Does any story starting with that line ever finish with, “and then it ended just like any other day?” No.  No, of course not.

Today started out like any other day.  Oksana got up early for her four-hour, one-on-one Spanish lesson and left me sleeping in bed.  I woke up an hour or so later and went about my normal routine.  A few pushups, a few sit-ups, I grabbed a quick shower.  I was out the door at 10am.  After a week of classes, I had finally been invited to meet her instructor.

The streets in front of the language institute were crowded because today was a big day for all the local boys and girls.  School after school paraded their children in front of the judging stands set along the parade route.  The girls, no matter how young, were decked out in provocative mini-skirts and cleavage-bearing tops, while the boys were sharply dressed in 3-piece suits.  Hundreds (if not thousands) of drums and xylophones played the same song, mostly in synch, as the boys and girls marched, mostly in step.

I didn’t so much meet Oksana’s instructor as say hello and then stand behind her for 40 minutes.  It was impossible to talk over the marching music.

Afterwards, Oksana and I went back to the hostel to check our email before lunch.  The women that run the rooftop cafe during breakfast were rendering sugarcane syrup on the stove and, like magic, dozens of bees had found their way into the glassed-in room.  While uploading some photos to Facebook, one stung me on the Achilles tendon.  It was a completely unwarranted attack; I was sitting perfectly still!  I flicked the bee off and removed the stinger within five seconds.  It throbbed for 10 minutes or so, but that was about it.

We decided to leave the beehive and go get some lunch.  We walked the four blocks to Cafe Pan Rico and sat down in the empty cafe.  I had a banana batido (basically a warm, banana-flavored milkshake) and a nice fruit bowl, covered in yogurt and granola.  Oksana opted for just a blackberry batido. We stopped by the market on the way back and bought a couple of deep-fried banana and cheese empanadas, too.

I was feeling sleepy, so I convinced Oksana to take a nap with me.  She agreed, so we stretched out in bed and tried to ignore all the street noises coming from beyond our window.  The maid hadn’t cleaned our room yet, so we knew that we’d be woken up by a knock at the door before too long.

And, an hour or so later, that’s exactly what happened.  There was a knock at the door and I jumped up to get it before she had a chance to barge in on us.  Oksana stayed in bed, awake, but feigning sleep.

I answered the door; there were two cute maids looking up at me (I stand a full head taller than most women around here.)

“Would you like your room cleaned?” she asked.  Or at least it was something very similar to that, just in Spanish.

“No, not today, I don’t think.”  I reached around to the hooks on the wall and put my hand on two wet towels. “But maybe we can just change the…”

I guess that’s when I passed out.

The next thing I remember, I’m coming awake from the most glorious nap.  Seriously, it felt like I’d been asleep for a week. Except…

Except why is Oksana hovering over me?  Why is she holding me down with her hand planted firmly on my chest?  And why the hell am I on the hardwood floor between our bed and wall?

Oksana spoke first, “Are you okay?”

I was in the Jesus pose. Legs straight, arms out and slightly bent as if waiting for a hug.  I put my arms down. “What happened?”

“You fainted!” I looked over by the door and the two maids were now in the room, eyes huge, hands over their mouths.  Oh.  Oh, Shit.

I turned back to Oksana. “How long was I out?” It felt like forever.

“You weren’t.  Your eyes never closed!”  That must have been disconcerting.

“How did I get on the floor?  Did you put me down here?”  (I still wasn’t thinking so clearly.)

“No, you fell there!”

I didn’t see how that was possible.  I mean… even lying down, my feet were a good meter and a half from where I was standing.

Maybe 10 seconds had progressed since I’d hit the floor and I was finally feeling like my brain was working again.  I wasn’t sweating, I didn’t feel dizzy. I started to sit up to assure the maids that everything was okay.  Oksana wouldn’t let me, so I just told them from the floor.

“Estoy bien.” I could even manage the Spanish.

“¿Sí? ¿Está bien?” Shaky voices. They didn’t sound convinced.

“Sí, gracias. ¡Todo bien!” I looked to Oksana; she was rooting around in our snack cache for something sugary.  She handed me a strawberry lollipop.

“Todo bien, todo bien,” she backed me up.  And with that, and doubt written all over their faces, they backed out of the room.

When they were gone, I looked back to Oksana and asked, “Did I at least fall gracefully?”

She gave a nervous laugh.  “No, no you did not!  You have no idea how loud a crash that was.  I can’t understand how you’re not bleeding all over the place right now.  It was so loud!”

Huh.  I didn’t feel injured, but, looking around, I couldn’t see how I wouldn’t be.  Two inches on my right was a wood-framed bed, an equal distance on the right was a waist-high shelf with all our stuff spread out across it.  My head was actually up against one of the backpacks stashed under that shelf.  Nothing on the shelf had been disturbed.  I fell perfectly into the one place that allowed an unobstructed pathway to the ground.  I would have said I was lucky… If it hadn’t been a parquet floor and if there hadn’t been a perfectly comfortable mattress to fall onto right next to it!

I only laid there another minute or two before climbing up onto the bed, but it was long enough to do a quick self evaluation.  I found a couple scratches on my upper arm and another on my wrist (probably caused by my watch catching on something.)  Later on, after flexing around a bit, I’d add a forearm bruising to my mental list of injuries.  Otherwise, nothing.

For ten minutes or so, Oksana and I talked it over.  She hadn’t actually seen the whole fall because her eyes were closed until she heard a gasp from one of the maids.   She opened them just in time to see me disappear below the edge of the bed, and loudly connect with the floor.  Was it graceful? No. No, it was not.

I remembered very little of the dizziness before the fainting.  I was tired, concentrating on making my point understood in Spanish, and twisting around to reach for the towels.  Then, nothing.

Oksana didn’t want me to get up, but I was feeling fine.  Under her supervision, I sat up slowly, waited, and then stood up even more slowly.  No dizziness at all.  I felt fine; Oksana admitted that I never even lost color.

I wanted to reassure the maids, so I opened the door.  They were still right there, in the hallway.  We did the whole “Are you okay, yeah I’m okay” exchange again before I had a chance to ask them, “¿Qué pasó?”

They told me I just went over backwards.  Did I say anything first?  Was there any warning?  Nope.  I just fell.  Are you sure you’re okay?  I did my best to reassure them that I was fine, and that they shouldn’t worry about me.  But I told them I was going to go back to bed, just in case.

Oksana and I have been wracking our brains, trying to figure out what could have caused this. Couldn’t have been low blood sugar; I’d had plenty of natural sugars with my lunch.

What was interesting was that this almost happened a few days ago!  Exactly the same setup: We’re taking a nap, maid knocks, I get up quick and tell her we don’t need the room cleaned, and this time, after closing the door I grabbed the shelf and said, “Whew! I stood up too quick there.  I felt like I was talking to her through a tunnel!”  At the time I was quite proud of my ability to speak Spanish coherently under those conditions.

So, it had precedence… but why was I so dizzy in the first place?

The first thing that occurred to both of us was the fever I had in the Galapagos.  I spent an evening with a high temperature and uncontrollable shivering, but the shipboard doc gave me a pill that broke the fever and a 5-day series of antibiotics afterwards.  Other than feeling incredibly lethargic the next day, I had no other symptoms.

(Well, that may not be true.  I experienced a loss of appetite after that.  Whether it was from the fever, a psychosomatic aversion to eating the food that might have given me food poisoning, or what, I don’t know.  But even though that loss of appetite has persisted, I haven’t felt any decrease in strength or stamina.  On the contrary, I’ve been exercising regularly since we arrived in Baños.)

Another thing we discussed was my apparent sleepiness over the last two days.  Both yesterday and today, I wanted a siesta.  Not exactly rare for me to nap on vacation, but over the last couple days, I’ve felt like I’ve needed one.

And then there was the shower incident.  The one where I slipped, had both my legs go right out from underneath me, and cracked my head something good on the tile wall.  Could I be experiencing concussion symptoms more than a week later?  Doubtful.

Which really leaves only the bee sting from this morning.  Even if we could blame the fainting spell on that, it wouldn’t explain why it almost happened before.

So, we talked about seeking out a doctor, but then agreed that without any other symptoms, there’s not much point.  I’m sure the diagnosis would be “dizziness caused by standing up to fast,” and the prescription would be, “don’t stand up so fast!”

And that’s some advice that I’m planning to take, anyway!

No related posts.

© Arlo for A Midgett Blog, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments |

You can make all the plans in the world, but life will still get in your way.

– Paraphrased from W.E. Griffin Jr. (My granddad)

My granddad told me that years ago and it struck me as one of life’s great truisms.  I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.

By now, Oksana and I expected to be deep in Central or South America, months into our round-the-world backpacking trip.  While we never had much of a plan, per se, we did have a sort of schedule lined up.  After driving through the United States, we thought we would depart from Florida around mid-August.  But then, because we were tired of driving, we pushed that back a couple weeks.

It was an easy decision to make; we were visiting my grandparents at their cottage on the beach in Nags Head.  We thought, Why not enjoy some sun and sand before heading south? Both Oksana and I like spending time with my grandparents and, in addition, my grandmother could use our help.  She was still recovering from a double-whammy of a heart attack and pneumonia from back in February.

All summer, my extended family took their turns visiting the cottage.  By the end of August, everyone had left for home, leaving only my overwhelmed aunt and grandfather to care for my grandmother.  Oksana and I realized that we were in the unique position of not having a job to run back to and, if we were willing to put off the start date of our trip a little longer, we could stay and help. We discussed it and decided to push back our departure date again until the end of September.

And then out of nowhere, on September 25th, we had another medical emergency in the family.  My aunt Susie, upon whom my grandparents relied so heavily, ended up in the emergency room with… well, we still don’t know what happened.  She’s been in and out of intensive care units and transported between three different hospitals now.  I’ve lost track of all the CAT scans, MRIs, spinal taps, and blood tests they’ve done.  As a family, we’ve weathered diagnoses of meningitis, encephalitis, multiple sclerosis, vasculitis, prescription drug overdoses and underdoses… even bird flu! We may not know the underlying cause, but we do know that she had upwards of four separate strokes.

In the short term, my mom (her sister) and my cousin (her daughter) flew down from Ketchikan to lend a hand.  My mom, realizing that my aunt would no longer be able to care for their parents, flew back to Ketchikan to start packing her things for a semi-long-term stay in North Carolina.  My cousin has stayed with her mom in the hospital, and Oksana and I are staying with my grandparents until my mom moves to NC.

Travel is important to us, but family? More so.

However, we do have a plan now.  Despite not having a real itinerary, we did have one commitment in Ecuador.  Five friends are joining us for a jaunt through the Galapagos starting around the 15^th of November.  Oksana bought our tickets a couple days ago; we leave on 10^th.

No related posts.

© Arlo for A Midgett Blog, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments |

View the same video on Youtube.

Here’s a long-ish podcast episode about the NASA Tweetup I attended back in May.  Oksana wasn’t able to go with me, so this video ending up being a one-man show.  There’s some good stuff in there, I think, but I ran into some problems during the production (not the least of which was overexposing my “narrator” shot… grrr!)  My intent was to convey my own experiences at, and thoughts about, the NASA Tweetup.  I hope I managed to at least do that.

Originally I thought I’d post it in June, but packing for our backpacking-around-the-world trip got too crazy for that.  Then, I thought I’d post it on the first week of the trip, but the trip itself got too crazy for that!

Oksana and I are finding ourselves facing down the Traveler Blogger’s Dilemma: How do we budget time for webpage work when there’s a whole exciting world out there to see?  Turns out that’s especially hard when you’re visiting friends and family!

The following is a transcript of the above video for Google’s benefit (ignore it, watch the video instead!)

So, back in April, I had planned a vacation with two of my friends to go see what I thought was going to be a once in a lifetime experience.  That was one of the last four space shuttle launches in Florida.  We watched that launch from the NASA Causeway which is about as close as you can expect to get if you’re just a member of the public, but we had to pay about $110 dollars for that privilege.  From 11 o’clock the night before until about 6:30 in the morning, with a gap of maybe an hour and a half when we toured the visitor’s center in the middle of the night, we were stuck on a bus.  I’m not complaining, we saw a fantastic launch, I got some awesome pictures, and it’s a memory that will live with me forever.

And with three shuttle launches to go, I never thought I’d get to see another one…

(Twitter | Chance to see launch! RT @NASA: registration for STS-132 launch will open Apr 19-20. You don’t have to be 1^st! http://www.nasa.gov/tweetup | 10:22am Apr 16th via TwitterGadget | joe_e_bear | Joseph E Sears)

..but!  One of my friends let me know that the NASA Twitter feed was advertising a contest of sorts, more of a lottery actually.  They were going to be invite people to their “Tweetup” for the next shuttle launch.  Turns out over 1000 people signed up and they chose 150 – one of which was me!

They were organizing two days worth of events before the shuttle launch…and they were going to let us see the shuttle launch from the press site which is about 3 miles closer than the Causeway I’d seen it on before.

That clenched it, I had to go.

So the first day I’m there, I drive to the Kennedy Space Center, and using the directions they gave me, I find the place where we registered.  We were all standing in line, very excited to give them our IDs, and in exchange they gave us a NASA bag full of all sorts of promotions goodies.

One of the coolest things in there was a bag of freeze dried “space ice cream,” which I haven’t tried yet, so I’m going to go ahead and give it a shot here.  It’s like an ice cream bar — sort of warm and dehydrated. (laugh) (bite) (chew) But actually really good!

At the security checkpoints, we had to flash our incredibly cool NASA Tweetup press badges.  Then we drove to the Vehicle Assembly Building and hung a right, and right there was the press area.

They had a tent set up for us right next to the countdown clock and it had air conditioning inside, it was grass on the ground with tables set up everywhere, with power connections and wi-fi so that we could get on the internet and user our Twitter accounts.  It was actually a very comfortable setup.

They had a podium up front, flanked by two screens showing whatever NASA TV was showing and they paraded in a whole bunch of guest speakers for us the first morning.

John Yembrick, NASA Spokesman
Robert Braun, NASA Chief Technologist
Janice Voss, Astronaut

Ron Woods, NASA Equipment Specialist
Jon N. Cowart, Orbiter Engineering Manager
Stephanie Stilson, Flow Director – Orbiter Discovery
Dave Wolf, Astronaut

When the speakers were talking, I tried to give them my full attention.  I took a few pictures of course, and some video, but I noticed a lot of people were just buried in their laptop, tweeting and retweeting everything that was said.  I’m sure NASA loved that because the whole point inviting so many people is that we rebroadcast that to our own audiences and build up the enthusiasm that we feel for NASA.

I posted maybe 20 tweets that day and worried that I was boring people that follow me; some people must have posted literally hundreds.  Looking around at the “Tweeps,” as we called ourselves, I noticed a very diverse bunch of people.  There were quite a few that knew a lot more than I did about NASA.  There were some, like me, who were just sort of there, star struck and just taking it all in.

That afternoon, after lunch, we got to go on a tour of some of the NASA facilities.  First stop was the International Space Station Center.  There was an introductory movie, that was maybe five minutes long, and then we were let into a place where they had mockups of the different living modules and the science modules.

I almost missed it because we didn’t have a lot of time there, but if you crossed this elevated bridge, you could look down into the real clean room.  There wasn’t a lot of activity going on, but it was kind of cool looking down into the place where they actually build the modules for the space station.

Next stop was the Saturn V Center which was really, I thought, quite impressive.  First we were shown a movie that talked about the Space Race.  Kind of emotional when they touched on some of the losses and hurdles that were overcome to achieve the first moon landing.

(I was a launch controller here, when from this very spot, Man took off to fly to the moon.)

After that we were ushered into the actual Mission Control room that has been restored and sort of turned into a museum.  They had a presentation there that kind of made it feel like it did when they launched the Saturn V rocket.  And they dimmed the lights; you could see the different control stations light up and the sequence of events on the wall…

(Oxygen tank has been pressurized…)

After that, we had about an hour or so that we could wander about the Saturn V museum. They had the newly-restored Saturn V rocket with all sorts of displays and dioramas around.

I touched a rock that actually came from the moon.

(Lunar Sample 70035.40.020 | Apollo 17, December 7-19, 1972 | This basalt sample, estimated to be 3.7 billion years old, was collected by astronaut Harrison Schmitt near the Taurus-Littrow Valley region of the Moon.)

I went in to get a drink and found out that they were incredibly expensive and made a joke on Twitter that that must be how they were funding the space program.

(I think we now know how they’re funding the space program… http://twitpic.com1nhnua #nasatweetup 11:44am May 13^th via Tweetdeck | rlomidgett | Arlo Midgett)

After the Saturn V Center, we had what was probably the most amazing experience, for me, for the day.

We went out to the launch pad. We were within maybe 200 or 300 yards of the Space Shuttle Atlantis the day before it was set to launch.  There were camera boxes all around us that people had set up, and we were there to watch what they call the Rotating Service Structure retract.

It’s that huge apparatus that’s leaning up against the Space Shuttle and they pull it away, leaving the Shuttle exposed on the launch pad by itself.  It happens very slowly, so you don’t really end up staring at it the whole time, but bit-by-bit and piece-by-piece, you see Atlantis revealed on the launch pad.  It was very, very cool to be there for that.

Before we left we had our group Tweetup photo taken by the NASA photographer.  I left that night at probably around 6:30pm and while I was in Orlando, I called a local radio station, here in Juneau, and gave a short little interview about my experiences down there.  Which was kind of neat; the next day I had a lot people sending me tweets saying that they woke up to me on the radio.

The second day didn’t start out so great.  I guess there were something like 300,000 people driving to the coast, and I didn’t plan ahead for the traffic, so I got there a little bit late and was literally running in to get into the second Tweetup group photo.

After that, we again set up in the Tweetup tent and I can’t speak for everybody else, but my sense of anticipation for the launch made it so that I couldn’t quite pay attention like I did the day before.  I found myself getting up and going outside and looking at the countdown clock.  I went and found a spot where I could set up my tripod and sort of claim my space up front.  There was a moment were CNN came in and interviewed some people at the Tweetup.

I, myself, was right behind Stephanie when she was giving a local TV station an interview.

Stephanie Schierholz, NASA Social Media Manager
(Today they are primarily here to watch the launch, but we have some guest speakers for them…)

And then they turned and talked to me.  As far as I know, that never aired; I didn’t see anything on their website, but…

About 45 minutes before the launch, I went out and started setting up my tripod and my camera gear.  I had decided that, this time, I was going to go for video since I had focused on getting photos on the last launch, but with three or four cameras with me, I couldn’t really decide what to use, so I had a kind of creative solution: I brought a tripod plate, and with bungee cords and gaffer’s tape I put all three of my cameras on it and focused them all on the launch pad so that when I moved it, they would move together and hopefully keep pointing at the same thing.

Our only rule in setting up our tripods was that if any of the official media asked us to move, we had to.  Fortunately, where I picked apparently wasn’t in the way, because the only media that came over to me just wanted to take pictures of my crazy camera setup.

In the 45 minutes before the Shuttle launch, we watched manatees frolicking in the water out in front of us.  An alligator swam right underneath, right by my feet.

The launch itself was spectacular!  Being half-again as close as I was on my first launch, I could definitely tell a difference in the sound.  It was louder! I actually felt the rumble in my chest.  It shook me.

(Go Atlantis!)

Unfortunately, I must have bumped the focusing ring, or something, on the camera that was set to take some photos, because every one single one of them turned out blurry.  Do I regret that?  Not a bit!  The only disappointment was that, from our vantage point, the column of smoke went straight up, and as the Shuttle arched over the eastern horizon, it fell behind that column of smoke and we weren’t even given a chance to see the booster separation.

After the launch, I was coming down off an emotional high and I had a long drive ahead of me, but it was interesting to think that there were hundreds or thousands of NASA employees all over the country that their work was just beginning.  The Space Shuttle had to get into orbit, and then dock with the space station, carry out their mission, and then return.

I just kind of chilled out in the Tweetup tent and spent some time out on the grass in front of the countdown clock reflecting on an amazing experience.

It’s funny to think all of this came about because of Twitter, a service that so many people don’t want to join because they think it’s people talking about what they had for lunch

(Screencap:  Twitter search for “just ate a sandwich”)

But without Twitter, I never would have seen a Shuttle launch from the press site.  And a big thanks to Stephanie at NASA who put this whole thing together!  I mean, she gave me a second once-in-a-lifetime experience.  And who knows?  With two more Shuttle launches, maybe there’s a third once-in-a-lifetime experience waiting for me?

Related posts:

1. PV013: Tagua de Wilson
2. PV014: Salar de Uyuni
3. PV015: African Big 5 Safaris

© Arlo for A Midgett Blog, 2010. | Permalink | 17 comments |

Boy oh boy.  You’d think now that I’m officially unemployed, I’d have all the free time in the world.  Not true!  I have a million and one things to do, starting with packing up one life and preparing to embark on another.

One thing I really need to get going on will be accomplished by this blog post.  It’s time to plan our going away party!  It’s going to be EPIC and if you’d like to see us off, you’re totally invited.

Here’s the low-down:

• It’s going to be all day on Saturday, June 19^th (starting at noon, dinner at 6pm)
• It’ll be at the Schiable House, on Back Loop Road (next to the Mendenhall River Bridge)
• Anyone that knows us is welcome to show (and bring a guest if you like!) but you’ll need to RSVP
• This will double as Oksana’s 30^th birthday party (more on that later)
• It’ll be a potluck (ohGodnotanotherpotluck!  Yes, but hold on:  There’s a theme!)
• The theme will be: A Second Thanksgiving (I don’t have a parenthetical for this, but I was on a roll)

“A Second Thanksgiving” theme is something I’ve wanted to set up with my friends for a long time now.  I mean, seriously, why shouldn’t we have more than one Thanksgiving?  Besides the sentiment of, you know, giving thanks for the things in our lives, shouldn’t we be able to enjoy all that wonderful food more often than once a year?  Turkey, stuffing, casseroles, cranberries, rolls, pumpkin pie… I’m making a declaration right now: It’s time to break out your favorite family recipes!

And this is why you need to RSVP: We can’t have everyone bringing cranberries.  I’ll start us off: I’m bringing the turducken.  What’s that?  OH YEAH THAT’S RIGHT I SAID TURDUCKEN!! Also, put me down for stuffing.

We can coordinate RSVPs and potluck dishes here in the comments, I guess.  Oksana and I hope we’ll have a lot of people show up, so I’m throwing out a request for at least one other “big dish” item.  Anyone willing to tackle another turkey?  Of course, we’ll need plenty of side dishes.  I suspect we’ll need at least two of everything.  Maybe even more.  (By the way, the Schiable House has a kitchen, so we can at least do some of the cooking there.)

As I mentioned above, we will also be celebrating Oksana’s 30^th birthday party!  Now, let it be said that the best gift you can give her is your presence at our going away party (well, maybe the best gift would be sticking around to help clean up…), but if you feel like you must buy her a gift, then you’re going to have to get creative.  Chances are, if your present has any sort of physical properties at all, it’ll probably just sit in storage for the next 12 months.  No puppies, okay?

Finally, if I can get my act together, I may pull together some video/computer equipment for the party, too.  I would love to have something set up in the corner where guests could put pins on a map, give suggestions on where in the world we should travel, or just get some help (if needed) subscribing to our podcast.  But really, that’s all secondary because…

We’re going to be gone for an entire year.  All we want to do is make time to see our friends one last time before we go.

So, get those RSVPs in, okay? (Recipes! s’il vous plaît) And we’ll see you in a couple weeks!

No related posts.

© Arlo for A Midgett Blog, 2010. | Permalink | 15 comments |

We also have a thousand-and-one other things to do.  Arrange for medical/travel insurance, complete our vaccinations, set up new bank accounts, cancel most of our utilities and make arrangements on the others to pay up a year in advance, buy ferry tickets, pack, fix the website, and somehow keep posting content (even if it’s Spartan, like this.)

On the plus side, my new Sony Vaio laptop arrived yesterday (after much struggle with FedEx Ground!)  Somewhere around here is my Adobe Master Collection serial number and as soon as I find it, I’ll finally get to try editing actual AVCHD files.  My previous Dell didn’t have the horsepower; let’s see what these i7 chips can do.

Appropo of nada, here is my letter of resignation:

May 10, 2010

Jim Gage, Media Services Manager
University of Alaska, Southeast
11120 Glacier Hwy
Juneau, AK 99801

Jim,

It is with sadness that I’m submitting this letter.  As you know, my wife and I have decided to take a year off to travel the world, therefore; I’m resigning my position as Digital Media Specialist at the University of Alaska Southeast. My last day will be June 1, 2010.

Over the years, I’ve come to cherish my role at UAS and I’m proud of the work I’ve done, not just for our department, but for the university as a whole.  Sprinting alongside students in an Ultimate Frisbee class, giving Spanish lessons in a tent on the Inca Trail, shooting ice field footage for the Environmental Science program from the open door of a helicopter, creating a 50-year anniversary party slideshow… No other job could give me the same opportunities!

I’ve worked full-time in Media Services since early 1999, and in my current role since October of 2000 (In fact, I started out in the glamorous role of Student Assistant on Aug 23, 1996!)  In addition, I have had the pleasure to work for the university in a freelance capacity, as a volunteer, and as an adjunct faculty member.

As I prepare to leave, I find myself reflecting on a job that, surprisingly, evolved into my career.   I can’t overstate how much I appreciate how UAS, and specifically the ITS department, labored to be flexible with regards to my contract.  Changing to an idyllic 10-month contract really worked for me, eliminating a sense of burnout and renewing my drive to contribute to the university in other ways.

The University of Alaska Southeast has been very good to me and I will be making every effort to return to it just as soon as our travels are complete.

Sincerely

Arlo Midgett

I would have thought I would be overjoyed to leave work behind for a year, but for some reason, I’ve actually been enjoying my job recently.  I may actually miss it; color me surprised.

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© Arlo for A Midgett Blog, 2010. | Permalink | No comment |

Have you ever thought about going to the Galapagos Islands?  How ‘bout this fall?

Here’s the deal.  Oksana and I will very likely be passing through Ecuador around October or November and I can’t imagine not taking her out to that amazing archipelago.  Unfortunately, it’s going to be way outside our budget of $100/day.  The rest of Ecuador is quite inexpensive, so we might just settle down for awhile and save up for the trip, but I’m hoping we can find another way…

When I was there in January, our group paid for a seven-day tour of the islands.  For the entire week, our home was the 78’ motor yacht, Floreana.  There’s room for 16 passengers (8 rooms), and everything from an English-speaking naturalist guide to three meals a day was provided.  Our itinerary generally consisted of two land excursions and two snorkeling excursions every day, with a couple of nights out on the towns (Puerto Ayora and San Cristóbal.)  Although there were only five people in our group, we quickly bonded all the other tourists and had a fantastic time!

Every time I bring up my trip to the Galapagos, someone says, “Oh, I’d love to go there someday.”  It gets me thinking.  How hard would it be to fill the Floreana with friends and family?

This is me, inviting you to join us on a Galapagos trip!

Let’s discuss the details a bit:

• Right now, Oksana and I don’t know when we’ll be getting to Ecuador, but my best guess is late-October, early-November.  Obviously, if this Galapagos trip comes together, we’ll adjust our itinerary accordingly.
• I would suggest taking two weeks off from work/school for this trip, but you could probably get away with just 10 days if you had to.  We’ll be spending an entire week on the boat, plus you’ll need a couple days from travel from the U.S.  If you’ve got a bit of extra time, we can tour Quito, visit the equator, and go to the renowned Otavalo market.

Cost estimate:

• Round-trip airfare from the U.S. to Quito (or Guayaquil): ~$1,500
  (I think it cost us $1,800 from Juneau, but it can probably be done cheaper with advance planning.  Also, don’t forget: You could save a lot by using your airline miles!)
• Round-trip airfare, Quito-Galapagos: ~$425
• Galapagos park fee: $100
• Seven-day boat tour: ~$1,000, plus tips
  (We paid $1,000, but that was arranged after we arrived at the islands.  Prices in Quito were around $1,250 for the same trip, but if we really can reserve the whole boat as a group, I’ll bet we’ll be able to negotiate $1,000 again.  Note that this will cover everything for the entire week, excepting sodas/alcohol and possibly incidentals in the port towns.)
• Extras: Maybe $500.
  If it were me, I’d probably budget an extra $500, just to be safe, but if you want to pinch pennies, you can get by on $20 for every extra day spent in Ecuador (which will cover food, transportation, and a clean hostel room, but probably not any extra tours or souvenirs.)  Maybe double that in the Galapagos, $40 per day, for any time not spent on the boat.  Obviously you can upgrade to the Hilton in Quito, if you like, but that will be much more like U.S. prices!
• And if I can convince you it’s worthwhile: $100 to Oksana and me…
  …in exchange for taking on any and all arrangements that you’d like us to take care of!  We’ll reserve the yacht, the hotels, the Quito-Galapagos airline tickets, we’ll meet you at the airport and take you to your hotel or hostel, we’ll give you a tour of Quito (or of other parts of Ecuador, if you have the time!), and we’ll make sure to have you back at the airport in time for your return flight home.  (If 14 people to join us, and if those 14 each chip in an extra $100, it’ll just barely cover one of our own trips.  Still wouldn’t be quite within our budget, but it’d be close enough for government work!)

So what are we looking at, total cost-wise?  I think you could do this for $3,500. (And hey, you Alaskans can knock that price down if you throw your dividend at it, right?)

Yes, that’s a lot of money, but let me assure you, a week in the Galapagos is so worth it!  There really is no place like it in the world.  The animals are completely fearless and you will be right up next to giant tortoises and both land and marine iguanas!  If you like birds, you’ll see blue-footed boobies, albatross, frigate birds, pelicans, pink flamingos, Darwin’s famous finches, and probably even penguins!  In the water, you’ll swim right up to sharks†, manta rays, sea turtles, and sea lions!

Oh, the sea lions!  I’d go again just to swim with them.  I can’t tell you how amazing it is to swim with the same sea lion pup for half an hour, playing follow-the-leader, blowing bubbles at each other, and looking each other in the eye.  Magical.

I wish I had the time right now to put together a video of our last trip there (I have literally hours of footage and no time to go through it.)  The pictures sprinkled throughout this post will have to do for now.

So.  Are you interested?  Even a little bit?  Well then… we need to hear from you!

I’ve organized trips like this for the university before, and what I like to do in the early stages is just get a feel for who’s thinking this might work for them.  What you need to do is send me an email (or get in touch with me another way) to let me know how likely you are to go with us.

Something like:

100% — “Count me in; I’m going no matter what!”
75% — “I really want to go, but it’ll depend on the dates.”
50% — “I have the time this fall, but I’ll have to see how much money I can sock away this summer.”
10% — “I’d love to go, but I don’t know how it’ll ever work.  Keep me informed, I’ll pray for a miracle!”

Really, the percentages don’t matter much.  If you’re interested at all, let me know!  I’ll form an email list and we can take it from there.

It may be that only two or three people want to go.  That’s okay; it’ll be super easy to find a tour that can fit a smaller group.  If, however, we get more than 14 people interested, I’ll probably have to form a waitlist of some sort.  In that case, your percentages will be much more important.

So what are you waiting for?  Send me that email already!

^† (You don’t have to swim next to the sharks if you don’t want to.)

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© Arlo for A Midgett Blog, 2010. | Permalink | One comment |

When I first went to Machu Picchu, I tried to absorb as much of it as I could.  I figured it was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  Same thing with the Galapagos; while I was there, I slept as little as possible so that I wouldn’t miss a thing.  Funny thing is, I actually went back to the Galapagos a second time and (I still can’t get over this!) I’ve been to Machu Picchu three times now.

So when I planned to attend the Space Shuttle Discovery launch last month, even though they’re retiring the Shuttle program, and even though arranging a viewing six miles away is still crazy expensive, and even though I live almost 3,300 miles away in Alaska, I guess I really shouldn’t have counted on it being another once-in-a-lifetime thing.  Because you never know.

When I got back to Juneau after the STS-131 launch, my friend, Joe, ReTweeted a message from NASA on Twitter:

Chance to see launch! RT @NASA: registration for STS-132 launch will open Apr 19-20. You don’t have to be 1st! http://www.nasa.gov/tweetup

I followed the link, read that registration for a NASA-sponsored “tweetup” would open at 6am Alaska time the following Monday, and set an appointment for it in my calendar.  When that morning rolled around, I filled out the sparse information they asked for and promptly forgot about the whole thing.

What was the harm?  I figured tons of people would be signing up, and if by some miracle I was selected, I’d figure it all out later.  Well, guess what.  A few days later I got the email; I’m in!

So what exactly is a tweetup?  Basically it’s just a gathering of people who have one particular thing in common: they use Twitter.  In this case, NASA has selected about 150 twitterers (out of more than a thousand applicants) and they’ll be hosting us at the Kennedy Space Center for two days, May 13^th and 14^th.  They have events and tours planned for the first day and we get to view the launch from the press area on the second.  In the meantime, we’ll have an air-conditioned tent with wi-fi, tables, and power supplies set up just in case we get the urge to share our experience online.

NASA isn’t actually covering any of our expenses.  I’ll have to figure out a way to pay for a plane ticket down to Florida, a hotel room, and a rental car.  We even have to buy or bring our own food for the two days spent at the Space Center.  Not that I’m complaining!  Getting to view the launch from three miles away, as opposed to being six miles away on the Causeway, is more than fair compensation!

NASA isn’t even allowing us to bring a guest, so I was a little worried when I showed the invitation to Oksana.  Half way through reading it, she squealed and said, “You have to do this!  What an opportunity!”  I have the best wife.

The next step was clearing it with work.  I’d just gotten back from a two-week vacation and, furthermore, was about to turn in a letter of resignation because of our upcoming world travels.  It would have been reasonable to expect that my supervisor wouldn’t approve more time off, but I think he saw my excitement and decided to let me go.  I’m going to miss this job.

The biggest hurdle remaining is to figure out how I can get a plane ticket that’s not too terribly expensive, but can also be changed if there’s a launch delay.  Normally Oksana and I have plenty of airline miles saved up, but I blew them all on the last launch when they pushed the STS-131 launch back by three weeks.  (Originally that trip cost me only 32,500 miles, but changing the ticket cost another 27,500 and $150 in change-ticket fees.)

At any rate, I’m very excited and will do my best to turn this wonderful opportunity into a Postcard Valet podcast episode in late May or early June.  If you’re interested in following my updates as they happen, they’ll certainly be posted to my @rlomidgett account on Twitter, on my blog, and maybe even on Youtube and Facebook, too.

The only thing I haven’t been able to decide is if I should concentrate my attention during the launch on getting spectacular photos or spectacular video.  Opinions?

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© Arlo for A Midgett Blog, 2010. | Permalink | 5 comments |

Oh, I had such productive plans for June!  Oksana and I were taking a trip back east to visit my grandparents and because this year we were staying with them in the country – as opposed to their cottage on the beach – I thought I would have all the time in the world to work on my website(s), edit videos, and so forth.  I should know by now that my vacations come with a particular mental state that isn’t conducive to work.

Am I disappointed?  Heck no.  Oksana remarked that just a few years ago, she wouldn’t have been able to appreciate a “boring” vacation, but this year, that’s just what we needed.  It was great to just get away from it all, read a book, and hang out with the grandparents… even if it did mean I had bury the nagging feeling that I wasn’t getting much done.

Actually, our vacation started with a little bit of Oksana’s work.  When her boss heard that we were flying into DC on the weekend of a big Subaru conference, he convinced her to attend and represent their dealership.  I wasn’t thrilled, but we were put up for a couple nights at a fancy hotel, so I didn’t complain.

We arrived in DC on Friday night and after getting our luggage, we headed over to the Alamo desk to pick up our average mid-size sedan.  The guy behind the counter tried to up-sell us to a costlier model (“I can put you in a premium for the price of a full-size…”) but we weren’t having any of it.  Turns out, their parking lot was empty and our choices amounted to a 30-minute wait while they washed a returning sedan, or driving off with a Toyota FJ Cruiser.  We didn’t even want an SUV, but we sure got our “mid-sized” money’s worth when we skipped their up-sell!

A problem with our Nokia N810′s turn-by-turn GPS activation essentially turned the 15-minute trip to the hotel into an hour-and-a-half nightmare.  First, DC’s lack of road signs lead us the wrong direction on the George Washington Parkway, and when finally figured that out and turned around, we found ourselves on the waterfront, right next to the bridge we wanted to cross.  The same bridge that, apparently, didn’t have a visible on-ramp.  Backtracking inland down numerous one-way streets finally resolved that little dilemma.  Which just set us up for the parking debacle…  We didn’t get settled until almost 2am.  The Subaru breakfast started just 5 hours later.

We managed to stay awake for the keynote, where the heads of Subaru congratulated their dealerships on a very tough year (to hear them tell it, Subaru was one of the only manufacturers out there that saw, though small, an increase in sales in 2008.)  Oksana did a little social mixing during the day, but the takeaway memory was the demo out in the parking lot.  We each drove a 2010 model Outback over their “Performance Point” to try out its new anti-rollback feature.  I was impressed.  Plus driving up a hill so steep you can only see sky over your hood… that was pretty cool, too.

Subaru pulled out all the stops for the reception dinner on Saturday night.  A fleet of busses picked us up at the hotel and drove us to the Smithsonian Museum of American History.  There we had about three hours to split between wandering the exhibits, sampling hors d’oeuvres and wines, loading up our plates from strategically placed buffets, partaking from the open bar, and listening to the live hip-hop electric violin band.

On Sunday, after the conference was over, Oksana and I drove all over DC for some shopping.  There were a few big-ticket items we wanted to check out for our upcoming travels.  We hit the Wal-Marts for a new netbook, the Costcos for a certain video camera model, and an REI for some research on ultra light tents, sleeping bags, and sturdy backpacks.  We got some good info at REI, but we struck out on all the other items.

That evening, we met up with our friend, Liza, for dinner.  We ate tapas outdoors at a great Spanish restaurant and spent the evening catching up.  I think Oksana and I could have hung out with her all night, but we were visiting on a work night and shortly after dark it was time to walk her to the nearest metro station.

The next morning we drove down to Hertford, NC, where my grandparents live.  We stopped at the first Wal-Mart we saw from the freeway (In Newport News) and, lucky for us, they seemed to have the netbook model we were looking for (an 11.6″ Acer Aspire.)  Unfortunately for us, our credit card was declined three times.  We finally resorted to buying it with our American Express and calling Bank of America from the parking lot.  BoA’s fraud protection division was involved and, 20 minutes later, after giving up our security information, accusing Oksana of “sounding like she was being fed answers,” making us try to remember every recurring monthly transaction on our account, what vacation we took in November of 2008, and confirming every single freaking transaction in the last two weeks, we finally had our card unlocked. Oksana spent another 10 minutes on the phone registering a complaint with a supervisor.

(And all this because they “noticed suspicious activity on our account outside our normal purchasing region.”  Excuse me?  How many times have I traveled through North Carolina, using this same card?  Besides, we’d already racked up three days worth of charges down there! Way to catch it quick there, BoA fraud algorithms!)

We arrived in Hertford early that afternoon, glad to be done navigating the girth of the FJ through multi-lane interstate traffic.  My aunt was there to meet us with my grandparents and we quickly settled into the routine of our stay.

Oksana spent the bulk of her time on the back deck.  Even though some of the days clocked in at 95 degrees, she savored the heat as she read her book.  Periodically she would get up to refill her bowl full of fruit or snap pictures of the flock of geese that visited in the early afternoon (not to mention the various other critters running around the big yard.)

My memories of this trip will mostly center around the tech support I did on my granddad’s new computer.  We set up a new e-mail account to make sending picture attachments easier, wrote notes on how to better use the printer, and any number of other tips and tricks for when he’s online, but what was really rewarding was setting up Skype with a webcam.  Each weekday morning, precisely at 11am, my grandparents would fire up a new video conference with my mom in Ketchikan.  Oksana and I usually sat in, and it was so rewarding to see their confidence with the new technology grow.  By the time we left, they were completely on their own (and I’ve already received Skype calls from the both of them upon returning home!)

Also, I’ve got to say, my grandfather – who, I might add, is turning 89 this month; Hi granddad! – is about the best damn Peggle player I’ve ever seen.  It’s really the only game he’s played, so we bought him Bejeweled 2 for Father’s Day, but he has so much fun trying to break 30 million on Peggle that I don’t know if he’ll ever get around to playing it…

The rest of our week in Hertford progressed slowly and pleasantly.  We had breakfast, lunch, and dinner at regular intervals (a novelty for us), met with other friends and family, and went out on a boat ride out into the swamp with my grandfather where we took plenty of pictures of osprey, turtles, and each other.  We celebrated Oksana’s birthday, made borsch for dinner, and returned the 11.6″ netbook to the local Wal-Mart when we realized that having a Bluetooth sticker on the keyboard didn’t actually mean that the computer had Bluetooth.  Figuring we had enough time to place an order online and have a new netbook delivered before we left, Oksana and I did the research and decided to go for a 10.1″ Acer with Bluetooth and a six-cell battery from J&R Music World ($349).  And it would have arrived in time, too, if J&R hadn’t conspired with Bank of America to block another of our transactions.  Once again, I found myself on the phone with the fraud detection department and when they started to go through my two weeks of transactions again, I almost hung up on them.  Turns out the two-day delay in processing my order was the result of using a different e-mail address than the one registered with Bank of America.  Excuse me for wanting my tracking number sent to a different account!

When we were down to just a few more days left in our vacation, Oksana and I decided to go to the beach, even though the other side of the family had the cottage until August 1^st.  We spent the first night just a few doors down at my great aunt’s cottage, instead.  That evening, Oksana and I went out for our favorite beach food – Pigman’s BBQ – then returned and passed the time by showing off digital photos of Alaska and other exotic places on my laptop.

We had an open invite to stay with her for a few days, but we were angling to do some SCUBA diving.  The Outer Banks is called The Graveyard of the Atlantic because there are so many shipwrecks along its coast, so we figured there’d be ample opportunity to don a wetsuit.  In fact, there’s a shipwreck only 250 yards offshore of my grandparents cottage, the USS Huron (1877), but after some online research, it seems like the more impressive wrecks were in deeper water.

Many of the dive sites we found were near Hatteras, and since I haven’t been that far down the coast since I was a kid, we decided to drive south and see what the more tranquil side of the Outer Banks had to offer.

Diving wise?  Not a heck of a lot.

There was only one little dive shop there in Hatteras and after we reserved a room in a motel managed by Midgett Realty (one of the very few “Midgetts” to beat me out on a Google search!), we stopped by to see what our options were.

Three people in the dive shop, all probable employees, looked up as we entered, yet no one asked if we needed any help.  After a few moments, awkwardly, Oksana asked if we might be able to get some information about diving in the area.  Thus began a five-minute ordeal where every tidbit of information had to be extracted with leading questions.  Are there shallow wreck dives in the area? (Not really, no.)  What are the water conditions like? (100ft visibility.)  How much bottom time would we be likely to get on the wrecks in 100ft of water? (About 20 min.)  How much would a 2-dive excursion cost? ($125.)  With rental gear? (Another $50.)

We asked many other questions, but you get the point.  After each answer, we were left with a pregnant pause whereupon we hoped someone would volunteer something, but no one there offered any information without prompting.  And here’s the kicker:  Even though Oksana and I weren’t too thrilled about spending $175 each for just 40 minutes of bottom time, I finally asked, “So, assuming we’d like to do one of these wreck dives, how would one go about booking a trip for tomorrow or the next day?”

“Oh, we’re booked up all week.  Some researchers chartered our boat.”

Frustrated, but in many ways sort of relieved, Oksana and I left the store and decided to do something else for our remaining days on the beach.

For the most part, we continued our ongoing vacation theme of just relaxing.  The hotel’s wi-fi network kept me happy (and not just because it’s SSID was named “Midgett Guest!”)  Oksana spent her time outside, planted in a chair by the water with her book.  The local flock of geese kept her company.

Obviously, we went to the beach a couple times, too.  We played in the surf on the ocean side, jumping over and through the waves.  We also waded out into the sound side with our underwater camera, just to see what we could see.  It was pretty shallow and silty; about the only creatures we saw were a couple hermit crabs and a lone fish or two swimming by.

Our one big beach outing was a visit to the Hatteras lighthouse.  At 208 feet, it’s the tallest lighthouse in the U.S., and apparently the tallest brick lighthouse in the world.  I wasn’t expecting to be overly impressed, but after climbing up to the top, I couldn’t help but admire the view.  Also, it sort of boggles the mind that the entire lighthouse had been moved about a half-mile inland just a few years back.

We wandered around the grounds, visited the museum, and apparently impressed one of the park rangers there when we mentioned we were from Alaska.  “You win.  That’s the farthest I’ve heard of anyone coming to visit the Hatteras Lighthouse.”

“You mean just for today or all summer?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “I think in forever.”

Couldn’t be true, I know.  But still.

Afterwards, we took a nice long stroll down the beach.  I got sunburned.

Eventually our last vacation day arrived.  We woke up early and hit the road about 7:30am.  From Hatteras, it took us about three hours to drive back to Hertford, where we stopped over for lunch.  Oksana was also able to finally able to pick up her new netbook.  Besides being able to see my grandparents and aunt one more time, my cousin also us in Hertford to see us off.  It was a nice interlude to what turned out to be a very  long day of driving.

We left Hertford around 1:30pm and headed for the Air and Space Center in Hampton, Virginia.  The night before, I had an idea that we could maybe swing an IMAX showing of Transformers 2 on the way back to DC.  We’d bought our tickets online for the 4pm show and my grandfather assured us that our departure time would put us there at least a full hour before the previews.

Well, we didn’t count on there being an accident in the James River Tunnel.  Our GPS led us right to the back of the stopped cars, a full six miles from the tunnel.  We found ourselves next to an exit for another bridge and decided to chance it before moving past in the stop-and-go (but mostly stop) traffic.  A very stressful 45 minutes followed as we manually mapped our way across an alternate route (the GPS kept trying to swing us back to the tunnel.)

We finally arrived at the movie theater, completely stressed out, about 15 minutes late.  While I parked the car, Oksana went inside and claimed our tickets.  The movie had already started, so we took the first seats we could see up in the front rows.  In an IMAX theater, that’s a recipe for motion sickness.  We craned our necks around and, incredibly, there were still seats available in the middle of the back row.  Once we moved ourselves back, we were at least able to enjoy the… theater.  I can’t say we enjoyed the movie because Transformers 2 is predictably pretty stupid, but also surprisingly boring.

After the movie we were right back on the road.  I called my aunt who lived only a couple hours up the road near Fredericksburg, to tell her we were on the way.  Even though we were going to arrive late, we still wanted to stop by and visit for an hour or two.  Of course, the day wouldn’t be complete without another traffic snafu; we lost another hour on the freeway because of an accident.  We never saw what all the tow trucks were for, but as we inched by the scene, we boggled over the full-size bus that had driven completely into the small wooded area on the median.  The only thing visible through the small hole in the trees was perhaps the rear quarter of the bus itself.

Eventually, after another GPS snafu, much texting, and one long phone call, we finally arrived at my aunt’s house.  It was great to see her and two more of my cousins, but since we arrived so late (10pm), Oksana and I felt guilty about keeping them up.  We borrowed a laptop to book a reservation in the Hyatt Regency near the airport in DC (Yay Hotwire!) and then we were back on the road one last time.

We rolled in, exhausted, and left our FJ Cruiser with the valet.  By the time we’d settled in, it was already 2am – another late night before another long day of travel.

But the next day wasn’t so bad after all.  We got up early, gassed up the rental, and discovered that the airport exit was literally right next to our hotel.  We turned in the car, flew through security, and boarded our plane without any trouble.  Both Oksana and I slept through most of the first flight just so we could be awake long enough to enjoy the first class upgrades we had from LAX on.

We had a five-hour layover in Seattle, and were met at the airport by our friend, Travis, who was only back in town for the weekend.  He was running his first marathon the next morning and we spent a lot of time at his place and at dinner talking about how he’d trained for the big day.

Travis dropped us off at the airport around 6:30pm and once again we cruised straight to the gate.  I expected our flight to Juneau (first class upgrades again) to be as relaxing as the previous one from L.A., but it was not to be.  A deaf five-year-old was sitting right behind me and he (understandably) had no concept of volume.  I swear that two-hour flight was somehow longer than the other two put together.

But it got us home.  And we had a much-needed weekend to recuperate ahead of us before jumping back into The Routine.  Oh, and one more little thing that kept the post-vacation blues at bay: As soon as we got back, we placed an order for our new 32GB iPhones..!

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© Arlo for A Midgett Blog, 2009. | Permalink | 7 comments |

This is an announcement I’ve been looking forward to making for a long time:

Oksana and I just quit our jobs!

Okay, not really. I just wanted to get your attention.

But actually, really! It’s just that our last day of work isn’t going to come around until next summer.  That’s right; we’ve put in our one year’s notice!  Next June, all our crap goes into storage and we set off on a long-planned, round-the-world trip.

This is something we’ve been talking about since before we married.  Before we could commit to such a bold move, we had to make sure we were in a position of security – with our finances, our education, our work experience, etc.

(Funny thing we learned about financial security: Once you’ve got it, it’s surprisingly hard to let go.)

This is why we haven’t settled down.  It’s why we were so anxious to stay out of debt, why we haven’t bought a house, and most definitely one of the reasons why we haven’t yet entertained the idea of having kids.

So, as excited as we are to shoulder a backpack and set off for the ends of the earth, we’re also a little bit freaked out.  Will our jobs be waiting for us when we get back? (Magic 8-Ball says: Outlook Good.)  Will the economy implode while we’re gone?  Do any of the big security questions even matter if we’re off having the experience of a lifetime?

Nope.

Where are we going?  No idea.  We don’t have (and probably won’t ever have) an itinerary.

Caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.
Wanderer, there is no path; the path is made by walking.

However, not knowing where we’re going isn’t the same as not having a plan!  Oksana and I have been brainstorming how we want to go about this for a long time and we’re going to use this coming year to solidify our goals.  We just bought ourselves a couple of Moleskin notebooks and we’re going to keep them with us so we can write down the ideas as they come to us.  This next year is going to be one long planning session…

Things we’re pretty sure we want to do:

• I want to blog and podcast the heck out of our experiences.  I want to share them with anyone who wants to travel with us vicariously and I’m pretty sure I can pull it off a once-a-week format (The Transient Books video I posted from Argentina was sort of the pilot program.)  In this day and age, even the most remote areas have internet access.  I plan to set aside ample time for writing, editing videos, and posting photos.Neither Oksana nor I have any real experience in front of a camera.  I’m confident that we’ll be able develop on-camera personalities and a certain editing style to our podcasts, but it’ll take a ton of practice.  I hope that we can begin experimenting during this planning year.  I expect there will be learning pains, but I’m actually fascinated by the process of improvement.  That is, rather than looking forward to perfecting the podcast, I’m even more interested to see what the body of work will look like as a whole.  In my mind, it’ll only be a failure if the last podcast isn’t any better than the first.
• We’re planning to do this trip on only $100 a day; in fact, that may become one of the “themes” of the blog and podcast (another might be “is it possible to create a decent podcast with the equipment in your backpack?”)  $36,500 seems to like a huge chunk of change.  On the other hand, $100 a day for two people means we won’t be staying in Holiday Inns.  It’ll be interesting.
• I want to take advantage of the 8,000 to 10,000 unique visitors my blog gets every month and see if we can recoup some of our expenses on this trip.  My plan in the coming months is – if it’s technologically possible – to reserve a new domain name, install the WordPress blogging software, and see if it can pull just the travel category posts out of A Midgett Blog’s MySQL database.  Readers of my personal blog will get everything I ever post, while people that aren’t as interested about our personal entries can subscribe to just the new travel blog.
• Oksana has her own interests and may contribute her own entries to the blog(s).  She’s thinking of giving weekly rundowns of the places we stay, the food we eat, and using her accounting skills to keep us apprised of how we’re doing on our $100 a day limit.

Things we’re mulling over:

• When will we leave Juneau and what will our first destination be?  Mostly likely June or July 2010.  And we might start with either the lower-48 or head straight down into Central and South America.
• Do we bring tents and sleeping bags to save on lodging?  Just how little can we bring with us?  Can we plan far enough ahead to have certain things shipped to and from home?  (“Mom, please FedEx empty hard drives #3 and #4 plus warm clothes to Siberia, and let me know when our box of souvenirs gets home!”)
  
• Oksana’s enthusiasm for the trip doubled when I suggested that we could create a business plan as part of the planning process.  A business plan could certainly focus our efforts at making money off the website.  Assuming we can create content engaging enough to attract an audience, will we be looking at product sales (photos, calendars, DVDs, etc), website ad revenue, sponsorship deals, or donations?  What we decide will certainly influence the look and feel of the website I’m going to design.If we actually make some money, what would we do with it?  Do we add it to our own pool of money and travel in a bit more comfort?  Do we extend the trip by one day for every $100 we make?  Or do we simply bank it all to offset our initial $36K expenditure?
• Can we take advantage of corporate donations and/or sponsorships to obtain some of the podcasting equipment?  Can we get a grant?
• What’s the best way to travel from point A to point B?  We’ll become quite familiar with each country’s bus system, I’m certain, but what about continent-hopping?  Can we save enough money by stopping for a couple weeks in one place to afford a trans-oceanic flight?  Can we hitch a ride on a freighter?Would a last-minute cruise ship fare be economical?How many countries will we have to skip because of unfairly expensive visas?
• Would any of our friends and family (or even people following along on the website) want to meet up with us somewhere along the way?  I’m sure seeing a familiar face from time to time would go a long way toward staving off the inevitable homesickness.
• And most important of all, WHERE WILL WE GO?  Central and South America are a given; so is Russia and some of the old Soviet states.  Southeast Asia is looking good for its low cost and multitude of dive sites.  Can we afford the more expensive European countries, too?  What parts of Africa are safe?  Can we possibly do all seven continents?

Next summer probably seems like a long way off, but with all the things we need to figure out and all the things I want to accomplish before then, I’m already starting to feel the pressure.

Before we can leave, we’ve got hundreds of questions that need answers.  I’m planning to present them, research them, and hopefully answer them – all on this website – in the next 12 months.

Stay tuned.

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1. Where in the World Are You?

© Arlo for A Midgett Blog, 2009. | Permalink | 9 comments |

Oksana wanted to know if I would accompany her to Portland for the weekend. She was bound for her first business conference – a thrilling adventure shared by all Toyota comptrollers of the Pacific Northwest – all I could look forward to was a couple days alone in the hotel room. You know what they say: A boring day sitting in a hotel room is better than a great day at work. I told her I’d be happy to make a long weekend out of it as long as she handled the details.

Our Wednesday departure date came along in late October; we put in half a day at the office and then hit the airport. Oksana scored some first class upgrades, so our Seattle to Juneau leg was a little more comfortable than usual.

We arrived late in the evening, grabbed our rental car (which was upgraded to a Dodge Avenger because all the compacts were taken) and started driving along the Columbia River towards Stevenson, Washington. Oksana, unused to big city night driving, was forced into the driver seat on account of my outstanding warrant in Oregon. [1] Fortunately, traffic was light (although the wind was strong) and we pulled into Stevenson about forty-five minutes after leaving the airport.

The conference was held at the Skamania Lodge – a sprawling complex, luxuriously fashioned, complete with manicured grounds, golf course, and spa. While Oksana spent the day networking with her fellow accountants, I passed most of the time in our room, enjoying the excellent wireless internet on our new laptop. Oh, it wasn’t all blog-writing and Warcraft playing. When the sun broke through the clouds, I hopped in the car and drove down to the main street in search of a few Diet Cokes.

Oksana was fairly busy the first day, but she managed to break away for an hour or two just before dinner. The sun was out, even if the strong winds off the Columbia were a bit chilly, and we decided to walk along the waterfront. Three bewetsuited kite surfers were out on the water, tacking back and forth the entire width of the river. We stopped for awhile to take pictures of them and the beautiful fall colors around us.

Later, walking along the paved path high above the waterline, I noticed a handful of rotting apples on the ground. Looking up, the tree was loaded with tiny green apples. One of the larger specimens was within reach; I picked it for Oksana. She pocketed it for later, wanting to wash it first. Back at the hotel, she took the first bite. I expected such a small, green apple to be tart, hard, unripe. Her face lit up and she pushed it to me. I took my own tentative bite and was surprised to taste a perfectly ripe apple. Neither mushy nor hard, not even a little bit bitter; except for its size, it would be the cream of the crop at the grocery store. I think maybe Washington might be on to something with their apples.

Day two at the lodge was much like day one, except that I had to check out of the room a few hours before Oksana’s conference was officially over. I spent about an hour and a half surfing the internet from a lounge chair out in front of the lodge, getting slightly, deliciously, sunburned. Oksana brought me cookies on her breaks.

We seriously considering staying at the lodge another night, but instead opted to let Priceline secure us a good deal on a hotel in downtown Portland. 4-star hotels were a minimum of $149; we bid $89 and got a reservation at the Hotel Monaco. While the free evening wine social, chair massages, excellent wi-fi, and “if the mood takes you” leopard -print lingerie in the closet were all appreciated, I was really just happy to be walking distance from Powell Books.

Our plan was to hit the bookstore in the morning, be we made such good time getting out of Stevenson, we still had daylight to burn after reaching Portland. We strolled on over and spent the next two hours browsing a whole city block full of books.

At first, I despaired that Powell Books was simply too large. I reflected that to fully enjoy the experience the store has to offer, one has to either stop by often or come to the store with a huge list in hand. After wandering through six rooms and any number of Dewey categories without a single book, I began to worry that I’d leave empty handed.

And then, the sci-fi section. Seven aisles, floor to ceiling, literally hundreds of shelves of new and used books that were right up my alley. Oksana saw the writing on the wall (so to speak.) With a wave over her shoulder, she said, “I’ll be back in the accounting section.”

Surprisingly, we made it out of there for only $63. And for the record, I was ready to go before Oksana. She found the cooking section.

Our main goal accomplished, we were all ready to leave Portland the next morning. We woke up early, got some coffee at Starbucks and walked back towards Powell’s to visit the Whole Foods store. Oksana picked us up some road food while I stopped at every camera store along the route looking for a decent monopod (no luck.)

We tossed around a lot of options. Drive up to Mount St. Helen’s to see the big ‘splody mountain? Call up any of a number of friends in Oregon and ask if they were free for lunch? We settled on the choice with the least commitment – drive down the coast, see where the road takes us.

It was a fantastic choice. The suburbs of Portland quickly fell away to rural country roads. The sun slanted through the leaves, highlighting fall colors that far surpassed mere “yellows” and “reds.” Patches of scarlet and gold broke through the evergreen canopy; we were driving through a Porsche commercial.

Our first stop was slightly north of where we intersected the coast. Seaside, aptly named, gave us our first views of the tempestuous waves pounding the Oregon coast. The wind, which tore a thick mist from the cresting waves, was chilly enough to necessitate a fleece, but its picturesque affect on the far hillside was worth it.

Driving south, we pulled over periodically to take pictures of the rocky formations along the jagged coastline while discussing their symbolic contribution to the cinematic masterpiece, the Goonies.

Late in the afternoon, we arrived in the sizeable Lincoln City. We pulled over at a beach access parking lot and checked for a wireless signal. It was sporadic, but good enough for us to book a room at a hotel across the way. Another fancy deal (for us), the O’dyssus offered a wine social, free breakfast delivered to our room, and a 6pm “turn down service.” We just liked the gas fireplace in our room.

We skipped the wine social again, however, and stepped across the road to a seafood restaurant called Kyllo’s. The food was good, if nothing to rave about, and we watched to sun swell and sink into the ocean while we ate.

While we were in the room, Oksana was flipping through a magazine full of advertisements. She discovered that Lincoln City was home to a outlet mall; one with a Coach store. This is the part where the guys go, “Huh?” and the girls go, “How much did she spend?” Two bags, two-fifty.

Our flight was due to leave Portland at 6pm, so we drove out of Lincoln City around noon. Our GPS wanted to route us through I-5, but I figured we had enough time to wind our way through more rural wonderlands. We marveled at the fall colors, listened to RadioLab and This American Life and the Dr. Horrible soundtrack on Oksana’s iPod, and generally enjoyed another relaxing drive.

Back near the airport, we stopped at Costco to fill the rental’s tank. At $2.35 a gallon, fully $2 less than back home, we topped off the tank at a mind-bogglingly-low $36. Not bad for close to four hundred miles of roaming.

We killed our last hour in Portland wandering the aisles of Costco. Oksana couldn’t resist the sushi, I had to buy one more book, and, of course, a hotdog “for the road.” We both admitted that we it was time to go before we bought enough stuff to warrant a new piece of luggage.

Everything about the airport went smoothly. We returned the car, checked in our newly overloaded bag (a full pound-and-a-half below the limit!), cruised through security, and enjoyed free PDX Wi-Fi while waiting for our flight.

In Seattle, we were warned that the weather in Juneau was spotty, but we were flying first class again and couldn’t be bothered. I figured the worst that could happen was we spend another night in a hotel and I skip another day of work. We drank our free drinks, ate our in-flight dinner, and enjoyed our extra legroom all the way home.

Back in Juneau, we suffered a 40 degree temperature drop. While we’d been driving with the windows down in 75 degree weather, our friends were celebrating the first snow of the season. We’d only been gone four days, but the sun, the relaxation, the respite from the unrelenting rain of Juneau, all somehow contributed to an extended weekend that seemed much longer.

We didn’t realize it until we were there, but we needed this trip to Portland. It would have been the perfect pre-winter get away… if we hadn’t already lined up an even better one in November. Argentina, here we come!

[1] To be fair, I’m pretty sure the statute of limitations is up on that. [x]

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© Arlo for A Midgett Blog, 2008. | Permalink | No comment |

Last year for Halloween, the UAS IT department decided to dress up as hobbits and decorate the office as the Shire. Big floppy feet were slipped on over their shoes, typically hairy faces were shaved, and a giant inner tube was iced with gallons of Crisco.

As always, I followed my coworkers around with a camera that day. They didn’t put on much of a show, just sort of stumbled around campus with their thumbs tucked into their lapels, and yet they still managed to win “Most Unique Department or Costumes.”

I usually try to start editing the previous year’s Halloween music video in September, but I was dreading this one. I couldn’t remember anything memorable caught on tape, and I worried that no theme would ever crystallize. With this year’s Halloween rapidly approaching, I finally sat down to capture the HDV footage in mid-October .

Watching it again for the first time in almost twelve months confirmed what I already knew: I had nothing. From almost an hour of tape, I pulled aside just nine or ten clips that seemed usable. What was I going to do with so little? I did what I always do when I don’t know what to do. I procrastinated more.

I had a fallback plan, but I didn’t really want to go with it. They’re Taking the Hobbits to Isengard was an Internet meme that was passed around sometime after the Lord of the Rings movies were released on DVD. Footage from the movies is edited to a devilish earworm of a song, repetitive in the extreme, which proves that excessive repetition is indeed funny in its own right. The Rule of Seven by way of Tolkien. On Monday, with a self-imposed deadline rapidly approaching, I decided that They’re Taking the Hobbits to Isengard was the best I could do.

I was surprised – blown away, really – by how quickly it all came together.

You can watch it below, but I warn you: If you haven’t seen the original, it’s not going to make a lick of sense…

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© Arlo for A Midgett Blog, 2008. | Permalink | No comment |

For Sale:
Jeep Cherokee Pioneer, 1989.  Automatic, 6-Cyl. 4-liter, 4×4, CD player, 135k miles.  Juneau body, but starts every time.  KBB at “fair” value $1200.  Asking $1000.  Comes with FULL DISCLOSURE.

SOLD! 

So, yeah, I upgraded.  Jeep 2.0…04.  I don’t need to be paying insurance for two Jeeps when the old one is just sitting there, so I guess it’s time to sell it. 

Below you’ll find everything there is to know about my old Jeep.  Part disclosure, part memorial; this was written mostly for me.  This is how I’ll remember a car that treated me well for 10 years.

This isn’t a glamorous Jeep.  It’s a 20-year-old Jeep Cherokee Pioneer that didn’t have a ton of options to begin with.  I figure it’s in “poor” condition by Kelly Blue Book standards, but I’m not the kind of guy that’ll try to hide the problems to make some extra cash.  I think this Jeep is probably worth $1000.  If you agree, and you want to buy it for that, it’s yours.  Contact information is at the very end of this entry.

My grandfather bought it new, in 1988 or ’89.  He’s an avid fisherman, and it was often used as a beach buggy on the Outer Banks in North Carolina.  It made many, many trips between their home and their summer cottage, 45 minutes away.  In fact, that’s probably where close to 100,000 of its miles came from.

He didn’t spend extra for many options.  No rear defrost, no intermittent wipers, no cruise control.  On the plus side, it’s got a roof rack!

I remember the first time I borrowed it at the beach.  I was only running to the grocery store, but I was 18 or 19 at the time and driving the new Jeep still felt like a privledge.  I carefully backed it down the long driveway, conscious of the rest of the family idly watching from the porch.  Traffic was thick and I had to wait awhile to find a gap between cars.  When my chance came, I quickly backed out into my lane, switched to drive, and accelerated up to speed.  Unfortunately, the Jeep had quite a bit more get-up-and-go than the Volkswagon Beetle I’d been driving back home – the tires squeeled on the dry pavement.  Shoulders hunched in an involuntary cringe, I drove away knowing I’d hear about it when I got back.

In 1997, the air conditioning went out and my grandfather was told it would cost about $2000 to repair.  He decided to buy a new Jeep and give this one to my mom.  The only catch was that she lived in Alaska.  Enter me and my college roommates!

Joe and I had done something similar in 1992 when my grandmother gave away her Chevy Cavalier.  My grandparents flew me down to NC (Joe had to pay his own way, but got a cool road trip out of the deal), gave us their gas card, filled the back seat with groceries, and sent us on our way.  6,000 miles (and many, many games of Street Fighter II) later, we drove off the ferry in Ketchikan.  This time, Joe could only spare a week, so we decided he was going to trade off driving duties to another college roommate, Mike, in Las Vegas, before flying home.

That first trip with the Cavalier was in November.  We drove the Jeep back in August.  Without AC.  Through Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Nevada.  As bad as you think that sounds… it was probably worse.

While we were passing through El Paso, the brakes went out completely.  And by completely, I mean straight-to-the-floor, might-as-well-have-shifted-into-neutral completely.  Fortunately, we discovered the problem while pulling out of a Wendy’s drive-thru (if we’d been on the freeway, we might not have stopped until New Mexico.)  As I eased the Jeep toward the street exit, I pushed the brake pedal in and felt it go right to the floor.  We were going slow enough that the front wheels simply rocked back and forth a couple times in the drain by the curb. If we’d been going any faster, we would have gone right out into traffic.  I used the emergency brake to get us back to the hotel.

We called up the nearest Midas and brought the Jeep in first thing in the morning (during a hellacious thunderstorm.)  After a half hour or so, we were given the estimate: $700.  Brakes needed replacing, master cylinder, the works.  I had to call my grandfather and tell him the bad news.  He’d had the Jeep checked out by his mechanic before we left and, supposedly, there was nothing wrong with the brakes then.  I couldn’t tell him if we were being ripped off or not, only that we really, truly didn’t have any stopping power.  He grudgingly gave us his credit card number; if he hadn’t we might still be there.

The rest of the trip was mostly uneventful.  Joe switched off with Mike in Las Vegas, and we drove it the rest of the way up the country, into Canada, up the Cassier Highway, and down into the tiny border town of Stewart/Hyder.  From there it was only a short ferry trip along the Alaska Marine Highway.  We delivered the Jeep to my mom in Ketchikan, where she held on to it for just over a year.

The Jeep came back to me as a birthday present in 1998; I’ve been driving it in Juneau ever since.

It was in decent shape when I got it, certainly the best car I’d ever owned up to that point.  I made a promise to myself to take care of it.  I began by trying to “fix” certain small problems.

Exposure to lots of salt air (during its life as a beach buggy) had two effects.  One was on the paint job, and seems to be endemic to seaside Jeeps.  Some sort of coating, a wax or enamel or something, began to peel off.  Like sunburned skin, I could use a fingernail to flake off little white bits.  The paint underneath didn’t seem any more susceptible to rust, so I didn’t worry about it too much.

The other problem was more annoying.  The humidity and salt air got up under the upholstery on the ceiling, causing the fabric to detach and hang down like a thin flannel sheet.  Granddad battled the inevitable by rolling sections of it up and pinning them in place with binder clips, but it still sagged from the middle.  Being taller than him, it annoyed me more; it hung down just far enough to drape over the top of my head.  (Without the binder clips, it would have covered my head like a blanket draped over a basketball.)

One sunny day, I got the notion the Jeep would be better off without that thin sheet of upholstery.  Bad idea.  After tearing it out, I realized it had been attached to some ugly, spray-on insulation.  Brown and tan, like a roof full of coffee stains. I pulled that out, exposing the bare metal underside of the roof.  Other than the electrical wiring running to the dome lamp, it didn’t look too bad.  The next few summer months were fine; the problems began when the weather turned cold.

You see, insulation is important in a car!  The heat loss through the roof was annoying, but the real problem was condensation.  Every time the inside of the car gets warmer than the outside (which is just about every day from October to April in Alaska) condensation forms on that cold metal ceiling.  In the dead of winter, it’s hardly a problem – drops of water freeze in place and stay frozen.  In the spring and fall, however, a bump in the road can send cold drops of water down the back of your neck.

I learned to minimize the condensation by swinging the door a few times when I got out.  Equalizing the temperature between the inside and outside before sealing off the environment helps quite a bit, but to this day it can still rain in that Jeep. 

Speaking of heating, that’s been a bit of a problem in the winter.  The temperature coming out of the vents is tepid on the best of days.  It’s enough to defrost the windshield, but on a very cold day, there’s no way it’s going to warm up that cavernous interior.  I purchased a small ceramic heater that plugs into the cigarette lighter.  That helps, but I can only use it at half power (150W).  At 300 watts, it blows a fuse.

When I first took ownership of the Jeep, one of my priorities was to upgrade the stock radio.  Within a couple weeks, I’d purchased a Sony CD player from Crutchfield.  From the pre-iPod era, it doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles, but everything you’d expect is there.  AM/FM radio, presets, removable face plate.  Too bad the sound system is so terrible.

I think the speaker in the driver-side door shorted out when water once leaked down along the window.  The two in the rear hatchback are blown and sound horrible if you turn the bass up.  Speakers aren’t terribly expensive, but I never got around to replacing them.

Let’s talk about the Jeep’s body for a moment.  Is it a “Juneau body?”  That is to say, does it have its fair share of rust?  Well, yes.  Yes it does.
 
On the drive back from North Carolina, there were really only a couple, small rust spots on it.  A little piece on the gas cap cover, a tiny corner of the hood near the windshield.  I don’t have a garage, so it’s spent most of its parking life unsheltered and, as a result, more rust has developed (especially at the bottom of the doors.)  Interestingly, while my wife’s old Mazda went from spots-to-gaping holes in just a couple years, the Jeep has weathered the oxidation much better.  Quality metal, I suspect.  At any rate, nowhere has the rust come close to penetrating all the way through to the interior.

One of the rustiest spots happens to be on the passenger-side, rear quarter-panel.  See… one day, during rush hour I was heading inbound on Egan.  I turned onto Mendenhall Loop Road and, in the middle of traffic, slowed for the stoplight ahead.  Turns out a woman behind me, in a brand new pickup, used that moment to throw a quick, over-the-shoulder look so she could merge into the right lane.  She must have looked before my brake lights came on.  She almost made it, but her bumper clipped mine.  It bent everythhing upwards, demolished the whole taillight assembly, and wrinkled up the quarter panel quite a bit.

I remember being initially quite upset, but after dealing with her and the police, the whole situation turned around.  She was driving a company car and had it fully insured.  My responsibility, after talking with the insurance company, was to simply take the Jeep around to some local body shops and get quotes.  I think I got three, and discarded the bottom one.  I submitted a claim for $2800, the insurance company actually sent someone out to take photos of the damage, and then a week or so later I was feeling a lot less like a starving college student. 

When I found out that it would cost hundreds of dollars to get a new taillight installed locally, I searched around online until I found an online junkyard.  I sent them an e-mail, telling them what I was looking for, and a day later they sent back a quote.  $25.  They shipped it to me, I screwed it into place, and pocketed $2775.

Other than one other incident, I don’t believe the Jeep has been in any other wrecks.

That other incident happened around the dangerous curve by the Anderson Building in Auke Bay.  It was a wet night; I was driving toward town, bound for an evening game of ultimate.  There was a small compact car in front of me, maybe a Ford Focus or a Saturn Geo.  A construction site pickup truck (what you’d call a drop-side or tray-top truck, I guess, with a truly flat bed, without sides) came speeding around the curve from the opposite direction.  It was loaded with construction equipment and, I found out later, late for a ferry departure.  The driver was going too fast and the load, obviously not properly tied down, began to slide off the bed.  Centrifugal force tossed it right into our lane.

As I watched the accident unfold, my sense of time stretched out.  In slow motion, I watched a garbage can-sized container tip over and fall right in front of the Geo.  Their brake lights didn’t even come on until after the collision; they hit it at about 35mph.  Metal brackets the size of my fist exploded from the container, littering the road.  My foot was already on the brakes, and I was mentally calculating that, yes, I would be able to stop before hitting the Geo and, in all likelihood, be able to steer through all the brackets even though they were scattering into both lanes.

At this point, maybe 1 second had elapsed.  The pickup truck hadn’t even passed me yet.

I was about to breathe a sigh of relief when a second container, a large blue Rubbermaid tub, fell right in front of me.  I was still moving forward when it hit the road, literally a foot or two in front of my bumper.  Time was still slowed, but there was no time to turn.  I gripped the wheel harder, probably said, “Shh-!” and then ran over it.

The Jeep practically vaulted over the container; it must have gone right under my left front tire.  When a car like that launches into the air, even if it’s only a foot or two up, it makes one hell of a noise when it lands.  I half expected to find that both axles were snapped in two and all four tires were flat.

Instead, a cosmetic support strut was bent a little.  All I had to do was bend it back.  Near as I could tell, the tires weren’t even knocked out of alignment.  I like Jeeps.

I stopped the car, got out, and looked back in time to see the construction truck continue around the corner.  For a moment, I thought he was going to keep going, but he finally noticed his lost load.  Cars were piling up in both directions, so the first thing I did was jump out in the road and start gathering up metal brackets.  I worked my way up to the Geo and asked if they were okay.  Having such a low clearance meant that their car (a rental!) took more damage; the bumper was cracked and hanging low, and the grill was missing.  The police showed up not long after and took our statements.

Unfortunately, the second accident wasn’t easy to resolve, insurance-wise.  After a couple weeks, I gave up because the pickup truck driver, as I imagine is often the case, promised everything when the cops were around, only to drag his feet when I later contacted him.  I could have gone after him – the police report said he was at fault – but there was no real structural damage to my Jeep.  Didn’t seem worth the effort at the time, though I’d feel guilty now if I found out he got off scot-free.  I reassure myself by thinking that the rental car company must have gone after him.

The only other significant problem with the Jeep’s bodywork is a small crease on the corner of the driver’s side door.  This happened, apparently, when the Jeep was in the shop, up on a lift.  I don’t know if it wasn’t centered properly, or what, but somehow that small strip of body work managed to get bent a little.  The door was a bit sticky for a few days after it happened, but I don’t even notice it now.  Compared to the other dents and rust, it’s hardly worth mentioning.

Let’s see.  What else is wrong with this Jeep?

There are some issues with the wipers.  The rear wiper is gone, though the assembly remains.  To be honest, it’s been gone so long that I don’t remember if I removed it because the wiper motor was shot, the wiring to the motor was shot, or if the wiper itself was bent or broken.  At any rate, I haven’t had a rear wiper for quite some time.

The front wipers are fine, except that the driver’s side wiper moves a little too far to the left.  It catches the trim on the edge of the windshield and makes an annoying “tick” sound each time.  It doesn’t appear to actually affect the rain-clearing performance; however it may ultimately be shortening the life of the blade.

The blinkers work intermittently, and by that I don’t mean they flash as they should.  I can’t quite figure them out, to be honest.  Sometimes they work correctly, both front, back, and side lights blinking correctly.  Sometimes one side or the other will signal with a solid “on” light – usually an indication that a bulb is out.  I’ve replaced the bulbs, had them work for a time, then go back to solid… and then start working again!  I suppose this indicates a wiring problem, maybe a short somewhere.  Perhaps it only happens when it’s raining, when things get wet?  Like I said, I can’t quite figure them out.

Speaking of the rain, I should mention something about the brakes.  They seem to work better in the rain – almost too good, to be honest.  I’ve noticed that when it’s wet out, the right-side rear brakes lock up pretty easily.  (Not that this Jeep has anti-lock brakes – if you smash down the brake pedal, they’re ALL going to lock up.)  Could be related to the mysterious master cylinder leak.  Mysterious, because I have no idea where the brake fluid is draining, but every 6 months or so, I need to pop it open and top off the reservoir.  I don’t consider this a hardship – I’ve been on the same bottle of brake fluid for the last 3 years.

You might think that the treads on the tires have suffered because of this.  Well, maybe they have.  When shopping around online for my new Jeep, I noticed quite a few people using selling points like “90% treads on tires!“  I don’t think I’ll be doing that.  Who’d get excited over “20% treads on most tires?”  At any rate, I haven’t had any trouble with them.  While the tread may be pretty thin, there are no steel belts poking through or anything.  And for the record, I’ve never had a flat in this Jeep, so you won’t have to worry about a bunch of fix-a-flat gunk clogging up the insides.

If there ever is a flat tire, it shouldn’t be too big a deal.  The Jeep has a spare tucked away in the back.  Not only that, but it’s still got the original jack tucked down under the passenger seat.  How’s that for a plus?

Let’s get past a couple other minor problems before we end up with what may be the biggest worry.

There’s always been a small air leak somewhere around the passenger-side windows.  I figure it’s probably a crack in the weather-stripping somewhere, but I’ve never been able to locate it.  It’s no bother, really, just carries a bit more of the road noise into the interior.  Can’t even hear it with the CD player is on.

Also, some of the doors are getting a little sticky, especially the rear ones.  Perfectly understandable, as they’re opened and closed much less often than the front doors.  Nothing a bit a grease or WD-40 wouldn’t fix right up, I’d imagine.

That reminds me:  The lock on the driver’s side door is pretty sticky, too.  You can easily push the key in and pull it out, but turning it to unlock the door is tough enough to make you wonder if the key is going to snap off inside.  Never has for me, and I’ve never had to go around and unlock the passenger side instead, but this is full disclosure, right?  Thought you’d like to know.  (And hey, if you’re that worried about it, let me tell you: You’ll be getting THREE sets of keys if you buy this car!  What a deal!)

Speaking of locks, I wouldn’t lock the hatchback if I were you.  I did that once and had to jiggle it forever to get it open.  Also, the hatchback itself rattles around a little bit.  I wouldn’t fault you for thinking that came about after the first accident, but actually my grandfather pointed it out even before we drove it across the country.  His quite servicable solution was to place a bit of foam padding around where the latch slams down.  Does wonders.

Okay, let’s talk about the potential deal-breaker.  I think there’s an oil leak somewhere.

Last year, I noticed that after the Jeep had been driving for awhile, the oil pressure would drop.  This didn’t occur at all on short drives, and not even all the time on longer ones, but after awhile it was hard not to notice something was going on.  At a certain RPM, the Jeep would start to shudder – nothing that impacted how it handled on the road, but obviously something that couldn’t be ignored.

I took it in to get it worked on and the mechanic confirmed that low oil pressure could definitely cause a shudder.  They replaced a bunch of seals and o-rings and things seemed to be good for a time, but just before I bought my new Jeep, I noticed the pressure dropping again.

Now, it could be that a new quart of oil poured in every once in awhile is all it’d take to keep the Jeep running indefinitely, I don’t know.  Could also mean something more expensive is in order.  Like I said, this is the only thing that really worries me about the Jeep.  Most everything else could probably be fixed up by a weekend tinkerer with a few tools and a dry parking spot.

Let’s not end on a bad note, shall we?  Have I mentioned the four-wheel drive?  It works, and it works quite well.  I’ve used it every winter, without studded tires, and it hasn’t failed me yet.  On snow, ice, or slush, doesn’t matter.  The Jeep climbs hills, leaps forward from icy intersections, and pretty much handles anything to do with acceleration.  (Stopping, on the other hand, is not something 4WD will help you with.  Be advised.)

So, that’s it, that’s my Jeep for sale.  Admittedly, it’s not in the best condition, but it’s served me well.  It comes with problems, sure, but at least the buyer of this used car will know about every single one of them before they drop any money on it.  Full disclosure.  Should be worth something.

Oh, did I mention the bumper sticker?  You’ll be a proud supporter of Releasing Bluefish in North Carolina.  That should be worth something, too, right?

Yeah, I don’t know, either.

For what it’s worth, the following information was taken from the Kelly Blue Book website:

9/25/08 Kelly Blue Book value based on Private Party Sales Kelley Blue Book does not attempt to report a value on a “poor” vehicle because the value of these vehicles varies greatly. A vehicle in poor condition may require an independent appraisal to determine its value.
Excellent Condition	$1,815
Good Condition	$1,530
Fair	$1,200
Some mechanical or cosmetic defects and needs servicing but is still in reasonable running condition. Clean title history, the paint, body and/or interior need work performed by a professional. Tires may need to be replaced. There may be some repairable rust damage.
Poor	$ N/A
Severe mechanical and/or cosmetic defects and is in poor running condition. May have problems that cannot be readily fixed such as a damaged frame or a rusted-through body. Branded title (salvage, flood, etc.) or unsubstantiated mileage.

Interested?  Want to kick the tires or take it for a drive?  Give me a call at 321-4033 or send me an e-mail.

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© Arlo for A Midgett Blog, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments |

The Alaska Permanent Fund is Alaska’s way of giving back to the residents of the state. Profits from oil sales are put into a fund, only 1% of which is then invested. Every October, the average earnings over the last five years is split among us 600,000 (or so) residents. (It’s more complicated than that, but only slightly.) Our dividends dipped during the dot-com crash, but that five-year average insulted us from a huge cut. Conversely, it’ll take a few more years before we see how high these record oil prices push it back up.

Everyone’s waiting for the checks, which could arrive as soon as Friday. This year’s dividend is the biggest ever, at $2,069. Of course, our illustrious governor decided that her constituents were unfairly burdened by high oil prices this year, so she spearheaded an initiative to share a little more of the state’s wealth. Each resident will receive an extra $1,200 in “energy relief” this year. (No wonder she has such a high approval rating!) The energy relief packaged is issued by the same office, the Alaska Permanent Fund Division, so in essence we’re each receiving a $3,269 dividend this year. Think of it: A household of five will receive a bulk sum of $16,345! Sky’s the limit for Mormons and Catholics! Who wants to move now?

I can remember back to the very first Alaska dividend in 1982. I wasn’t quite 10 years old, but that was old enough to understand that if my dad’s Coast Guard transfer had come just a few months later, our family would have been $5,000 richer (over $10,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars today.) I got to thinking: How much would I have received if I’d been eligible for every single dividend? How much would I have in the bank if I hadn’t spent any of them? What if I’d invested them?

I plugged some numbers into Excel. Take a look:

The second column has list of the PFD amounts since 1982. Total amount given to a resident eligible for all 27 years is $30,805.41. The average yearly dividend is therefore $1,140.94.

I freely admit that I know little about global interest rates, yields, and investments, but after a scanning through the Department of Treasury’s tables, I found one that may be a fair gauge of a low-risk investment over the years. It’s called “Market Yield on U.S. Treasury Securities at 1-year Constant Maturity, Quoted on Investment Basis.” I take that to mean it wouldn’t be too hard to find a nice, safe CD (Certificate of Deposit) near that amount. Anyway, the pattern seems to fit what I know about the U.S.’s recent financial history: Great interest rates in the 80s, horrible after the dot-com crash.

I’m only slightly better with accounting principles than interest rates, but I think I’ve got my compounding interest formula correct. The fourth column, labeled Yearly Principal, totals up what a resident would have if they invested their dividend in CDs at each year’s rate. The formula is: P * (1 + r), where P = the Principal and r = the interest rate. Of course, the principal rolls over each year.

Looks like if someone safely invested all their dividends in CDs, they’d have $51,891.89.

I thought it might be interesting to average out the interest rate over the same 27 years and came up with 5.85%. Investing consistently at that rate (which would probably still be relatively low-risk for a savvy, market-knowledgeable investor) would result in holdings totaling $63,826.66. That’s just a bit more than twice the original dividend amount.

Yeah, okay, so my numbers are based on some barely-educated guesses, but still. The state of Alaska has given out quite a bit of money and we’re all looking forward to this year’s record check.

Next week, everything goes on sale. Costco’s probably stocking up their inventory of plasma TVs and computers, the Honda dealerships are probably offering deals on jet skis and generators, and furniture stores all over the state are advertising their no-interest dividend specials. Even Alaska Airlines knows how to get in on a good thing – tickets out of the state were just discounted this week.

While most people in the country are facing some tough decisions due to rising fuel costs, Alaskans are actually benefiting. As long as the Permanent Fund Corporation continues to invest our money safely, dividends should continue to climb right along with oil prices. For many of us, it easily offsets a year’s worth of gas.

More than makes up for the occasional crappy summer, too.

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This spring, when Oksana mentioned that she finally had things under control enough at work to consider a vacation, we sat down to decide where we could go. She could afford up to three weeks off, but that didn’t necessarily restrict us. With almost any country in the world as an option, we had to narrow it down from not only what we wanted to see, to what we wanted to do.

Oksana, for her part, was focused on diving. As far as she was concerned, we were going someplace sunny, warm, and underwater.

Me? I’d been thinking about buying a new car. My ’89 Jeep hasn’t been weathering the winters very well, and we can afford to trade up. I’m not in the market for a new new car; I can’t see spending that kind of money when I don’t even have a garage. Something a little younger than 20 years would be nice, though, and buying a used car from somewhere dry should minimize the risk of an getting rusty “Juneau body.”

I didn’t tell Oksana, at first, that I was considering shopping for a car while we were on vacation, because she would have pushed for buying it from her employer, Mendenhall Auto Center. That would have been fine, except the more I thought about it, the more I was starting to look forward to another road trip.

Combining these two goals limited our options somewhat.

We picked Florida. Not only could we buy a car and dive on a reef, we could also visit my grandparents!

As our departure date neared, our plan coalesced:

Step 1: Buy one-way tickets to Florida.
Step 2: Spend up to one week with my grandparents, shopping for a car.
Step 3: Put the car through its paces on a drive to Key West; spend up to a week diving the reefs.
Step 4: Drive across country either leisurely or like a bat-out-of-hell, depending on the time we had remaining. Barge the new car to Juneau from there.

It went… more or less according to plan.

Before we bought tickets, I called up my grandfather to run the idea by him. He was excited. Excited that we were coming for a visit and excited that we were buying a car. I didn’t realize it at the time, but he was to become a valuable resource in our search for a new vehicle.

With gas prices nearing $4/gallon, he was surprised that I was in the market for a new Jeep, especially since we’d have to drive it from Key West to Seattle – just about as far apart as two points can be in the continental United States. I explained to him that gas prices weren’t too much of an issue, because once home, I wouldn’t be putting many more miles on it. .8 miles to work, .8 miles home, maybe 10 miles here and there for lunches and grocery shopping; I go 2-3 months between tanks of gas. My previous Jeep has served me well, so brand loyalty had me shopping for a newer-model Grand Cherokee, but I wasn’t opposed to looking at some “crossover” vehicles like the Honda CR-V or the Toyota RAV4.

Besides, with gas prices so high, there were dozens of news stories about Americans trading in their SUVs. It was a buyer’s market.

While I casually browsed through car auctions on eBay and Yahoo, my grandfather pounded the pavement. The extent of my research before we left amounted to flipping through a Consumer Reports at the dentist’s office (which had me questioning the Jeep brand’s reliability over the foreign models) while he was out talking to dealers, digging up relevant information such as Florida (maximum elevation: 345ft) not being the best place to look for 4-wheel drive vehicles and my $10,000 ballpark limit being reasonable for what we hoped to buy – an up-to-5-year-old SUV, 4×4, with a preference for options over low mileage. Within a day or two, he already had a line on more than one Jeep for sale. I appreciated the help, but had to assure him that I couldn’t commit to anything before we could see it for ourselves.

On June 8^th, Oksana and I flew into Tampa. Exhausted, waiting an extra hour-and-a-half for our luggage because a thunderstorm had sent the baggage handlers’ inside for an extended coffee break, I worried about the week to come. Oksana was in the middle of her penultimate MBA class and planning to be on call for work throughout the entire trip; I wanted to make sure that, when she returned home, she felt like she’d been on vacation. Shopping for a car can be a stressful endeavor. Shopping for one under a deadline, more so. I hoped for the best.

And the best was what we got!

Jetlagged, we slept in a bit the next day and got a late start. My grandfather told me that his brother, Lynn, had a lead on a Jeep in St. Augustine. In fact, Lynn thought it was such a good deal that he put $500 down on it to make sure it didn’t sell before I’d had a chance to look at it. First thing in the morning, first lead of the trip, that was hard to hear. I appreciated the sentiment, but I wished he’d talked to me before putting his own money down. The last thing I wanted was to feel obligated to buy a car I didn’t want.

We called Lynn up, made some plans. St. Augustine was a couple hours away, so we decided that we’d hit a few dealerships along the way, see what the market was like. Even if we found a fantastic deal, we promised to hold off, at least until we’d seen Lynn’s find.

My grandfather drove Oksana and me around and we stopped at three or four dealerships. We didn’t limit ourselves to just Jeep dealers, either, as we figured just about any dealership would be taking SUVs as trade-ins. It was true. Each lot had at least one or two Grand Cherokees, and plenty of similar vehicles for us to browse. We glanced at some CR-Vs, RAV4s, Muranos, and even peeked at an older model Mercedes. There were certainly some in our price range, but none with four-wheel drive.

And that seemed to be the big problem. Every dealer had something they wanted to sell me, but nothing with four-wheel drive. Beginning to doubt the plan, I remarked to one salesman, “Yeah, I guess Florida’s not the best place to go looking for a used 4×4.”

“On the contrary,” he replied. “Any 4×4 down here has probably gone completely unused. It’ll be in pristine condition.” It may have just been the guy trying to make a sale, but it gave me hope.

With time in the day running out, we decided to drive the rest of the way over to St. Augustine to take a look at the Lynn’s Jeep. At least we knew it had four-wheel drive.

After a little socializing and catching up at my uncle’s house, we drove together to see what he thought was good enough to put $500 of his money on. It was at the local Dodge/Chrysler/Jeep dealership, which didn’t bother me, but posed a bit of a problem for Oksana: “My coworkers will never let me live it down if you buy a car from another dealership!”

As it turned out, Lynn had bought at least three Jeeps from this same dealership, Atlantic Dodge, and knew the lead salesman well. When we arrived, he introduced us. There wasn’t much beating around the bush; with money down already, we were simply handed the keys and told to take it for a test drive. We barely had time to look at it first.

First impressions were good, however. It was a surprisingly blackish Jeep for Florida – “Graphite” on the outside, black leather on the inside. There were just a couple, minor scratches in the paint job, and hardly any marks at all in the interior carpeting and upholstery. It was a 2004 model Grand Cherokee Laredo, about as new as we were looking for as both Oksana and I disliked the body style changes they made the next year. Sunroof, premium speaker package, power seats and mirrors, and – bonus! – heated seats. The only real hesitation was the number of miles on it: 69,000. Not bad for 5 years in Florida, but the same car in Juneau would have been hard ridden, indeed.

So we took it out for a drive. Felt like a nice ride, about what I’d expected. After warning my three passengers, I gave it the hard brake test. Also, the get-up-and-go test, from the stoplight. Had to say it didn’t feel quite as strong as my old Jeep, but still more than adequate. We found ourselves an empty parking lot, and I pulled over to make sure the various four-wheel drive positions would engage.

While slowly tooling around the parking lot, Oksana used her cell phone to call her own dealership. We didn’t have internet access available to check the Kelly Blue Book value, so she was asking one of her coworkers to run the numbers through the dealer system. Was it a decent deal at $10,000? After rattling off all the options and the condition the car was in, she reported back with the only hesitation: The high mileage would hurt its resale value in Juneau.

Well, I wasn’t looking to resell it. Long story short, when we got back to the dealership, we bought it.

Of course, buying from a dealership is never a short process. There were papers to sign, payment methods to discuss, hands to shake. We got held up a bit when Oksana began pressuring them about sales tax, registration, and all the things she knows about dealership sales from the accounting side. We also spent some time discussing the best form of payment. We settled on our out-of-state personal check, but my uncle had to write one of his own to cover it just in case ours didn’t clear within ten days. $10,301 was the total. I may be wrong, but I think that’s the single, largest purchase I’ve ever made.

One anecdote worth sharing: Oksana didn’t immediately let on that she also worked for a Chrysler dealership in Alaska. In response to many of my questions deliberately asked in an attempt to get more for my money – “What about that little plastic piece that’s missing on the hatchback?” “What about the empty tank of gas?” – our salesman replied (more than once) with, “Look, I don’t know what kind of business they do up in Alaska, but we run an honest shop down here. This is a 5-Star Chrysler dealership. You’re getting a $14,000 car, with a warranty, for $10,000…” He always stopped short of saying “don’t push your luck,” but he constantly reassuring us that he wouldn’t be making any money on this deal as a favor to a long-time customer, my uncle.

Well, at one point, while Oksana was on the phone again trying to sort out what the total cost of the plates and tags would be once we returned to Alaska, the salesman, making small talk, asked me what I did for a living. I tried to explain to him my digital-internet-computer job thing at the university, and we’d just about exhausted the topic when Oksana got off the phone. He casually turned to her and asked, “So, what do you do up in Alaska?”

Oksana locked eyes with him and was quiet for a moment. If this were a movie script, her pause would be perfectly represented by a “beat.”

SALESMAN

So, what do you do up in Alaska?

OKSANA (beat)

I’m the comptroller for a 5-Star Chrysler dealership in Juneau, Alaska.

Our salesman, across the desk, stared back at her. (Beat). You could tell he was trying to decide if she was pulling his leg. Oksana, with a small smile on her face, simply stared right back.

“No…” he said. “Really?” He honestly didn’t know what to make of her.

“Yes.”

“But you’re so young!”

“Been the comptroller for 4 years now,” she replied.

They went back and forth a few more times. He was incredulous, she kept reassuring him. Eventually they fell to talking about their respective dealerships, the current economic conditions, and other corporate mumbo jumbo. Then she got a tour of the place and met a bunch of people while I waited around for the paperwork to be completed. Seriously.

Presently, everything was squared away. A temporary paper tag was taped to the back window, we received two sets of keys and a handshake, and we were out the door and driving along behind my grandfather as he led us back to his house in Beverly Hills.

I couldn’t believe it! Less than 24 hours after landing, we’d already bought a car. Now we could sit back and enjoy our vacation!

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© Arlo for A Midgett Blog, 2008. | Permalink | No comment |

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© Arlo for A Midgett Blog, 2008. | Permalink | No comment |