stardate 061107. arctic explorer's log:

today i met a legend of the alaskan bush. his name is wild bill. nobody knows his last name. he flew his little plane into our camp today to hang out. He didn't know any of us, but he still hung out for close to an hour. but our pilot and our cook had heard of him. I guess the FAA is after him because he's always equipping little planes with huge engines, and he also makes equipment runs illegally on the same enourmous plane that was featured in the epic hollywood film Con Air - a fact he made sure we were aware of during our conversation.

so i'm having a blast up here. i commute to work on a helicopter in the morning, explore the tundra for about 8 hours, then take the helicopter back to camp. its pretty sweet. we saw a grizzly bear the other day too, and since then we've stopped "accidentally" forgetting to bring the shotgun into the field. incidentily, i'm currently the gunman in my two-person group (the other geologist is a girl), a fact i personally find hilarious. we were target shooting the other night with the slugs and i couldn't hit the blamed board from 15 feet away. Also, I have a bad history of hightailing it when I see bears. Like when that black bear in Colorado jumped out of a bush in front of me while I was peeing, and I took off running mid-stream, urinating all over my leg.

the wildlife here is amazing. we see moose just about every day. also porcupine, caribou and fox. wild bill told us there were some musk oxen a few miles from camp too. i'm really hoping to spot a wolverine, but that might be too much to ask for. anyway, it turns out the company pays for plane trips home during vacation so I'm heading back to Minnesota for a week starting on Saturday. I should make it for Smither's track race Saturday night. hope to see some of you there.

Ed