When we finished our boat excursion in the Galapagos, we had to plan out the rest of our time there.  Our friend, Jeff, only had a week or so left with us, so we deferred to him.  What would he like to do?  See more of the Galapagos or, perhaps, something else in Ecuador?  He wanted to see the Amazon jungle.

This was an interesting video to put together.  Because of the rain, for most of the day trip we only ever hauled out Oksana’s tiny little point-and-shoot camera (a Panasonic Lumix TZ5.)  It doesn’t even compare to the other cameras we had tucked away under our raincoats, but I was surprised to discover its 720p HD video mode and marginal microphone were more than capable of telling that day’s story.

The day before Jeff left (Dec 6), we sorted through our footage, pounded out a rough outline, and shot our voice-overs on the roof of Plantas y Blanco, our hostel — which accounts for much of the background noise in the final edit — all in about 3 hours.  While not perfect, I do like how most of the video turned out.

What do you think?  Does the image quality stack up to some of the previous episodes we’ve done?

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This is long (5000 words!)… and long overdue. Other than myself, I only know of one other person out there that would really love to have my wedding writings finished. Thanks for the reminder, Anya.

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Friday
August 16, 2002

Another early morning. Luckily for Oksana, she could sleep in just a little bit longer than I could today. I got up at 7 and was out of the house by 7:45. First stop, Joe’s house – to pick up Noah and Rob.

Noah and Rob were ready to go and, because I needed to pick up some family members, we didn’t spend much idle time at Joe’s. Joe was interested in hiking the glacier with us, but he needed to go to work first to see if they could spare him for the morning. The plane was that if he could swing it, he would meet up with us at the trailhead. With Rob and Noah in two, I headed off to the dorms to pick up some rafters.

One of my college roommates, Mike, has been rafting the Mendenhall River as a summer job for the last few years. I had asked him this spring if he thought we could wrangle a free trip down the river for anyone that came up for the wedding. Not a problem – a date, time, and enough able-bodied rowers was all he’d need.

At the dorms we picked up my Mom, Don, and Mariah. Oksana, having roused herself from her slumber, showed up to escort her brother and nephew for the same trip. Everyone was ready to go except my brother, Kegan, who was nowhere to be found. He was supposed to meet us at 8am, but we couldn’t find him at the dorms. Hmmm. Maybe he thought we were to meet at the university, instead. Our train of cars drove down to the campus looking for my grandparent’s rental car – or any other sign of Kegan.

No luck. Eventually I was forced to run home and get my PDA so that we could call Kegan’s cell phone. We rang him up and found out that he was… waiting for us at the dorms! He must have shown up moments after we drove off. We returned to the dorm parking lot, added their car to our train, and made it to the head of the river just a little later than I’d hoped.

Mike was there and all ready to get everyone suited up and in the boat. While they were getting their feet sized for boots, their legs sized for rain pants, and their chests sized for life jackets, those of us not going took plenty of pictures and made plans to pick them up at the pull-out. Soon enough they grabbed their paddles, hopped into the boat, and floated up the lake towards the glacier.

Rob, Noah, and I took a few pictures of their departure and then heading off to Safeway to get some breakfast and some hiking food. While there, Noah gave Joe a call at work – no luck. There were too many important things for him to do at work.

We grabbed a breakfast of donuts (and coffee for Noah) and some food and drinks for our backpack before driving back to the same parking lot where we’d dropped off the rafters earlier. Once there I loaned out a couple pairs of shoes to Noah and Rob, we filled Noah’s pack with our supplies, and dressed in layers because the morning was a bit chilly. That was a mistake – 15 minutes into the hike and we were shedding them fast.
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