The First of the Year

I gave my first presentation of the year last week to The Anchorage Audubon Society. I talked about my Mongolia expedition, showing my slides and telling them about what we did.

It was not the best attendance I've ever had with them, due mostly to the fact that the weather was somewhat less than ideal. Not that it was cold, thank goodness. It had warmed up just that morning so we were finally thawing out.

That was the problem: we were thawing out.

The roads were barely drivable due to the ice, and people's homes were flooding out all over the place. In fact, roads were being flooded out as well as houses, so some intersections were nearly impassable.

About 20 people braved the elements though, so I went ahead with my presentation.

On a more positive note: a local celebrity did the introduction for me! Locals will recognize Mr. Whitekeys as being the inspiration behind the Whale Fat Follies that used to premier at The Fly By Night Club each year; a favorite spot for tourists (and Alaskans, too) to get a rather colorful take on the local news. Mr. Whitekeys is an avid birder and is currently on the board of directors for the local chapter of the Audubon. He is a very nice man, and was very courteous to me.

The meeting was held at the BP Energy Center, a building providing meeting space to non-profit organizations here in town as a community service by BP. It's a very nice building, and the room we were in had seating for at least 100 people as well as a nice big screen to project my pictures onto. About the only thing I could complain about was the fact that I was so close to that big screen I could barely see it. Plus, trying to reach up to point at things during my talk was pretty much impossible: it was just too big.

As always I talk too much, so they had to rush me along when it got close to time to stop. I had planned on showing a bunch of pictures that Dr. Reading (the scientist I worked with out in Mongolia - see previous postings in this blog) had sent to me of various birds he's come across over there. We barely had time to quickly flip thru them, and no time at all for them to come up and look thru all the books, pamphlets, and other material I had laid out for them up front.

But, they all seemed to have enjoyed themselves, so I guess it wasn't a total flop. Not a bad way to start out my year as the Alaskan Field Representative for the Earthwatch Institute.