Iceland Part 1

So here we are in Portland, and it's been a few days since we've been back from the tour.  I finally got around to putting some of the photos up from the iceland adventure.  Flickr photoset here. 

So the trip started out a little lame.  We had two segments to our flight.  One from PDX to MSP, and then the next day, we were flying from MSP to Reykjavik.  We split this up, because we got decent airfare w/ iceland air from MSP, and planned to stay at our friend Patti's house to get a good night sleep before the flight to iceland.   Problem was, we had a layover in chicago on the way to MSP.  So we were stuck in a holding pattern above chicago, until we got low on jet fuel, and the pilot decided to get gas in Detroit.  So we got gas, and by the time we finally got to chicago, all the planes to MSP were gone.  Our options were spend 50 bucks on a cab and 69 bucks on a hotel, only to get 4 hours of sleep to make our flight at 7:20am, or sleep at the airport.  We chose the airport.  They setup cots so it was not complete hell, but then the guards come by at 4am to wake everyone up and it basically stormed all night, but we did have a good view of the lightning storm.  So we didn't get a good nights rest.

The next day we were off to iceland.  We hit the blue lagoon hot springs / geo thermal site.  It was pretty sweet.  We then hit the hotel in sellfoss and put the bikes together and rested up, for tomorrow the bike tour would begin.

In other news, I started a new job here yesterday, up on the hill, at the OHSU SON as a DBM.

More tomorrow.

Crude, trips, planes and economics.

Well, here we are in portland, as a strong hurricane starts to ramp it up toward the gulf of mexico. So, I'm not a professional stock or commodities trader, but if I was, I would have loaded up on crude oil futures today. But the fact is, I really don't even know how it works to buy Sept07 crude, but what I do know is, if Dean stays strong, and rolls into the Gulf as a categorized hurricane, it will threaten some oil refineries, and well, the price of oil will hit about $100+ a barrel. Well see what happens there. The chart here is the graph for today and oil traded at about 71.50 a barrel.

We're going to iceland next week for a bike tour. It should be totally major and hopefully we don't bring too much stuff that we don't need, since it will just add extra weight. It's a bit stressful trying to plan such a trip, without even having been on a multi day bike tour in america, let alone a foreign country. Luckily we're going with some experienced professionals.

So next Wednesday we'll be up and on our way to MN where we will catch a plane to iceland the next day. We don't make airline trips too often and now I have to wonder if this might be the last trip we take on an airplane. Not by choice mind you, but I strongly believe that the era of low cost air travel is going to be gone at some point in the not so near future. The cost of fuel will be too much to keep it going (because it's not going to get really cheap again like it was before about 2005.) (but maybe I read too many blogs like this and this).

I don't really consider myself one of those coo coo for coco puffs retards that goes around warning of economic collapse, and stock up on rice and water. But (IMHO) we have some major issues with our economy. It lives on growth. It needs growth. We proved it this week when the stock market was going insane, on credit woes and slow housing stats. Our economic engine requires factories to build more cars, construction workers to build more houses, and which in turn requires OPEC and other oil producing nations to drill more oil (because that's what we need for growth). So with all those new houses, and new cars, we can then use more energy that creates more pollution.

OK, so you say, "the new houses are energy star efficient" and "the cars now get better MPG" but i say that's fine, but what about the 500 houses in my neighborhood that are 50-100 years old and they are all crappy energy wasting shacks, even though most of them cost over 400k. And honestly, are we just going to line up all the SUVs that were sold in the late 90s thru now, to line up at the junk yard? NO, they are going to be driving for at least 10-15 more years. Peak Oil has already happened:
This was taken from here in the February 2007 issue. Note that proven oil reserve discoveries hit a 'peak' in the late 1960s, and have fallen ever since, and is expected to keep falling, as shown. At some point, production will be forced to fall (because there's only so much discovered oil), and when that happens, there will be a supply/demand issue. When you look at that graph, it's hard to imagine we can keep growing production.

I guess what I'm saying is, I've come to the conclusion that we're all screwed, because I don't think there is enough oil left to keep fueling the economic growth long enough for us to figure out another way to grow our economy without it. See, lots of us have retirement money in the stock market and if that bombs then what happens? I know I had history classes and I think that happened sometime around 1930 something. And that's not even taking into account the possible global climate changes that may or may not happen (like what? oh, maybe hurricane Dean).

Your president is not going to fix it, and if you think you're going to get a new president that will fix something, think about this:

1988 - Bush 1
1992 - Clinton 1
1996 - Clinton 1
2000 - Bush 2
2004 - Bush 2
2008 - ???? Clinton 2????

What the hell is this? Our government is really a one party system.

See you after we get back from Iceland.

Chile

Our two week vacation to Chile was one of those trips, that you can refer to as a '10 year trip'. If you still remember the trip you went on in ten years, (hence '10 year trip') it was a good trip. No doubt we'll remember this one for longer than 10 years. Two weeks was not nearly enough time to see all there is to see there (so plans might be in the mix to return someday ;).

Getting there:
It's sort of a long haul to get to where we went the first day. The day started out at about 4:30am in Portland, with an early flight to Atlanta. ATL is the busiest airport in the USA. It's a crappy airport, but aren't they all? Unfortunately we had a 7+ hour layover so we had to drink coffee and try to find something to do. This was a real drag, but I guess that's what happens when you use frequent flier tickets to travel now-a-days. Finally we were able to board our flight to 'Santiago de Chile'. It was an overnighter, and with the help of some ambien sleeping pills we were able to sleep a bit. When we got into Santiago, we went straight to the LAN desk to see if we could get on the earlier non-stop flight to Punta Arenas (and we did!). We were originally booked on a flight that would have forced us to stay in the airport a couple more hours and then the flight also stopped twice along the way to Punta Arenas, so getting on the earlier flight would save alot of time. (This would have been a great move in the TV show 'the amazing race'!!). After we got to Punta Arenas we immediately got on a bus to goto Puerto Natales, the staging area for Torres del Paine national park.

The Park
Torres del Paine is just south of the southern Patagonia ice fields. It's spectacular to say the very least. Hiker's have two options: the common W route, that is about 4-5 days hiking/camping or the 'circut' which is about 8-10 days. Laurie and I figured to do the circut in 6 nights (7 days). Could we do it? We thought so, but keep reading. It started out in the late afternoon, when we began the hike here:

It was 7km to the first camp, and if we decided to go on after that it was another 4 hours. Since it was about 6pm, when we reached the first camp, we decided not to go on to 'Seron camp'. So the next day we got off to an early start and were hiking before 6am. It was a beautiful morning, and more beautiful landscape:

There was a major river right next to the trail. This rivers source is melting glaciers. Now we talked to locals that said there was alot of rain in December, but these rivers were high. Like over flowing their banks high. You can see in the next photo the trail is flooded out, and we had to travers up the side, to avoid getting wet.

This was a recent flood too, because there were also spots where you could see blooming daisy's underwater. (they weren't underwater for long. Anyway, the main observation here, is there is some MAJOR melting going on down there. Global warming? The second day of hiking was planned to be about 27 kilometers. And let's just say it ain't an easy walk around the Paine circut. We were exhausted when we finally got to Refugio Dickson to setup the tent. It was a real welcome site when we finally got it into view:

It was not before Laurie's toe was black and blue and my feet hurt real bad. (We choose trail running shoes over hiking boots. A big mistake, with heavy backpacks. - no blisters though!!!)
The next day we slept in a bit, got some rest and decided on a shorter day. Since there was only one campsite between dickson and the big pass, paso John Gardner. There was no way we were going to pull another 20km+ day after the first big day of hiking, but that's OK. We made it to 'Camping Perros' near los perros glacier:

Needless to say, we were just fine with the shorter day. It was still long. After that we went up Paso John Gardner. The view at the top from behind:

and then looking the other way over the pass, it was glacier for as far as the eye could see:

It was an amazing sight, but bring a polarized lens for your camera. Glacier Grey is the big glacier. Here's another pic from way further down the narly trail:

Now this was another long day. It was an extreme section of the trail where there were many sketchy river crossings, where you walked over logs and grabbed a guide line for balance, and steep ladders leading down to these rivers:




Steeper than they look:




It was very exciting hike, because you really never knew what was around the next corner or over the next hill. It was truely an adventure. The next campsite didn't have as much of an "I'm out in the middle of nowhere' feel:

Needless to say, we didn't get through the whole 100km circut, we endedup taking a shortcut back because there was no way we were going to do a 8-10 day hke in 6. We were glad we did the hike we did, because the other route (the 'W') is much more popular and when we merged onto that part of the trail, it was very busy. We did meet some really nice people though.

We also found what could be the best hostel in Chile, maybe even the best in all of south america. It's called Zapato Amarillo, and this is the view:

If your down there, find it. It's near Puerto Octay, north of Puerto Montt. The staff is first class, the food is excellent, and it's not expensive.

It was such a great trip that we want to do it again! It was a great time, we didn't have enough time!

Whew. What a post. Now there is a full set of photos on flicker. Click here for a slideshow.

Torres Del Paine

I uploaded some of the pics from the trip to Chile. There are many more to come. Click here for the slideshow for the photoset. It will grow as more photos are uploaded.



I'm a bit disapointed in our camera (Sony cybershot DSC-W50.) Most of the pictures are good, but its a bummer that some of them are out of focus. This trip was amazing. I'm going to dedicate an upcoming blog post to it, hopefully I will get that done this weekend.

hola , punta arenas

donde esta cafe internet?

Post from Punta Arenas, Chile. Laurie and I just finished a 6 day trek (+camping) through torres del paine natl park, aka southern patagonia. It was absolutly awesome. I took a ton of photos, and we remembered to charge up the battery for the camera... We had excellent weather and hiked about 70 kilometers. This is a short post because the cafe iñternet here is full of fumar (smoke).

Next we are going up to Puerto Montt for a few days before our last day in santiago, will be back in bend on tuesday january 30!

Hasta la vista!!

the trip

Sorry for the lack of blogging lately, but I've been busy w/ some new projects, and the blog is has been ignored. We're heading south of the border next week. Way south of the border. Practically to the south pole. We're heading to Chile for 2 weeks, to visit Torres del Paine national park in Patigonia. We'll be backpacking for half the trip. An adventure, it will be. Possible blog entries when internet connections allow, photos likely will be uploaded upon return.

until then!