J Week April 17, 2008
Posted by rcl2861 in Uncategorized.Tags: Add new tag, Alaska Press Club, Conference, J Week, Journalism
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The Alaska Press Club is holding J Week, a journalism conference, in Anchorage. I’m going to attend with my girlfriend and watch as many presentations as possible. The theme this year is New Frontiers on the Last Frontier and it will be held April 17-20. The presentation that I want to attend most is by Leonard Pitts. It’s called ‘Finding Your Voice’ and the description looks like a how to for aspiring writers.
Gas is up to $3.59 in Fairbanks and will probably be near $4 on the Parks Highway. I really want to drive the Tempo down but if it keeps snowing I’ll have to take the truck which will use twice as much gas. I booked reservations at the Red Roof Inn for $49.89, so that will save on some of the cost. It’s in a good part of town and the room pictures looked nice but I’m wary of the price, has to be something wrong with it. Ah well, hazards of being a college student on a budget. At least it’s not a hostel or the YMCA.
Soaking your sorrows away April 10, 2008
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When your troubles start to weigh you down, it’s time to get away and relax. What better place to relax than a hot springs? This was my mindset on Friday, the 11th. My significant other and I decided that it would be a fun, relaxing trip to go out to Chena Hot Springs. The first place I checked was their website, which was put together quite nicely, and didn’t see any accommodations that fit my price range. I called the resorts front desk to find out if they had any cancelations on their cheaper rooms. The girl said that they had vacancies in their number 3 cabin and that I would pay the Alaska rate $119, that was $60 less.
I booked the rooms right away and started packing. It would be 55 miles from where I was, but it would be worth the wait. The drive went by quickly; it took just over an hour to get there and we saw a few moose on the way. After checking in, we took a look at our rooms. The rooms were clean and had cable, but no phone and the wireless internet wasn’t working that day, which they apologized for. We changed into our bathing suits and I met her in the outdoor pool.
The water out there is magic, we stayed in the pool for what seemed like an hour or so and decided to go get dinner. Unfortunately we had actually been in the pool for over 4 hours and quickly rushed into our dinner attire. We grabbed our room keys and practically ran to the restaurant. We got there 15 minutes too late.
We heard some music playing from the lounge and went to sit down. The man playing the guitar and singing was Pete. We decided if we couldn’t have dinner, we could stay for Pete’s music and maybe some soft drinks or appetizers would be enough. Pete came over after his song and gave us a list of what he plays. Ring of Fire seemed appropriate so we picked that.
We got up early the next morning to make sure we didn’t miss breakfast, we were still awfully hungry. After ordering half the menu and drinking a lot of coffee, we packed our stuff and checked out. We were melancholy about leaving, but enjoyed ourselves immensely and would recommend the trip to anyone. It’s my favorite place to escape to when life in town brings me down.
“The Nenana Ice Classic” April 5, 2008
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April 5th was the last day to guess when the ice will go out for the year 2008. This is the time of year when everyone checks the thickness of the ice in Nenana, which is now 45 inches thick, to find out how much longer it will be before the ice starts moving the tripod set up on the Tanana river. Then when that moment comes the bells, whistles and sirens go off and the celebration begins.
Usually there is more than just one winner in the Ice Classic, not just because of the likely hood of someone picking the same time but also because of ice pools. People will join into pools to blanket certain days or possibly weeks to increase their likely hood of winning.
There are several ways that came to mind when picking dates and times for the ice to go out. The first is using science to deduce an answer. You can check previous years where the ice was 45 inches thick to see when the tripod was finally tripped. You can gauge how warm the winter was and use it to pick your date. Of course then there is just random numbers and luck. How would you pick a time for the ice to break up?
