bad news when Mark thinks something is funny.

"Tell me what it is" I said.

"No."

"If you tell me I promise to try it anyway."

He grabs the tongs and throws my two now suspicious raw somethings on the grill.

"Intestines" he says.

So it turns out that intestines are rather tasteless, albeit extremely chewy. Reminded me of the unfortunate squid I sampled last time I was in Yokohama, only without the crunchy parts (the little round sucker things.)

I didn't go back for seconds.

Update from OKA

Still no pictures (I haven't gone anywhere new yet). Still not a lot to update. It has been 13+ hour work days and finding food and sleep in between. I hope to be on my flight home on Saturday, but it isn't looking promising at this point...

Interesting tidbit: Okinawa has endured an earthquake and 2 tsunamai warnings since I was here last. The world is rocking and rolling.

Osaka, for another hour or so

So, it is true. The only time I have for blogging these days is when I'm on the road. I have been re-assigned to our project in Okinawa, so I am on my way back there today, and will be back and forth a bit for the next month or two. The 7 week break from travel was nice, but good things never last. This should only be a one-week trip, and I have a big task ahead of me, so I don't plan on doing anything exciting. I didn't even bring a camera, other than my phone. We'll see if I can find anything interesting to take pictures of...

Germany

So I finally made it to Germany in January 2010. Now I am out here for a second trip already in February-March. Overall life has been busy, both at home and abroad, so I haven't had a lot of time for picture taking/site seeing, but I though I would post what I have and make a few comments in case anyone is interested.



This is me standing on a castle wall, overlooking the town of Heidelberg. This is an "Americanized" German town, but I can't tell from where I am. To me it just looks German.



This is pretty much the same picture, just better because I am not in the way.


More from the same vantage point, but looking straight across the valley.



If I turned around from where I took those pictures of the valley, this is main building? Wall? of the "castle". The term castle refers to a lot of things, and while it felt like a castle as I climbed the ancient narrow trail that wound up the side of the mountain, I didn't expect for there to be so many windows... Granted, this still isn't an easily accessed/conquered vantage point, but still. That is a lot of windows.



It seems that the castle is in a constant state of being rebuilt to keep it in showing condition, however, some parts had been damaged beyond fixing by time, bombs and lightning. This picture (horrible lighting, sorry) was meant to show the thickness of the walls. They are incredibly thick in some place,like 12 feet thick. And it still broke... Interesting.



This was part of an interpretive sign that explained about how the castle used to look. It seems that most castles weren't just built, they were large buildings that kept getting addons and remodels until the took the shape of what we consider a castle. Perhaps some of the more Gothic structures are a little different, so I should find some of those. If/when I go to France, I think that a few French castles fit my particular perception of a castle a little better.



This tower was broken almost clean down the middle, and the massive piece of the tower remained intact and just slid to a new resting place. A German professor, trying to make a political point of some kind back in the day, spread the story that this was the work of WWII bombing by the Allies, but Wikipedia confirms that the real culprit here was lightning in the 19th century. Still, it is amazing to see this massive, old, man-made hunk of tower just leaning there like a tinker toy. My picture doesn't do this justice...

Old vs. New. As I said, the castle was more like a bunch of add-ons. Here you can see a date carved in the stone (1545) and right next to it are the more modern pipes bringing in utilities of some kind (water maybe?) Very interesting.




This is from inside the Courtyard of the castle. That big building in front of me is the other side of the wall I was looking up at a few pictures ago. The courtyard does match my perception of castle life a little better... They have converted the East side of the castle (to right, around the corner) to an Apothecary (Pharmacy) museum. It was very interesting too, but I wasn't able to get pictures of anything in there. In the foreground of this picture on the right, you see the corner with pillars. That was where the well for the castle was. That alone is amazing to me, that they could dig that deep by hand on a mountainside and hit water... ok, so I was raised in a desert.

This is a horrible picture for a number of reasons, the biggest being that you don't get the scale of it at all. This is a humongous Wine cask. It was built in the castle, and is 20 ft. tall I would guess? Standing on the ground next to it I have to look up to see the center of the thing. It was huge. Some idiot with more money than brains had it built, only to find that within a year it started leaking. It was only in use for a year or two, at the end of which it was constantly leaking like a sieve. At least the guy did set his sights high.... There was a staircase so you could walk up and over it, or stand on top. It was cool.



This is a town square in below the castle (you can see one of the ruined walls behind the statue. The statue was of Mary and Baby Jesus, but the picture didn't turn out too well.

So those are some of my pictures from my first trip in January. I only had one half day (luck) to do anything but work, since I was only there a week, so I am glad to have been able to see what I did.

I was home for about three weeks, and then I went back to Germany for what was going to be 2 weeks, but is stretching into almost 4 weeks (I am still here...) I hope to be home soon. The upside is that I had a few more days--weekends--to see a few things, so here is a sampling of those sights.

The day started at the Hauptbahnhof (train station) in Frankfurt. We had to take a coworker to the airport, so we parked the car at the train station. There was a tourism office where we got a day pass for Frankfurt, which allowed us to ride any of the trains and get discounts at any of the museums in town (there are a lot of museums) for about 9 euros. That is about $14.


An overall shot of the train station. I am not a big fan of cities, or city life, but I am a big fan of trains. Too bad they seem to go together.


So after getting our day passes and maps we took a few minutes at an American icon to plan out our day. It was extremely cold, and snowing off an on, so a cup of hot chocolate was perfect. Did I mention it was freezing cold? Ok, good. Didn't want to leave that out. (BTW: Can you pick me out of the crowd? Ok, that was too easy.)


There are basically 4 types of trains: underground (U-bahn), Regional surface trains (R-bahn), local trams (buses on tracks;)--(S-bahn) and then the long distance, super fast Inter City Express trains (ICE trains). This is the tram stop (S-bahn) outside of the train Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (main train station). We decided to ride the tram down to the old city center along the river, where it would be a short walk to a dozen different museums.

This is the old town in Frankfurt. Frankfurt is actually considered a new city, and has more skypscrapers than anywhere in Germany (or so I am told) but why would I take pictures of skyscrapers? That seemed dumb. So here is one angle on the old town square. This weekend was Carnival (a big drunken festival of unknown origin?) and they were setting up for the festivities as we wandered around.


Just another building in all its quaintness.


This statue was outside an "ancient statue" museum. They had big windows along the outside of the building, so we walked along and saw all kinds of Greek and Roman statues, at varying levels of modesty. We didn't pay to go in. The statue pictured is of the King (ok, so I don't remember exactly what he was king of) from around 760ish AD. That was a long time ago. And it looks just like him!! Amazing. I wonder if it was chiseled by a guy named Polaroid. Or maybe it was a guy named Bob using Polaroid chisels...


So being from Vegas, I see random stuff stuck on buildings all the time. I don't even see it anymore becuase I know it is all just a faked up attempt to make stucco (and the whole city) look like something more than it is. Well, I saw this on the side of an old German building and thought, I don't know if that is genuine or a reproduction for tourists. Just not knowing for sure somehow lent it some credibility. And even if it is just another cheap stucco reproduction, it does have more value because the street I was standing on probably had seen armored troops on horseback (among other conveyences.) Also, you can't tell from the picture so much, but this is not just a picture, but a flat sculpture on the wall (isn't that called a relief? I never took art history. I never thought I would use it ;) )




This is two attemps to get a shot of an old chapel across the river. Yes a new camera is on my Christmas list.


There was a foot bridge across the river... (Did I mention it was freezing cold?)


This is me on the foot bridge, freezing. (Thanks Mom for the stocking hat from Christmas like 10 years ago. See, it made it to Germany!) The sign above/behind me is in Greek. In the full sized picture I can't make out the characters I can't read. Yeah, you aren't missing much there.

This is a dog.

So we wandered around some more. Went to an Architecture museum and a Archeology museum (no pictures allowed in either.) We found a more modern, very European street to walk down that had a bunch of shops and pubs, so we stopped in one for lunch. That took two hours. That is where the dog picture came from. We noticed in multiple places, especially restaurants, that people would bring their dogs to work. Our waitress owned this little dog, and the table next to us had a few little kids, the youngest being a little blond haired girl who was 3 at most. They loved this dog, and the waitress came over and had it do tricks (rolling over and such). My little Taryn would have loved that dog. He was very patient with the kids, although they did finally get him to bark a few times. When the family left the dog went and sat by the glass door and watched them leave.

So a few more train rides and we were done for the day. I have a few more pictures from my trip, which as I mentioned isn't over yet, so I will do another post later for those who might be interested.