Greenland By Kite

by Erik Olsen on

Here’s another hard-core expedition for fans of, well, hard-core expeditions. It is also one of those trips you can
talk about in a bar conversation about when people say that everything has already been done.

Niklas Norman, Trygve Nakling and Carl Gustav Rye Florence
have embarked on a plan to ski-sail 1,553 miles across Greenland from south to north. Using only wind power, the goal
is to make the trip in less than 30 days. How will they cover so much ground in so short a time? Amazingly, the winds
are so fierce in this part of the world, that they will often his speeds in excess of 60 mph.

Dealing with gnarly white-outs and gaping crevasses, the team is currently into the trip, and they are
posting dispatches from their site.

Greenland, you might recall, is massive. It is about 7 times the size of Norway, and over 80 percent if the island is
covered by a giant ice-cap. Most expeditions traverse the island across, but the “Windpower Expedition” will do a full
length crossing.

Sailing the Northwest Passage

by Erik Olsen on

Lewis and Clark were just a century or so too early. Remember one of the goals of the pair, sent out by Thomas
Jefferson, was not just to cross the continent, but also to find the Northwest Passage for the sake of an easier trade
route for east coast businesses. Well, they didn’t find it, partly because at the time it didn’t exist. But thanks to
global warming, sections once covered by ice have now opened up.

And so we have father and son team Ben and Brad Gray who are
out to do it by ocean. The boat they are on, a 57 foot powerboat called the Idlewild, will carry them for 16 months
as they sail around the world, part of it through the NW passage. The route takes them through the Northwest
Territories’ Slave and Mackenzie Rivers Northwest to the Arctic Ocean, and then along the Northwest Passage to
Greenland, Africa, Australia, Japan, Alaska, the western section of the Northwest Passage and back home to Canada.
Whew. 

Go to the Land Down Under, Young Man

by Erik Olsen on

I guess I’ve always thought that the United States was considered the Land of Opportunity. Isn’t that what we’ve always been taught? Then what is happening here? Is George Bush’s single-handed effort to besmirch America’s reputation abroad having an effect even on those who are looking for greener pastures for themselves?

Well, maybe. According to a new Pew poll, most young men and women now see Australia as the place to go where the opportunities are best. Who knew?

Only in India did the US register as the most popular country to which to migrate (thank God for the Indians. Prediction: one of our closest allies in the next several decades will be India…mark my words). So, yes. Australia topped the ratings in four countries: Britain, Canada, the Netherlands and Germany. Canada was the most highly regarded destination in the US, France and China. What is up? Well, it does seem W’s policies are the deal-breaker. The poll found that the US’s reputation continuing to suffer around the world because of Iraq and the administration’s stridency.

It should be noted that there was a turnaround in Indonesia due to the American response to the tsunami disaster. Do we need more tragedies to get back in to favor in the world? If so, that’s sad.

Comments?

World Heritage Sites

by Erik Olsen on

I love the World Heritage Sites Web site.
I’ve raved about it before, but you know, you just can’t get enough of a good thing. 

Their list of amazing sites spans the globe from the
Minaret and Archaeological Remains of Jam Afghanistan to the
Matobo Hills in Zimbabwe, and tons in between. For example, take a look
at the list for the United States. There are sites here I’ve
never even heard of (Chaco Culture National Historical Park?).

The number of sites out there is remarkable, and new ones are being added all the time by the good folks at UNESCO.
There is even a magazine put out by the organization called World
Heritage Review. If you are traveling soon, this would be a great place to look for interesting places to
visit. 

Jane Goodall IMAX

by Erik Olsen on

Good old IMAX. I love the format, and wish they’d do even more with it. A while back I saw James Cameron’s Aliens of
the Deep, and let me tell you this film should be on the lesson plan of every student in America. Sure, you can get
your concepts of the underwater world from textbooks, but nothing beats a screen five stories high with 3-D glasses.
Well, depending on where you live, you likely have a museum of natural history or a science museum or something of that
ilk. Here in New York, we have the American Museum of Natural History, pretty much
the best of its species around. They’ve got a relatively new IMAX film showing there on Jane Goodall and her
chimps.  Called Jane Goodall’s Wild Chimpanzees,  the
film looks at Goodall’s forty year career of eschewing homo sapiens for chimps. Not that I blame her. I bring this all
up because it’s a hot Sunday here in the city and I was thinking a lot of folks probably don’t remember that an IMAX
theater is somewhere nearby, and catching these films is always a treat.