salmon

Valentino Turns 7 and SB Turns 46

February 17, 2020 by Taco

Greetings and welcome to Dinosaur Bear!

Just going to be a bit of a haphazard update post for this week. The biggest thing to touch on is that my foot healing continues. After having a broken foot since early May of 2019 I think I am now getting close to the point where the bone itself is entirely healed. There’s still some soft tissue and nerve stuff that’s cropped up, but progress is progress. In fact I’m now 100% free of the crutches and will soon (as in this week) begin transitioning out of the boot too. Then comes an unknown amount of healing/physical therapy time for the aforementioned tissue/nerve stuff. Still in quite a it of pain with it, but I’m glad to be proceeding through the stages at least.

During the recovery process I’ve been doing a lot of reading, either with the Boys and SB:

Looking at the animal book Grandma Meem got us for Christmas!

Or doing some personal reading on my own as I try to continue my goal of reading at least one more book each year than I did the year prior.

Our now decade old Kindle – the fish screensaver has always been my favorite.

One cool thing that is related to reading we all did as a family was one of those “Murder Mystery Boxes” where you get mailed a murder mystery to solve. This was also a present from Meem, it comes via a subscription service and you get four independent boxes over the course of a year. Our first box was about a murder that takes place during a blizzard and we ended up solving it correctly!

This box was decently challenging – not so hard that it wasn’t really fun, but also difficult enough that we spent around 2.5 hours working through all of it. The culprit was the t-rex in the librarium with the frying pan.

Not the murder weapon – instead our pan we learned we messed up by using cooking spray on it, but Circulon still honored the warranty and sent us a new one, so I’ll probably be a Circulon customer for life now.

On the topic of blizzards, no we didn’t have one – at least not like we’ve experienced before, (and oddly enough I have an email in my inbox right now from the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavík telling me they are closed due to weather) but we did get not one but two rounds of snow. The first left one of our two palm trees, Pauly, with icicles hanging off his palm leaves. They are a little hard to see in the compressed photo, but they are there!

The second round of snow was fairly substantial for these parts, with some places closing early and being delayed or outright closed the follow day. That said, it was still not very much snow and SB and I got a kick out of what we perceived to be an overreaction to it.

It was very pretty though!

Prickly Pear cactus – on ice.

Of course the desert being the desert, despite that snow occurring just four days ago (as I type this) we’re now back up to 70° and the snow is long since gone. At least one member of the household, a certain member of the polar bear variety, was not pleased that the snow stuck around for less than 24 hours, but the plus side is that he got snow in the first place! We were all happy to see snow (except probably Tristen) as it’s quite rare here, so we kind of figure it was the universe giving Valentino an early birthday present. That’s right, Valentine’ Day brings not only a consumerist holiday to our household, but also both Valentino’s and SB’s birthdays. This year Valentino is turning 7, while SB is clocking in at the ripe ole age of 46.

We started off the day with some flowers and coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts (which I guess is now officially just known as “Dunkin'”), Valentino consumed both.

Later on we procured some scotch, and since we are both cultured and common we picked up both some not-cheap and some very-cheap scotch. I’ll be you can never guess which is which.

We were even fortunate to have a very nice sunset as a backdrop as I prepared our Valentine’s Day dinner.

For Valentine’s Day/SB’s Day/Valentino’s Day (i.e. pretty much just Valentino’s Day as he claims everything) we had some peppered salmon, Spanish rice, and roasted zucchini.

For dessert we had a bit of an interesting cake, it was made with chocolate & strawberry pancake mix (Kodiak Cakes of course) rather than actual cake mix. I had to make a few educated guesses but it turned out really good, though quite dense and hearty for cake.

After I cleaned up from dinner and did the dishes (and SB was well on her way to falling asleep on the couch for the rest of the night 😛 ) I also melted 9 of our spent candles down and combined them into one uber candle.

It’s really not that difficult to do and once you’ve cleaned the old containers most of them can be recycled. Plus it’s just getting your moneys worth since so often there’s a decent amount of wax left over when a candle ceases to burn anymore.

Anyways, that’s about all for now. I’ve reached the point where the sun is making my monitor almost unusable and since it’s so nice outside I don’t want to close our ~~lead-lined nuclear blast shields~~ metal blinds as they are a pain in the arse. Since I made fun of SB for going to sleep shortly after eating on Valentine’s Day here’s a really cool photo she took of the Organ Mountains at night.

~~~~~

Since I had a relatively “dark” song last time, the sign-off song for today is:

Tim Toupet – Ich bin ein Döner

I heard this for the first time way back in my second year of German. For the record a döner is a type of meat kebab. The title of this song is thus, literally and directly translated: “I am a kebab.” For this song there’s not much more to say than that, lol. The funny thing, it’s such a silly song that it’s honestly good for learning the German lyrics.

Until next time,
-Taco

Valentino’s 6th Birthday (plus yummy food)

February 25, 2019 by Taco

Greetings and welcome to Dinosaur Bear,

This post is all about birthdays, Valentine’s Day, and food – but mostly food. SB and Valentino’s birthdays both center around Valentine’s Day (sometimes to SB’s chagrin, never to Valentino’s) and unsurprisingly we tend to find lots of excuses to eat plenty of good food and sweets (such as our tradition of making a cake). However, this year we even got into the “February sweets” mode a little earlier than normal thanks to SB’s work. Considering that SB is a mental health professional that might sound like an odd connection, but one of the perks with her job is that she occasionally gets wined and dined by pharmacy representatives and (more importantly) brings home left-overs when she is able! 🙂 These left-overs have even included such things as filet mignon, though the most treaty thing so far has been some yummy cheesecake.

Beyond fancy dinners, there’s also the generous co-worker aspect that has provided us with a decent amount of food so far. These Hispanic dishes have continued to impress – and besides free food is, well, free food.

Of course we don’t always get food provided to us, but we (and by we I mostly mean SB) have been exploring making lots of different new dishes, a decent majority of which have also turned out really good.

These explorations have included some new variations on old favorites – such as salmon (when it goes on sale and we can afford it):

As well as some entirely new efforts, such as when I made a chocolate-honey-banana-cinnamon.. something? I’m not sure what you would call it, but we paired it with some Skyr and it was surprisingly good for something that I just made with no preparation.

Of course, it’s still winter (more on that in a bit) and so we also tend to fall back to our ole’ standbys such as our Sunday-waffle (and yoga!) fest.

Since we found Kodiak Cakes I’ve dutifully made either waffles or pancakes nearly every Sunday – with a new variation (even if minor) each weekend. We also pair our waffles or pancakes with coffee, with some of the more recent varieties definitely meshing well with colder temperatures.

While the holidays are over, we did find some extremely yummy gingerbread raisin crackers that were on clearance from the holidays and they really made us wish we had found them sooner! Though our waistlines are probably glad we didn’t. 🙂

Speaking of post-holiday things, Tristen continues to lord over us in his new golden-state. Things are mostly back to normal with him, though since February normally centers around SB and Valentino Tristen has had to keep himself busy. Naturally he’s found lots of ways to do this, such as continuously examining “his” car after anyone else has used it.

To Tristen’s credit he’s generally been a good boy, I think Pig’s yoga classes keep him (mostly.. sometimes) mellowed out. 😛

Or maybe he’s just waiting for the Chakra chocolate that comes at the end! Unfortunately we did recently finish off our chocolate box, so we’ll see how long Tristen remains dedicated to the whole affair.

Oh, and this is kind of random, but one day while doing some yoga I noticed that SB’s chair sort of looked like a horse with the four wooden legs being the horse’s legs, the chair being the body, a sweatshirt being its head, and a pillow being part of its mane.

Not sure if you can see it, but I just happened to randomly think of that and wanted to post the thought here for posterity me. 😀

Anyways, with Valentine’s Day approaching the Boys started receiving some love from their friends (which literally span the globe).

In truth the Boys got more cards than we did.

Insofar as homemade sweets go, we got a bit of a jump start on the season by making a strawberry cool whip pie.

I used to make these all the time 7 or 8 years ago, but then sort of tapered off a bit before stopping altogether over the past couple of years. We really like them so I’m not sure why I stopped making them, but this was the first one we’d had in a long time. It turned out.. odd, something was wrong with the consistency. The flavor was still really good, but I somehow managed to mess up something as simple as cool whip pie. 😛 After that we didn’t want to overload the sweets, so we took a bit of a break on the sweets after the pie in order to better appreciate SB/Valentino’s cake that would be coming up soon. In the meantime I got a late Christmas gift from a friend, a Super Nintendo Classic!

This is one of those console remakes where they preload it with a bunch of games (21 in this case), reduce the size substantially, and make the console HDMI compatible. It’s one of those really neat things that I enjoy having, but probably would have never bought for myself. The really nice thing is that it comes with 2 controllers by default, so SB and I have been able to play Super Mario Kart together!

That about brings us up to the celebration of SB’s Birthday, Valentino’s Birthday, and Valentine’s Day – which in the Taco Household are pretty much all done at the same time. Valentino began the celebration by sleeping in, and Pig joined him either because he wanted to sleep in too or because he was too scared to move and wake up Valentino (who can be quite cranky during that process). 🙂

Valentino also spent quite a bit of time just chilling under the flowers that SB got. He may look cute but in actuality he was sitting there because he was hoping to eat them when we weren’t looking (same goes for Pig).

Surprisingly all the flowers survived – probably in equal parts due to us being diligent about watching Valentino and Pig around plants and also because they had something even more tasty to look forward to: the birthday cake!

There is a long-standing tradition of Tristen helping me make the birthday cake and this year he was joined by Mr. Pigsten as well.

I think Pigsten gets a bit stir crazy from time to time now that his construction site work is all remote, but I welcomed the additional help in the kitchen. We made the cake earlier in the day so that it would have plenty of time to cool and so we could eat it with no delay after the birthday dinner. The downside to that, is that it meant that not only did I have to watch Valentino around the flowers, I had to watch out for the cake too.

Now, as for that birthday dinner. We have a second tradition of me cooking salmon in one fashion or another. We usually only buy salmon when it’s on sale these days, but for most of our relationship SB and I couldn’t even really afford to buy it that frequently, so back then salmon was a real treat. Now it’s still a treat, but I think we do it more for the tradition of it than for the “exclusivity” of the salmon itself as we might have done in the past. Don’t get me wrong, we all love salmon here, some a bit more than others. 😛

Valentino can get.. ehm.. aggressive, around salmon.

If you have to cook salmon around Valentino then you basically just have to come to terms with the fact that you are either going to have to give him a nibble or get scratched – and sometimes both are going to happen regardless of your decision.

Since it was his birthday I was a bit more lenient with him than I normally would be (also polar bear bites hurt).

The completed dinner featured some seasoned salmon (Taco’s secret blend), seasoned Spanish rice, grilled asparagus, and also a big ole’ chunk of a cheese because SB loves cheese and I hadn’t integrated it into the other dishes, so I just put a chunk in the middle and SB was more than ok with that. 🙂

After that came the real excitement, the birthday cake!

For starters, that coffee is worth explaining. SB gets a free drink from the Bux (and also Dunkies, but that came later) on her birthday, but when she went to redeem it the employees did something wrong (they claimed to have messed up her drink, but nothing was wrong with it) and so the birthday coupon wasn’t used. So, after work SB went and actually used the coupon for another free drink which she brought home to share with everyone! This paired really well with the yummy cake.

Valentino will share, right? Right?

This cake was awesome. It was by far one of my favorite cakes I’ve made in a good while. Sure it mostly used premade ingredients, but that didn’t stop me from making it magical in my own way. The end result was a cherry, orange, whipped vanilla cake (with two different kinds of sprinkles, naturally)! The cake was a huge hit and even better it was big enough that we had cake for the next four days!

After dinner we all played some more Super Nintendo and Valentino got the place of honor of SB’s lap – complete with comfy blanket.

The following weekend we kept up the Valentine’s Day theme with some lovely flower bath soaps that SB had received as a gift. These were profoundly difficult to keep Valentino and Pig from eating because they smelled really good. Fortunately the prospect of a bad stomach ache was enough to dissuade them (for now).

While the festivities were mostly about SB and Valentino, I was also gifted with another bottle of scotch – and it just so happened to be the most expensive one so far (though as I’ve learned, my definition of “expensive” and hardcore scotch-drinkers’ version of “expensive” are too very different things, e.g. to me $60 is not “quite affordable” – lol – but I guess when some bottles are $45,000 I guess it’s all relative).

Definitely one of the fancier looking bottles I’ve acquired. Its cork is topped with real wood.

I used that acquisition as another opportunity to do a “taste off” this time between the newly acquired Aberlour 12 and the Glendiffich 12 I’d been working on. Unlike some of my earlier tastings, this one had a clear winner in the Aberlour 12 for me.

I’ve yet to get a scotch that I just hated but this versus match made it clearly obvious that my palate has now learned enough about scotch over the past six bottles that I am discovering more about what I like.

Beyond that – lingering cake aside – the weekend and subsequent week saw the Taco Household return to normal. I mentioned earlier that it’s been cold here, well, as with scotch prices cold is generally relative. For example, we’ve had a few days in January and February that just were not cold, I’m talking like 72 degrees. However, the past few days (as of me typing this) have been actually cold (low 30s). I think a few days of really strong wind brought that on. We’ve been told that March is incredibly windy here (oh lawds, us and wind) but before this cold front we had a couple of majorly windy days – so windy that a bunch of sand got blown in the from the desert and necessitated me cleaning off a bunch of electronics in the office.

Blow off – for some reason I’ve always found this cleaner to be funny. I’ve had it for years – I think Daryl 1 bought it for me as many as seven years ago.

While we were having our subsequent windy days it was fairly sunny and still decently warm, just very windy. But then the clouds and cold moved in (and the wind stayed, though not as intense) and one day we even woke up to snow!

It’s probably hard to see in that photo, not only due to the compression, but also because as I’ve discussed in the past the snow here tends to be decently limited. Valentino was a very happy boy, at least when the heater wasn’t turning on. We keep it set at 68 for cost/environmental reasons, so on sunny days (even cold ones) the heater doesn’t turn on much. As such this has given us insight into the fact that Valentino does not seem to like when the heater runs. 😛

Fortunately the cloudiness was only really intense for two days. Sure, the cold hung around a bit longer but when the sun is out the cold is much less intense. 38 degrees with clouds is far different than 38 degrees with sun here. I suppose the better weather was also fortunate for the folks whose car broke down in front of our apartment.

This might seem like an odd thing to post, the random misfortunes of another person who I don’t know, but I swear we live in the desert version of the Bermuda Triangle for automobiles. There have been an absurd number of cars break down in front of our apartment. Realistically I’m sure it has to do with traffic routes and flows and where we live in relation to them, but it’s WEIRD how many cars end up broke down directly in front of where we live. In the relatively short time time we’ve lived here I’ve seen more cars break down than I think I have at any previous residence of my entire life.

So yeah, that’s odd. In hindsight I can’t help but wonder if Tristen is involved. 😛

Anyways, that’s all for this episode of Dinosaur Bear. I hope you all had an enjoyable Valentine’s Day (whether it’s loving Valentine’s Day, loving to hate Valentine’s Day, or if you are indifferent that you just had a good day). We celebrated our round of birthdays and Valentine’s goodness with lots of family time and good food: hard to beat that!

As a closing thought we recently received a special mystery package, but the powers that be have informed me that I can’t reveal its contents to you lay-folk just yet. 🙂

The secret package prior to being opened at the set time – Tristen was not amused.

Until next time,
-Taco

8th Anniversary Festivities

November 17, 2017 by Taco

Greetings!

Another year has come and gone, and it’s time for some anniversary fun!

Indeed, SB and I recently celebrated our 8th anniversary! This year had a couple of especially exciting details to it. First, we are in Iceland! Second, we actually got to spend our anniversary together! We have a pretty abysmal track record with actually having time together on the anniversary itself (or other such misadventures as a car dying), but this year it fell on a day we both had off!

So, as a way of celebrating both of those things plus the anniversary itself we opted to go a bit “crazy” this year and begin our celebrations a full week early. Part of that had to do with weather on the weekend prior.

There is a building near us known as “Perlan” (The Pearl in Icelandic) and if you follow this blog (or have visited Reykjavík) you’ve seen it several times, even if you don’t realize you have.

Perlan is many things… landmark, museum, cafe, bar, restaurant, coffee shop, gift store, observation point, water storage facility, etc. I have to say that in all my travels I’ve never quite been in anything like it. When I see something new, I have a nearly oppressive desire to explore it – and that Perlan literally sits on the horizon of my daily view made the desire to explore all the more intense.

SB was also interested, but a couple things had previously held us back. One, distance – despite not being that far away from us as the ~~crow~~ raven flies, Perlan requires walking around the domestic airport to get to. Second, and more importantly, weather. Perlan sets up on a hill, Öskjuhlíð (betcha’ can’t pronounce that), which means that you get good views of the area – but it also means you’re really exposed to the elements. So SB and I had sort of been waiting for a good weather day that we both had time on. Sadly this took a long time. However, the weekend before our anniversary we woke up and there were blue skies! So we decided to hop out of bed and make our way over to Perlan.

Naturally by the time we got out of the apartment and were on our way clouds rolled it, but at least it wasn’t raining (for a change)! The walk over was nice. As mentioned you have to loop around the northern end of the domestic airport, which often yields some nice views of planes flying right above you as they land (Tristen’s favorite part). After that you make your way up to Öskjuhlíð, which is one of those areas that makes you quickly forget you’re in the middle of a city.

There are a lot of paths on Öskjuhlíð, not all of which go to Perlan. It’s a fairly nice paved trail system. We opted for one of the quicker routes on our side of the hill, which branched off from the dual path in the photo above.

It got decently steep in a few parts – enough so that it’d be rough in snow. But before too long we made our way to the clearing at the top of the hill where Perlan awaited us!

Even at this point we’d gained a decent amount of elevation for the area.

Since Perlan is literally built in and around giant hot water storage tanks it’s a bit bigger up close than it seems to be from a distance.

As you can see the central area of the structure was built between the tanks.

We didn’t know it, but we’d actually came up the “back way” (go figure, considering my history of going about things back-asswards), so we had to loop around to the front of the building to get inside.

If you follow a straight (impossible but work with me) line from this next photo (facing west) you will eventually get to our house. So we came up the hill “behind” Perlan.

Once inside you have a few options. Perlan itself is free with a few caveats. You can go into the building for free. In the “free zone” you have food, beverages (of the both the normal and adult varieties), restrooms, a gift shop, and good views from within the dome. Until very recently (September, I think) you could go out onto the viewing platform for free, but they’ve since started charging 490 ISK for it (~$4.65). In addition to the viewing platform, which is essentially the top of the tanks, there is a full-fledged museum and ice cave inside Perlan (including one of the tanks) – which is more pricey at 2900 ISK (~$27.35), however the museum fee includes the viewing platform – so that’s what we did.

When you first enter you are in the “core” area between the tanks and pretty much have to go up or down if you aren’t starting at the museum.

Since we weren’t sure about the weather we decided to start with the viewing platform in case rain rolled in. It offers quite a view!

Here’s a more focused shot looking west-northwest (that’s downtown Reykjavík to the right).

And here’s a more directly western view, you can see HI’s campus in the center to center-left of the photo.

Here’s another shot of downtown, as a point of reference the big church is Hallgrímskirkja and the little island to the left is Akurey, both of which you might recognize from my first Iceland post!

Moving around the viewing platform a bit, here is a shot looking to the north. While you can’t really see it, the start of the long road SB and I took north to the Westfjords lies along the base of the distant mountain (Esjan).

Then, looping all the way around to the south side, you get a view of the southern harbor (we live out on what is essentially a peninsula).

We watched a little sailboat sailin’ around for a bit, it was a good day for sailing. Plenty of wind, but not the crazy stuff we normally have.

As you can kind of tell, the observation platform wraps around the central glass dome. They built it on top of the hot water storage tanks – the majority of which are still used (lots of steam coming out of the vents!). As you walk around there are lots of little signs explaining what you are looking at, as well as overpriced viewing machines (which I just learned are apparently called “Tower Viewers“) – though not as overpriced as those in Boston.

They also have a variety of rocks/minerals on display from the various regions of Iceland.

Pigsten revealed himself from my pocket and was all over that shiz.

One of the tanks also had a cool sundial with surrounding topographical information – not that I could read any of it.

Pigsten used his geological knowledge to guide us.

About that time we started to get pretty chilly, so we headed inside to have some yummy coffee!

In order to get our coffee we had to head up into the top-floor dome area, which is actually above the viewing deck.

There are two places to get coffee inside, a more “grab and go” type place, and then a full-service coffee shop up on the dome – we obviously went for the full service.

It was really neat, they were in the middle of installing a hydroponic “green wall” in the middle of the upper dome area. I’d like to go back at some point and see the plants once they’ve had time to grow.

After our chilly walk and viewing experience, warm coffee sounded delicious, and it was!

We’d also worked up a bit of an appetite from our walk, so we through in some yogurt and a salmon sandwich, because why not!

Pigsten Approved™

We enjoyed a good chat while taking in the views – which are really good even from inside the dome.

We even got to see a few little planes taking off from one of the secondary runways.

After we’d had our coffee and noms’ we headed back down to the museum. We’d timed it well because the next ice cave entrance was only about 10 minutes away, so we browsed through the photo gallery they had outside the cave while we waited.

The photos were from all over Iceland, showcasing its various environmental extremes. One that I thought was really crazy was a photo which showed a boulder that had been blasted through the air during the 2010 eruption. Yes seriously – this thing got blasted over a massive distance.

The little thing to the right is a person, for reference.

After that it was time to enter the ice cave! Now, obviously this is a man-made ice cave. It’s designed as a replica of the actual ice caves which exist in several parts of Iceland. These aren’t caves with ice in them, mind you. These are literally caves through solid ice. It’s pretty crazy. The Perlan replica is 100 meters long and made out of 350 tonnes of ice and snow, so pretty dang substantial.

The entry reminded me a bit of SB and I’s ice museum adventures in Chena Hot Springs, Alaska. You could get suited up in a warm parka if you wanted one, then you went through what were essentially two airlocks before making your way into the entrance of the cave. Once inside you were immediately greeted by the snuggly-warm -10C (14F) temperatures.

The way they had done the lighting was really cool (literally and figuratively) – as it was behind a layer of ice with blue filters, which gave everything a really neat blue hue in some areas.

For the most part the cave was fairly straightforward, but in a few areas there were different paths you could take – each showcasing a different aspect of a real-world ice cave.

If you are getting hardcore Echo Base vibes from this, so did I.

As mentioned, different areas of the cave were designed to showcase different types of ice formations as you’d find them in actual ice caves.

This translucent area was probably my favorite – the patterns and detail in the ice was amazing.

Here’s a closer shot.

They’d also done a really good of creating the “illusion” of an ice trench.

These are the fissures you’d find in glaciers that go down.. well.. really deep. Our cave guide was pretty blunt – if you fall into one of these you’re pretty much f*cked. I say they had created the “illusion” of one because they’d use a cleverly placed mirror to simulate a deep-ass trench. You can’t really blame them, as they don’t need kids plummeting to their icy-blackness-doom as they slowly freeze to death in agony in the middle of a family friendly museum. If you look closely you can see the mirror in this next photo.

They also had a recreated “air vent” which would naturally form in the glacier. These are also really, really deep – but much more narrow.

If you thought you spotted a Pigsten in that air vent, you’d be correct.

Since a little dinosaur isn’t equipped for such ice cave living, we made our way to the exit – which they had designed in such a manner as to make it seem like you were leaving an actual cave.

Side note: It starting snowing outside while I was writing the ice cave section, fitting!

Once out of the cave you enter an exhibit on global warming, glaciers, and Iceland’s geological/climatological history and future in general.

This circular exhibit is situated above the ice cave, which is itself contained within one of the water storage tanks. So the whole of the museum (save for the photo exhibit) is actually in an refitted tank, kinda cool.

The exhibit had a lot of really good (and high tech) displays about the changing climate and how that’s generally bad news (for everyone, not just Iceland).

They had some pretty awesome digital images which curved along the wall and displayed things as they would change in real time.

In fact, one part of the wall was interactive. You could stand in certain parts and the wall would track your movements, so you could interact with things on the map by pointing at them or moving around. It was really neat and quite interesting – I especially liked the ones focused on naminals’ because they would move around when you pointed at them.

As you made your way out of the exhibit there was a wall with little plastic disks that you could leave messages on. People from pretty much all over the world had left messages, the Boys did too.

There were a couple which I thought were kind of funny.

After the exhibit we started to make our way back to our apartment because we were trying to keep ahead of the inevitable rain.

We took the same path down Öskjuhlíð, but this time I opted to explore a bit of the side routes.

After walking through some bushes I noticed something that seemed an awful lot like the remains of a bunker.

Now, I have no military experience (not that you need any to recognize a bunker), but I’d been in an IDF bunker on the Syrian border and it had similar vibes – albeit in a bit better shape. Turns out it was a bunker.

Yep, while mostly being rumble and a graffiti hotpsot now, we’d stumbled on the remains of part of the U.S. Occupying Forces defensive network during World War II. The part we’d found was one of the entrances plus a machine-gun nest – both of which were haphazardly sealed off with rocks.

Had you really wanted you could still get inside, but I wasn’t really wanting to, lol. I was more than happy to just explore the surface area.

If you were wondering “why this spot?” – well, that’s because Öskjuhlíð directly overlooks Reykjavíkurflugvöllur (the domestic airport), which was a hugely important airport for not only World War II, but also for the GIUK gap during the Cold War.

The bunker network wasn’t the only “war relic” as there was also a huge blasted-out pit where they’d placed and hidden fuel storage tanks during the war.

The tanks set down in the pit for protection, and then were coverage by camouflage. They also used the rocks they’d blasted out to build the war-time runway which had to be expanded due to the increased traffic and plane-size.

Speaking of rocks, Pigsten acquired his newest rock from the bunker – marking yet another impressive acquisition for the little guy.

Once Pigsten had his rock we continued back home, taking in some ducky butts in the wetland area in front of HI.

Once home we went to the small store near us (Háskólabúðin) for some drinks. One of things I got – and regret – was this atrocity.

I’ve described “near-beers” already, but this one took the cake at 0.0% ABV. I mean, that should of been a warning sign, but curiosity got the best of me. The result was the worst beer I have ever had. It is so bad that I don’t even know how to describe it. But let’s put it this way, choosing between this and Natty Ice, I’d chose Natty Ice. Fortunately the terrible “beer” was the only upsetting portion of our Perlan day!

That was the end of “Phase 1” of our 8th Anniversary festivities. The next had to wait until the following Friday, where I fixed us up a yummy (near) anniversary dinner!

It consisted of grilled salmon, garlic bread, and roasted vegetables with a mustard sauce. Delicious! Since eating out is just really, really expensive we’d decide to forgo it (yep, even for our anniversary) – however everyone agreed that we hadn’t missed out on much as dinner was awesome! Of course any good dinner needs a good treat, so we also had the first cake I’ve baked in Iceland!

Technically it was the second baked good we’ve produced. SB attempted to make banana bread prior to my cake, but she put Hjartarsalt in it by mistake (she thought it was baking powder). Turns out Hjartarsalt is another name for “ammonium chloride” (noticing the theme here? Why Iceland? Why?) which promptly rendered our bread inedible – at least to us, some people love Hjartarsalt.

Fortunately I learned from SB’s error and just used what we have and know to be baking soda (Matarsódi) instead of baking powder (which we still haven’t found). The end result was a super yummy white chocolate-caramel-fudge cake!

It was good enough that we ate on it for the next 3 days. 🙂

Naturally, good food, good treaties, and happy occasions cannot properly exist without good drinks. SB ventured out and got us not only some good beer, but also a pumpkin!

Yes, as a I not-so subtly alluded to last time, we acquired Thomas IV! Thomas has a long history which goes all the way back to 2014 and becomes increasingly storied each year. Generally we get a Jack-be-little pumpkin to be Thomas, but we could find no such variety in Iceland, so we went with a standard punkin’ for Thomas IV (his power grows). Kudos to SB for hauling Thomas and beer home from the other side of Vesturbær!

Despite having a cake, we used our looming anniversary as an excuse to get pretty much anything we wanted that weekend – including pops and more treats! Case in point, we found some polar bear gummies for Valentino!

And.. not to be forgotten some dino gummies for Tristen!

If you’re wondering about Pig, he ate both. 🙂

And that was pretty much the weekend, mostly just chilling, eating, and drinking things. We also had pretty decent weather for the weekend, which we’d hoped would stick around until Monday (our actual anniversary) but alas the clouds rolled back in. Fortunately it didn’t rain and it hadn’t gotten stupidly cold yet, so we were still able to get out and about and enjoy things!

Just what did we enjoy you ask? Well, the answer would be feeding the duckies – and geese – and swans – and (asshole) seagulls, of course!

Yes, we decided to put the ole’ nanner’ bread to good use and headed over to Tjörnin feed it to the friends. They did not seem to mind the Hjartarsalt in the least. Before too long we were pretty much swarmed by friends. Sadly I didn’t get any good photos of the swarm because I was feeding them, but here is a shot of the build up to the swarm.

In this next photo you can see Chuck and Chica, our two ducky friends who follow us around the world on our adventures and have ever since 2013.

After the friends had consumed an entire loaf of nanner’ bread we parted ways and took ourselves over to the highly recommended Reykjavík Roasters for some warm coffee.

We sat and enjoyed our coffees and chatted for a bit, before the warmness made me start to fall asleep, haha. Once we were finished with our coffee we headed down the street to the (also highly recommended) bakery, Brauð & Co.

As you can tell from the photo, if you somehow miss the delicious smells wafting out into the street – you’re sure to take visual notice of the bakery itself. We got a cinnamon roll and a vanilla + chocolate croissant (fresh from the oven) and then made our way back to our apartment to nom’ them. Along the way we decided to use the pedestrian bridge over Route 49 (Nesbraut), something we hadn’t done before and had wanted to do because we’re weird.

As you can see there is really nothing exceptional about it, we just wanted to walk over it. It does have some nice views though. He’s facing east (notice Perlan in the distance!).

And here’s facing west.

And he’s a nice view of HI, as well as the wetlands where we saw the ducky butts.

Once home we all quickly dove into our baked goods (never mind the fact we still had cake), which were OUTSTANDING.

Seriously, easily the best croissant I’ve ever had in my life, and quite possibly the new cinnamon roll champion as well (which says something, as they make some might fine cinnamon rolls where I come from).

After that we went comatose for a bit and just enjoyed everyone’s company for the rest of the evening – and since the sun goes down quite early these days that didn’t take too long.

And that, dear friends, was our 8th Anniversary!

Since then life has essentially gotten back to Icelandic normal, but not too normal – for instance I’m pretty sure we have ghost living with us now.

Fortunately he seems to spend a lot of his time over at the construction site or on top of Thomas IV, so he isn’t too much trouble (though he can be ornery).

Also, since Halloween is over that means that it’s Christmas already, or at least that’s what the stores are telling me. To be fair, the rampant consumerism around Christmas doesn’t seem to be quite as bad here (yet), but that doesn’t mean that the stores haven’t started creeping in some holiday malts, holiday energy drinks (for real), and holiday cakes. We may or may not have indulged ourselves in a gingerbread-cream-jam holiday cake.

Hey now, we’ll stretch those anniversary excuses as thin as possible. 😛

Anyways, that’s all for now. Here’s to another crazy year with the ole’ SB and the Boys!

Until next time,
-Taco

February… er.. March Check-in

March 3, 2017 by Taco

So I was sitting down to type up this post and I realized that I didn’t post anything during the month of February. Sure, the last post was on January 31st, so it was “kind of” like February, but still, I figure it’s time for an update.

If it wasn’t obvious from that fact that February slipped away from me, I’ve been busy – though I have to say that on the whole certain things I thought were going to be terrible have ended up not being so terrible. For instance, my First Amendment course has turned out to be pretty laid-back and manageable. The Federal Courts class that I came within a millimeter of dropping kind of sucks, but it doesn’t suck to the point that I thought it was going to suck. And, while my schedule on Wednesdays and Thursdays most definitely sucks, my schedule on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday does not suck (though Friday does a little – but it’s Friday), so having 3 of the 5 days not suck is nice. So, on the whole, most of my classes haven’t been that bad, plus my research assistant position hasn’t been too crazy this time around (after a pretty rough start at least).

Now, lest ye’ think I’m an optimist, I have to say that one of my classes has turned out oh so much worse than I possibly imagined it would be. Why? Group Project. I think anyone who has survived through group projects doesn’t need an explanation of why a Group Project worth 100% of your grade is a horrible, god-awful idea. Not only that, we’re going to make a group project your entire grade AND curve the class. Add in neurotic Harvard students and you have, without a doubt, the second worse class I’ve had in law school (Legal Research and Writing will never be dethroned – which coincidentally also involved group work). To say I uh.. despise.. that class would ~~probably~~ be a massive understatement. Then there is the journal. There is nothing I can complain about with my journal that I haven’t already complained about so, QQ – there, I complained.

But enough about law school, I’m kind of over it and honestly a bit tired of blogging about it.

Let’s talk about more interesting things.

First, remember when I mentioned that Pig was going to adopt our third puffin? Well, awhile back his certificate arrived!

Actually I just realized that I already talked about Grubbert last time. Oh well, I’m leaving it up here because Pig (and puffins) are awesome. Pigsten is awesome too, so here he is again with his quartz. I was going to talk about that again too.

I guess that’s the downside of only booting up the blog once a month, you forget things (thanks citalopram). Oh well, these things are awesome and worth revisiting. What I didn’t share last time was Pigsten’s block party he had on his box.

Pigsten has several brothers and sisters (or friends, we aren’t entirely sure) who live in our bedroom. They, along with Pigsten, came to live with me in Denver courtesy of Meem (though Pigsten didn’t really become “Pigsten” until New Mexico). So they came out to play for a day or so and everyone enjoyed ~~SB’s~~ Pigsten’s quartz.

Speaking of parties, February is special in that it features SB and Valentino’s birthdays, back to back. Which translates into a lot of cooking and baking for yours truly (with help from Tristen, Pig, and Pigsten of course). A running tradition is that SB and Valentino pick out a cake and the rest of us make it for them. This time SB and Valentino settled on a cake with cherry icing and sprinkles!

Pink has been pretty much a constant, as have been heart decorations.

Valentino is 4 and SB is 40.

Pigsten wasn’t quite sure what to make of the cake – at least until he started tunneling inside of it. He likes colors – a lot.

SB also brought home everyone some flowers. Naturally Pig and Valentino wanted to eat them (remember bears eat flowers!) but we got them to hold off for a few days.

We don’t have a proper vase, so we made due with a Department of Justice stein and rubber-bands. 🙂

Pigsten was drawn to the color, the smell, or both. To him the flowers were kind of a magical playground.

As for me, I didn’t get anything right away, but a couple nights later I got back from one of my late classes and found this waiting for me!

A sure fire way to make me happy is to get me beer. I’m not even picky when it’s a gesture of good will. You can give me bad beer and I’ll still be thankful for it. Don’t bite the hand that inebriates you.

Of the new beers in that Harpoon sampler, I think The Craic stood out to me the most (in a good way), though they were all good.

I later expanded my beer stock to go with all the late-night law school work I’ve been doing.

Of course as I type this I no longer have any beer (sad, I know) as SB and I finished off the last two I had for Mardi Gras (in no small part so that we could get the Mardi Gras 2017 badge on Untappd).

In other festive news SB and I took advantage of one of the gift cards Meem got us for Christmas and went to Orinoco, a Venezuelan restaurant with lots of tapas! It was sort of a belated Valentine’s Day date for us. Unsurprisingly it was quite good, considering that SB and I love tapas – especially bacon wrapped dates. In fact each time we have them we normally take a photo and send it to Meem and Daryl 1 to make them jelly.

Delicious.

Another big event in February was that we had our first – and probably only – sizeable snow for this winter.

For about 48 hours things were pretty nasty and a lot of schools and universities ended up closing for a day or two. For its part the law school decided to stay open (when other nearby universities were closed). I say law school, because Harvard University itself was closed. Yes, this made no sense to me either but it’s a thing out here. Apparently the university can close, but individual schools can choose to remain open. The result is that some schools were closed, others were open, and some did half days. The law school made everyone come in during the morning, then realized things were getting bad enough that they shut the school down at noon. For me, in undergrad and K-12 it was always “school’s open” or “school’s closed” (we had half days as well) which applied across the board. Here it seems a bit feudal in that schools are like little kingdoms and they do what they want because its their hot body.

So yeah, lots of snow for a couple of days.

It did that lovely thing were it rains –> snows –> rains –> snows again. So you get the snow with layers of ice embedded and beneath it. As a result I didn’t run for over two weeks while waiting for the sidewalks to de-ice to the point I felt comfortable using my fairly worn out running shoes on them.

But, by and large, snow doesn’t tend to slow Boston down much, so life went on. Heck, from what I heard the T even did decently this time around (for the T, which isn’t saying a lot considering they have the highest light-rail derailment rate in the country).

While a lot of people complained about not getting a full snow day, I was a bit more neutral about it. A lot of it stems from the fact that the ABA requires a set number of hours of class time each semester, so if you get a snow day you have to make it up (depending on the particular class I would say “have” is relative). The downside is the make-up classes are normally at a way worse time of day (super early morning or late Friday afternoon for instance) or in the case of one of my classes they schedule a makeup class and make you do an additional project you wouldn’t have had to do to otherwise. So yeah, the two times I’ve had weather affect my law school schedule it was nowhere near as awesome as similar events during undergrad. Subsequently I’ve been on campus a bit later than normal trying to get some make-up stuff done, plus just normal stuff.

The good news is that no matter how late you are there are some awesome snuggles to be had once you are home.

Once the snow had passed, the weather did pretty much a 180 and got unseasonably warm for about 1.5 weeks and we broke some temperature records (of course now we’re expecting -4 degree wind chills this weekend). In the past I’ve mentioned the skating rink in the Science Center Plaza, well, after problems keeping it frozen last year – coupled with higher temps this year, they just did away with the rink and went with outdoor bowling and curling lanes (though the standby fire-pits + s’mores are there as always).

Skating rink or not, this is a cool central area of campus to hang out at. I was waiting to meet up with SB for our Friday date night and there was ample people-watching to be had during the nice weather to keep me occupied.

They have the area done up with lights, tables, benches, food trucks, the lanes, etc. It’s really quite nice.

Another nice thing was that we actually were aware of International Polar Bear day this year! Since we have a resident polar bear, we celebrated by cooking one of this favorite things – salmon! In fact this was free salmon since a nice manager at Star Market gave SB a demo box to try out. We ended up making sandwiches with it and apple-wood sauce. We had chocolate covered strawberries for dessert. Valentino approved!

He loves him some salmon (and strawberries – and really all berries and fish – and seal, you get the point). Now, Valentino’s love for salmon isn’t the only amor in the Taco household lately. Rosita has recently fallen for a plant named Javier who lives in our neighbor’s apartment. If you look closely you can see Javier in the window across from Rosita.

So we kind of have a Romeo and Juliet drama playing out here lately, heck they even have the initials right. Oh! Speaking of plants, I discovered a super cool application recently. Credit goes to SB for showing it to me and telling me about it. It’s called “Plant Nanny” and as the name suggests, it’s all about taking care of and raising plants. However, what makes Plant Nanny so awesome is that you get to be healthy while you tend to your plants!

The basic premise of the app is that you put in some information about yourself (weight, activity level, etc.) and then the app calculates how much water you should drink in a given day. So, at it’s core Plant Nanny is a water tracker. Yet it’s more than that because it links your plant’s health to the amount of water you consume. So if you drink too little your plant gets dehydrated and sad, and if you don’t fix it your plant will die! Since the plants are super cute this kills your soul and compels you to drink more water.

Look at its little face and little song.

Plus, to make you even more emotionally invested in your plant you get to name it, pick a pot for it, pick a background for it, etc. Once your plant has grown enough, you can plant it in a garden where it will generate seeds for you. Here is my first plant named “Babby Plant,” she is a Devil’s Ivy and is now living happily in the garden and growing seeds.

You can use seeds to buy more kinds of plants, more pots, more backgrounds, and drops of “water of life” (which can either 1: resurrect your dead plant, 2: quickly re-hydrate your dehydrated plant, or 3: speed up the growth of your hydrated plant). Seeds can also be purchased with real money, but it’s entirely unnecessary to do so unless you chronically don’t drink enough water or are seriously impatient.

Of course if you’re a person who already drinks a lot of water (like me, I sometimes drink more than 200oz a day) different plants have different difficulty levels. The more the difficult the plant the more seeds it will yield once its in your garden, but before that it has to be more consistently watered and is quicker to become dehydrated (and die!). Oddly enough the cactus is the first more difficult plant you can unlock – I say it’s odd because cacti are generally pretty easy to take care of (I have four in real life, one of which is 7′ tall).

After “Babby Plant” I decided to try out the cactus (Devil’s Ivy and the Dandelion are free – the next plants cost seeds, but the cactus is only 3 seeds) and of course named it “Little Friend.”

Little Friend and I got off to a rough start. I planted him before bed, and then by the time I woke up he was already dehydrated and sad! 🙁

Fortunately after about 4 or 5 bottles of water he bounced back to his usual self. In the next photo he is singing, though he still looks a little frustrated with me. 🙂

We’ve since made amends and Little Friend is growing big and strong!

In fact Little Friend has since generated his own little friend (so getting into Three Amigos territory)!

As of me writing this, this is what Little Friend currently looks like:

Yay flowers! My guess is that once he hits the next phase he’ll be ready to join Babby Plant in the garden and then I’ll have to decide my next plant friend!

Update: Yep, “Little Friend” is now hanging out in the garden with “Babby Plant” and I’m now raising “Dabney” the dandelion – she likes boxes!

Anyways, I like Plant Nanny because 1) It’s free 2) It’s cute 3) It encourages you to drink more water and 4) If you already drink plenty of water it rewards you with cuteness.

While I suppose the sadness/death serves a motivator to drink more, I don’t like that a lack of water causes the plants look super depressing and sad – and then can die (I haven’t had any deaths yet, but I dislike the thought). Of course you can always use the Water of Life to save them, but I prefer to spare them from dying the first time around. I’ve been told that if you aren’t Jesus it’s kind of inconvenient.

While my plant buddies (real and digital) have yet to made me sad, I did have a sad moment earlier this week when I finally retired my old brown shoes. If you know me personally, or have read about my blue jacket or maybe my 50 cent folders and patched jeans, you’ll know that I value things – as another example the inside of my backpack is held together with duct-tape, but it works. No, I don’t really value the acquisition of things (I prefer experiences) but once I own something I try to take care of it and I certainly don’t get rid of because it’s not “in style” or even “fully functional.” Case in point are my brown, American Eagle shoes from Payless Shoes (not the tweener American Eagle coo-kids clothing store, but the bargin-bin shoe line from Payless).

I bought these before I even visited Boston for the first time. I bought them because up until that point in my life, the only shoes I had really ever consistently owned were tennis shoes, dress shoes, and work boots. Well, there are times when tennis shoes don’t quite cut it, but dress shoes aren’t really necessary. So SB took me to Payless Shoes and I found these bad boys for something like $27. Little did I know it but they’d end up being probably the most used, abused, and trustworthy shoes I’ve owned thus far in my life. What was eventually a budget purchase to try to blend in during admitted student weekends at top law schools (I didn’t) turned into shoes that not only carried me for over three thousand (yes thousand) miles, they also carried me through the snowiest winter in Boston in recorded history (my fancy snow boots came a year too late), and not only that, I’ve literally climbed mountains (in the snow – with no tracks, I don’t recommend it) with these shoes. These shoes also, in an odd way, represent a transition from my pre-law school self, to my nearly post-law school self. I had hoped they would last me all the way through law school, but sadly they reached the end of the road when the big February snow hit. The shoes themselves were fine in dry weather. But the slightest hint of rain or snow would result in your feet being soaking wet (and with Raynaud’s this is an issue, not just an inconvenience).

The problems were many – the soles were separating from the shoe, the shoe itself was cracking open, the inside of the shoe was worn completely through the fabric and over half way through the rubber (it turned your socks black in those spots), but the real killer was that in a couple places the sole got so worn and cracked that it cracked open. As a result, if the ground was wet, whelp, so were your feet.

If you look closely you can see the open cracks in each sole.

For a good while I was ok so long as I avoided puddles (not an easy feet in the dark on old brick sidewalks) but eventually it got so bad that I ended up with wet feet even if I touched nary a single puddle. Starting off a 10+ hour long school day with soaked feet (wool socks can only repel so much) was a downer. Even treating the shoes with moisture protecting spray didn’t help – they were simply too worn.

So, with GREAT reluctance I switched out my shoes for an even more expensive pair of American Eagle brown shoes from Payless. I tried to find my exact style, but unsurprisingly they don’t exist anymore (though some overpriced used ones are on Ebay, no thanks). So I went with the descendants of my shoes which cost nearly as much and.. didn’t fit right at all. In fact, the fit was so off that the size and style I needed didn’t even exist anymore in that line, and it’s not like I have abnormal feet. So I ended up returning those and trying out a pair from Sketchers.

They look similar to my old shoes, I guess similar enough that it doesn’t bother me. They are pretty comfortable, though not 3000 mile broken-in comfortable. That said, I have a hard time shaking my mental image of Sketchers as they existed in the 90s – a try-hard brand “skater brand” with an annoying plastic strip that would make a “zip/clacking” (sketching) noise as you pulled them through. It was the coolest thing in the world to just pull, un-pull, and pull those again and again. It was never appealing to me, even 90s me. But, like everything else from that period, Sketchers appear to have have gotten older, a bit more mature, more straddled with crushing student debt, and instilled with a growing sense of disillusionment.

Valentino expressing his general sense of disillusionment during the recent presidential address.

Ok so maybe they’re just shoes, but the Sketchers I remember didn’t look like the pair I now own, and I am more than ok with that.

Anyways, I have some school work and job applications to get back to, so I’ll wrap things up here. Based on the amount of work I have in the pipeline, coupled with a trip I have coming up, I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me again for another month. But, in light of those things the next post could be pretty exciting even if it’s slow getting here. 🙂

Until next time,
-Taco

North to Alaska [Part 4 of 4]

September 23, 2016 by Taco

Dinosaur Bear Presents:

North to Alaska Part 4 of 4:
Just a little south-east of Nome’

[Continued from Part 3]

Greetings,

When we last met SB and I had just headed back to our cabin for our final night on the Coral Princess. After packing up we got to bed (later than planned, as usual) and then the next morning we woke up in Vancouver!

After leaving our cabin we headed up to the front of the ship for our last breakfast onboard and then from there we went to our mustering disembarkation station. Getting through the disembarkation process was actually fairly easy, especially since we just had travel backpacks and no luggage to pick up. In fact, that we didn’t have luggage seemed very foreign to the Princess and port people – including the Canadian customs guy. We are not your typical cruise passengers in that regard I suppose.

Anyways, after getting off the ship we met up with our next guide – a native Canadian named John was about as genuinely (and stereotypically) Canadian as you could ever hope for. He even apologized for apologizing so constantly. It was grand. Since our flight wasn’t going to leave Vancouver until like 7:30pm (it was originally supposed to leave around 4:30 but they moved it back by 3 hours sometime after we booked) we figured there was no point in going straight to the airport. So, instead we went on a tour around Downtown Vancouver itself, as well as to Stanley Park, Lynn Canyon, and Capilano Canyon.

While I wouldn’t say that the sun came out, the light drizzle of the early morning faded away for the most part.

Both SB and I were really impressed by downtown Vancouver – the place had the cleanest sidewalks of any city I’ve ever seen, it was almost Pleasantville-ish. I had remembered liking Vancouver a decade prior, but last time I’d only been whisked straight to the airport (and almost missed our flight at that) so this time I got to see a lot more. Stanley Park was really cool, I liked the totem poles and horse carriage rides (though we sadly did not have the time nor money to take one).

A lot of the tour involved driving along Vancouver Harbor which made for some nice views of downtown as well as interesting spots such as Deadman’s Island, the 9 O’Clock Gun (which took me back to Edinburgh), and a statute of Harry Jerome (and yes I had to look up who it was, I had no idea, but hey it’s a cool photo anyways).

We also got to see (and cross) Vancouver’s famous Lions Gate Bridge. This was a landmark I vividly remembered from 10 years ago, namely sailing under it – but this time we were asleep because we had a latter disembarkation time this time around. 🙂

We also got to learn why the bridge was built, and it was kind of funny because the basic gist of it is that the Guinness family, yep of Guinness beer fame, had some valuable land on the other side that they wanted wealthy people to buy and build fancy houses on. Problem was, there was no good way to get there – so they built an entire friggin’ bridge. The bridge is named after “The Lions” – which are a pair of pointed peaks near Vancouver, if you were curious.

Before you get to the bridge there is a statute in the harbor named “Girl in a Wetsuit” which while not being an exact copy, is pretty much a conceptual twin of “The Little Mermaid” in Copenhagen. So now I’ve seen both!

After crossing the bridge our first stop was the Lynn Canyon area, namely the Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge!

I’m a big fan of suspension bridges, the more treacherous-looking the better (keyword: looking). While many a person might freak out when they sway to and fro I think it’s fun.

Plus, with cables like that there isn’t much that is going to happen. Of course if something did happen you’d have a nice 160’ plummet to the rocky canyon below.

Naturally the government is quite aware of this fact and before you even get to the bridge there is a nice friendly sign warning of not only how many people have died in the canyon, but also how they died. It was kind of macabre, I liked it.

From there we headed down towards the Capilano River for a nice hike through the rainforest – and nope, not joking, it’s a coastal rainforest (as is much of coastal Alaska). It was gorgeous.

Not only were a lot of the trees extremely old and extremely huge, they were also covered in all sorts of funky moss.

One less natural element in the canyon is the Cleveland Dam:

…which, despite being a giant wall of concrete, still managed to look like it fit perfectly in its surroundings. Oh, and if you are HUGE cinephile that area might look vaguely familiar to you. Don’t fret, your cinephilia is not failing you – that’s actually the exact spot where they filmed some scenes from Rambo: First Blood. Pretty cool.

After that we progressed a bit deeper into the forest where John – who is an ecologist-turned-tour-guide by trade – told us lots of interesting information about the trees and fauna. Here’s John next to a rather large Douglas fir.

I even got brownie points (on multiple occasions) for asking “really good questions.” In fact we became buddies by the end of the tour. One of the surefire ways of getting me past my crippling asspie social awkwardness is to get me interested in something, then I’ll never shut up.

Once we’d walked along the canyon wall for a bit we headed back down and checked out the Capilano River Fish Hatchery.

They had a lot of information about the different kinds of salmon in the hatchery as well as those being routed into the hatchery by the weir:

This information of course included the “Hand Trick” about salmon which SB and I had heard about 12,000 times by that point. However, you might not have heard it, so here’s a cool way of remembering the five most common types of Pacific salmon!

Take your hand, yes rip it off and look at it. First, you’ll see your thumb. Got it? No don’t eat it, just look at it. Well, thumb rhymes with Chum, as in Chum salmon! Next you’ll see your pointer (or index) finger. Well, you can use that finger to sock someone in the eye. Go ahead, go sock your finger into someone’s eye right now (but don’t mention this blog to the police afterwards). So, you’ve just socked someone in the eye, or Sockeye salmon! Next you have your largest finger, the middle finger, or as cool people like to call it, the King Finger. From there it’s no surprise that a King of fingers is kind like a King of salmon, or the King Salmon! It’s technically called the Chinook salmon but don’t argue with me it’s not like you knew that anyways. Next is your ring finger, where you wear fancy minerals that some horribly abused person mined from the earth before they were killed. A common example is silver, so you wear silver on your ring finger, as in a Silver Salmon! Ok, so this one is also technically known as something else – the Coho salmon – but seriously you try to relate coho to a finger. Finally, you have your pinky finger, which… well you get it pinky = pink, as in Pink Salmon! There you go, you have now acquired a piece of knowledge which might stick with you for the next 30 5 minutes! Go you!

After hanging out at the hatchery for a bit and seeing some itty bitty salmon babies we made our way back into downtown Vancouver were we dropped a few people off at various swanky hotels before making our way towards the airport.

Along the way I got some more brownie points with John by somehow pretending to know things about baseball (don’t ask me how I do this stuff I honestly don’t know, maybe I was adopted from an NSA laboratory – or more realistically rejected from an NSA laboratory and left in cornfield in Northern Mississippi to die before being found) .

Once at the airport we braced ourselves for US customs – as I had had a horrible experience here 10 years ago, but this time around the place was practically deserted and most of the agents have since been turned into computer terminals. And while the customs people were still basically robots, at least they were efficient robots this time around. Once through we got some coffee and lunch, or rather I got coffee, SB got tea because she still wasn’t feeling well (the olds had infected her and soon enough she would infect me). Then we settled in for a long wait until 7:30pm. Or at least that was the plan. I decided to go talk to the United People about getting bumped up to an earlier flight, and despite initially being told the flight was full ended up getting a seat without even waiting on standby. Of course, for as helpful as the employee was, he also accidentally deleted the second leg of our trip – you know the one that actually would take us home. But I noticed the lack of second boarding pass and was like “Yep this is an issue.” Turns out they had to call HQ to fix it because the oversold second flight – San Francisco to Boston – was crazy oversold and thus SB and I had been bumped from the plane entirely when he deleted our second leg. While they did get it worked out, I could see utter horror looming just beyond that employee’s face; my guess is that he got the vibe telling me: “So, uhm, sir – I just deleted your flight and, uhm, since that was the last flight of the day you’re now going to have to wait until tomorrow to fly out” would not end well. It would not have ended well, but as much as being on “Canada’s Most Wanted” sounded appealing to me, I’d rather be home. But it was fine and we got our flight moved up by 3.5 hours.

Of course that meant waiting the extra time in San Francisco, but I felt much better waiting in San Francisco – in the US of Murka – than I did waiting in Canada and trying to make a pathetically small connecting window of <30 minutes (also thanks to United moving our flight times around) and risking being stuck for 12+ hours.

So we waited for several hours in San Francisco – SB slept on the floor, we had some dinner, I pondered quantum mechanics, Tristen ate someone, Pig ate bugs, Valentino drew flowers, and Pigsten organized his rocks. All was well. Then 10:30pm finally rolled around and we were on our overnight flight back to Boston.

Now, I’ve been fortunate enough to have only been on three overnight flights in my life. The first one was freaking terrible. The second one wasn’t much better. So for this third one, I was anything but enthusiastic. Namely I just cannot sleep on a plane; I’d never been able to accomplish it for more than a 5 minute stretch. However, in the grand scheme of things this time around wasn’t terrible, in no small part because I learned that leaning forward onto my tray table works better for me sleep-wise (bubonic plague be damned). In fact, on our ~6 hour flight I probably logged 3 hours of sleep, which isn’t great, but it’s much better than on past occasions.

Plus, around 3am we were flying over a thunderstorm and I woke up just in time to watch it. It was absolutely incredible.

I tried taking like 600 photos and finally caught the lightning – no exposure delays makes it quite hard – but even those photos weren’t great. So just trust me it was cool.

The next morning we woke up to clear blue skies, which was a nice change as in the past the weather has been f*cking horrible when I’ve returned to Boston (though Hermine was only about 24 hours away at that point).

In fact the whole affair of getting to our apartment was pretty easy. We had all of our luggage with us, so there were no delays or destroyed/lost luggage to deal with. The Silver Line actually showed up on time and didn’t careen into the ocean. The Red Line also arrived on time and didn’t catch on fire (sadly not much of a joke here). Then we were early enough (on a Sunday) that the swarms of tourists hadn’t descended onto Harvard Square yet (they generally seem to begin propagating around 8am).

One thing most normies don’t realize that getting to Logan Airport is really only the start of getting home for us. Sometimes it has literally taken as long to get from Logan Airport to our apartment has it has to fly from Indiana to Boston – no I am not joking.

Anyways, once home we went to bed and slept for like 6 hours (or 8 hours in SB’s case). I love blackout curtains and loud window air conditioners when it comes to blocking out the incessant noise of neighbors’ children.

As mentioned I woke up a bit earlier than SB – her illness had worn her out – which allowed me to continue my wildlife tour. Yep, despite no longer being “on” our trip, the wildlife followed us home in the form of two wild turkeys right behind our building.

Believe it or not wild turkeys are quite common here.

From there it was mostly just unpacking and preparing to return to the real world. For Pigsten this meant starting the process of getting his rocks organized on his box:

Top Left Rock: A magic rock from gold-panning in Chicken, AK – it changes color when you put it in water (seriously)!
Bottom Left Rock: An Arctic Circle rock taken from the shores of the Arctic Ocean outside Kaktovik, AK. SB pointed out that it looks like a snow-capped mountain from the right angle, everyone agreed.
Top Right Rock: A rock taken from between Mendenhall Glacier and Nugget Falls. It’s full of white (think ice) and black (think sediment) just like a real glacier!
Bottom Right Rock: A rock taken from the depths of the Tongass Narrows outside Ketchikan, AK. It’s shiny and slick from the fast current of the narrows, just like the rocks we snorkeled above.

For Tristen this meant accounting for his newest “rokens”:

Not all of these are from this trip, obviously.

During our travels in the northlands Tristen had acquired some Canadian currency including a Loonie, a Toonie, a 25 cent piece, and a 10 cent piece [seen closest to him in the above photo]. And yes, they seriously call them Loonies & Toonies, it’s awesome.

Of course Tristen also had his official Alaskan Railroad “License to be Dangerous” – but that’s not a token in the traditional Tristen sense.

As for me, my organization (photos, luggage, etc.) would take a day or two, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying a beer in one of my newest acquisitions:

I almost bought a shirt that looked just like that in Dawson City, but decided not too since I’m not a big shirt collector. Turns out patience was the way to go as SB later found this beer huggie in Anchorage.

But more than anything, for all of us being home was the start of a great deal of reflection. It had been 20 days since we departed and we were only just beginning to process the incredible journey we’d had. In fact, even though I’m writing this two weeks after returning to Boston, I’m still reflecting on everything we did – which has kind of been the impetus behind this post series. That said, such lengthy reflections are neither a bad thing nor a surprising thing. I mean heck, look at how much ground we covered (including flights):

As predicted, it involved (very) roughly 12,200 miles of travel, though there is probably about a 1,500 mile margin of error there, haha.

Of course it’s not really the miles that count, it’s how you spend them – and SB, the boys, and I made the best of every one of them. There is nothing about this trip that I regret, not a single thing. Sure there were days were I had to push hard to get us where we needed to be, but I never felt like I was driving, but rather I felt like I was exploring. And yes, while the Taylor Highway was beat to hell and right next to huge plummets in a few places, we made it through just fine – thanks in no small part to Beckett’s suspension – and now it’s just another notch in the ole’ belt called life.

Since returning a few people have wondered how much it cost. Well, the truth is we haven’t even added it all up yet. Because it doesn’t matter. If you’re wondering why I talk about us not having much money but then saying “it doesn’t matter” then I don’t blame you. But the thing is, we don’t have much money for things because we don’t spend money on things. We spend money on experiences. So yes, SB and I work hard (frequently for less pay than we are worth, truth be told), and I have socks with holes in them and I eat store brand lunch-meat sandwiches essentially every day, but that’s the balance SB and I have chosen for ourselves. I have regretted spending money on things more than a fair share of times, but I have never regretted spending money on an experience.

So the answer is, I have no idea how much it costs, and truthfully I might not ever know.

But that’s fine with me; it was worth it, whatever it was.

Because on just this trip – among countless other things – I’ve driven over 2,600 miles in a truck named Beckett who was just as excited to get to Alaska as we were, I’ve camped at a Canadian rodeo, I’ve passed lakes that extend for miles and miles into the untapped wilderness, I’ve fallen asleep to the sounds of an owl in the mountains of British Columbia, I’ve interacted with some of the friendliest first nations people you could imagine in a town the size of a football field, I’ve felt the icy wind blow through my hair from a glacial ravine, I’ve crossed an internatonal border four times in one day, I’ve drove up an old mining trail to the summit of mountain where someone named the “Bear Man” lives in a tent, I’ve seen numerous black bears foraging for dinner, I’ve drove through a storm so strong in the Yukon that even a Ford F-350 XL struggled to stay on the road, I’ve spanned the longest bridge on the ALCAN, I’ve pried a frozen septic cap off of a camper in the icy cold Yukon morning, I’ve had lunch in the middle of the Klondike wilderness with not another soul for countless miles in any direction, I’ve seen the sun rise over the Yukon River, I’ve panned for gold in Chicken Alaska, I saw Santa Claus in North Pole, I saw the twin of the North Pole, I’ve played an xylophone made of ice and bathed in hot springs, I’ve crossed into the arctic circle in a bush plane, I’ve seen wild polar bears by the dozen (and met another Hoosier all the way up there no less), I’ve dined with roughnecks and fishermen at the top of the United States of America, I’ve traveled 12 hours by train through the most glorious countryside you could imagine, I’ve seen the tallest mountain in North America – again, I’ve met conductors who travel with polar bears named “Mr. C.,” I’ve followed a portion of the Iditarod trail, I’ve met friendly hosts and learned their stories as well as shared my own, I’ve sailed on a cruise ship where I played putt-putt and got a hole-in-hone while surrounded by the Inside Passage, I’ve heard the thunderous roar of the largest tidewater glacier in north America calving, I’ve laughed at a late night comedian while having my first ever mojito, I’ve learned about the plight of the glaciers of Glacier Bay while peering into their mesmerizing blue depths, I’ve zip-lined down Grizzly falls while upside down and doing the robot, I’ve watched a mamma grizzly feed her cubs with a family of bald eagles looking down overhead, I’ve seen a mother humpback whale teaching her baby to dive, I’ve hiked to Nugget Falls in the shadow of Mendenhall Glacier and felt the cool mountain water misting against my face, I’ve seen whales making magnificent jumps out of the water in the light of the setting Alaskan sun, I’ve snorkeled and free-dived into the frigid waters of the Tongass Narrows, I’ve watched a swarm of balloons fall to the dancing crowd below, I’ve seen a bartender play drums better than most professionals, I’ve traversed a suspension bridge while the river roared beneath me in Vancouver, I’ve gained knowledge while sitting in a grove of ancient fir-tree sentinels, and I’ve looked out in awe from the silence of a 3am flight to the magnificent display of a thunderstorm while everyone around me slept peacefully.

Or, to paraphrase the words of another:

I took the path less traveled by, and that made all the difference.

Until next time,
-Taco

Valentino Turns 7 and SB Turns 46

Valentino’s 6th Birthday (plus yummy food)

8th Anniversary Festivities

February… er.. March Check-in

North to Alaska [Part 4 of 4]

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North to Alaska Part 4 of 4:
Just a little south-east of Nome’

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Dinosaur Bear Presents:

North to Alaska Part 4 of 4: Just a little south-east of Nome’

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North to Alaska Part 4 of 4:
Just a little south-east of Nome’