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Carrie is busy at the Juneau Artist Gallery and with keeping the kiln hot. She has been branching out a bit in terms of subject–adding Float Planes and local Plants along with the “old standards”. A few of the new ones are shown below, and you can check out the latest gallery. We are also exploring selling the tiles through http://talustiles.etsy.com/ check it out!
After the great bike ride fun (see previous blog entry), we enjoyed the post-race dinner, and then searched out a quiet camping spot. We went out to the Chilkoot Lake State Recreation Site and found a really great spot. After sleeping in a bit, we woke up, had coffee and hot chocolate, then started packing up. Carrie finished this up while Torsten and Matt went down to the lake to fish and do some father/son bonding on Father’s Day. Carrie came down and joined us after a bit.
We have some great fishing movies, but I still have to compress those for posting. In the meantime, enjoy this still shot (and I’ll post a bunch of movies as a separate blog entry).
We went into Haines and had some “famous” fish and chips for lunch at the Bamboo Room, played at the playground, and went to join in with all the other unique, individualists who drive subarus and bikes, just like us and everyone else. 🙂
As always, check out the whole gallery (includes the bike race and fishing).
We had an awesome adventure last weekend centered around the Kluane Chilkat International Bike Race. It started out with a beautiful blue sky, flat water, fast ferry ride from Juneau to Haines. Carrie, Torsten, and Matt were on the ferry with Adelie, Chip, Missy, Mark, and Julie. Chip “Dr. Blokus” brought along his favorite game..
After grabbing dinner and some new fishing gear for Torsten, we went on up to Haines Junction (Canada) and camped with a lot of bikers. Here’s the start of the race on Satuday.
Carrie, Chip, and Matt rode as Team US Postal Service, with Missy acting as our team captain. Julie and Mark rode the whole race (150 miles–the race was 148.1, but they rode bikes from the campground to the start of the race). Chip rode legs 1-4 (69.4 miles) of the race, and was a bit wet and cold. Once he got up into the mountains, the skies cleared up and things warmed up, just in time for Matt to hop on to ride legs 5 and 6 (36.3 miles). Carrie got this great shot of Matt heading down the road after the station between legs 5 and 6.
Here’s Chip after Leg 4, escorted by Missy, Adelie, and Torsten:
After thoroughly enjoying Leg 6 (check out the altitude profile of Leg 6!), Matt handed off to Carrie (here she is riding off down the scenic road), who did Leg 7 and went on to do about a third of Leg 8 (the line at Customs to get back into the U.S. was a killer!!). Carrie rode a little over 30 miles.
Chip cleared customs and jumped right back in to join Mark and Julie at about midway through leg 7. So the US Postal Service team “cheated” (by covering parts of legs 7 and 8 twice) to get the red lantern (last to finish). But we had a blast and that was our only goal. Here’s the whole team (along with the “finishers”–Adelie and Torsten).
As usual, the whole gallery is available.
Or blow the dandelions! Carrie and Torsten met up with Joan and Eva down at the duck pond (Rotary Park) and Carrie got some great photos. Check the gallery.
We are having a fun and busy summer–and a hard time keeping up with blogging and e-documenting it all! Torsten is biking, enjoying swimming lessons (movie) (and swim pictures), and plenty more. We have a slew (or a few, depending on if you are T’s grandma or not!) of movies are posted at http://talus-and-heavner.com/movies/
We’ll sort and blog those movies sometime… So the sentiment of stopping and smelling the roses is a perfect mantra (as we pack to hop on the ferry up to Haines this weekend).
Matt went up with the group of EDGE K-12 teachers that Cathy Connor brings to Juneau/UAS for two weeks. The program is intended to connect and inspire K-life teaching and learning by connecting K-12 teachers in June, and then a cohort of Jr and High School students in August with Alaska experiential learning opportunities. We are working to combine EDGE and SEAMONSTER, so I (Matt) gave an EDGE lecture on Monday, then went up for a half day with the teachers to Mendenhall Glacier to describe our mass balance measurements and SEAMONSTER efforts. We measured a (rough estimate!) melt rate of 20 cm per week at the North Star camp. Anyway, check the story (and you can use a login of public with password public if you need).
