Blog of Bermanism

Wow, this was quite a few weeks that I just went through. I basically had to shut everything out and bury my head into my laptop as I wrote the first draft of my major research paper for my postdoctoral fellowship. It was really a nice experience to get it written, and I had forgotten how difficult it is to write the discussion portion of papers! I had to read around 12 papers for every paragraph that I wrote. It was a lot, but I managed to get it all pounded out in two weeks. My original goal was to have the paper submitted by this Thursday, but it is clear that we need to have a few more quick experiments on board in order to have a really tight paper. So, I’ll be doing those experiments next week and then editing like a fiend to get it out the door.

For those that don’t know, this will be my first paper of my professional life. I’ve never managed to publish a paper before (for a lot of reasons that I won’t go into here), even though I should probably have two previous publications already. As you probably also know, in science, your currency is your publications. It is how you let the world know about your findings, it is how you add to the bulk knowledge of the human race, and it is how you prove that you are an effective scientist that is worthy of good positions and grant money. It is impossible to further your career without publications, and in a time when funding is next to nil, people hiring into positions are very selective about who they take. A person with some high-quality publications to their name will beat out someone who doesn’t have them because it is less of an investment risk for the university, institute or company to take someone who has proven that they can do good science. It is a tricky game, one that is fraught with politics and red-tape, but, for those that play it well, promising futures are on the horizon. So, I feel like I’m finally making my way by getting through this manuscript. I feel much more fulfilled with science than I did two weeks ago, and, I think that in writing this paper, I’ve proven to myself that I can actually do this (something I wasn’t entirely convinced of until now). Now, I just have to actually get it published, and that will be difficult and will take a while.

Anyhow, I had wanted to get the paper submitted before Thursday because I’m going to be heading to Winter Park, Colorado for my annual ski trip, and I’m totally psyched about it! I haven’t been to Winter Park in a few years, because we went to Tahoe last year, so I’m very happy to be returning to my childhood stomping grounds. I’m going with a great group of guys this year (no women this time, they’re all pregnant, with infant, or otherwise unavailable). Everyone coming along has a good deal of experience on skis and I’ve planned out a pretty intense three days of skiing that will effectively take us on a full tour of Winter Park’s immense terrain, both on and off piste. It will be epic, for sure, and all of the guys are up for my challenge. We’re staying in a ski-in/ski-out condo in two studio units. The studios are small, but it was really inexpensive, so it will be nice to ski-out, shred some Winter Park goodness, ski-in, and go to the hot tubs. There’s nothing better than soaking in an outdoor hot tub after a day of hard skiing. So, I’m looking forward to good friends, good skiing, and good beer for three days. I say this every year, but I’m going to try to write a blog entry chronicalling our ski adventures each day. It probably won’t work out, but I’m going to try. So, then next time I write, I’ll be on my way to Denver. Until then, peace and carrots.

Well, it is a sad day in the land of science fiction and fantasy as Ricardo Montalban has died at 88 years old. Montalban was probably best known for his role as Mr. Roark of Fantasy Island, but to all of you geek-boys and -girls out there, he played the role of Khan Noonien Singh in the Star Trek feature film, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The famous overacting performance that was given by William Shatner in that movie featured Captain Kirk screaming “KHAAANNNN!!” several times with a look of extreme constipation on his face after being marooned on a planet by Khan with no obvious escape. Never-the-less, Montalban gave an amazing performance in this movie and it is a sad day that sees his passing. Khan’s final dying words in the Star Trek movie were quoted from Hermann Melville’s Moby Dick, “To the last, I will grapple with thee… from Hell’s heart, I stab at thee! For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee!” RIP Ricardo.

Today’s xkcd is not just awesome, it’s hawesome:

Anyone who knows me knows that I tend to take the most difficult path to something potentially simple. I’m really good at graspong complex topics and coming up with crazy ways of doing complex things, but I suck at seeing the obvious things that are right in front of my face. So this xkcd totally fits. I would have done something similar.

I don’t know what it is, but the media has really been annoying me lately (this isn’t true, they usually annoy me, which is why I usually get my news from Fark, but that’s another story). Recently though, their inanity has reached new heights. A lot of really horrible things are happening in the world from Israel’s relentless bombing of the West Bank which is killing thousands of innocent people, starvation, a standoff with Iran, the killing of nearly 500,000 people in Iraq during our massively inappropriate war, the American economy is in shambles, and global warming is on the rise (as evidenced by our 80 degree day this January the 13th here in San Francisco). Not only that but we’re about to instate a new president of the United States, one that will hopefully fix a lot of the bad things that have happened over the last eight years. And, Obama’s administration has basically already taken control of the government and will be going full-steam next Tuesday when he is inaugurated, which I really like. Way to take charge Barack!

Yes, all of these very important things are happening, as well as many others that I haven’t listed here, and our very way of life is in serious jeopary. But, what topic has the media all in a frenzy? What topic has all of the major networks devoting entire teams, massive amounts of air time, the soliciation of expert interpretations, and has network executives peeing on themselves over? That’s right folks, the single most important news story of 2009 so far is…. drum roll please…. THE KIND OF FREAKIN’ DOG THAT OBAMA IS GOING TO BUY HIS CHILDREN!!!!! This is quite possibly the most inane display of misappropriation of resources and the biggest waste of time I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m mean seriously, who the hell cares whether they are going to get a Poruguese Water Dog or a Labradoodle?? I mean really!! A Google search for “the first dog obama” yields, count them, 3,440,000 results. The Today show this morning did an entire segment on the two possible breeds and how either of them is, “such a wonderful family breed”. I mean, really. Who is getting rich off of this? Someone must be, because I think I’d rather see a segment on watching paint dry.

The only other side of this that I can think of is that some executive somewhere, or some white house press secretary thought that focusing on the first family’s first dog would somehow take America’s mind off of the dismal current situation, either that or it would allow the world to identify more with the first family, but I still don’t give a crap. And, I can’t imagine that Obama feels any differently, I know it would annoy the crap out of me (obviously). Anyway, sorry for the rant. I’ll write something plesant next time, but this was really getting to me and thought I would share with you.

Happy puppy hunting.

Patent trolls (and all others that exploit the system for their own benefit) should kindly die in a fire. This case was particularly annoying to me. This guy patented the use of an ancillary internet website to enhance the look and feel of physcial products, like books. The definition of the patent is really broad, which means that it can be interpreted any number of ways. Slashdot users had some good comments on the subject. The biggest problem here, in my opinion, is that there are really no rules about what can be patented, except that it can’t have an active patent or patent pending. I think that only real property should be patentable, something tangible, like an algorithm in software or a revolutionary type of toaster that could toast your bread from where ever you are in the house; that sort of thing. But, patenting a generalized idea that has a wide range of applications? It is a little weird. To patent an idea, you should have a demonstrated, unique application for it that already exists, and you should only be able to patent that particular application. We went through a similar situation in the biological sciences a few years back when people started patenting biological processes and enzymes (PCR), and DNA sequences that are found in nature that have commercial application. The result of this was all out warfare. The PCR patent, for instance, was a patent on the use of Taq polymerase for the amplification of sequences of DNA. Anyone could go and get their hands on a few cells-worth of Thermophilus aquaticus (the bacterium that makes Taq) and isolate their DNA polymerases, but, thanks to this patent, you couldn’t use that enzyme in a PCR reaction without paying a licensing fee to Perkin-Elmer (now Applied Biosystems), who patented the process and made it such that no other company could develop the machines to perform PCR (called thermocyclers) without paying Perkin-Elmer through the nose for it, essentially creating a monopoly. And, they made it all very expensive. This patent, and other patents like it in the biological sciences made things very bad. Likewise, patenting the use of the internet to enhance one’s experience of a product that they have purchased is ridiculous. Of course companies are going to infringe on this patent because it is the natural thing to do with the state of technology as it is currently. So, Scott C. Harris, being a renowned patent lawyer, obviously created this patent with dollar signs in his eyes because he could sue almost anyone for infrigement (as he has done in the past, and it cost him his job). So, big boy here has gone after Google and lost, and now he’s set his sights higher, to Oprah. As is stated in the Slashdot comments, Oprah is probably the most powerful and influential woman in the world. Going up against her might be worse than Google. I hope she fights it and takes this guy down, because it is ridiculous and he obviously didn’t learn from losing his job at his law firm after going after Google. What an ass cake.

The new year at the Marin Rowing Association marks the beginning of training for the San Diego Crew Classic, which falls on April 4-5 this year. That’s right, we spend four months training for this one race. It is kind of ridiculous, but it is always fun to train hard and starting early is how we go beat the Olympic rolodex crews that show up every year. Anyway, my team has an erg test next Thursday, a 20 minute test in which you basically have to row as far and hard as you can (in meters) in 20 minutes. There is no easy erg test, but, next to the 2,000m test, this is the hardest and you really have to plan your piece.

Anyway, in preparation for this test, my friend Hanns came up with a pretty hard erg workout that we did this morning. The workout was 4 x 2,000m with 7min rest at your target 20min pace. For those non-rowers, we measure our current rowing speed in meters rowed per 500m. That number is our split. My best split ever on a 20min erg test was 1:50.3, or 5,443 meters in 20 min. My goal for the test next week is to finally break the 1:50 split mark and go in the 1:49’s, which would also finally allow me to break the 5500 meter mark. So, for this crazy workout of Hanns’, I decided to make my target split 1:49. The first piece was much harder than I expected. I was really beat about 1000m into the piece, but I was holding a 1:48.5 (I also didn’t really have time to warm up at all). But, I finished the first piece and finally felt warmed up. The second piece was even harder. I don’t know why exactly, but it was really hard until I got through the 1000m mark, then it got easier. The third piece was probably the easiest of the pieces to maintain, but it hurt a lot to make it through. Up until this point, I’d been sub 1:50 the whole time, which I was pretty happy with, and by the end of the third piece, I had gone 6,000m, which was further than my 20min test, but I was totally exhausted by the end of that piece, and we still had another one to do. I started the last one and just couldn’t get my split below 1:52. I was disappointed, because if I could keep all of my splits below 1:50, then I could do that for 20min. But, at 1000m to go, I realized that I could bring up my stroke rate and pull my splits down, so I went up to 29-30spm (I had been rowing at 27-28spm up until now) and got my split down below 1:50. At 500 to go, I was really going to lose it, so I did the natural thing and went psycho on the rate. I went up to a 32, then up to a 34 at 250 to go, holding a 1:46 through the end. My average for all pieces ended up being 1:49.6, which is in the realm that I want to be in for the 20min test. So, I was pretty happy with it over all, but it was really hard. I realized half way through the pieces that this was the first high-rate work that I’d done on the erg for several months, so I’m not surprised that it hurt so much. But, I’m very happy that I did it. Hanns has an even worse workout planned for Sunday, 3 x 3,000 meters with 10min rest at the same pace as the 2k’s. That’s going to be super hard, but much more approximate to a 20min test. So, that will be interesting. I’ll make sure to get some sleep the night before, Sasha willing.

The most interesting thing about doing really hard work on the erg is that a lot of making it through any hard piece is completely in your head. It is all about how much of the pain you can ignore. I’m in pretty good shape for guy whose 5′8″, 156lbs, so I know my body can handle the work load. It is a matter of convincing my mind that I can do it. When I over come those mental barriers, it all goes much better. I’ve also found that I can apply this mentality to all parts of my life, work, personal, and otherwise. It is interesting the lessons that you can learn from the simplest things, like killing yourself on an erg workout. You always grow from it. Anyway, just thought I’d share my pain from this morning with all of you.

This is the obligatory first blog post of the New Year in which I wish everyone a healthy and happy and recession-reducing new year. We spent the New Year in Lake Tahoe at my cousin’s best friend’s cabin. It was a great time, and certainly much more successful than the last time we tried to have New Years at that cabin. Rachel (who can’t ski because of bad knees) was good enough to volunteer to stay home at the cabin with Sasha while the rest of us went off and skied our hearts out in the way-better-than-normal early season conditions at Squaw and Northstar. I think I really needed to bomb down some mountains to re-center myself after this last year, so I’m very grateful that Rachel is supportive enough to have a not-so-exciting weekend so that I can. If she wasn’t willing, I’d probably never ski again. Anyway, I had a wonderful time skiing with my cousin and her husband (which, I guess, makes him my cousin too). The lift lines were short, the mountains were pretty much empty and the snow was great. We managed around 16-17 runs each day, so my legs are pretty blitzed, but it was a great first few ski days of the season and I really feel like I got my ski legs back under me.

So, now that I have my skiing addiction tamed for the time being, it is time to turn our attention to 2009. I do, in fact, have some New Year’s Resolutions. I’m writing them in my blog for all to see:

1. I want to be better at keeping in touch with people: I really let this fall off this year. I probably have about 10 people that I should keep in regular touch with. This isn’t a tall order and I just need to make the time for it. I also tend to let emails, texts, and voice mails go unanswered for a long period of time, and let’s not even talk about Facebook. I’ve gone two months without replying to people on there. So, I resolve to be better about communicating. I do actually have the time to do it, I just need to make it happen.
2. I want to move on to the next phase of my career in 2009. This is complicated beyond explanation, mainly because I’m not sure if I want to go into industry or academics. I suppose I’m going to wait and see what comes from my postdoc and then decide based on what I’m qualified for. So, this is my major resolution, and it is a big one, but it is time to move on in my career.

That’s it! I only have two resolutions. The rest of my life has been pretty awesome and I really wouldn’t change very much of it. I’ve been pretty lucky that way and I hope it continues. So, Happy New Year to all! I hope it finds all of you in comfort and good health.

This is so scary.

Basically what the article is saying, to those who don’t have the appropriate number of geek points, is that the entire infrastructure that secure websites are based on (like credit card companies, banks, online shopping, etc) can be spoofed so that you could be viewing a valid secure site, but it is under the control of someone who is trying to steal your information. And, you would have no idea that you aren’t viewing a valid site because your web browser would tell you that the site is secure and trusted (the little padlock on the browser).

The thing that I don’t get is, why do companies write these incredibly complicated algorithms to hack through infrastructures that are well in place only to publish the vulnerabilities online where all the hackers can get wind of exactly how to exploit these issues? I’m one for open information, but I would have a solution in place before pointing out that PKI has a big-ass hole in it and writing the program that can make your fake certificate authority so that the identity theft can ensue. Seems a little backwards to me, but what do I know?

I do know that in the linux server world, having people work hard to break through security protocols has resulted in very fast security updates that are released at the same time as the vulnerability itself. This method has resulted in the generation of a VERY secure system. Apple and Microsoft have also adopted this methodology. My problem with this case is that they released the vulnerability with no fix ready to be implemented. I think this is a bit like lighting off fireworks over your super-secret army camp in Baghdad, hoping that none of the enemy will see where your super-secret encampment is, then asking them not to hurt you because you’re cute and lit off pretty fireworks. It is a little silly.

Still though, the problem that they pointed out is scary as hell. I no longer trust the internets.

Oh, and this:

Oh my God! He does exist!

Yes, I’m actually posting in my blog for the first time since July.

What can I say? A lot has been going on. I’m going to keep this short in the spirit of posting a lot more, but here’s a bulleted synopsis of the last six months in the land of Bermanism, in order of stream of consciousness:

• Sasha is now eight months old. (!!!!) Time sure does fly. She’s huge. She’s turned from a weird alien-human hybrid to full on small person. She’s crawling, sitting up, pulling up on and standing next to almost anything, eating solid food, babbling up a storm, and not sleeping. She’s pretty incredible and a blast, despite the recent rash of not sleeping. It seems that she’d rather stand up and jump around in her crib than sleep. See her latest pictures and movies to get the gist of what I mean.
• Sasha has now been to five states (Alaska, Ohio, Texas, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania) and on 15 flights. She’s better traveled at 8 months old than most people are when they’re 20 years old.
• Sasha had her first Chanukkah, which was cute. She got a ton of gifts, which has forced us to reorganize and get rid of some of her younger-months favorites (at least put them in storage). She’s really good at ripping gift wrap and immediately putting whatever was inside in her mouth. As far as that goes, she likes Chanukkah. I’m sure it will carry more meaning next year. We went to Union Square last night for the last night of Chanukkah to see the giant Menorah lighting. It was really cool and nice. Check out our pictures to see if Rachel has posted them yet.
• Rachel returned to work, but figured out that she only needs to work part-time for us to make ends meet. So, I stay home with Sasha in the morning (until 12:30) while Rachel works, then I go to work from 1pm until 8-10pm. It is a hard schedule, but it does two positive things and two negative things. On the positive side, it allows me to be an active part of Sasha’s life and to spend a lot of time with her, which I absolutely love (and I think she does too), and it avoids the $2000+/month cost of having a baby-sitter or day-care, both of which are not great for Sasha in general. On the negative side, Rachel and I spend about 15 minutes/day with each other Mon – Thur and I’m freakin’ exhausted by Thursday night. Friday is a normal day for me because Rachel doesn’t have to work, so that is nice. The bottom line is that this schedule is temporary until I get a job that can actually support the family and Rachel can stop working, which is what she wants. So, it is hard, it is a big sacrifice, but the rewards seem to be greater than the sacrifice, in general, so we’ll keep doing this.
• I’ve raced at the Masters National Championships (and came home with three medals), and at the Head of the Charles Regatta, where our boat came in 4th out of 32 boats and came home with a medal, the first ever for me at that race. At the same time, we lost our coach right before Nationals, I happened to be the captain, and I spent an enormous amount of time trying to fill the giant vacuum left by Jim for the next four months before we hired a new coach who seems to be working out quite well. To be quite honest, the majority of my free time went into maintaining our team and planning and organizing the Head of the Charles for the team. This is why I haven’t blogged (or anything else) in forever. The captain’s duties, taking care of Sasha, and work took up all of my time. Luckily, my team pulled through really well and we’re still as fast, if not faster than we were before. I’m no longer captain, so I can just row, which is nice.
• I’ve now lost a collective 55 pounds since graduate school. I decided to lose my last 15 pounds before Masters Nationals, and now weigh 155 (from 210). Actually, I weigh more like 158 after the holidays, but I’ll be erging a lot over the next two weeks and it will come right back off. I’m actually almost back to my college weight, which is crazy. I never thought I’d be there again.
• I’m officially in the last 6-12 months of my postdoc in San Francisco. This means that I have to actively start looking for my first “real” job after the 1st of the year. It also means that I have to put my nose to the grindstone to really get my papers finished and out so that I can actually be marketable for people to hire. It also seems that my graduate papers may actually get published sometime in the near future, which would be awesome for me and would really help out with the whole career thing. I’m not sure if we’ll stay in the Bay Area or not. It would be much easier to live closer to family, so I’m going to look in Texas as well. Actually, I’m looking everywhere. I’m not sure whether I’ll be looking at Biotech or Academics. It is open, and I’ll look at both.
• I’m still really enjoying brewing beer. It is really fun. I’ve brewed a Honey Wheat, an Imperial Red, and a Pale Ale since I last wrote in the blog. The Pale Ale was brewed for my friend Tyler’s wedding, so I didn’t get much of that batch. It was a hit at the wedding though. The Honey Wheat wasn’t my favorite and I probably won’t be making that again. The Imperial Red is awesome. I made it really strong and pretty hoppy, on purpose. It balances nicely. I recently brewed my version of a holiday lager. For now I’m calling it an Egg Nog Lager (no, there are no eggs in it). Most people wince when I tell them the name of the beer, so I need to come up with a new name for it. But, it is a pale lager with vanilla, nutmeg and allspice in it. It should taste like beer with a hint of the main flavors from egg nog. But, maybe I should just call it a spiced vanilla holiday lager so that people aren’t grossed out by the thought of it. I’ve gotten more than a few visceral reactions to the name. Next I want to remake my Chocolate Raspberry brown ale or my lager, which tasted a lot like Sam Adams, but stronger. I may also make a Dopplebock. I haven’t decided. I really need to brew two beers at once to be truely happy. I may try it. (yikes!)
• I’ve rekindled my love of cooking. I’ve been baking and cooking a lot recently, much to Rachel’s advantage (or disadvantage, if you look from a caloric perspective). It has been fun to get back to that.
• I turned 34 in November. That was exciting.
• We elected a black, progressive president in an attempt to clean up the giant mess that is our government and its affairs, but you probably already knew that. I hope he can accomplish what he’s capable of accomplishing.
• We lost a TON of money in the recession. But so did everyone else. It still sucks though.
• People started driving their huge SUVs again once gas prices returned to 2004 prices. That sucks too. I’m happy to say that I drive a fast sports car that gets 32mpg. Yay Toyota.

I’m sure there’s  a lot more to post here, but those are the major events. As I always say about now, I’m going to try to start posting more. I’m going to try to post shorter things that take around 15 minutes to write, rather than my previous novellas. I think I’ll get more out this way. We’ll see. I missed you, I hope you missed me and come back to read more often again.

Peace.

Rachel, Sasha, and I went to Alaska two weeks ago for a family vacation with Rachel’s family. Rachel’s dad had a meeting in a small town south of Anchorage called Girdwood, at a resort called the Alyeska resort. The resort is located at the southern edge of the Chugach State Park, which is home to the legendary Chugach mountains and to some of the best skiing in the world. As such, I was totally excited about going on this trip, mainly because Girdwood is home to the Chugach Powder Guides, some of the best heli-skiing guides in the nation. They are always featured on the Warren Miller films. So, it is one of my dream vacations to go up there and heli-ski for a week with a few close ski buddies. It is crazy expensive though, around $6000. Rachel says that might be a good 40th birthday gift. We’ll see.

I’m not going to go into incredible detail in this post, because I don’t really have time to write an epic tale of our trek to Alaska, so here is, in a nutshell, what we did. We got onto a non-stop flight in San Francisco and were in Anchorage 4.5 hours later. This was Sasha’s first flight, and she did really well on it. Her ears didn’t bother her and she was cute and fascinated by the whole experience, not to mention that the stewardesses loved her. Anyway, we got to Anchorage at around 11:30pm, and the sun had just set (yes, the sun is up for 19.5 hours this time of year, and it never really gets dark). So, that was kind of strange, but really cool. The weather looked a lot like San Francisco in the summer time, 50’s and 60’s with fog everywhere, with the addition of giant mountains all over the place. We drove to Girdwood where we shacked up in a three bedroom cabin with Rachel’s folks and her brother and his wife. It was very nice and had a hot tub (win!) that I never got to use (fail). Sleeping for Rachel and I was fairly easy with it being light all night long because we’re both pretty used to no schedule with Sasha, so it was all normal to us.

The next day we headed up to the hotel Alyeska to check things out and get some lunch (once we all got moving again). The hotel was nice, but a lot smaller than it seems in the pictures. Also, we found out that it is a $300/night place (!!!). I can tell you that it didn’t seem worth that to me. Anyway, we hung out walked around, had the WORST service I’ve ever had at a restaurant anywhere in the world while trying to have lunch, then tried to avoid the rain for awhile before heading off to a wildlife preserve to see moose, elk, bison, musk oxen, and black bears. The wildlife preserve was nice, but we spent a lot of the time trying to avoid the rain. Yes, it rained almost the entire time we were there, endlessly. It would have been nice to know before we went to Alaska that Girdwood is the most northerly rain forest in the world. That’s right, a rain forest! I suppose that explains why they get 65 feet of snow every year (905″ last year), and thus the legendary snow.

Anyway, trying once again to keep this post short and sweet, we went to the thriving metropolis of Whittier, and caught a tour boat that took us around Prince William Sound to see the Blackstone glacier. It was pretty remarkable, and the ship got pretty close up to the head of it (check out pictures in our Photo journal). Sasha liked the boat ride as well and really enjoyed trying to watch the white water crest off of the side of the boat as we went on our way. We also took a train tour up into the mountains on another glacier tour. This was fun because we got to hang out on a real train, also a first for Sasha. It was a nice tour, lots of sights, wildlife, and mountains, which I love. The next day, the sun came out and Rachel and I went on a six mile hike all the way across the valley and back, which took us to a gorge that we had to cross using a hand-tram, which was WAY cool:

This was a really fun hike, except for the swarms of mosquitoes that attacked us every time we stopped for 10 seconds.

Probably the coolest thing that the group did in Alaska, that I didn’t get to do because I volunteered for Sasha duty, was take a helicopter ride up to the top of a glacier and ride Iditarod sleds around while seeing how the dogs are trained during the summer for the race next spring. Rachel said the dogs were really cool, but not what she expected and that Hollyweird had really done a number on what people would expect the dogs to look like. These dogs were true Alaskan Malmutes. The dogs used in the movies are Siberian Huskies, definitely prettier dogs than the mutt that is the Malmute. She said they were all different shapes, sizes and colors and that they were skinny and in great shape. There are some great pictures of it in our photos section. Anyway, Rachel and Co. got to ride around the glacier on the dog sleds, and they said that it was really fun. One of the most remarkable things was that, once a team of dogs got hooked up to a sled all 100 or so dogs started to go nuts and got really excited, jumping around and barking because they knew a team was about to go out. She said that dogs were really cute and it was really cool experience. I’m a little sad that I missed it, but I have to admit that nothing quite beats being able to spend four hours with my daughter, just the two of us.

Finally, we got to go to the top of Mount Alyeska for dinner one night (taking the tram). The view from up there was really pretty, but it totally made me want to go skiing. I almost can’t help being at a ski resort and not ski. The restaurant was a four diamond restaurant, something virtually unheard of in Alaska. The food was very good and the service was, for once, excellent. The best part was, of course, the view. You could see the entire valley and a lot of Turnagain Arm, the inlet from Chickaloon bay that leads from the ocean to Anchorage in southern Alaska.

The next day we left. We headed out through Anchorage again and were about an hour delayed leaving because they realized, after we were on the plane, that the plane had a flat tire. So, with everyone on board, they jacked up the side of the plane and replaced the tire. This of course was done by a half-wit, one competent guy and a dog, so it took about an hour to complete the project, while we were sitting on the plane with a restless baby and 300 fisherman fresh of the boat, and I do mean fresh! It did not smell very good in there. One we got into the air, we headed for Seattle. We got there just in time to make our connection to San Francisco, so we ran off of the plane and onto the next one, which was thankfully only one gate away. We sat down and they announced a 45 minute delay imposed by SFO because of excessive smoke in the area from all of th forest fires. So, we sat again until the plane finally took off. All-in-all, it took us around 7 hours to get home. Sasha’s schedule was a mess and so there wasn’t much sleep to be had that night by any of us. We learned very quickly that if were flying with Sasha at this age, that we really need to spring for the non-stop flights. They go much more smoothly.

So, my impression of Alaska is that the entire place is just majestic, extreme and virtually untouched by the influences of modern society. In fact, it kind of reminded me of being in nowhere middle America, where there is nothing but grassland and the occasional redneck on a tractor going to his neighbors to share they cow they just slaughtered. The people were very simple, not too bright, and totally unaware of things like conservation and preservation. I suppose that since the human population in Alaska is so sparse, they figure that the impact the people will have there isn’t that great, so why conserve or try to keep Alaska in its current state? Alaska is beautiful, the glaciers are amazing, the mountains are incredible, the weather this time of year in Girdwood sucks. Alaska is the type of place that outdoorsman would love. It is a haven for fishermen and hunters and back country skiers and hikers. It really isn’t the place to go have a luxurious vacation. If your idea of a great vacation is to sit on a warm beach somewhere sipping Mai Tais, don’t go to Alaska. If you’re a fan of natural beauty of all sorts, even if it is cold and wet, then you’ll love it there and you should go check it out. I loved it, I think it was a great experience for Sasha, and I think Rachel has checked it off of her list. Go figure.