Richard Simmons Zombie Aerobics Team - Halloween

I love my ultimate frizbee friends. Everyone is so positive and fun and up for anything. We've had some great tournament teams with tons of costumes. So, we all thought we'd do Halloween together too. At a party, a few of us hatched this idea: Richard Simmons leading a bunch of zombies in aerobics! Such a beautiful idea in so many ways, but most importantly, that we could take over the dance floor at the bar and get everyone to do some zombie aerobics with us. It was fantastic! Here is the group right after we got all decked out and were just about to leave for the first bar. Such a fun, creative group of people.

Chris Visits from Zambia - part 2 (part 1 still to come): Packrafting in the Brooks Range

My friend Chris has been living in Southern Africa for the last 8 years or so. He's currently living in Lusaka, Zambia working for a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) doing aide work. I've been over to visit him in Africa a few times, but he just made his first visit up to Alaska (about time you bastard). Chris and I, along with my roomate Ed, did a packrafting trip up in the Brooks Range in Northern Alaska. This was my first time to visit this part of the state and I was really impressed. The mountains are amazing and had a timeless sense about them. You could almost imagine dinosaurs wandering around, and Fred, Barney, and Dino too.

We couldn't hold back our enthusiasm to reach the arctic circle.

Or this big outcrop of rocks.

Or to be excited that my car made it up the road.

Or, to be excited about Chris's superpowers.

Or Ed's for that matter.

After our excitement qwelled for a moment, we began our hike away from the road. This is looking back towards where we parked our car.

The mountains are amazing of course, this photo shows a little scale.

We found a waterfall and were very excited once again.

The water poured out through a hole. Pretty amazing. Ed and I ducked under the water for a cold shower.

Ed brought his "bush buddy" stove with for boiling water. It's pretty cool. You just need a small pile of twigs and you can quickly boil water. It's very lightweight and convenient as long as you can find dry twigs.

Ed and Chris were very excited about the good weather.

We had to climb up high to get through the valley and were excited to get to the top.

Then we had to climb down.

And back up again.

Here is the rare... the elusive... the ferocious... Chrisabou!

We did have some river crossings to do.

Chris and I got very tired after 12 mile days, but Ed just kept on going. He makes the energizer bunny look like a fat kid with a mullet.

More hiking up and down and up and down.

Here some ice protruded up from just under the surface. It was a huge chunk of ice. I'm not sure what caused this to happen, but it shows what lies underneath the surface.

Here's Ed's new online profile pic. Ooooh.

We were excited to find a fantastic campsite up high with great views.

Then we were excited to swim in Elusive Lake the last morning of the trip.

We finally got to where we planned to inflate the rafts we had carried with us up and down and up and down through the mountains.

Giddyup!

We were excited to get started with the rafting.

The river was pretty tame overall, but was pretty fast. It's the Ribdon River which flows down on the North side of the Brooks Range towards the Arctic Ocean. There were some fun little bumps along the way, but overall was a relaxing and beautiful float.

Our friend's Dea and Ben moved my car along the highway to near where our trip finished. It was only a short hike along the road to get back to the car to drive back to Fairbanks. Overall, a great trip, and of course it was great to have Chris visit and to see an area of the state that very few people see.

My virgin packrafting trip

Ed, Ann, and I went out to Beaver Creek in the White Mountains last weekend. This was my first packrafting trip with my new boat. It is awesome! I'm excited about future possibilities for the pack raft.

Ed already made a really good blog post for this trip, so I'm not gonna duplicate the effort. See Ed's Blog for photos and details.

Here's what you've all been waiting for... Mating Lions - yea baby!

My friend and I came across these lions one morning. A male and two females. We pulled the truck up close and then climbed up through the sunroof and sat on the roofrack watching them. All of a sudden, one lioness walks across in front of the male and it's ALL ON!

We learned that lions will mate for a few days straight without eating or really doing anything else. They mate every 10 to 20 minutes!!!! So, of course, we just hung out on top of the truck drinking beers and watching the lions. Then we'd go away and look for other stuff and then come back to this same spot and they'd still be at it. It was awesome!

Here's the approach.

Here's the foreplay.

There's a lot of biting and growling, just to keep things interesting. You can kind of understand, after a few times per day, things might start to get a little on the dull side.






Oh yeah!


And the dismount. Well done!