We have been up to so much exciting stuff we’ve forgotten to post to this blog, sorry, guys!

Here’s a quick summary of what we’ve done:

• Art and Cafes in Utrecht
• A trip to the beach
• A weeked in Brugge, Belgum
• More lounging, etc in Utrecht (you may think that’s a bad excuse for failing to post. no comment)
• Flu, vomiting, headaches, immobility
• Road trip to Berlin

And since we leave tomorrow, we’re not likely to do a ton more, but we intend to climb the Dom in Utrecht. Which, after uploading photos, I need to set out to go do. Hopefully we’ll get some more detailed stories up here. In the meantime, here’s a description of a special birthday treat I had:

Here’s a little story about a special birthday treat that happened. The day of my birthday was spent in large part driving on a road trip. I was just fine with that seeing as how the trip was to Berlin. Part of the way into Germany the driver got tired of driving and I offered to do some. I was excited to drive on the autobahn and didn’t know when I’d have another opportunity. It was going fine, and it was fun. The car wasn’t thrilled with the speed we were going, but plenty of cars were zipping past me.

I then, in a moment of cheeziness (which I felt allowed to have, as it was my birthday) I requested that my friend who was DJing put on Kraftwerk. Autobahn, naturally. For maybe a minute and a half I was basking in the perfectness of careening along the listing to a song I love driving on its namesake. It was about that long before we hit traffic and came to a dead stop. For the next two hours we were in painfully slow stop and go traffic, utterly obligerating my romantic ideals of the autobahn, to an ironic soundtrack.

The experience, however, was a very good one. When we first hit the traffic I popped the door open and touched the famed highway with my hand. The irony of the situation was glorious, and I completely appreciated it. It was an excellent birthday treat.

#1
While we were planning our trip to Alaska I told Sarah that our friend Craig grew up there and that I would ask him for advice. A couple weeks before we were to go, I received an email from Sarah saying that she had met Craig a few nights before. They were out at a strip club (in portland neighborhood bar = strip club, they’re everywhere!) and she saw another friend of ours and recognized him. They met once at a party here in Seattle. Craig was with him, and as they chatted it became clear that he was the guy I had been talking about.

#2
Craig and his family are the nicest people in the world. His parents put us up while we were in Homer. Neither of us had met them before, but in the great way that parents just are they welcomed us to their home with open arms. Literally, in the case of Craig’s mom.

Sarah says:

We arrived in ragged but happy shape in Homer only to meet the glowing Host. After we chatted and unloaded our luggage into the basement apartment I went into the restroom to heed the call of nature when I look up on the wall and see this odd painting on a chunk of driftwood.

It’s of an old (trawler?) called the Maritime Maid complete in kick-assedness with a helipad on back plus helicopter. After excitedly showing Keely I inquire and sure enough, our hosts own the Maid and run her crew.

The weird coincidence is that I spent 10 days on that boat last summer with the Alaskan Forest Service crew and it was SOOOOOOOOOO wickedly fun. I was conducting ‘quality assurance’ on the budding lichenologists who conduct lichen surveys for forest health monitoring (= your tax dollars gloriously at work). This entailed living in a bunk on the boat, complete with a chef, and being transported by helicopter to a forested plot every day to look at some of the sexiest lichens I’ve ever seen. I’m frothing just writing about it.

[landing on the Maritime Maid]

When the weather got crappy and we had to bivouac one night (which sucked. My stupid MRE consisted of ‘beefy mac’ with dehydrated peaches and crackers made of cardboard. Blech. ), we were rescued the next morning in a skiff, greeted with cheers as we boarded the Maid, and served cheesecake for breakfast.

So meeting the Maid’s owners was a crazy surprise. In fact we missed my colleague from the Anchorage office by 2 days as he’d been to their home to wrap up some final details. Keely and I visited the Maid, sans helicopter, in the dock behind the Salty Dawg. She be a fine, fine old boat.

Here’s the Maritime Maid as we saw her, docked in Homer:

What a cool story! Sarah will spend another 10 days on the Maid this summer, and this time she’ll know exactly who it was that made sure there was cheesecake on the boat.

On Monday we went to Exit Glacier, where you can hike in right up to the glacier, which is pretty impressive. Thinking about how these glaciers have molded the landscape is pretty awe inspiring. They have carved out the most beautiful mountains, fjords, lakes, valleys, you name it, all over. Here in Alaska there are so many glaciers still working their magic, and being able to learn about them and walk right up to them is pretty cool. (sure, I’ve skied on the glacier at Whistler, but it’s just a part of the rest, you know?)

Along the 1/2 mile snowy hike to the glacier we saw an unbelievable number of moose, as my grandmother would say, “calling cards.” Though I grew up in an area with some moose, I don’t believe I have ever seen their scat. I was suprised really, it looks like a giant rabbit took a crap, not something like a moose. I expected their droppings to look more like that of a cow or horse. Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you consider the prospect of an angry moose), we didn’t see any moose along our way. We did see one on the way back up to Anchorage to drop Mike off at the airport, and Sarah and I saw one on our way to Homer. I only caught his butt in the photo. I kind of wish I caught his butt while he was relieving himself, so I could fully confirm those little rabbit turds.