“Aaaaah, if anything will get you up in the morning it’s chewing on some cold squirrel bones.”

My latest man crush (besides Alton Brown) is Les Stroud of ‘Surivorman’.  The premise of the show basically is that he goes out into the wilderness for 7 days and tries to survive off of the land.  With his history of film-making and survivor-ing his show is a great marriage between them both.  Sometimes he has these scenarios where all he has with him are his multi-tool and whatever else he came with. 

Les Stroud is the man.  He carries all his camera gear himself.  He sets up intricate shots where he’ll walk ahead set the camera and hit record, walk back to pick up the rest of his gear and then walk through the shot and then have to walk back to pick up the camera. Whew, that’s a lot of work considering he hardly eats anything.

I read “Into the Wild” again recently in preparation for seeing Sean Penn‘s film based on the book.  I would love to get in touch with Les to get his thoughts on Chris McCandless and his lack of surviving in the Alaskan wild.  Maybe I would even suggest an episode of ‘Survivorman’ where Les hangs out where McCandless did.  If there was a way to do it respectfully that would be a cool show.  I just think it would end up showing us that McCandless wasn’t too smart in the ways of surviving.  He was more into the romance of it.  You gotta use your brain out there, too.

Strapped into an Office Chair, in an Office with No Windows

Now that we’re back in the world of satellite television and digital video recorders I’m a little behind on the shows that I like to watch. One of the best, IMHO (hee hee, look at me! I’m doing the intertubes lingo thingy. Whatever that means.), is Alton Brown’s Feasting on Asphalt.

It’s got all the things that I’m a sucker for: road trips and food. I’m a huge sucker for beer but it’s not a show on road food and good beer. Beer and driving do not mix.

This show is like Blue Highways with food and a motorcycle.  I just love travel/road trip/hiking books/movies/television shows.  Maybe I enjoy reading/watching it because it’s just something that I can’t do anymore.  Even though I’ve had some great road trips in the past (shout out to Mountain Kilter who, by the way, needs to write more!)  I’ve even spent 21 days backpacking, canoeing, mountain biking on an Outward Bound-type of program called Discovery.  Plus, some smaller, shorter backpacking trips.  This whole road trip/travel thing I’ve done a little bit of but don’t anymore.  And I never wrote about the trips.  I guess I just like to read and watch them.

Among the things that I love about the show is the transition to commercials. The camera pans up a collage of photos of the past events and then ends on a quote. I guess I’m a sucker for a good quote too.  I’ve got collections of quotes stashed in random places that I can’t even remember.

Great.  Now I have wanderlust, I’m hungry and thirsty for a frosty beverage and it’s only 8:40AM.