Who needs headlamps?

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- Bill Watterson


Hello everybody, Soarpheat here and once again, I've decided that the goings-ons of my life were interesting enough that someone other than me might be interested in them. As in like times past, that means that I am continuing in my trend of proudly putting many details of my life in a public forum and thinking that somebody somewhere might find them. I kind of sound like a weirdo when I put it that way. As is hopefully obvious by the location I listed, I'm currently chilling out in the Yukon Territory of Canada, the town of Whitehorse to be more specific. Now you may be asking yourself, "Self, why is he in the Yukon when he said quite clearly that he was going to be in Alaska in his last post?" Well fretful reader, that is a very good question, but as the writer of this post I reserve the right to answer it later. Ha! Witness my clever ploy to coerce you to read the whole post in it's entirety before your insatiable curiosity is quelled. Now that my brief power trip has subsided, allow me to fill you in on the last month and a bit.

My stint with Life Adventure Center came to an end on May 23rd. I had a great time there, and I really liked my co-workers. They dealt with my odd quirks and habits like champs, and warmly accepted me into their folds. I also learned a lot and began to get back to my teambuilding roots, which was admittedly long overdue. However, all good things must come to an end, and as that fateful Friday came and passed, I chose to be excited about my next string of adventures rather than mourn the end of the previous one.

The next thing that I did was to drive to the Outer Banks with Ashley, and my old roomie Tyler and his girlfriend Marla. We were going to a 2 1/2 year reunion! I know that's not the normal length of time, but waiting till 10 or even 5 years was simply out of the question. Who were reuniting you might ask? None other than my old New Zealand crew! Most everybody was there and it amazed me at how easy it was do fall back into intense friendships with people that I haven't seen since 2005. We did all the normal stuff, kayak, get burned by the Death Star, drink ourselves stupid. It was great.

The reunion lasted a week for me, although some people ended up leaving a bit early. They said something about jobs or such, I don't understand. Oh well, to each their own I guess. I drove back to KY by myself, but it gave me the opportunity to try something that I had heard about. We took my dad's van and under good circumstances, it gets 17 or 18 miles per gallon. I had read about these people called hyper-milers and their methods of getting the most MPGs out of their cars. I decided to try it. Now, keep in mind that I also had a kayak on top of the car, and I was driving over the Appalachian Mountains. The things that I did were never driving more than 60 mph and keeping the windows up and only turning on the A/C when I got very hot. Any guesses as to what my MPG was? 23.673. I increased the fuel efficiency of the van by almost 40%! And that was during challenging conditions (kayak and mountains). There's no reason I'm ever going to drive faster than 60 again. My time is not worth as much as the price of gas, and I will use it accordingly. That's Soarpheat's lesson of the day.

I spent a week with the folks in Louisville, and then it was off to the Yukon! While I was in the Outer Banks, NOLS staffing called me and asked if I could change my contract from Alaska to the Yukon. I said yes. Relatively anti-climactic I know, but I had to keep attention somehow. Currently, it is my last day of briefing and I meet my students tomorrow. It is odd here that the sun doesn't set. When I arrived on Monday, after 20 hours, 5 airports, and 4 flights, I was too tired to care that it was 10 PM and looked like 5. But since then it's definately wigged me out a couple times. The course here is shorter than some of my others, it's only 3 weeks long. I'm very excited to not only be back in the field but also to be back in the mountains. I'm ready for both. The majority of the stuff I'm going to put in the blog about the Yukon though will come in a month, when I come out.

As for future stuff, unfortunatly my Russia trip fell through, so I'm actually uncommitted the first bit of August. I'm going to do a job plug now, if anybody is looking for somebody to do something during that time, I'm your man. That's it for now, I need lunch and to pack. Adios everybody!

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