Telluride Film Festival

by Erik Olsen on

One of the best film festivals of the year is coming up soon, and this might be the
opportunity you’ve been looking for to head to Colorado for both culture and superb outdoor fun. I’m talking, of
course, about the Telluride Film Festival. For outdoors buffs, the
mountain biking around Telluride is kick ass, as is the hiking and fishing. But you can’t beat it as a killer venue for
watching films and then heading out for a beer at one of the local bars. But it’s a very popular place during the
festival (the town’s population literally triples during the festival), so at this point, you probably have to know
someone to stay with or find a good campsite to pitch a tent.
Here’s a site with a list of some of the camping areas
nearby. 

This year’s festival runs from September 2-5. Looks like some of
the passes are sold out, but you can still get your hands on the
Full Festival Pass for $650. That’s not cheap, but I’ll
bet if you just went, you could sneak your way into some of the venues. Not that I’m advocating you do something so,
well, evil.

 

One of the oddities, but oddly compelling things about the festival is that they never reveal the program until just
before it starts, so it’s usually full of surprises. But every year they show films both big and small. A couple of
films that have premiered at the festival include: Sling Blade, Roger and Me and
Lost in Translation.

 

If you’ve never been to Telluride before, well, you’ve missed out. It’s one of the most beautiful places around. We
used to go every year to the bluegrass festival there in the heart of summer, and just sitting there with the mountains
and the old mill rising above you, the old Western charm of the place, man, I wish I was going.

San Marino Walking Itineraries

by Adrienne Wilson on

San Marino is the third smallest state in
Europe, somewhere around the size of Washington D.C.
and a little enclave in central Italy. Being nicely positioned in the
Mediterranean the country sees some mild to cool winters and sunny summers which should make exploring the country easy
at any time of year. Hearing the name alone already makes me think relaxing, refreshing, enchanting and slow
paced so why not take advantage of the many suggested walking
tours? Getting there might pinch your pockets like most places in Europe, but walking should cost you
nothing. Take a nature stroll along the mills of the Mulini trail, a survival course and mountain-bike excursion
in the Laiala Pinewood or several other green areas in the country.

Waterproof iPod Cases from H2O Audio: Review

by Erik Olsen on

As someone who frequently paddles with his ipod, I’ve long been on the lookout for a good solution to the problem of
keeping my magic little musicbox of beauty dry. Up to now, I’ve put my iPod (a gen4 unit sans photos) in a Ziplock bag,
cinched it up with tape, and prayed that I will not be capsized by a rogue swell. But now I have finally found the
solution. I recently got my hands on the SViP4G (oh please
oh please come up with a better name!) a wonderful new waterproof MP3 player housing from the good folks at
h2O Audio. So far, I cannot say enough about it. I took it out for a
paddle last weekend and even dumped it – with my ipod snugly encased inside – into the Hudson River. I actually held it
a few feet underwater as I was listening to some Pearl Jam.

These MP3 casings are very well-designed. You simply pop open
the casing and plug your ipod into the mini-jack that is affixed to the top. Shut the case and make sure that the
watertight seals have closed neatly around the unit. The case comes with a pair of headphones with special rubber ear
plugs that aren’t the most comfortable in the world, but they do a fine job once you get used to them.  Once the
unit is closed, you have access to all the buttons and functionality of your ipod. Of course, you want to make sure you
get the right H2O unit for your particular ipod. The Mini
case will not work, for example, with the Gen4 because the size and button arrangement is different. But I was very
impressed that even the clickwheel works via a clever spinning wheel that simulates finger contact with the actual ipod
clickwheel.

Of course, what I’d love to do with one of these things is go diving, but the company says that the cases’ protection
is only good to about 10 feet, which is fine for, say, snorkeling. Imagine floating over a reef alive with colorful
fish and hearing the new Foo Fighters album instead of your own labored breathing. Very cool. BTW: the company does
offer a unit called the i300dv (for Deep Version) that they
say is good to 200 feet.

But these casings do more than protect against water. They are rugged enough that you can use them for climbing,
hiking, surfing, mountain bike riding…wherever and how ever you might find yourself being active in the outdoors. I
assume you can’t hurl the thing off a mountain top or into a crevasse, but if it drops a few feet onto a jagged rock,
the case will absorb the fall and your ipod will keep on playing. If I have any quibble with the cases, they can be a
wee bit hard to close, as snapping shut the bottom latch takes some effort.

The cases run about $150, not exactly cheap, but worth the investment if just for the protection for your
iPod.

I give the H2O a big thumbs up for helping me bring my music with me to the outdoors and underwater. On a scale of 1
to 10, I give it a 8.5.

Waterfall Discovery on NPR

by Erik Olsen on

More on the “hidden” liquid asset discovered in California…the 300 foot
waterfall found in Northern California’s Whiskeytown
National Recreation Area. NPR runs a quick
piece on the waterfall with an interview with the Rec Area’s superintendent Jim Milestone.

As you might remember, while people certainly had seen the waterfalls before (in fact, it’s only about 1 1/2 miles in
from a main trail), there was no mention of it on the maps of the Geological Service, the arbiter of all geological
features and mapping in the US.

The 300 foot waterfall was all over the news last week,
and took people by surprise because, well, things like this are usually pretty well known. Ande as I pointed out in my
earlier post on the subject, now that it’s been “discovered” it will certainly not remain unknown for long. In fact,
the Rec Area is building a trail to the waterfall to be completed soon. So kiss the waterfall’s “pristine” character
good-bye.

Grizzly Man

by Erik Olsen on

So last night I headed over to the Angelica theater and caught a sold out showing of
Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog’s new documentary about the bear loving young
activist Timothy Treadwell. This is a superb film. One of the best character profiles I’ve seen in a long, long time.
Having spent 13 years living among Grizzly bears in Alaska, Treadwell was a minor celebrity. He made an appearance on
David Letterman and was the subject of several articles in adventure travel magazines. People loved him and loathed
him, but no one questioned his passion, a quality that shines through in this film.

Using a DV camera, Treadwell filmed himself over the years living among the bears and assorted wildlife of the
gorgeous and yawning Alaskan plain. He completed several hundred hours of tape, some of it extremely riveting footage.
(He also shot numerous photographs). Much of the
footage in the film has Treadwell talking to the camera, explaining why he is there. He constantly professes to be
protecting the bears, but this is National Park Service land that is already heavily protected, with few real problems
from poaching, and so one wonders if there is something else about his presence there, whether the whole adventure is
more a matter of personal escape, of banishing demons and finding a purpose in life. 

Treadwell is a complex and fascinating character…a mixture of compassionate, animal-loving green, fervent nihilist and
unbridled megalomaniac. He reminded me a bit of Chris McCandless, the character from
Into the Wild. On
the one hand, you can relate to his disdain for aspects of modern society, his passion for preserving wilderness…on the
other hand he unquestionably goes off the deep end, and you really question his sanity. It’s
no secret that in the end he is munched by a bear (along
with his girlfriend), something captured on the audio portion of the tape found in his camera (the lens cap was on).
You never get to actually hear this audio…but it is described in detail in the film. In once of the film’s scenes of
perhaps treacly melodrama, Herzog listens to the tape as Treadwell’s former girlfriend looks on with a horrified,
deeply pained face. I liked the scene, but it did seem a bit overwrought.

Anyway, if you can catch this film, do so. Here is the
trailer.

Also, it seems that Leo DiCaprio may actually
play Treadwell in a motion picture, although in this case it is hard to imagine the fiction film surpassing the
documentary for elegance and drama.