Adventurers' Club News Nov 2009 - The Adventurers

Minutes – October 28, 2009/Ralph White(Minutes continued from page 17)man woman and her two daughters. Headmired her jewelry.Soon Pierre was fitted with a nice hat andthe woman was trying on her finest clothes.Pierre caught on. A wedding was beingplanned and he was the groom.The climax would be when he gave a ringto the bride. Pierre stood silently and whenthe time came, he clenched his fist aroundthe ring. It took six persons to open it.Pierre paid $50 the next day to get a divorce.Overall, Pierre found a very positive attitudetoward Americans. He felt safe inthe desert even though that is where thebandits are. His group of six land roversalways had a guide with them. They carrieda lot of water with them and did drinkit. But the women do suffer due to the restrictionsplaced upon them.RALPH WHITE CONTINUES HIS JOURNEYBy Roger HaftFriends of Ralph White are spreading hisashes around the world, under the oceanand into space.In August 2009 Ralph set out for Nortica(Scandinavia plus Iceland and Greenland).His first stop was in Iceland wherehe met Kristjan Kristjansson, our memberin Reykjavik. We all traveled from Reykjavikto visit the glacier at Snaefellsjokul,the volcano at Hekia, and several waterfalls(one at which Kristjansson recovereda body during his career as a police departmentunderwater recovery specialist). Westopped at the Blue Lagoon Spa and visitednumerous naturally occurring sources ofenergy: thermal, solar and hydroelectricplants. There is so much excess power inIceland that they are trying to find a wayexport some to Scotland. I suggested ahuge underwater extension cord.We then flew to Nuuk Greenland, wherewe visited a really misnamed country.There were a lot of icebergs looking like alot of very large ice cubes, not the romanticizedpointed looking mountain like icebergs.We then went back through Icelandand on to Oslo, Norway where Ralph tooka ride on the Kontiki raft and the Vikingship which had gone to the North Pole.Our member, Raul Amundson, was mentionedin a lot of the exhibitions. We thentrained to Myrdal and Flam in Norway onone of the most outstanding train rides inthe world. Ultimately we reached Bergen,Norway where we boarded a boat for a tripup the Norwegian coast on the old mail boatroute calling at Alesund, Trondheim, crossingto the Arctic Circle and then finallydebarking at Bodo, Norway for a flight towithin 12 degrees of the North Pole atSpitzbergen. Ralph said he had alreadybeen to the North Pole so we didn’t botherstopping there. He did enjoy driving thedog sled team and the motorcycle ride tovisit Bill Gates’ millions of seeds stored inthe area. Gates is trying to store all theseed types in the world for posterity.After Spitzbergen we flew to Narvik,Sweden and then trained through the centerof Sweden to Stockholm where, amongother things, we took a bicycle down anescalator in a department store to get to abicycle repair shop. In Stockholm RalphNovember, 200918ADVENTURERS’ CLUB NEWS