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Summer in the BWCA

One of the more foolish decisions in my life was starting my work career two days after my college graduation from Dartmouth. While I was learning the world of work, two of my friends during the Summer of 1978 bought an old car, and tripped across the USA.

Late last Winter, my middle son Carl phoned me from his graduate studies at Johns Hopkins. His question was simple: What did I think about spending his last Summer before graduation in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) working for Tuscoroa Outfitters instead of staying in the Washington DC area and working in a job relevant internship? It was an easy response, even with all the focus on optimizing one's resume in this poor economy, I said "go for it!". Visions of the missed car trip across the USA during the Summer of 1978 made me determined to not see my son make the same mistake. Work will ALWAYS be waiting. Life experiences will not!

Last Wednesday I picked up Carl from his job at the end of the Gunflint Trail. His Spring and Summer were everything I had hoped it would be. Communications had been difficult with Carl as the BWCA is "off the grid". Just like his Dad, Carl blogs. Whenever Carl had a connection, he would post about his time "up north".

Early in Carl's Summer he took one canoe trip where he camped on an island in Crooked Lake. After the trip he sent us photos, and a description. I immediately pinged him back ... for you see, it was on this very same lake and island campground during a canoe trip with my wife almost 26 years ago that Molly first told me she was pregnant. Guess which of my three children would soon enter this world? Carl! (read Carl's post about this trip)

Here are links to the Summer canoe trips:

• Canoe Trips in May, 2011 | June 2011 | July 2011 | August 2011
• BWCA Planning: April 2011

And perhaps my favorite post in the realm of father knows best! Black Flies! If you've ever spent time in the wilderness during a black fly hatch, you'll understand my love of mosquito netting head gear. Carl thought I was crazy. He learned otherwise!

Like this post? Curious to learn what it is like to live "up north". Visit my Northern Life series of posts.

Finally, here are two photos of Crooked Lake with a link to the specific trip. Click to maximize either photo.

Living in the Future!

For slightly less than 27 years I have worked at a Fortune 100 company's research and development center. A goal of one's work is always to see the future, and then make that future happen in a profitable way. However, understanding what technologies will drive the world of tomorrow through new products is always difficult. Seeing a trend before it smacks you in the face is tough. Thus, the question remains ... how do you see the future? 

One company has taken a unique and delightful approach, the Tomorrow Project from Intel. Imagine if you took four leading science fiction writers and asked them to wright short stories about present technologies in your lab, but how that body of work might evolve in the future? This is an intriguing concept, and is exactly what Intel's Tomorrow Project has done. The four short stories may be downloaded without charge via NorthstarNerd.Org.

I've already read the Last Day of Work by Douglas Rushkoff. I won't give the story away, but imagine a technology which knows what you want ... before you consciously understand your own desires? Intel has a process in their R&D Lab which can anticipate whether you want to go left, or right. Now read the story!

Learn more about this fascinating idea via the Tomorrow Project, including Science Fiction Prototyping (free pdf download). Intel is thinking outside the box. In fact, the box does not even exist!

Northern Express Photo Shoot

This afternoon I learned how difficult it is to photograph a steam engine when it crosses a bridge in the northern forest. Given it was a beautiful afternoon, I decided why not head up the north shore of Lake Superior and try to photograph the Soo Line steam engine from the North Shore Scenic Railroad as it crossed French River?

In theory this task should have been easy. I descended into the ravine, chose my rock and waited. Right away I realized achieving my goal would be difficult. Recent heavy rains had swollen the river, and the rapids were roaring. Although I would normally never refer to rapids as "noise", in this case I would have little or no warning of the approaching steam engine. 

The afternoon light was perfect, but what I really needed was an assistant 200 yards up the rail line who could phone me and tell me to start taking pictures in autoshoot mode. Oops, this would assume one could get a cell phone connection in a ravine in northern Minnesota. Oh well ... I waited for over 40 minutes on my rock and planned "my shoot". Many times I turned my camera on and pressed my shutter release. False alarm, the rapids had fooled me again.

In the end I had about 1 to 2 seconds warning, and started shooting. The slideshow given below has seven photos. In the end I climbed out of my ravine laughing at myself. This business of photography is harder than I thought! (direct Picasa link to view high res photos). You'll also see I played around with the photo effect settings.