 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Okay, we're back, we're live, and we have an amazing first time only show. We're having a show with Jeff Grad, World Traveler, eating lunch. I mean, we could have been watching people getting a haircut, but instead we're having Jeff Grad eating lunch. And it's okay, Jeff, you can eat during the show. Welcome. Thank you very much. If it had been me just having a haircut, it would be a very short show. Yeah, same with me. We do have something in common. Amazing. So anyway, first you said you were going to discuss the new DROA form, which you have on the table. But then we thought that's probably not expansive enough for our discussion. So here on Global Connections, we should talk about more global things. And it so appears that you had just come back from Alaska, because everybody is going to Alaska and we need to compare notes with you. We've had several shows about Alaska. You know, Hawaii should celebrate Alaska, you know, 49, 50, all that. So can you tell us a little bit about your trip to Alaska, Jeff? Well, my trip was on a ship, just like the one that you were on with your lovely wife. And we did it with three generations. So we had my wife and I were the oldest generation and our son and daughter-in-law and then their two kids. And I thought, you know, that would be an unusual way to go on some of these trips. But it turns out that that time of the year and August and July, you know, kids are on vacation and it's really a great family-oriented vacation. And usually, if I go on any of these cruises that people tend to be older and less fit and less energetic, but this one was really good. So I'd say it's really something that's a great family trip and especially for three generations. And so, yeah, I'd really encourage it. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, our trip was on the Norwegian Sun, which started in Seward, which is to the southwest part of Alaska, and then worked its way all the way to the northeast, the rather southeast part of Alaska in Vancouver. It was seven days. We did not take the round trip. Did you take a round trip? No, actually, we took the same trip as you did in reverse. We actually started in Vancouver and then we ended up in Seward. And as I mentioned earlier, once we get off the ship, then my wife and I took about a two or three hundred mile trip north. And we went up to Denali, which is the Great Mountain and the Great National Park and maybe the biggest national park in the United States. And that was also a very interesting experience. Yeah, Seward, 1867, Seward's Folly, 17 million acres, two cents an acre. Really? It was a great bargain. They don't do that here in Hawaii. Yeah, well, at that time they probably could have done a pretty good deal, but you're right, now that's a very good price and it's not quite such the Folly what with all the oil they discovered and they had a gold rush of two along the way. And there's a lot of good stuff going on in Alaska. Yeah, what struck me is so different and interesting. Here we have an island state with water between all the islands. But in Alaska, you know, it's almost the same kind of thing except it's not water, it's forest. And there are no roads between a lot of cities. Only way to get around is by airplane and boat along the coastline. Well, one of the most remarkable things I think is that they have Juno as their capital. And the only really way you can get to Juno is by boat or by air. It seems like a difficult way to run a government. I guess technology has helped them because they can talk on, you know, the phone and mobile and internet and whatnot. So that works. But I was amazed the same way. I was also amazed. You know, my wife and I were, you know, we only spent a little while in any given port. So we were walking around Juno one morning. It's raining. It's cold. You know, it's a surprise for somebody from Hawaii. And this is the shop right across from our coffee shop. We're sitting here having coffee and it says no miners permitted. So what's this about? Can you guess what it was? Oh, maybe it was people who used to be gold miners perhaps. Only that. No, it was marijuana. Not the medical kind, the recreational kind. So it's very interesting. It was closed at the time of the early... Not a bad break. I guess so. It would have been interesting. I would have felt so guilty, you know, walking across the street and having a talk. I wouldn't have done that. But it's just very interesting how that state is in a way more, you know, more band more progressive than we are here. Well, it's interesting, the people that are on the ship, though, are different than the people who are going on land. They tend to be a little bit more upscale. There's a lot of middle America that gets to Anchorage. They rent an RV for often. And then they and their families go up to Denali principally. I mean, I've been to Alaska on a couple other occasions, mostly for fishing purposes. And we did a lot of flying in and flying out of remote areas. It's a great place to go fishing. And eat fish. Well, you know, when you go to a place that's so remote and you're trying to get very prized type trout, you don't tend to eat them. You throw them back. And so where do you think that the lodges food all came from? Flown in. Well, it came in from Seattle, the Costco. Yeah. Pretty interesting. It was pretty good food. The lodges are well known for the quality there and the lifestyle. We had crab, dungeness crab that was really out of this world taken out of the inside passage there. And my favorite of course was salmon. I mean, that would give me a town along that way. Yeah. Past Juneau or rather southeast of Juneau. Yeah. The salmon capital of the world. That's exactly. That's the one. Scalloway? No. Skagway. That's not the salmon capital. It begins with a K, I think. Oh, Ketchacan. That was really interesting. They had a lot of restaurants serving a lot of salmon. Well, they get a lot of salmon. There's more salmon can there than any other place in the world at one time. Yeah, maybe not anymore. But the salmon we had was really good. It was just beautiful salmon. Well, it's beautiful salmon until you watch them go up to streams and spawn. Yeah, why? And generally they waste away as they get up further and further into the stream and then they spawn and then they die. And so you're up in the streams that are several miles inland and there's a lot of dead fish. And not as they go up these streams and these rivers, they become quite emaciated and not very attractive, although the bears like them. Yeah. That's why there are a lot of bears that time of year out having a big feast. Yeah. Did you stop at Icy Point Strait? You don't recognize the name. Was it Indian Island Indian Village? Oh, I don't think so. I was fascinated with that place. It was an island and it was owned by the Indians. It was not a reservation, but they were Indians. They were, oh, I'm talking in the name of the tribe, Tinklit, Tinklit. And they're, you know, throughout Alaska they were in every town. Well, we stopped in the Anchorage Museum and they have a special, they have a number of the tribes, but Tinklit is certainly, that's one of the three or four better known tribes and really good, very good museum actually, really good museum. There are some very interesting, there's a lot, there's a great history, a great tradition in Alaska. And it goes back a long way and some very exciting and maybe unpleasant things have happened in Alaska. You mentioned Skagway. Skagway is a town that was pretty raucous for a long time. And the photographs, early photographs of how life was in the mud streets of Skagway, a lot of rough and rady, a lot of fighting, a lot of rady. I think that's where the gold rush was in the Yukon. And the Yukon, so they had actually a train track that went from there, it was Ketchkast Skagway. Skagway. Yeah. Before they had it, it was a very difficult walk for the miners. A little bit like Australia in some ways, they wouldn't allow a miner to go into Canada unless he brought a lot of gear with them. It was very hard to bring gear to go over these passes and might take 10 or 12 times before they could have enough gear to get over to where the gold was being mined. But the people that really made the money turned out with the people that were servicing the miners, not the miners themselves. So taking their last coins. It's interesting that that's the feeling I had too, that the miners in the gold rush there, they didn't really make money, they suffered a lot though, they worked so hard. They braved all kinds of weather and terrain and what. And trouble because to get from Alaska to the mines, you had to go through Canada. And that's an international boundary. Well, it was very steep. The area to go through was exceedingly difficult. And that's why they built that train. I forget what the name it was, something in Yukon. White, something white, white trains. Yeah, it could have been. It's good. Yeah, and they had, did you go on the excursions? I mean, every stop there were excursions. We did some of them. We actually did a helicopter trip where you land on one of the glaciers and you get out and walk along the glacier. And that was quite interesting. I've been to Alaska a few times and I can see the dramatic change in the glaciers, particularly at Mendenhall Glacier. Yeah, that's beautiful, that one. But that one is, it's almost a mile from where it was before, miles back. Do you see them falling into the water? Oh yeah, they call it capping, I think. They make a lot of noise as they go into the water. It was pretty interesting. It was interesting how close the ship got to it. The ship would sort of back into that and it really wouldn't be too far away. And you'd be close enough to hear the sound and see the thing shear off that way. And I couldn't, I mean maybe this is wrong, maybe you know more, but I couldn't help but think this is part of the same process of climate change. Well, it's partly a movement of a glacier anyway because it's on a slope. It becomes a glacier when it's on a slope and then it does sort of move. I mean those glaciers, you know, one time when they had the great glaciers, they went all the way into New England so they go a long way. But I was struck though with first the remote wilderness aspect of Alaska. I mean it's the biggest wilderness in the country all by itself, huge. And the beauty of it, it's quite beautiful. Well Denali is particularly that way. Talk about it, what's there? Well, it's a national park and there's about a hundred mile road of which maybe twenty miles, first twenty miles going in from the north to the south is paved and then the rest is not paved and they only allow, they don't allow motor vehicles other than a couple of buses so they have a bus that the national park has and then there's a couple of private vendors who I think were there before the national park and they give a tour. And because there's so little traffic that goes through there, the animals don't get very spooked when they see a little bit of... That's worth it right there, out along. I would say we saw, you know, wolves and we saw bears and we saw bears eating elk and so all kinds of pretty interesting stuff. Was the Forest Service, the United States Forest Service in residence there, did you see them? The Park Service. Park Service. Oh yeah, very important up there. And then at the end of the road you can then board the bus and come back but it's a hard road for people like me and so we ended up taking a fixed wing airplane ride back and then they go back up to Denali, the peak. Not only about 25% of the people that get into Denali they'd ever see the peak because it's so covered by clouds and storm and weather but that was a beautiful trip, I'd say. That's pretty a trip by helicopter. That was a fixed wing but it was a beautiful trip. But where can you land? A little water? Well, you could but there's actually back at the town where Denali at the north an end that has a nurse trip and they don't have big airplanes that go in there but there's a lot of small airplanes. I think, I forget what the number is but it's very hard. One out of eight Alaskans has a license for an airplane if they don't already own one so that's one of the easy ways to get around and the bush pilots. The distributed transportation industry is what it is. Everybody has a few airplanes as a result they all network together and the place lives. It reminds me also of the notion that in Alaska because of the weather and the seasons and the remoteness people are into a barter kind of economy in many places. You mean like a cocktail lounge? No, I'm serious. You said a barter? Oh, barter. I did see that in a couple of places I didn't notice it as being so prevalent but I did see it a few places where in most places you don't run into it at all. Bars are an important thing because it's pretty dark and it's pretty cold in the wintertime and there's a lot of camaraderie. I think there's a lot of fraternization among people in Alaska that have a lot of loyalty to one another. Yeah, I agree and that's year round and maybe especially when the tourists are not there. Let's take a short break, Jeff. This is Jeff Grad. He's a world traveler. We're talking about traveling in Alaska and seeing the beauty of that place especially now when it's jeopardized by climate change. We'll be right back. What are you doing? Research says reading from birth accelerates the baby's brain development. And you're doing that now? This is the starting line. Push. Read aloud 15 minutes. Every child, every parent, every day. Welcome to Sister Power. I'm your host, Sharon Thomas Yarbrough where we motivate, educate, empower and inspire all women. We are live here every other Thursday at 4 p.m. and we welcome you to join us here at Sister Power. Aloha and thank you. Okay, we're back. We're live. We're talking about Jeff Grad and his world travels and the trip he came back from most recently is the Alaskan trip on Crystal now which is a great passenger line. It applies the same ports that I went on a few weeks ago and Caroline Lee went before that on another trip also on no region. But I want to mention is the retail. You know, you get off these ships and these ships hold a couple thousand people. Crystal's smaller, I think, but you get off these ships and they all get off, everybody gets off and there you are. The first reaction is, gee, it's dark. There's cloud cover. You can't see the peaks of the mountains. You see, you know there's snow up there somewhere. But it's not like Hawaii, you know. The sun is not shining. You travel on the ocean and it's dark and it's raining, it's misty, it's foggy. And at first I said, gee, you know, we have the wrong time, wrong place. This can't be, you know, this is not what we expected. But then I realized, I don't know if you have the same experience. Maybe you had better weather than I did. But it's the deal. That's the way it is and you have to see it that way because it has its own beauty. And don't expect the sunshine all the time. What was your weather like? It wasn't terribly sunny, but it wasn't terribly rainy. And it was a cloud cover, which in a lot of ways is pretty good. You know, I got enough sun living in Hawaii, so it wasn't, I didn't wear my shorts much. But I thought the weather, the weather in Anchorage actually is pretty similar to being in Vancouver and probably in Seattle. They all seem to get a lot of weather that comes in off the Pacific and they get a lot of it. Did you get the piece about Anchorage with the low buildings? The buildings in Anchorage are like two stories high no more. And why is that? Because they had some really devastating earthquakes up there. It's a big earthquake zone. Yes, it is. I think some of the worst volcanoes have actually in earthquakes have occurred up in Alaska. I didn't know that. I don't know why, but I should have figured that out. When you think about it, the whole Pacific region is bounded by earthquake zones from one end to the other, including the West Coast and including Japan. It's the same plate, I think. Sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-substructure. So, the thing about the retail that I was mentioning during the break is that we found my wife was interested in the retail. Not that we bought anything, but she was interested and so we would go and talk to shopkeepers. Many of whom were from Hawaii. Am I kidding? It's a little trip they do. They go there, they come back. Depends on the season. I mean, it's pretty appealing, you know. go to Alaska, enjoy it, come back. Anyway, found that a lot of the shops are, what do you call it, pop-up shops. They might be in pretty nice spaces. Yes. I mean, improved spaces. But you're right, they're popped up in a sense that they're only there during the ships traveling in and out season, which is probably a better part of 90 days. So they have to make it. Well, it's not just the shopkeepers also. It's the people who are providing all the land options, the helicopters and fixed trains, and a lot of kayaking, things like that. They're people who go fishing. And it was, yeah, it's a short season, but they have to make it during that 90 days. And so things are pretty expensive, even relative to Hawaii, I would say, that they're pretty expensive. Yeah, it's true. And so you have to be careful about what you bought. And one of the things that I noticed, at first I couldn't believe it, I couldn't understand it. I still don't understand it. Why shop after shop after shop from diamonds and jewelers, left and right? Why? Maybe this is something that spilled off the truck during the gold rush. Maybe. But diamonds, they don't have diamonds in Alaska. Diamonds in this whole continent. Why so many diamond stores? Well, I think they've got a lot of people who get off these ships that have time in their hands. And money in their pocket, burning a hole in that. That's right. I mean, I always wonder when you go to a fancy resort, there's always a lot of art galleries. Because who has time other than when you're on vacation to really spend time in an art gallery? So yeah, it's a pretty stucie, a lot of jewelry. And then a lot of other stuff, it gets pretty repetitive. They're very typical deals, typical things. You know, on the ships, there were art auctions on our Norwegian sunship. And I had the feeling, I'm curious about your experience, I had the feeling that they knew that you would feel constrained because it was a limited space amount, amount of space on the ship. So they had to entertain you. They had to give you stuff to do. They had to make a plan of the day that kept you occupied. Otherwise, you'd just sleep in your cabin all day, do nothing, get bored, and all that. And television wasn't so great because satellite and all that. So they kept on doing things, entertainment, music, art auctions, so many things that keep you going. And they would give you this plan of the day thing to keep you occupied, as if you needed to be occupied. I mean, you could read, I did. But it was not designed for that at all. Would you do all day, Jeff? With the kids, I'm sure it was fun. Well, the beauty to these ships in Alaska is that they have a program set up for the kids. So although we did spend a fair amount of time with the kids, I think we probably spent as much time as they wanted to spend with us. And the kids were nine and seven. And it just works perfect. If these kids had been 15 and 20, they would have nothing to do with these in-house camps. But I think I had sort of expected it on a Disney cruise. But I was a little surprised that on other lines, they would have children's programs. And I would say that was certainly what the kids did most of the time. What did I do most of the time? I did a fair amount of reading. And they have a gymnasium. I used the gym maybe three or four or five days out of seven. And of course, there's hardly an hour or two that went by where I didn't have an ice cream cone, something like that. It was a vacation after all. Yeah, I mean, it was, I'm sure, eight too much. How was the food? You know, the food was good. It's a pretty high end. You know, after seven days of that, I think that was enough for me. But I think a lot of people on these cruises go there with the idea that they're going to really chow down, as they say. You could eat all day, all night. You could, yeah. Did they have formal dining on your ship? They did. They had some formal and some not so formal. Have to wear a coat and tie? No, that's pretty, the cruising industry has found they come around to the rest of the world. They call it freestyle. Yeah, well, cruise wear or something, but they, in fact, not only that no ties or even jackets were required, so that was quite a surprise from the days when you expected that you'd have at least one or two formal evenings. Yeah, yeah. On the Norwegian Sun, you know, they had the stock restaurants where you could chow down all day and all night, mostly. And they were located in various places around the ship. They also had these specialty restaurants. Where you'd pay extra for that particular meal. It was actually cheap, because it's just extra, in addition to the meal you might otherwise have. And they were pretty good. Some of them were really first class. Yeah, they had one on our ship. It was actually a Nobu restaurant. Really? Yeah. My favorite of all, wow. But again, they had a little extra that you had to pay above what they figured the normal food rate was. But nonetheless, as you say, it was pretty reasonable. What about the service? There's always a question. You expect they're gonna kiss your feet because this is after all about service. Was it like that? I mean, the feet kissing part. I didn't have too many, maybe one foot was kissed along the way, but for the most part, I don't remember that as an issue, but people were very accommodating and the service was quite good and quite nice. I was really interested in the international polyglot of the crew and the amount of the passengers. They were from everywhere. They were from everywhere. You could hear every language spoken. The crew were the... The crew and the passengers. The passengers, yeah. The crew tended to be on our boat with a lot of Filipino help. Yeah. I don't know how it is on your ship. I know some of the ships have Indonesians and they have some Scandinavians, some Eastern Europeans. Yeah, I mean, I like that. I really like the polyglot of it and you get to talk to them and they talk to you and it sets up a kind of international community around you and you feel like you're traveling. You're liberated, emancipated. So this is not the only trip you're taking this part of the year. Where else are you going? I'm actually gonna go next this month to a place called Pulia. It's southeast corner of Italy. And it's, yeah, I'm looking forward to it. It's mostly along the Adriatic Sea and we fly into a place called Bari, B-A-R-I, which I had been to as a youth because it was a place to catch ferry boats to the old Yugoslavia. Oh, wow, yeah. So it's not, that area actually as a crow flies isn't very far from the old Yugoslavia or even Albania. Yeah, Croatia, the Croatian crow as they say. Actually, I went to Dalmatia in that area last time. Very interesting. Well, I hope that's a good trip for you but I know if it was me, I'd be looking at Europe to see the changes. I'd be looking at Europe to see the migrant issue and how people are reacting to that. I'd be looking at Europe to see Europe of 2017 because it's different than it was, say, 10 years ago. Oh, yeah, it should be an interesting trip. And this whole area is what they call the Metzo Giorno. So it's, you know, it was really the poorest section and the section that needed the most help from the Italian government. So I haven't been down there for a number of years but I'm sure it's improved over when I was last there which might have been now 25 years ago. But it was a real down and out area but physically it's a beautiful area to travel through. Actually, I think it raises almost 60% of the grapes that are used for wine in Italy. It's not a bad thing. Yeah, so that's a good thing. Enjoy that. Well, I hope they have internet and I hope when you're there you watch thinktecawaii.com. I wouldn't miss it. I don't miss any of your shows. All right, he's not kidding. Thank you, Jeff. Okay, my boy. Good to have you. Nice to be here. Wonderful, lunch together. All right.