Category: Les Stroud

Catching Up

Twitter is really eating into my intermittent blogging ideas. I suppose it’s that I figure it’s already ‘out there’ I don’t have to put anything ‘out here.’ So, I’m going to bullet some stuff to catch my trusty reader(s) up on what has been going on lately.

  • I’m not sure I’ve described my office here but it is a combination equipment store room/office. Oddly shaped with some of the walls being exterior walls. It has one vent that is approximately 6″ in diameter and I believe it is connected to the vent in the rest rooms. So, I keep it closed. In the summer it gets rain forest hot and the winter it gets arctic cold. I have done without the suit and tie at work and have been wearing a polo shirt. I am getting used to it.
  • My DirecTV was acting erratically last week and there was fear that we’d miss the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus 3-D movie on the Disney Channel on Saturday. When I called DirecTV the earliest time I could have gotten a service call was today. Not good. But the digital satellite gods smiled upon us and blessed us with uninterrupted ‘tween pop star goodness. And that was 2 hours that I can’t get back.
  • The Introvert/Extrovert family had a wonderful time being back in Montreat/Black Mountain, NC. Sigh, it was very nice catching up with that community. I miss it so.
  • The Elder Extroverted Holy One has an interview with a church that is located in the eastern part of Tennessee (vague enough?). I’m excited for her and the potential of this church.
  • The Young Extroverted One starts kindergarten in a couple of weeks!?!?!? Holy crap! We are so not ready for that and at the same time we are so ready for that.
  • Contemplating stuff to do to the house to make it look better is overwhelming. My head is going to explode.
  • I missed the Music City Brewer’s Festival this year due to me paying attention to publicity for it. Damn.
  • Caught a new show on the Planet Green network called “Off the Grid.” Chronicling the efforts of my man crush Les Stroud and his family to live off the grid in the Canadian wilderness. Nice.

Alright, carry on with your daily activities I am done.

Survivor Queen?!? HUH?

I had to revert back to looking through my moleskine to get some writing mojo. I just came across a little entry I wrote while I was up in Schaumburg, IL for some sales training.

It must have been my second night in my hotel room because I got to the hotel way too late on the first night and I just passed out. But, it was 11:00PM and I was channel surfing through the small amount of channels this hotel had and came across Oprah. I have no idea why Oprah was on at 11 o’clock at night. Maybe they have a 24-hour Oprah channel in the Chicago-land area? I really don’t remember why I stopped on this channel but Oprah gave a little tease of what was up next after the commercials.

She was talking about survival and what you would do in certain situations to survive. I thought to myself, “Self? This should be pretty cool.” Considering I like surviving in all situations and the guest is probably someone cool like Les Stroud. Do you know who it was? LEEZA GIBBONS?!?!? WTF? Did she recently become the ‘survival queen’ and I didn’t get the memo? Needless to say, I was too aghast to continue watching. So, I ended up watching something else as I fell asleep dreaming of being stuck on the roof of a high rise inferno as Leeza swooped down to save me. Good times. . .

“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.