Giant pumpkins

So, back in September, I went to the Alaska state fair. Mainly for one reason - to see the gigantic pumpkins. I'm sure I made a post about this back in September, but the friend of mine who took the picture only just now sent me the picture. So, here it is

It was a new world record...something like 1100 pounds. Crazy, right? That's a lot of pumpkin pie!

The Last Great Race on Earth

Iditarod XXXIX

March 5, 2011

10:00 am

Downtown Anchorage, on the corner of 4th and D St.

-1 fahrenheit outside

The great, 1049 mile race, from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska. The top mushers typically finish in just under 9 days, making a great journey into the Last Frontier.

People lined up all along 4th Ave, even filling up the sides of the big parking garage facing the street, all cheering along the mushers and the dogs.

So, right at 10:00 am, the first musher takes off. Today was a ceremonial start, so the mushers take off in 2 minute intervals, and run down the Anchorage city streets, people cheering them on.

One of the greatest dog teams in the history of the Iditarod.

This is the team of Lance Mackey - winner of the previous 4 Iditarod races. First man ever to win 4 consecutively.

This team came all the way out from Australia.

Here's the banner flying high on the sled.

Dogs getting prepped at the starting line, waiting for the countdown to send them off.

All dogs get a thorough inspection, at the beginning and along all check points. Their health is always a top concern.

Anchorage police were kept busy, making sure traffic was under control and making sure people weren't doing anything too stupid.

These teams all consist of 16 dogs. There were 63 mushers in all. That's over 1000 dogs!

There's also a contest called the "Iditarider." It's a phone auction to ride along with all of the mushers for the 7 mile ceremonial run.

The dogs, though enjoying themselves, are hard at work.

The streets in Anchorage have no snow currently. It's all been plowed away, and we haven't had snow fall in a few weeks. So, snow has to be hauled in by dump truck so the mushers have snow to run on. Any snow we have in Anchorage at this point tends not to be so white and pristine looking.

There are some prominent mushers running in the 2011 Iditarod - Lance Mackey, who I mentioned earlier. He's wearing bib # 17. Martin Buser, another 4 time champion was wearing #11. And Rick Swenson, the only 5 time champion, wearing #49 (the lucky number). There's a great story with Martin Buser and the 2008 Iditarod. Read the story here:

http://www.adn.com/2008/03/12/342450/buser-takes-a-130-mph-detour.html

Well, as the mushers run, people along the way want to high-5 them.

And most do. I got in a few myself. I also got in trouble for standing on the snow bank the way this kid was. I guess you're not supposed to do that. Oops.

As for me, it turns out I was under-dressed. I only wore 2 layers, which wasn't quite enough, but I was able to tough it out for the 2+ hours of the ceremonial start of the race. Now, once the ceremonial run was over today, they packed up the dogs and sleds in trucks and shipped off to Willow Alaska (mile 69 on the George Parks Highway out from Anchorage). Tomorrow, they will have their official re-start, where official time is kept. Who will win the great race? Who knows? You can follow along here:

http://www.iditarod.com/

If you click on the Iditarod tracker on the window on the right side of the page, you can follow all the mushers, as they are kept track of by a GPS-based tracking device. Just in case you don't see the link:

http://www.ionearth.com/2011/iditarod/demo/

If I were a betting man, I'd say Lance Mackey will win again this year, maybe just beating out Martin Buser. To be fair, Buser does hold the record with the fastest finish, at 8 days and 22 hours, 46 minutes, and 2 seconds, and has the most consecutive race finishes (25 in a row, which is quite a feat, considering a lot of mushers can't even finish the 1000+ mile trek). So, I'm excited to follow along this year. Hope you enjoyed this.

Weight Loss

So, I found an old picture, taken back in Jan 2009, at a friend's wedding. Here are myself and 3 buddies.

Left to right: Tyler, Kelvin, Brandon, and me.

So, why did I bring this up? Well, through various reasons and methods, we've all changed in the last 2 years, so I thought I'd bring up a bit of comparison. All of us have become quite a bit lighter, and I thought it would be nice to see the differences over time.

First Tyler, who spent the last 2 years on his mission. This was about a year ago. He's the non-hispanic guy, just in case you couldn't tell which one was him.

Check back with the original. Skinny, right? Let's go on.

Next up, Kelvin. Kelvin started P90x, and lost like 90 pounds.

Check back with the original. Quite the change, wouldn't you say?

Ok, next, me. This was a little less than a year ago, at my senior recital. I had just finished doing P90x for the first time, and was down about 30 pounds.

Check back with the original. I think the change was for the better.

Now, everybody goes through changes in a different way.

Tyler, Kelvin, and myself became noticeably skinnier. We're not as wide as we used to was.

How does this affect Brandon, who was already rather skinny?

Well, his change wasn't so much horizontal, as much as it was vertical.

Look at the original.

Brandon is in the back and hunched over. He was 6'8 in the picture. The new Brandon...

The new Brandon is only about 4'9.

Hope this made you smile as it did me.

Stories of a substitute teacher

This was about a week and a half ago. One of the funniest days I've had. Reasons why (and not in chronological order, for reasons to be explained)

5th period, middle school math:
Student: Mr. Yi, what nationality are you.
Me: American.
Student: What language do you speak?
Me: English.
Student: ...oh

6th period math class:
Student: Mr. Yi, are you related to Mr. Kim?

‎4th period math class:
Student (to another student): They're related, right?
Other student: ...I think so. They look like it.

Why all this? To begin the day, I arrive in my class. I pass by a man who bore some semblance to somebody we all know. I get in the classroom, and shortly after I am greeted by "Hi, I'm Mr. Kim." He was 6+ foot tall. Korean. Long black hair. No joke.

Return to Anchorage

So, upon my return to Anchorage, this was the state of my car:

What had happened was that Anchorage went through an unusually warm period around New Year's (mid 40's), followed back by a very cold period (0-5 degrees). So, all the frost melted, including the semi-permanent layer that's been on my rear windshield for over a month. Then, everything froze back up, so I had a nice layer of ice crystals on my car.

Monday of last week (the 17th), I happened to look out my bedroom window, and guess what I saw?

Moose!

They were just feeding on the trees right across my window. Pretty exciting. I've started to see more in the area I currently live in than my last place.

This last Monday night we had an activity for my ward, called Family Home Evening. It's a weekly activity, where we all get together as a ward (which is comprised of young singles, between the ages of 18-30) and share a lesson and an activity. Our activity? It was a cook-off, kind of Iron-Chef style. We got to pick from a set of ingredients (each team having to pick 1 meat, 1 grain, 3 veggies, 1 canned item, 1 sauce, and seasonings). Each team had 25 minutes to plan and cook. And the judges? Who else?

The Elders in our ward. So, Mom and Dad, rest assured that this is the thing we as church members do often...feed missionaries. Ours get fed; Chris does too.

What other adventures will our hero encounter next? Stay tuned to find out...

Vegas trip part 2

So, on New Year's Day, I went rappelling with my friend Laurie Hansen and her family (no relation to my other Hansen friends (Kyle, Whitney, Audrey, Trevor, Danielle, Tyler, and Jake, who are all either siblings or spouses). Rappelling basically is going down a big rock or the side of a mountain with ropes. Like this:

Me and Laurie on the last part of our descent.

It was the first time I had ever done this, and it was a lot of fun. We went out to Calico Basin. The weather was pretty nice, slightly on the chilly side, with a bit of a breeze, but otherwise a great day to be out. We had chili, and hot chocolate and some other goodies. In addition, there had to be a bit of showing off.

Me hanging upside down. The camera angle and my face makes it look like the rope is causing me pain. It was just the angle I assure you.

Vegas Trip part 1

So, I apologize for the lack of posts lately, so I have some catching up to do.

Dec 21 - Jan 12 I was down in Las Vegas. Here are some of the adventures I embarked on.

Dec 23, the eve of Christmas Eve, I went to a white elephant party at a friend's house. We each brought a dish and had a feast.

People at dinner.

The delicious food.

For those of you who don't know what a white elephant party is, basically everybody brings 1 gift, not for anybody in particular. Then, everybody participating draws a number, and we select gifts in order. Person 1 picks a gift. Person 2 then goes. Person 2 has an option: either select a gift, or steal one already selected. If that person steals a gift from person 1, person 1 selects a new gift. And the same goes for every person. Once a gift has been stolen 3 times, it can't get stolen anymore. So, basically, the later a person goes, the lower the odds a gift can get stolen, but the higher the odds a gift has been stolen the maximum number of times. As it turned out, more than half the gifts were Nerf guns. So, we did what any reasonable people would do and had a Nerf battle.

Me and my new Nerf blaster.

Setting up a fort to give us cover from the onslaught.

My buddy Chris using a chair and Big Fat Nick as cover.

Trying to snipe some unsuspecting guys (this is Big Fat Nick's gun, so I'll assume it was Nick)

To supplement the guns we had, some of us went out and bought more. Well, as if that wasn't enough, the Monday after Christmas, we all got together and had a second round of Nerf Wars, with more guns and more people.

Kyle showing off his gun. He did have the biggest gun around.

Jacob poking through the window to get off a shot from the outside.

Taking cover behind the love sack.

Little Katy, big gun.

Posing for the camera.

Hiding under a covered table.

All of the guns we had for round 2.

And all of the combatants. It was a good night.

Credit goes to Whitney Hansen and Wendy Rosser for all of the pictures that I stole from their blogs/facebook. Thanks ladies.