Traveler Stories - An Arctic Expedition through the Northwest Passage with Jay Flaming

Jay takes a turn in the interviewee seat to share about his experience working as an archaeologist/polar bear guard/zodiac and kayak wrangler/story teller/luggage schlepper on board a polar ice breaker in August 2024 for an expedition cruise from Kangerlussuaq, Greenland to Nome, Alaska.

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Music credits:  Largo Montebello, by Domenico Mannelli, CC.

Transcript

Jennie Flaming: 0:00

Jennie, welcome to the Alaska uncovered podcast with me, your host, Jennie Thwing Flaming, my occasional co host and full time husband, Jay and I bring you accurate, helpful and entertaining information about Alaska, travel and life in Alaska. Before we start the episode, we would like to thank our Patreon members for making this podcast possible. You can join them at the link in the show notes. We are so grateful for your support of independent podcasts. Enjoy the show. You Jennie, hello, everyone. Jennie, here today I have a very special guest for November's traveler story episode, and that is my occasional co host and full time husband, Jay. So today we are gonna be talking with Jay about his experience in August working on board a small expedition cruise ship through the Northwest Passage. So stick around if that story sounds like it's for you. All right, welcome Jay. Thanks for being willing to share with everybody all about your experience this summer.

R. Jay F: 1:28

Well, it's my pleasure. I'm a long time fan of this podcast,

Jennie Flaming: 1:33

and it's kind of funny. I don't know how different it will be from being a co host, but, you know, I think it will, because you're talking about, you'll be talking about your experience today as a traveler and a staff member of an expedition ship. So a couple things before we get into this conversation for everybody listening. Number one, Jay and I are gonna keep the name of the company and the name of, uh, the ship that he worked on anonymous for this episode, and that is just to help preserve the spirit of this episode, which is him sharing his experience, which is what these traveler stories episodes are about. And this podcast, of course, is not affiliated with this or any other ship company or cruise line, and however, you know, if you really wanted to figure it out, you could dig around on the internet and you could figure it out. It's not really a secret, but we're just not gonna get into that on this episode. Also, a lot of the trip that Jay did was not in Alaska, so he's gonna talk about that in a minute. It was through the Northwest Passage, and they went from Greenland to Nome, which is in Alaska, but it was in the Arctic, and a lot of it was in the waters north and west of Alaska. Not all of it, a lot of it was also in Canada. So this will be a little bit like the episode where we talked about the Dalton Highway and the dumpster highway. You know, not everything that we talked about was in Alaska, but I think that's totally fine. So Jay, can we start with having you share with everybody what the Northwest Passage is and a little bit about its history as a construct,

R. Jay F: 3:20

yeah. So, I mean, to some degree, the Northwest Passage is nothing. It's a it's a concept that was essentially coined by Western European nations during their periods of colonial expansion, when they ran up against the fact that they couldn't. They thought they should be be able to get around the north side of North America to get to their colonial holdings in the Pacific, and they ran into ice and were unable to use their tool of choice to project their power, which was wooden sailing ships of the 18th, 17th century. And so they weren't able to pass through that zone. And was kind of an unbearable you know, the nations of Britain and France and Holland were not accustomed to being told no by anything, including Mother Nature at that time, so they the quest for the Northwest Passage was a big deal for them because it would allow them to, again, you know, project their economic and military power into the Pacific without going all the way around the south end of the capes, Cape of Good horn, the Cape of Good Hope. I mean in Cape Horn, which are notoriously dangerous and difficult passages. So, you know, I think it's important to recognize that the Northwest Passage is only a thing for ships that people get around in this country, this area, by over land, in small boats, in dog sleds. You can buy an airplane. So it's really it's just the thing about whether or not boats can pass to the north of North America. And I think, in a way, maybe a little too much has been made of. It. So I in that with that, said, I had never been through the Northwest Passage, and very few people have, yeah,

Unknown: 5:10

so

R. Jay F: 5:11

we passed through, I believe we were the ship number 400 or so that's ever gone through this route in all of history. So, you know, that's pretty unusual and pretty cool, yeah, but it's not, yeah, I think, I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of tragic history associated with, especially with the British the Franklin Expedition is something a lot of people have heard about. A lot of people died associated with trying to, to quote, quote, find the Northwest Passage. So it's so it's a thing of mythology in many ways, and it has opened up in recent history. It has become passable because of climate change. So the sea ice is receding and opening up open water passage to the north of the continent, so it's a thing now. And I believe the first passenger ship to ever pass through was in the early 80s, and there hadn't been another one until six years ago. I believe, yeah, so. So

Jennie Flaming: 6:19

not only are we talking about climate change, we're talking about an industry which is expedition cruising in the northwest passage that started six years ago. Really, yeah,

R. Jay F: 6:31

yeah, yeah. And I worked on another ship in the Pacific, or Pacific in the north, in the area here, of the Canadian Archipelago. Just so for reference, I think if you're following along at home, you might want to to pull a globe out, or you can use Google Maps, but you need to kind of scroll out to understand normal maps do not do the Arctic very they don't do justice to the Arctic because, yeah, you're at the extreme edge of what most map projections horribly mangle for one reason or another. So if you want to follow along a little bit with with some of the places I'm talking about, Google Maps isn't a bad option. Google Earth is maybe a little better. Yeah, anything a globe, if you I'm gonna

Jennie Flaming: 7:16

just make a plug for dusting off your globe that's in the attic from the 70s. If you really want to try to understand how this works together, we have a globe in my office. I have a lamp globe that's really cool, awesome. Yeah, but I rarely look at it to see where things are. But I did that multiple times while you were on this trip, during the part where I was not also in Alaska, you know, to be like, where is that now? And like, how does the you know? So, right? Get your globe. Get your globe, if you've got one. Yeah.

R. Jay F: 7:50

So, so that's the concept. Is essentially, you know, an ice free passage way. And I'll tell you that it's not quite if you have not ever looked at a map of the Canadian Archipelago, you should it's a stretch of small islands that's that go up from Hudson Bay nearly to the North Pole. I mean, a very long way north to 81 or 82 degrees north. Greenland goes a tiny bit further north than the Canadian Archipelago, and there is lots of little passages between these islands. And that was where the quest for the Northwest Passage was to find one of these that you could get through. And I'll tell you that on our trip, we did end up going through a passageway where, you know, you could throw a rock onto shore on each side, and it was the only ice free way between the two sides of the continent was this tiny, tiny, tiny, little river sized passageway. So that's what we're kind of talking about. It's not like the entire North Coast just opens up and you can sail across lots of little passageways to find your way through. Yeah, and even today, and I mean, for the foreseeable future, there will be a pack ice in the far, far, far north at the you know. So it's all about these little passageways.

Jennie Flaming: 9:08

Yeah, yeah, cool. Okay, well, thanks for sharing about that. I think that's important context, because I know, honestly, even for me, before you did this, I was like, oh, yeah, that's people trying to get through water north of Alaska, and that's pretty frozen most of the time. And like, I also knew about these changes and Expedition cruising just in the last few years. But yeah, so we were, I learned a lot while you were, and

R. Jay F: 9:36

it's a massively growing industry. So yeah, so when i So, when I was on the trip that I was on eight years ago, nine years ago, yeah, no ship, no commercial ship had yet gone through with passengers. And this the company I was with had tried and been turned back by ice. Another company had done the same numerous times, and I can't remember. How long ago they had their first successful trip on this company. There's a couple that have gone through multiple times in the last few years. But I believe last summer there were 16 ships going through. So, you know, you can see it's a an explosion. And now, of course, all these ships are tiny compared to like, if you're used to cruise ships in the Caribbean or the Inside Passage of Alaska. You know, we're not talking about 3000 person ships. We're talking about 100 person ships, yeah,

Jennie Flaming: 10:28

and, you know, I'm just gonna throw in a quick sidebar here, and this is not the topic of this episode, but one thing that I hear people frequently say is that the impact of of small ship or expedition cruising is less on the environment than large ships and, um, sometime I want to do an episode where we try to calculate somehow if that's actually true. Um, but I do think it's important for people to know. And you know, this is something that you and I talked about a few times. You know, we're sort of experiencing this global tragedy that I feel like that isn't quite the right word, slow moving disaster, and then it's opening up opportunities like this, but that makes it really ethically complicated. I think because you've got these things that you can do that are really cool, but that's only possible because of this other thing that is not,

R. Jay F: 11:30

yeah, it's a very mixed and weird, and we had conversations about that all through this trip very, very weird feelings about it. It's like, yeah, we are fortunate to be able to do this thing because of a tragic situation? Yeah,

Jennie Flaming: 11:43

for sure. And by the way, we do have a couple previous episodes where we talk about some of these issues. So in episode eight, in April of 2023 we talked about small ship and Expedition cruising with our friend Jen, who's worked in that industry for 25 years. And so if you're interested in in knowing whether or not a small ship might be right for you, that's a great episode. And then also, in April of this year, Episode 62 was with Rick toman from the University of Alaska, and we talked in depth about climate change and the impacts on the Arctic. So if you're interested in that topic, I'd really encourage you to listen to that. And these are things we'll probably be talking about again. But for today, we're really, you know, going back to your trip. So can you share a little bit Jay about an expedition cruise like this. So you mentioned it's a much smaller number of guests, around 100 I believe you said on the ship you were on,

R. Jay F: 12:49

yeah. I believe, I believe the full capacity would be 126 or something like that. Yeah, yeah, 120 and

Jennie Flaming: 12:54

that's if every room is correct, double double occupancy, yeah. So can you talk a little bit just about like what your itinerary was and kind of what life was like on board the ship, and actually, even before that, can you tell everybody what your job was, where, and so you've worked for this company Before, not on this full itinerary. It's not

R. Jay F: 13:23

we could fill the podcast explaining what my job was on this ship, because it's multitude of duties. So these ships have, they have they have folks on board that are doing things that really don't exist on big ship cruises. So on our ships, we really had a definition difference between crew and staff and guests. So I was a staff member, and the staff members are, most of them are subject matter experts in biology, glaciology, geology, whatever. And so there's a big component of interpretation to the guests. We also move all the luggage.

Jennie Flaming: 14:04

Yes, the exciting always the most

R. Jay F: 14:07

Yeah. Just, just to rewind, the crew do all this stuff, like running the engine, driving the boat, serving food, cooking food. Those are crew jobs, and they're, they're managed completely differently than the staff. And the staff are more the like guest facing, you know, mostly natural and cultural history experts, but then we do a lot of other stuff. We drive the boats, the small boats called zodiacs, they go to shore. And my position was as an archeologist. Then, if you've heard me on before, you probably know that I am sort of a recovering archeologist.

Jennie Flaming: 14:48

This was not an example of you recovering. It's a failed

R. Jay F: 14:52

recovery as far as that goes. Yeah, I was filling in at the last moment for an old friend of mine who had an injury in this wood shop. And was unable to do it at the last second. So it wasn't a plan. I think I had three days notice that this was happening, and, yeah. And so it was, it was really, I was really fortunate that my, my, you know, wage and hour employer, was like, Yeah, cool. Like, you can't avoid, you can't miss doing this. And I was able to do it. But so yeah, my job was to drive boats and to be an archeologist. And the archeology component is partly because the Canadian government requires all ships going through this Northwest Passage to have an archeologist on board if they want to go on shore. And that's because there's so much unexplored archeology on the coast of and history on the coast of this route that they can't really, they can't really afford the possibility of people damaging it unintentionally, or vandalizing or just, but just, you know, incidentally, causing issues. And also, there's not a lot of eyes and ears doing research there either. So there's a component of just feeding back. We found this. We saw this. You know, we weren't allowed, of course, to do any excavation or anything, but we did find new stuff. Every every ship that I know of that has worked in this region has come back reporting new, new old stuff. Yeah, new old stuff. Yeah, absolutely. And then also I was one of the people on board who is weapons qualified, and was a polar bear guard. Polar bears are quite dangerous, and we did see many, many, many of them on this trip. And and people do get killed by polar bears in the far north, not infrequently. It's a regular activity, a regular, irregular thing. So it's a very serious thing to take precautions. So no one is allowed to be on shore without a trained polar bear guard who understands something about about bear biology, bear behavior, and has carries a large caliber weapon to if you know worst case scenario to defend the the the guests against an attacking bear. Yeah,

Jennie Flaming: 17:11

so And have you ever had to defend yourself? I have not an attacking bear.

R. Jay F: 17:16

I have not. I have had, maybe in my life, two or three close calls where I thought that might become possible, but thank God I have not. I only know one person who's worked in the north that has ever had to do that. He is, I think, pretty negatively impacted by that to this day, and that was a polar bear that did attack a research camp, and they did have to kill the bear, and it was pretty traumatic for everyone involved, yep. So yeah, it's, you know, but it's a real thing. It was a little bit of an eye opener. Sometimes, I think, for some of the guests to be having someone, you know, packing heat,

Jennie Flaming: 17:55

yes, no joke, yeah. A lot of

R. Jay F: 17:58

folks are not accustomed to being around, especially folks who live in, you know, non rural areas, are not accustomed to be around folks with firearms. So that was kind of an interesting experience too, because you ended up doing quite a bit of, I would say, interpretation of that to the guests themselves and and reassuring them about safety and stuff. That was kind of an interesting yeah, component. And then there's a component of on the trip, of being a I had to do a number of of lectures about history and climate and that kind of stuff, and also just be a presence at things like dinner. We had to eat dinner with our guests and and answer questions and be it. So there's a component. It's just being sort of a micro celebrity. You end up getting really comfortable talking about, talk with folks about, about your adventurous life, yes,

Jennie Flaming: 18:56

and you know, I gotta say, like, the first time that you did this, which was eight years ago, even though it wasn't the Northwest Passage, when you were in the Arctic and and I was like, yeah, that that professionally trained archeologist, you can also manage a pretty big weapon and as knowledgeable about their behavior and can also tell stories and give lectures as a little bit of a tricky

R. Jay F: 19:32

a professional mariners license. Yeah,

Jennie Flaming: 19:35

there's not a super large number of people that are qualified to do that, but you are, you are one of them, yeah, which is why you ended up doing it on such short notes. It is funny. It's a

R. Jay F: 19:47

tiny little world. I kind of, you know, there's a bit of a psychic unity of the Arctic, anyway, in general. And it's just interesting, like, I, you know, everyone involved, I've either met, worked with someone, they worked. But you know, it's a very tiny, tiny little world. Yeah.

Jennie Flaming: 20:03

So is there? So, yeah. So I feel like I cut you off before asking about the job, before we even got into the like itinerary in the ship. Okay, I'm sure about that a little

R. Jay F: 20:14

bit I'm enjoying being a guest where I don't have to actually keep things on track, because God knows, I'm not good at that. So, yeah. So, yeah. My the trip that I did, just to, like, give you the nuts and bolts of it again, I had last minute, last minute notification about it. I flew to Boston, where I met the rest of the guests and some of the rest of the staff who were also changing out. Again, it was a, it was a crew of particular experts chosen for this trip who with particular expertise and knowledge. So we all met at a hotel in Boston, had our orientation the night before with the guests, telling them about what was going to be expected. Early the next morning, we caught a chartered 757, that was operated by a cargo Company, which was really quite funny, to see a cargo flight on the passenger board. And then in Logan Airport, right? People are like, Wait, you're getting on the cargo ship. Yeah, it's fine. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. And then we took the charter flight to kangaroos walk Greenland, which is on the west coast of Greenland, and it has the biggest airport in Greenland, because it was a a NATO airfield, and so there were large, you know, military aircraft operating in and out of there. There is no longer, to my knowledge, an American or NATO presence, really there, but there is a large jet capable landing strip there.

Jennie Flaming: 21:48

And wasn't that one of the the airstrips like, sort of, in the post world war two era that allowed before planes could make it all the way across the Atlantic? Wasn't that, I believe one of the ones they would stop at, in addition to Iceland. And

R. Jay F: 22:04

yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure it is. And so I think there's been an airstrip there for quite a long time. Yeah, we landed in King girl SWaCH, and we were met by a number of vehicles, a motley assortment. And, yeah, you know, Arctic tundra buggies took our guests to a landing, where we took were met by the zodiacs off the ship, and we zodiaced Everyone to the ship, and their luggage went on a little barge and was barged out, and the ship was anchored out. It's a very narrow fjord, and so it's also quite shallow at the end. So there were had to run out about a mile out to the ship and get on board.

Jennie Flaming: 22:50

Can you, for folks who don't know, I know we've talked about it in other episodes, but it's been a while. Can you talk about what a Zodiac is?

R. Jay F: 22:58

Oh yeah. So you've probably, you probably have seen a zodiac, even if you don't know the name of it. It's an inflatable boat with a hard bottom, and it has an outboard engine. They're quite fast. They're used by the military a lot. They're used they're they're fairly light, and they can be operated in pretty shallow water. They're very robust, and guests will sit on the sides, on the tubes, facing the center, yep, and put their packs or whatever in their in between their feet in the middle. It looks a little bit like a raft you might use on white water, yep, yep, where a white water raft will have a soft bottom, this has a rigid bottom, yep, for better motor operation. Yeah, so about 10, eight to 10 people comfortably in a Zodiac. You can fit up to 12, I think, in the defenders we were using. And Zodiac is sometimes used as a, it's a, it's a, come as one brand, a rigid inflatable boat rib. But we, ours, were actually zodiacs. But sometimes you'll hear that term used, and is not the Zodiac company, which I think is a French Corporation, right?

Jennie Flaming: 24:04

Like when people say Kleenex instead of facial tissue or something like that. So you'll hear

R. Jay F: 24:09

the term Zodiac used because they were just the most famous of the makers of that, yep. So yeah, we spent the next most of the night going out the fjord, which I think it's around 70 miles long. It's a really long fjord. Came out into the Davis strait. It's the northern tip of the Labrador Sea. And we were waiting for ice to clear where we were going to enter Canada, which is Pond Inlet, which is the little town in the northeastern part of Baffin Island, and so we were waiting for that ice to move out. So we went north along the coast of Greenland, and we actually got to go into a glacial fjord that was Uncharted, because the glacier had retreated back up into it since the last charting vessel had been there. And we spent a whole day pushing through the brash eyes. Now the one thing that's really cool is this ship that I was on is a polar rated icebreaker, so we were able to move through really dense, brash ice. And if we can make it work, I might put a sound clip in here of us going through the ice. It's really a cool sound. Yeah, the brash eyes. So we were able to get way into this glacial inlet. And then there was this giant tidewater glacier that, you know, maybe nobody has seen there ever, because that which is pretty wild. Unfortunately, I was watching it from the window in my cabin because I had COVID. Bummer, bummer, yes, and I was isolated that day. But it wasn't the worst day to be isolated, and we eventually, I think, the next day something like that. We went down to pond inland, which is a tiny Inuit community, and made our entry into Canada. And then we proceeded West. We went up to Dundas Harbor on Devon Island, which is where there used to be a Mounties facility there, and there's some lonely Graves from a few RCMP members who were who died there. We went up and saw off Cornwallis Island. There's, there is the wreckage of, well, it's not wreckage. There's the leftovers from the Franklin exhibition. There's some graves of some Franklin exhibition members from the 1800s who died there and were buried there. And then that's the last place that the Franklin exhibition was known to have been recently. Their ships have been discovered, but it's pretty wild place. And then we went up north a little bit exploring, looking for narwhal, which, if you're not familiar with them, they're a small whale that has a it looks like it's a unicorn horn. It's actually a single tooth that comes out and spirals up into you know, we were able to find, we were able to find them. Pretty cool. We got to our furthest north point of the voyage. There, about 75 degrees north latitude. I've been there. I've been a little further north in that and in other trips in my life, but that's pretty far up there. It's basically the edge of where birds go. Yeah, there's very little vegetation left at that, at that latitude. It's very much like the, you know, the NASA does research there, because it's similar to the habitat of Mars. That tells you what? When it's ice free, it's, it's, it's very Mars, yeah, yeah. It's a pretty it's a pretty exotic place. And and kind of eye opening to go to. We're not used to that sort of environment, yeah. And then we were searching for so west of there, the ice had settled in or and it is not normally passable. I don't think it's ever been passable. To the west, there is a theoretical open water body that could open north of banks island there into the in Victoria Island, into the Arctic Ocean. But it was not something that's ever been open to my knowledge. We went down along Somerset Island, and we went through this tiny, tiny, tiny, little pass, very cool experience, and came out in a near Prince of Wales Island, one of many Prince of Wales islands that I know, yeah, in Canada,

Jennie Flaming: 28:41

yes. And Alaska also has Prince of Wales Island, yes.

R. Jay F: 28:45

I think there's at least three that I know of in the in the north. And we came out and entered into sea ice, and we were breaking ice for a better part of a day. Are the captain of the ship was, I think, demonically possessed by a love of going through ice, and he was just like cackling with joy as we were gonna break through this. And the ship we were in is quite capable. We were breaking sea ice of about a meter thick, so it's pretty, it's loud, it's and we saw, I think, 14 polar bears that day because we were going through the sea ice, which, if you're not familiar much with polar bears. They are. They are marine mammal. They don't ever want to be on land. They don't they live out. They live out their lives on the on the water and on the ice. And so in this case where the ice is retreating, they're being sometimes they're actually marooned behind by the ice, which is really bad. And they can starve to death in that scenario, because they need to be able to hunt seals through holes in the sea ice. But as the ice retreats, you know, they get more and more condensed into areas. And so, yeah, we saw so many of them, yeah, along those and and one of them got close enough that, by you know, a law, we had to stop the vessel because they were too close to us and to not disturb them. And it just went around the back of the ship and fell. Sleep about 100 yards off the stern of the ship. And we were like, What are we

Jennie Flaming: 30:08

gonna be waiting till it it's done with its now

R. Jay F: 30:11

pretty wild, yeah. And then eventually, got up and wandered away, and we snuck off in the ship. You know, as sneakily as you can be in a 15,000 horsepower vessel breaking sea ice. But right, yeah, that was pretty cool. And we went, we visited a few little Inuit communities, Cambridge Bay, joavin, which is a name it was, go havens, the where the mag back north pole was 150 years ago. And if you are not familiar with this, the magnetic north pole moves quickly, and it is right now it's been moving almost 30 kilometers a year Northwest. It's headed towards Siberia, and right now it's way up into the sea ice. But it was in the 1800s it was down here. And so there's some pretty cool observatories from explorers trying to find the exact magnetic north pole, and we've visited a couple of Inuit communities there. We did a bunch of really cool stops along the way, and we continued west into the open Beaufort Sea, which is the southern part of our the Arctic Ocean around the north tip of Alaska, Wainwright and point hope and around down into the arc, into the Bering Sea, all the way to the town of Nome, where we docked and flew, got another charter flight to Anchorage, to where we all scattered, to the Four Winds back to where we came from. Yeah, guests on the trip, by the way, I believe tickets were about $48,000 a person for double occupancy to come on the trip. It was a very expensive trip to go on. It's also very expensive to operate. Yeah, you can imagine two, 757, charters, fuel for 23 days. I think it was maybe

Jennie Flaming: 32:04

lots of skilled people like you getting paid. Yeah. I mean,

R. Jay F: 32:08

there were around 20 skilled staff, 20 professional staff. I mean, there are lots of skilled crew, obviously, but of the staff, the ratio is almost five to one, which is pretty mental compared to, like, a big ship, yeah, of of just the customer, guest facing staff. So, yep, you know, there's a lot of expense in a trip like that, and that is shows up in the price tag. Yeah, yeah. I mean, what else? What else can I tell you?

Jennie Flaming: 32:38

Yeah, well, that is super interesting. I think, um, I'd love to know, like, what type of person so obviously, these These ships are small and it's very expensive, but in your opinion, having worked on these ships, especially in these high arctic adventures, because, of course, there's expedition cruising in Antarctica and many other places that you and I haven't been to. So thinking specifically about the Arctic, what, what sorts like Who is it worth it for? Right? Like, like, what are really the things that make an experience like that special that you wouldn't be able to get in another way? Okay,

R. Jay F: 33:33

I can think of a few things that are and I'm thinking of the guests that were on the ship that I met to some degree, and what was motivating them? And so I think there's a couple things. One the history geography buff that is just obsessed with the idea of the Northwest Passage as this driving force of Western European expansion for 300 years, basically. So that's one person. Another one is the polar bear fanatic. If you want to see polar bears, there's basically three options. You can go to Svalbard Norway. You can go to which is a little island off the northeast coast of Greenland. You can go to Churchill and Hudson Bay. I mean, there's obviously other choices, but these are the big ones where people go that I know of, and another one is to take a small ship cruise out of Greenland or northern Canada. Alaska actually doesn't have a ton of polar bears, partly because of the way the coast is is put together. And there are polar bears on the coast in the winter, but it's really difficult to get there to see them. In the summertime, the ice retreats and leaves. There has been an open water north of the coast of Alaska for a very long time. Yeah, it's different than the archipelago, where the ice is packed into these little channels. So the polar bears normally are pulled off during the ice free season. In the summer along there. And so they're not as common to see, yeah, so polar bear visiting, I mean, and this, I this is, bar none, the most insane polar bear viewing. I mean, I don't know how many you know, I have pictures of this one that was sleeping off the that I took with my iPhone. Yeah, that are full frame pictures of this bear. I mean, we saw so many bears in so many situations. It was really cool. So I think that's one person. Another one is the is the birder who's trying to check off some of the exotic, Arctic, Arctic birds. You know, there's not the diversity of birds you might find in like a tropical setting or African setting or whatever, but there are birds you just don't see in any other you know, yeah, you just don't see another situation. So that's pretty I think that's another drive, exotic whale viewing too. There are whales you can see on this trip that our trip like it, maybe not through the whole northwest passage, but up and off the we used to. I mean, there used to be expedition ships off the Russian Far East as well, because of Russia's politics. At the moment, there's not, I don't believe anyone's operating those. No, I don't think from the European and I'm sure that the Russians themselves are offering stuff, but, but really, it's kind of hard to get to this environment to see some of these whales. So there's narwhal, which are really cool. Yeah, they're very weird. There's beluga, which you can see in Alaska. I've seen them, yeah,

Jennie Flaming: 36:28

you can see them in turn again, arm sometimes near Anchorage.

R. Jay F: 36:31

Yeah, they're really cool. I love it, yeah. And we saw, we saw humpbacks, which, of course, you can see in in southeast Alaska as well, but I saw blue whale the second time in my life, and it was really cool to see a blue whale. I also think that the glacial fjord viewing was off the chart. I've never seen I've seen most of the big glaciers in Alaska. Nothing holds a candle to some of the stuff we saw, yeah, just, you know, miles wide tidewater glaciers with 1000s of icebergs off of them. I mean, really wild stuff. And you know, that stuff's disappearing fast, and most of these were retreating at rapid paces. So, I mean, that was pretty cool. And if you want to if you want that experience, that's a that's a thing. Yeah, I think those are probably the big ones.

Jennie Flaming: 37:27

Yeah. And, you know, that's interesting, because in general, you know, when you ask people why they want to visit Alaska, most people will say one of three things, or two of three, or all of three, which is glaciers, wildlife and big mountains. Of course, there are other things too, but those are kind of the biggest ones. And I know you didn't see particularly big mountains on this trip. Did you accept anyone on

R. Jay F: 38:00

the archipelago, actually, it's quite mountainous and very beautiful. It's very different the north coast of Alaska. It's quite it's why it's called the North Slope. Is it is a gentle slope from the from this Arctic ocean floor to the tip of the Brooks Range. Yeah. So they, there's not a lot of visible mountains from the Alaska coast, but from coming through the archipelago itself. It's, it's full of, really, maybe not Denali high, obviously not Denali high mountains, but really rugged, yeah, scarps of, you know, two or 3000 foot peaks that look pretty epic because that so that's, that's pretty

Jennie Flaming: 38:38

cool, coming straight out of the ocean. Yes, you know, peaks that aren't as high and still look really dramatic. Yeah, absolutely.

Unknown: 38:44

But what about,

Jennie Flaming: 38:46

can you talk a little bit about the sea ice and getting, you know, the days that the the staff and the crew and the guests were able to walk out on the sea ice, kind of, what was that? Oh, right, I

R. Jay F: 38:59

didn't mention that. Yeah,

Jennie Flaming: 39:01

I would love to hear a little bit about that, because that looked pretty amazing.

R. Jay F: 39:06

Yeah. So one day, I think we were so we made a stop at a place called Herschel Island, which was really cool. It's a little island off the north near the border of Alaska, has a has an old whaling station added. And we actually ran into an archeologist who was, we shared a dramatic former advisor. Anyway, really, oh, well, yeah, yeah, you know, that's just the way the Arctic is. Yeah, really cool. I liked her a lot. She's really interesting. But as when we left there, we went north, and we got to the heavy, multi year sea ice. So when in the in the ocean, you will find basically three types of ice. There is icebergs in their smaller Ken Burg bits, brash ice, small bits, and that's fresh water that is frozen in a glacier breaks off and is floating around in the ocean. So. Yeah, that's kind of what people think about classic.

Jennie Flaming: 40:03

So it was part of a glacier, correct, snowfall.

R. Jay F: 40:07

It's settled into glacier. It's been compressed into ice. Now it's in the ocean. It was pure fresh water, yep. Then Then, then there is sea ice. And sea ice comes in two types of it's frozen salt water. So it has to be very, very cold because it's salt water. It doesn't freeze at 3226 27 degrees or whatever. And so there's two types of sea ice. There's multi year sea ice and annual sea ice, and annual sea ice will thaw in the summertime. And then there's the multi year pack. And the multi year pack moves around a lot, and it's it is a force to be reckoned with. It can scour the landscape. It can push crushes ships to get caught in it. It's incredibly dense because it's been slowly compressed. Maybe not as dense as an iceberg from glacial compression, but more. Yeah, yeah. Air has migrated out. It is. It has gotten denser, and it's often in these big pressure bridges that are that can be 30 feet tall. So it's not a flat expanse, multi a single year, sea ice will be quite flat, you know, and often have pockets of water on top that look like, like, maybe they're holes, but they're actually just ponding on the top. And that sometimes those go through into what's called a polynah that opens up into the sea ice or into the sea water below. And then those are used by by sea mammals to breathe and come up and also buy polar bears for eating McDonald's of the North. Yeah. So we were, we got up through the into this multi year sea ice, which is really hard to break. You really need a polar class one, like a Russian there's only, I think, four multi year sea ice breakers in the world. Really, the US has two. The Russians have at least two. There maybe is five, anyway. But we got just into the edge of the sea ice, and we rammed into the multi year ice with the ship and drove into it a ship's length or so, and dropped the gangway, and we were able to walk out onto the multi year sea ice. Was pretty cool. The pictures, you know, the if you can kind of imagine just stepping out down this, this aluminum staircase out onto the ice, and below us is, you know, 8000 feet of water. Actually, it's a very strange to be walking around. There's big pools of water around, which is kind of creepy, because you feel like the ice is rotten and you might fall through. But it was about two meters thick, so you could easily have landed a 747, on it. I mean, it was, you know, huge, thick, thick eyes. Well, you couldn't have, because it's so broken up, but Right? But strong enough, it's strong enough, you know, to do that. And, yeah, so the guests were able to spend a few hours out there, and a lot of people got sunburns because, yeah, the sun was reflecting up off course, the water in the

Jennie Flaming: 43:03

oh, those reflecting ice sunburn, sunburns are like the

R. Jay F: 43:07

worst horse. Yeah, terrible. That's a pretty cool experience, yeah, not something you can do very often. And no place in the world to walk around on the sea ice like that, yeah.

Jennie Flaming: 43:19

My, my only experience with sea ice. And this is not a story to emulate ever. I shouldn't even be telling this, but I'm going to anyway. So when I was in middle school, my family was living in Holland for two years in in Europe. So it was related to my dad's job, and we were living there in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down. And I remember it was a wonderful it was a big celebration. Wonderful. We were only our town was only about half an hour drive, maybe not even that from the German border. And, you know, people were so excited and like, outside all night, and it was really fun. But anyway, I remember that night, my mom saying, we are gonna go to the Soviet Union before we move home. So it was the Soviet Union. Then you couldn't really visit as an American, but we were able to because we joined up with a Dutch tour group, and so we went anyway. We were staying in this hotel in what was at the time Leningrad, now St Petersburg, and it was in February, might have been the beginning of March, and we were staying in this kind of grim hotel. And everything about that trip was pretty wild, pretty great experience. But anyway, my dad and I, and I think my brother too, there was sea ice there. Or at least, I think it was sea ice. Yeah. It was frozen. Yeah, the Baltic Sea, and it was frozen. And so we walked out there, and I should say that, like, first of all, you should never walk out on any kind of ice without, like, no local knowledge and maybe a guide, which we didn't have. Either of those. And my dad grew up in West Africa. Was born in Seattle, grew up there, you know, he didn't know anything about sea ice. And, like, obviously my brother and I didn't either, because we were from Seattle Anyway, the next morning, the ice was gone, and it just like, floated out or something, anyway. So we were all like, Whoa. That really wasn't a good idea anyway.

R. Jay F: 45:42

There's a lot of, like Inuit stories about the kind of terror of being out on the sea ice and having it detached. There's also two types of, I know I'm giving a lot of terminology here, but there's land fast ice is where the interesting where the sea ice has frozen all the way to the bottom, and then it's stuck where it is, and there's no open water underneath it. If you drill through, you just hit rock when you get through. Yep. And then there's the non landfast eyes can tear away from it there and leave this opening. And it's quite frightening for hunters at times to go out on that, yeah, that if the ice detaches, they can be marooned without being able to get home. And dog sleds can cross small, open leads, but obviously you're not going to swim across miles of, you know, with dog teams and so people, that was always a concern, I think, for Yeah, for hunters, yeah, wow. See, ice is really dynamic. Yeah,

Jennie Flaming: 46:42

yes, cool. Okay, so Jay, I would love to hear a little bit so I know you shared with me that one thing that was really cool about this experience was getting to work closely with Inuit guides who were on the ship with you as and there were also staff members like you were. And I know for those of you listening, I feel like I should preface this question by saying that Jay has been really fortunate to have the opportunity to work with a lot of indigenous people in the last 25 years on various projects, whether that was in Arctic, Alaska, or in the Midwest of the US, or some other situations. And so I just would love to hear you share a little bit about about working with those colleagues and what that was like for you.

R. Jay F: 47:38

Yeah, it was a real highlight of the trip for me, and I really, I really love Inuit culture. I really miss one of the things I miss in my life right now is that I don't get to spend time with I like, I really enjoy all of Alaska native cultures, but the Inuit have a real special place for me. I did a master's project working closely with some Inuit elders, and I really enjoy their company, and I enjoy that, and we had Inuit folks on board who and this is, if you're you're from Gen X or older, you may have heard referred to as Eskimo, and the term Eskimo is actually a French term, and it's mildly derogatory. I mean, it's basically raw meat eaters. So they there are numerous names for different Inuit groups. I'm just going to speak broadly, yeah, and just say you knew it. There are different names for all the sort of regional groups of people. But we had a staff member named Lars who is from Greenland and he's Greenlandic guy, absolutely, just an absolute joy to work with, one of the most fun people I've ever had as a co worker before, and he was, he is a training to be an archeologist himself at the university. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was really fun to be on the ship with him. And we had some what are called ambassadors, who were not members of the normal staff, but they were on board for their both to be sort of an eyes and ears, to protect their communities, and also for to provide information to our guests about their to improve the the cultural tourism component. And I think a lot of folks are surprised to discover that the the high Arctic is a very human place. Yeah, they expect that it's going to be completely desolate, whatever. And partly because that's how it's kind of represented in the historical literature by the Yeah, but they slip sometimes, if you read these British, you know, they'll be like, Oh, we were in this God forsaken, blasted land where no human has been and then, and then, you know, thankfully, though, the locals came and brought us some fish, and

Jennie Flaming: 49:43

you're right, and that like, yeah, right, yes,

R. Jay F: 49:48

yeah,

Unknown: 49:49

there's a, you know,

R. Jay F: 49:50

there's some stuff about the Franklin Expedition that, you know, the the locals were like, oh yeah. You mean the people who started eating each other on the ships, and the exports were no. Oh, that can't possibly, you know, couldn't have been them. The people who were looking for them recently, DNA analysis and stuff has proven, oh yeah, no, that was happening, yes. And they're like, oh yeah, we tried to help those guys. But, you know, yeah, I'm digressing, but we had folks from Cambridge Bay, which is a little it's one of the bigger communities of the far north in in Canada, it's like a seat of government for Nunavut in that area, we had a representative from, well, tuk tuk tuk, which we've talked about before, who was a new violet representative on board for the last portion of our trip. And we also had some folks from Kiwa havin as well, and they were really fun to listen to, and it was quite embarrassing because several times they corrected me on things that I thought I knew, and I really, actually appreciated that, or or to get sometimes we had fun because we had a Greenlandic person, and not just that from nook, people from from Canada and then, and then Alaska. Yeah, it was kind of fun to do this. You know, what's different, what's the same game? Yeah, all during the voyage. But I think, in the end, I really think that the the guests on this trip came away with cultural experience having been there, one of their top experiences with, like, crazy polar bear experiences and, and I don't think many of them came in knowing that was going to be their Yeah, their takeaway, yep. And, I mean, it's impossible to go to these communities in the north and not just feel drawn into them. I don't know how to describe it, you know, I I have a looking right up above the table here at a steel carved fish out of an old oil drum that was given to me by a guy in Cambridge Bay because I gave him a tour of our ship and just, and it's beautiful. It's really cool. Yeah, it's really cool. And that's just the kind of experience that I had the whole time i i enjoyed, really enjoyed being able to spend time with those folks. And there they were all remarkable in their ability to work with Guess who? Sometimes, I have to be honest, sometimes the guests were what I would consider pretty rude, you know, and be like, ask questions that at times were very impolite about, like, you know, like, Oh, I've heard you're all drunks, or I've heard whatever, you know, and stuff like that. That was really quite and these folks were just very generous in answering questions like that, and amazing, yeah, and, you know, that's asking a lot. Yeah,

Jennie Flaming: 52:42

it's super fair to have to do that. And a lot of times they were quite

R. Jay F: 52:45

intimidated by, you know, these are folks who maybe grew up in a community of 300 people, and now they're on a ship with that many people on it, yeah? And they've never talked to a group of people more than 15 Yeah. And these were mostly younger women who are reps most, and most of them have, you know, not had an opportunity to be in a we gave our lectures in there, in the round, in a big lounge, and you're in a in a circle in the very center of it, with lights on you and the have cameras. Intimidating. It's really, I found it really intimidating. And I have been doing that kind of stuff my whole life, yeah, so I was really impressed. They were, they were remarkably willing to do that kind of stuff. So I think that's a that's a pretty cool aspect of a trip like this, yeah, and something that people were pretty fortunate to experience. Yeah,

Jennie Flaming: 53:36

absolutely. So for folks listening to Jay, can you just talk about where Inuit people live geographically? Because, I mean, everyone should know, if they think about it, that indigenous people and current political countries have nothing really to do with each other, but I think that's especially true in the Arctic. So kind of where is the land and water that is home for Inuit people? Yeah, drive

R. Jay F: 54:06

north when you hit the when you hit the ice, stop. That'll

Jennie Flaming: 54:09

be Yeah, so all the way around the globe.

R. Jay F: 54:14

No, well, so that's a good you know, I and I don't want to, I don't want to. I want to stay in my lane. I am not an expert on, well, anything, but I'm definitely not an expert on anything to do with eight people the far north of Asia, or the laplanders, or any of that, Sami people and but the Inuit people, what we would consider kind of a they share similar language group, yeah, pretty mutually intelligible all the way from, from the Bering Chukchi Sea area, yep, all the way through Greenland.

Jennie Flaming: 54:46

Okay, so North West and basically

R. Jay F: 54:50

north of the tree line, yep, all across that whole coastal area, yep, and down. I. To basically Hudson Bay, yeah, a little bit, yeah, down onto the southern end of Elsmere Island, the northern tip of Newfoundland, that kind of Yeah. And these ranges have changed historically as folks move around, or whatever that's that's basically what we're talking about. And most of the culture is around sea mammal hunting, so whales, seals, walrus, Yep, yeah, some limited there are groups at times, who have exploited more of caribou and gone more inland than that. And you know, and it varies a little bit based on where you are in the western like, point hope, it's very focused on big whales. Yep, if you go more east into the north of Ellesmere, or south of Ellesmere, north of Baffin, it's more focused on small whales. Yep, things like, yeah, so, but it's a, it's a, it's a culture that is adapted to a very extreme environment. Yeah, I have a very highly developed technology for hunting and traveling and living in that in that space, yep, and so that's, yeah, cool.

Jennie Flaming: 56:10

Thank you for explaining that. Okay, so before we wrap up, Jay, I would love to know you know you ended your your trip in Nome in western Alaska, there's no place like Nome and I should tell everyone listening that we are working on an episode about Nome in 2025 so we should have that coming for you somewhat soon. But for now, you know, neither of us had, I've never been to Nome. You hadn't been there before. Is there anything that you want to share about? No acknowledging that you were only there for a few hours, but just any reflections about that?

R. Jay F: 56:56

Well, okay, so there's a couple things there about that. First of all, we came into Nome tail first, because the winds were so strong off the Bering Sea that we weren't sure we'd be able to turn around inside without being blown ashore, basically. So we turned around in the open water and then backed slowly into the little harbor and tied up the dock there, the wind was, I don't know, probably in the high 40s or so. It was pretty strong, but, yeah, it was, it was strong, but not like insane, but it was pretty strong. It was absolutely apocalyptically foggy and raining, and so we couldn't see more than about a quarter mile. Maybe I didn't actually think we were going to be able to fly out. Able to fly out, but

Jennie Flaming: 57:44

I remember you texting me and being like, not sure this is gonna happen. And I was like, Yes, I am that's really gonna live here now.

R. Jay F: 57:54

And you know, some of that is just life on the Bering Sea, and some of that is also the fact that we were there pretty late in the season, yeah, for, you know, it was the beginning of September, and things are starting to get they're starting to get kind of kind of rough that time of year, and in anywhere in the Arctic. So, yeah, I didn't actually get to do any of their folks. Did do a couple hours of look of town sightseeing. I was in involved in offloading a tremendous number of snorkel gear, things that were inexplicably had been left on the ship from some other climate. And I can't remember, we had a couple other weird projects we were working on on the ship, kind of desperately. I do remember that some of the guests were very concerned as we were loading their luggage out to be sent to the airport, that it was in the back of a pickup truck, because that's what was available to Yes, to haul their luggage to the to the airport. And it was raining so hard that I can see their concern. And they're like, No, we're just going to drive it over and put it into the hanger. You know, it'll be fine. They're like, Okay, that was pretty funny, yeah. And the gal driving the truck, they were like, but what if someone steals it? She's like, we're good. It's not gonna happen. There were a couple of folks on the ship who were quite excited to be there, because it is a place that's in a bunch of reality TV shows, yeah, Bering Sea gold is one, I think, yeah. And there's like, ice miners or, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I'm not in into those shows. But so there were folks who were excited about seeing some of the things from that. And let's see what else was. What else can I say? The The visibility was quite limited. It is a very flat area, so there's no mountains there. There's no it's, you know, it's folks did enjoy. There's like an old Russian Orthodox Church they went to. And I think by all accounts, people kind of enjoyed their morning there. Yeah, overall. But. In sort of a like this place is crazy and kind

Jennie Flaming: 1:00:03

of way, yeah, really wild and out there, yeah, it's

R. Jay F: 1:00:07

a strange little outpost. And, you know, the town itself is smaller than the airport square footage, I think, yeah, it's a small town, yeah, but it's a small town with a very outsized historic Yes, impact, though, because there was a

Jennie Flaming: 1:00:22

huge gold rush here, the Gold Rush and the end of the rod, it's like a place people really know, compared to, say, Kotzebue, which is a similar climate and not all that far away, also in western Alaska, that I feel like when I talk to clients about using cots of view as a jumping off point for a couple of national parks in Alaska. They're often like, where, you

R. Jay F: 1:00:49

know, actually, one of the guests, I just remembered, one of the guests told me when we were at the airport, waiting in a terminal time for the weather clear for us to go, and one of the guests told me that he said that it was like, the Mona Lisa. And I was like, You're gonna have to explain that? And he said, Well, you've heard about it, and when you go see it, it's smaller than you expected. Yeah, it's pretty great, yeah. But it is kind of like that, you know? And it's kind of lovely in a way. They don't have a tourism industry. I don't think they have a very, they don't have a very developed visitor industry, yeah, it's there. It's not nothing like what you'd find in southeast Alaska. It's nothing like you would find in even the interior, but it's there. But, you know, like we had the city school busses took our guests from the ship to the airport. You know, that's, that's the kind of, that's kind of situation, which is great, and

Jennie Flaming: 1:01:42

I think I told you this, but for other I happen to know from other sources that, like, that's part of the ship scheduling in Nome is it has to be worked around when, when school busses are available to take guests to the airport, because there isn't really another way to do that? Yeah, totally,

R. Jay F: 1:02:01

yeah. And the other thing is that guests enjoyed seeing some of the Gold Rush history. There's like, some old dredges around, and there's some in the mining. And gnome is super weird because it's, it is. Most of the gold is in the sands den. Now, people are mining down into the bay underwater. So there's all kinds of weird stuff people have come up with, like, I don't know, I built this contraption that's like a amphibious, whatever that I can, you know. So people said it was like, there's all kinds of Rube Goldberg, 100 and some years of Rube Goldberg, gold mining stuff that was in town. Yeah, I would actually, you know, it's a bit of a flight to go out there, but I felt like I didn't nearly see what I would like to have seen. I would have liked to spend a little more time. I don't know if it would be, you know, yeah,

Jennie Flaming: 1:02:53

I don't know. It would be a place you would go and meet some people and hear their stories, yeah, mainly what you would be doing, which sounds, yeah, cool, actually, yeah.

R. Jay F: 1:03:04

I think that, you know, it's also interesting because it's, it's got more white folk in it than, like, cost, or some of those, like,

Jennie Flaming: 1:03:12

ask you about that, because, because many communities in Alaska off the road system, not all, are mostly indigenous. And of course, there are many indigenous people on the road system also. But I got the impression that Nome was not that way as much as some modern, 21st century gnome was maybe less that way than

R. Jay F: 1:03:36

Yeah, very much so. And I think hots of you, or Yeah, like cots, GNOME and concert are sometimes held up as sort of opposites of each other, in a way that's like cots is a as a native, driven sort of community that's got a long history and Nome as um, it's essentially wasn't anything until Gold Rush in 1898 I think,

Jennie Flaming: 1:04:02

yeah, and it's also just from the land perspective. It's the delta of the Yukon River. So the land is like coming and going there in a way that it isn't necessarily in some other places.

R. Jay F: 1:04:17

You think of cots, right?

Jennie Flaming: 1:04:20

Or anything of Nome. No, no. Well,

R. Jay F: 1:04:22

no, itself is not near the well, the mouth of the Yukon is, well, oh, sorry, yeah. The mouth of Yukon is quite is for Davis. So it's, it's, it's a ways out. It's not in Nome itself, but yeah, there's a lot of, yeah, sorry, there's a lot of debris in the water.

Jennie Flaming: 1:04:36

That area is very what I was trying, sorry, is very dynamic because of that enormous river. And it's, yeah,

R. Jay F: 1:04:44

there's a lot of the yeah, there's a lot of sediment being dumped into the water there. So there's, yeah, it's, it's, it's weirder water than anywhere along that area. Yeah, no, I was, I. I don't, you know, again, I don't know a lot, except it did seem like a white town, and from what I've like, which is very different from what you experience in like cots of you, which is just not that way. So they have totally different flavors, and there's this historic component to it, yeah, and I was thinking of of cots is the mouth of the ko Bucha. That's why I was yes,

Jennie Flaming: 1:05:24

yes, totally. No attack, no attack. And yeah, different drainage culturally, and

R. Jay F: 1:05:30

which is right there at cotsby, which is why I was thinking that. Anyway, yeah, I'm not I'm not crazy. I am crazy.

Jennie Flaming: 1:05:39

Awesome. Well, is there anything else you want to share about this experience? Jay, before we wrap up? No. I mean, it

R. Jay F: 1:05:45

was pretty epic. It was, I'll just say that working as a working environment, it was exhausting. I knew, very long days, very I really enjoyed. The guests were really interesting. They tend to be, you know, fairly wealthy folks, but they were very interested in natural history. It's fun to be around guests who are really into knowing more, and not just like, you know, not just experiential, but like educating themselves. It was really, really fun. Yeah, we did, do have some fairly serious, quite serious conversations about climate change, sometimes even somewhat, you know, tense between folks on board. And I think that was cool. It's a place that that was, but it was, you know, it wasn't necessarily a climate change expedition per se, but it was kind of the the drum beat behind a lot of it, yep. And, yeah, yeah, I don't know it was a really cool thing. And I came home with, I think, 6000 photos,

Jennie Flaming: 1:06:48

a lot of photos so, and by the way, back in August, when Jay was on board the ship, I did put some of his photos on my Instagram feed. So my Instagram is always in the show notes, so you can go back and go through that, and then this week, some at some point this week, if you're listening in real time, I'll put some additional photos that you took on my Instagram when this episode is going live. Yeah. Cool. Well, Jay, thank you so much for taking the time to share this Arctic expedition. Wait,

R. Jay F: 1:07:27

was it a choice? Sorta. No, I

Jennie Flaming: 1:07:33

enjoy talking for caving to my pressure. No, you were fine with doing

R. Jay F: 1:07:40

I enjoy talking anytime I get a good Question. Yeah,

Unknown: 1:07:44

okay, okay, Thanks,

R. Jay F: 1:07:45

Jay, thanks for listening. You.