Two Danish Treasures: Exploring Copenhagen and Greenland with Michael Perry ‘74

well for many mainers in the wintertime spring gets near and most people would head south but those who love winter would head north maybe it was trip to baxter state park mount katahdin but 95 percent of mainers with a presented with a spring vacation option might head to the tropics to the caribbean many of you probably been here trunk bay st john island but six of us from l.l bean and other parts of maine decided not to head to baxter park not to head to st john island but to said to go to greenland and participate in the arctic circle race built as the toughest cross-country ski race in the world and i must say the brochure lied there was no flat terrain in the three days we skied you ski 30 miles a day 90 miles total and for two of the nights you camp out in the snow not as bad as you might think because we've all been reading about greenland the last 10 20 years it's ground zero for global warming as the ice cap starts to melt there's great significance for those who live near the ocean it's estimated if the greenland ice cap should ever melt completely the level of sea rise would be 20 feet greenland is the biggest island in the world it's about 1800 miles north to south 700 miles wide at its widest point and 80 percent of it's covered by ice and the ice averages about a mile and a half of thickness it's the second largest land-based ice mass in the world next to the antarctic ice shelf or ice mass which is 10 times bigger than the greenlandic ice sheet so think about the ramifications of melt if the greenland ice sheet should melt oceans rise by 20 feet if the antarctic ice sheet melts completely that adds another 200 feet of elevation rise of the ocean levels so sobering thoughts indeed so there was six of us involved on the trip four four of us worked at l.l bean and one of the fellows was a ranger up in baxter state park he had great training backyard plenty of snow oh we were jealous down here along the coast there's not a lot of snow to practice on so we've been signed up for this event for three months and then we two months left and one month left and finally the day came where chris drove rob and i down to the airport to meet the other fellows you can see it's definitely under march no snow on the coast of maine posing with all your ski baggage and luggage headed to greenland well not really you take the bus down to logan airport like any european flight it's a nine o'clock departure iceland air now truly in new england's saying you can't get there from here and that's true in getting to greenland there are no commercial flights from the united states so to get to greenland you need to fly to copenhagen denmark and then the next day we got on another plane and flew all the way back to greenland so you're pretty bleary-eyed by the time you get to greenland there will be a stop though in iceland to change planes many of you have deplaned here and change planes iceland's a little bit bigger than the state of maine and there's 360 000 people live on the island a third of them live in the capital reykjavik so here's your reykjavik airport in iceland then with a two-hour delay await we get to copenhagen denmark we left sunday night get to copenhagen monday noon now denmark is about twice the size of massachusetts has about the same population six million people but denmark is very unusually shape country it's made up of 400 islands of which 70 are populated copenhagen the capitals the size of boston way over to the east and most of you been to europe and i think you'd agree with this statement all the europeans have transportation nailed it's fast it's efficient it's on time it's clean when you land in copenhagen you're only 10 minutes by subway to downtown copenhagen so very accessible from the airport passing by the largest hotel in scandinavia the bella sky 800 plus rooms be great someday when they come back and finish the thing now we stay in the lap of luxury and place a part of copenhagen called nyhaven which means new harbor this area of town was a vast complex of warehouses that shipped goods all over the world and most of these buildings now are upscale boutiques and hotels and restaurants we're staying at the brick uh building in the center of the screen boy travel can be stressful can't it now in the brochure i did say every room had an ocean view well sort of you had to stick your head out the window but we're in copenhagen not for long though if i could show you one picture typical of copenhagen this would be it again this is all part of nyhaven and the man lived one of those buildings in the middle his name was hans christian anderson in the middle 1800s he wrote many stories and fables never married in his work his life was his writing he wrote over 3 000 stories in fables if you've ever been to central park in new york city you might have walked by the hans christian anderson statue there's the ugly duckling well when you fly the evening flight to europe you don't want to sleep when you get there so what do you do you eat because everybody eats outside near the end of march but everybody's outside eating across from my table across the harbor this is the um copenhagen opera house people are divided 50 think it's the ugliest building in the world and the other 50 percent think it's the most beautiful one of the most expensive opera houses ever built behind it's very odd building which was featured in time magazine a month ago it's their waste energy um complex just opened up a couple years ago so all the waste in copenhagen is trucked here it's incinerated and that creates electricity and power for the city of copenhagen denmark is judged to be by environmental performance index to be the greenest country in the world followed by luxembourg then followed by switzerland and then followed by the uk where's the united states on that list of green countries number 24. russia is number 56 and china is 120. i'm not sure who number 180 is but they get some work to go so denmark greenest country in the world now interesting thing about this building is they there's a ski slope on the roof so any time of year you can go skiing on top of the waste to energy building in copenhagen it's 1200 feet long it's about a 200 foot vertical rise and the other far end of the building is one of the largest rock climbing walls in the world you've got two hours in copenhagen you go down to the harbor to see the little mermaid made famous by hans christian anderson four feet tall weighs 385 pounds and it's a source of much political uh discourse and it's been destroyed many times people put spray paint on it and political slogans so it attracts a crowd a little mermaid 1989 walt disney film when you think of denmark you're thinking danish you might not think of pigs though but denmark is the largest um pork export country in the world much of it going to germany also you might have read in the papers last couple of months because of covet 19 a variant of covid was found to be in their mink population and denmark up to this point has been the largest exporter mink fur in the world and they just killed 18 million mink because of the covid the covert infestations and they've pretty much admitted they made a mistake we're too hasty to do that something is rotten in the state of denmark we think of denmark we think of william shakespeare to be or not to be that is the question interestingly enough this fellow made his mark playing hamlet right after the civil war he played it in new england in portland bengal or boston all the big cities along the east coast i think it was edwin booth unfortunately he had a brother that did something horrible he assassinated abraham lincoln so edwin booth's acting career suffered for a couple years as he was associated with his brother's act but a couple years after he got back to performing hamlet edwin booth you think of legos you think of denmark and i know we all love to go out eat fine restaurants and if you talk with a chef in a good restaurant you might ask them what butter they use a lot of people use lurpak one of the finest butters in the world made in denmark famous danes include victor borge great comedian great piano player niels bohr um he won the nobel prize for physics in 1922 um brilliant at atomic theory there is an element named after him named borium he was a dane kirkegaard soren kirkegaard one of the great philosophers who was the father of modern existentialism i love this quote boy isn't it true today there are two ways to be fooled one is to believe what isn't true the other is to refuse to believe what is true well we all love shopping this would be their equivalent of macy's in copenhagen the magazine dinard okay enough of copenhagen next day dawns we're going to get on a flight from copenhagen copenhagen headed back west to greenland largest island in the world so we're trying to get to systemic that's where the three-day event is going to take place but they don't have a big airport so we had the land in kangalussi this airport was built by the americans in world war ii it's one of the larger airports in greenland now the capital is nook down with a g a little below where the g is in greenland only 56 000 people live on the island of greenland eighteen thousand those people live in nook so a third of the population lives in the capital city systemat is the second largest town in greenland 5 500 people live there that's where we're going well how big is green land it's huge three states of texas would fit within the island of greenland and for you rhode islanders in the crowd 689 rhode islands would fit within the island of greenland so we land with the big jet in kangalussi but we have 50 miles to go to the west to get to where we want to go so we all deplaned all the ski gear and about 180 skiers and they put us on these little planes there were a series of little planes and they flew us to systema so we get this system we're all nervous what's this three-day event going to be like and we had signed up for the hotel option frankly i i did not have high expectations i thought the snow would be blowing through the chinks on the walls oh my gosh it was a four-star hotel so we walk into the lobby of the hotel and we saw these t-shirts for sale stranded in system lucky me no i didn't give it much thought at that point but we're going to be in system it for a week and a week later keep these t-shirts in mind they're gonna make a lot more sense so as i mentioned there's a beautiful hotel they had a conference room and here we are above the arctic circle in march and every table was covered with a cactus i never thought i'd go to greenland and see a cactus then down the road from the hotel was a supermarket had everything you needed including ben and jerry's ice cream from vermont again a head scratcher above the arctic circle and i'm buying a pint of ben jerry's ice cream well the lap of luxury four of us had a nice suite the other two guys had a smaller room adjacent now we're there a couple days before the event you can see the lobbies where everybody met to chat and about 200 skiers in the whole event from all over the world there only were nine from america i was proud to say seven were from maine it was a fellow from boston and a person from vermont so we were the united states connection or nine skiers out of the nearly 200 skiers well your inside was warm and toasty but you went outside again this is the third week of march and you knew you were in greenland low angle the sun and howling wind and temperatures in the upper teens lower 20s well there's no flat spot in system again think about 5 500 people living here it's full employment a lot of people employed by the fisheries which is a big part of the greenlandic economy imagine you live in these greenhouses and you have young kids you send them out to play in the backyard you might want to tether them to the house with a rope that's a long drop so for two days we walked around system getting our bearings and i wasn't looking at main license plates anymore i was looking at green landic ice license plates now greenland is technically a part of denmark they have what's called um self-rule and they can take care of all their everything that needs to be taken care of except for foreign affairs and denmark takes care of foreign affairs and military for greenland everything else though is up to the green landers i'm not going to begin to pronounce that it's not smith avenue as i mentioned it just like you in brunswick maine a little smaller version this is their grocery store one of three in town you walked in they had everything you needed oh you need your cocoa puffs fix there it is now i know what you're thinking michael 42.95 well their currency is the danish kroner which is about 16 cents a kroner so if you do the math there the cereal is selling for about seven dollars a box not bad now next to the grocery store there was where the local shop the greenlanders we'll get out of work and oh let's go have some walrus tonight and they were very accommodating here they let all us tourists come in and take pictures i'm not sure if we're looking at seal meat here perhaps that looks appetizing and leopard fish fish that thrives in the cold green landic waters now systematic why is it the second biggest town in greenland well it's because it has the most northerly ice free harbor in greenland most of the thriving communities on the west coast although there are communities on the east coast but the employment is much harder to come by in the east coast and the west coast has more employment mostly fishing i know it looks like it's pretty much frozen over but no it never freezes completely so any given day you can get out in and out of this harbor so it's really neat to get out in the morning and watch the uh seal hunters come in and they they can hunt whales and walrus as well it was a cold bitter cold morning these folks are tough that's probably going up to that market i showed you where they saw the seal meat and the whale meat you can see what a beautiful community is this will be our backdrop for our three days of skiing you see a little peak on the left i call that my little matterhorn it's about 2500 feet above sea level this would be a summer picture obviously and you can see the bright color of the houses again think of this being a community of 5 500 people second biggest community anywhere in greenland there's the same mountain scene from the air and from the top of that mountain you're looking down into system you notice those lakes that's the source of their public drinking water the town gets its energy from hydroelectricity from a river that's dammed up nearby so here are back to the end of march and we've still got a day to go before we start skiing on friday morning i just was enthralled by the beauty and because the lack of pollution the air was so clear so it really it was hard to tell how far something was away there's our little mat on well the two days before the event it was quite menacing out over the out over the water and it was almost like lake effect snow over the water and sometimes that would creep onto shore and we'd get a two or three snowfall but it always looked like something was about to happen while many people live in their own homes most of the folks in the community live in apartment style housing and no dryers so everything kind of freeze dries out on the front balcony so how's all this stuff get in and out of system well it comes in once a week once every couple weeks by cargo ship container ship again most northerly ice free harbor anywhere in greenland so this is where your cactus are coming in your ben and jerry's ice cream and what's leaving shrimp halibut and cod fish well our first day there we bought a banana a very green one this picture's taken a week later so i guess one of the questions this show is going to answer today how long does it take to eat a banana in green land one week oh there goes the shrimp the cod and the haddock headed back to europe and there's a shrimp waiting for the next container ship the fisheries 50 of the greenlandic economy they're just starting to get mining going so what makes up the other 50 of revenues well the danish government every year subsidizes greenland to the tune of 600 million dollars the greenlanders would like to be completely independent but that's not going to happen until the greenlanders can get more export income and we'll see if that'll happen as the ice sheet starts to melt will really open up many mining opportunities especially for rare earth elements so the greenland economy is going to look a lot different in the next hundred years than it does right now today it's danish dependent and fishery dependent now the shrimp is not this shrimp these are alaskan shrimp they're really the shrimp we get here in maine they're the little bitty shrimp so green lake shrimp would look just like the main shrimp so it's neat to walk down by the waterfront early in the morning see all these containers it's piled up at the dock this little sculpture of a greenlander fishing for halibut well come thursday afternoon i think we're all pretty nervous about gee are we going to be able to figure out the waxing for our cross-country skis there was a little outdoor store in town kind of their version of l.l bean so we

wanted down and they had a special that weekend that they would wax your skis for 150 dollars so that meant three wax jobs to get you going on friday then they would wax them at camp saturday night and get them ready with that yes three three waxings for friday ski sandy ski and sunny ski 50 a day 150 total and he looked like he knew what he was doing and my gosh he got the wax just right so when you were tired at night after 30 miles of skiing you didn't have to stress out about getting your skis waxed up for the next day he was doing it thank you this whole town turns out for this once a year event unfortunately last year's event was cancelled due to covet 19. this morning i just found out this year's event is cancelled as well so our participation two years ago was the last time this race was held so hopefully next year it'll be held again one of the really moving parts of the experience was thursday afternoon we were told to gather at the civic center and the mayor of the town and other dignitaries led us on a walk down to a church to have a church service to bless the event this was a very touching ceremony you could tell us tourists right taking pictures out over the harbor as everybody lines up to head inside the church now the whole service was done in greenlandic that is the um language of greenland many people speak danish and many speak english as well but this was done in greenlandic hymnbook in greenlandic so we just kind of hummed along but it's very touching to be there with local folks you got the skiers from around the world a real feeling of camaraderie my gosh friday morning did dawn nine o'clock we're at the race start they're gonna fire the pistol and we're off for three days of skiing whole town turns out school is cancelled and not sure why this family chose the american flag but we're glad they did now there were about 200 skiers and quite a few from greenland i'd say there were probably about 30 green lantic skiers there were some olympic skiers in this event an olympic skier from australia there was a woman olympic skier from france so there were some very good skiers then there's folks like me that are strong skiers but we're not going to win any races we're at the back of the pack we're just trying to finish the darn thing well they didn't say in the brochure anything about vertical gain or vertical drop but it was obvious by the map that there were a lot of hills i hope they were just going up valleys but we quickly found out why they don't tell you much about the vertical rides nobody would sign up for the event so first day of skiing at 13 000 feet of vertical rise and gain basically you have 6500 feet up and 6500 feet down world's toughest cross-country ski race most things are overblown exaggerated life i found that this race lived up to its billing it was hard so three days of this so everybody starts out with different expectations mine was to finish it the australian and the french woman their goal was to win it now when you start out there's a little half mile loop that goes up a hill comes back down to the start line and at the bottom of this hill all the locals gather and we're all just getting used to our fast skis you come hurling down that hill you want to be a hero and 80 of people fall in a heap at the base of the hill and the cowbells are going people are cheering fist pumping it's kind of like going to the indianapolis 500 and watching for a car wreck so this was a great of uh scene of great frivolity for the locals oh that hurts doesn't it i even did my part with the butt plant not a face plant thank goodness so a half mile out back and then you head for your 30 miles out into the back country and this pretty much sums it up if you're not going uphill you're going downhill and i do mean downhill in fact some places were so steep even the olympic skiers you couldn't ski it that you had to take your skis off and walk down it was that dangerous but on many hills i walked down i just couldn't control my speed do you think this woman's going to survive it or she gonna go down in the heap looks to me like she's too far gone i think she's going down ouch that's that's the title this slide ouch well rob the photographers of the event love to photograph him get a little lather going and beard's frozen solid charlie one of the other skiers from maine he's a great skier no effort at all no perspiration so i know you've probably been wondering okay you ski your 30 miles our first day michael what about this camping out well you don't have to carry your own gear you arrive and system it with your duffel bag full of warm clothes they bring your duffel bags out to the camp by snowmobile so when you ski back to the camp all your stuff is there thank goodness you just ski with a little daypack with some survival items in it but the wind did blow that first night friday night and boy the tents were pretty much covered by snow in the morning in fact that morning was very blustery saturday morning i had been very very worried about the bathroom situation now think about 200 skiers plus all that staff and somebody says michael that's the bathroom what do you mean it's the bathroom that's all there is all i could picture in the morning was 90 people out to the left the men's side and 60 people out to the right the women's side waiting to go the bathroom there was no line ever i guess they had that figured out so this winter camping is pretty tame stuff why well they basically create a canvas hotel for everybody up to a certain point in the evening they erect these canvas tents there's heaters inside they've got plywood floors so inside the tents it's 75-80 degrees one of the tents is dedicated to the change room so your duffel bag's in here you get the wet stuff off half the coat hanging me they don't know why she's smiling she just skied 30 miles in the toughest terrain in the world she's still got energy to smile though all volunteers running the event this woman is the water woman so all's well and good until 9 59 at night then say somebody comes in the tents and all 180 200 skiers in these tents and they announce the crowd okay folks it's ten o'clock everybody has to leave the nice heated tents and go down to your tents for the night and if anybody's found back here in the wee hours of the morning you'll be disqualified from the event oh it was tempting to sneak back but she couldn't next morning was a ground blizzard we do to start at nine o'clock for the next 30 miles and they delayed the start 10 o'clock they came back and made another announcement still too dangerous out there we're going to delay till 11. now for skiers like me we're just trying to finish the event that's a problem i need every hour of daylight i can get to finish the course and 11 o'clock i knew i wasn't going to be able to make the 30 miles by dark so they do have a 20 mile option you can sign up for this event and ski 60 miles 20 miles a day over three days or you can sign up for the 30 miles per day 90 miles because we'd all signed up for the 90 and a lot of people that saturday morning made the switch to 20 miles and that made it so much more enjoyable so we're pretty pensive that saturday morning waiting for them to tell us that we could start skiing they can see on tom and joel's face the apprehension we're losing precious time that we could be out there skiing finally at 11 o'clock they fire the pistol ben's got all his uh frostbite protection on his cheeks and his nose so doesn't that look a lot more doable 20 miles you can see if you continue on beyond the red line you can see where it goes up onto the water to the right that was the 30 mile loop on day two many of us decide just to do the 20 miles so 11 o'clock same thing as the day before the gun goes off and we're headed out again some of the greenlanders proudly skiing in the race here's joel from l.l bean chugging

through the snow which started again late morning tom trying to control a steep downhill well later that saturday cleared up wind died down it was absolutely beautiful in the low to mid 20s but with no wind it was just just bombing so those of us skied the 20 miles we're just shuffling along enjoying the scenery that night local hunters brought out by snowmobile some whale meat seal meat walrus meat and shrimp it was really neat it was like having a little baked bean supper except it was the local fare and boy i must say i got on a piece of whale meat and i must have been chewing for half an hour to get it down very tough kinda like eating a soft candle that night about two o'clock in the morning somebody yelled out folks folks the aurora borealis the northern lights we all got out and it was stunning i think we'd all gone there not just to ski in the race but to see the northern lights as well oh this is how an event should end day three we know we're going to survive it many folks skiing in the 30 miles many of us skiing the 20 miles sun no wind perfect way to end an event people have been wondering about the ski track was it good it was great they have uh a big track setting machine so it's setting 30 miles of track although it would get wind blown with snow during the course of the day and beat up by the skiers but in the morning it was just pristine i think this sums up the beauty of the event imagine three days of this and your head was just swiveling and mountains everywhere volunteers they have all kinds of duties and responsibilities this fellow was one of the safety stations and he was kind of out in the middle of nowhere you can see sesame way in the background he had a walkie-talkie and if anybody ski by was having difficulty sprained ankle or broken ski he would call for somebody to come out and give some support they take safety very seriously in this event every six to seven miles you'd have an aid station where you could get hot water also get some energy snacks like chocolate and bits of bread the dog sled team went by this couple were delightful mother and daughter what a great event to share they each were from copenhagen and the daughter had seen news of the event said mom let's go to greenland together and ski it what a wonderful adventure to share together oh the middle of nowhere was a ski area i have no idea if it was operational or not it wasn't operational when we skied through you can see the little line of ants going across the landscape the olympic ski is way up to the right michael perry's of the world way back to the left you'd be working up a long lonely slope thinking about gee i don't know how the bowdoin sports teams are doing or how the red sox do in their first game and you just pinch yourself like oh my gosh i'm skiing above the arctic circle now we're not skiing on the ice cap the ice caps actually still another oh 60 miles inland i want to be young again i'm 67 and i don't know if i ever had thighs like that but that girl just powered up that slope and i'm just logging a couple friends a couple of ladies from london england and they beckoned me mike take the skis off you're flowering walk up with us and we're talking about boris johnson and donald trump and i hated these guys these are the winners you got the australian olympic champion on the right you've got the greenlandic ski champion on the left they were dueling for three days to see who would finish first and second afternoon of day three sunday afternoon we can't believe it we've survived it the toughest cross-country ski race in the world we're still smiling whole town gathers again to uh greet us coming in this time boy you saw those banners at the finish line you were very happy little girl she's not too excited about the skiers coming in she's dozing away in the low march sun isn't she a cutie even the sled dogs are welcomed us back i think there's more sled dogs in town than there are people now while we're out for the three-day ski in the backcountry animal event for the families and kids in town next year they're going to give this kid some skis but he's he's getting ready for next year i think his little girl got up in the morning when her pjs and her dad said get your skis on we're going skiing oh this kid's style he's got his little ll beam backpack on he's blowing a bubble there remember that hilt in the day one friday we all skied down it back into town and everybody fell down well you got the kids skiing down the hill too and i love the bottom middle of the picture you've got the little kid and his mother has just gone down in the heap with him oh this is a future olympic champion oh i'd like to be able to ski like that so the whole town is glad we're back i love this sign welcome back from our amazing back country we hope that you enjoyed it well it's the spirit of the message there is a little museum in session and because the original settlers were danes original white settler 1721 although um eric the red did visit greenland and there have been people in greenland since 2500 bc the church the blue church the oldest church in greenland 1775 that is a whale bone which you walk through to head up the path to the little blue church this is the red church above the blue church that's the church where we had that service on thursday afternoon well we decided being tourists for another day that we would take a sled dog ride boy it was cold as cold as it was skiing the three days when you're not doing anything and just standing around it's frigid oh if you want to bring a couple home aren't they cuties and they just live in the snow they're tough well that monday night they had a gala a banquet to celebrate the achievement of the skiers and some of the organizers dressed in the traditional dress aren't those beautiful outfits the decking of our hotel signs different places around the world copenhagen new york about 2 000 miles either direction so come tuesday we all think we're flying back home we get on the bus from the hotel the half mile ride to the airport they've been snowing through the night and kind of a wet pasty snow we got down to the airport and getting processed and our baggage checked in there were no planes there they were trying to keep the runway clear i want to show you what this place looks like in the summer same airport not beautiful you wouldn't know it's the same airport so you see the blue building left of center that's the that's where we checked in that's where we're hanging out so hang out we did four hours it got to be about one o'clock in the afternoon it was obvious that the planes weren't coming in because of the weather so they brought the buses back from the town we all headed back to the hotel they hadn't made the beds up yet and we walked in the lobby and i looked at those t-shirts and laughed stranded in system lucky me i bought a t-shirt yes this is a very hard place to leave so come wednesday morning we do the same thing all over again we take the bus down to the airport snowing even harder it looks even more dubious that we're going to make it out of here well about noon a little hole opened up overhead these little little red planes not this plane flew in picked us up brought us here we waited to 12 midnight where we met this plane and it took us back not to logan airport back to copenhagen denmark so we only had a couple hours lay over so tom had a great idea well let's take the metro in and we'll just take the one hour canal boat tour to see a little more of copenhagen a little bleary i haven't got much sleep from the time we left greenland have you ever taken the canal tour in greenland and i'm sorry denmark it's a great way to see the city this would be april first at this point you haven't been if you haven't been to copenhagen since 2000 but it's really changed down with the waterfront there's a lot of um new theaters opera houses libraries museums you know there's that church on the right that's the largest dome church anywhere in scandinavia it's called marble church they started building it in the early 1700s but they quickly ran out of money it took them 150 years to fundraise and they finally got it finished 150 years later the queen of denmark lives here near marble church it's queen margarith she has been queen for nearly 50 years now denmark is the constitutional monarchy or parliamentary democracy and the queen has very little power it's kind of like england where it's more ceremonial but she's a feisty lady headquarters corporate headquarters of one of the great container ship companies maersk now the interest of time here i know we're almost at our time limit here i'm just going to move ahead so bear with me here we go so i hope you've enjoyed our tour our ski of the arctic circle race a little side visit to copenhagen denmark i apologize for the beginning but uh in a condensed version we completed the race hope you're all still smiling but we'll be reading about greenland a lot in the years to come as the ice cap retreats i think this is a very sobering picture it's pictures taken the beginning of april and years ago somebody with their dogs and sled would have been sledding over compact ice and snow but now the seasons have been turned topsy-turvy you know once there's snow and ice now it's water on top of ice and when we did talk to the locals we asked them about climate change and without hesitation they said young man we get the strangest weather now it snows when it should be raining it rains when it should be snowing it's warm when it should be cold it's cold when it should be warm it's just a climate turned topsy turvy and nowhere in the world is the climate changing faster than it is in greenland and nowhere in the world is ice melting faster than it is in greenland so imagine someday well beyond our time if that ice should ever melt the oceans rising 20 feet also think about the ex exposure of land where nations like the united states and china have their eyes on those rare earth elements that will be exposed in mind at times in the future when will that come so i want to thank you all very much and i wonder if there's any questions mike at all mike there was a question about the latitude of sesame which i just looked up looks like it's 66.93595 degrees north it's just above the arctic circle so nook the capital is below the arctic circle and systemat is about oh 40 miles above the arctic circle great um i don't know if anyone else has uh questions for you michael i was wondering you started talking about climate and weather i was wondering about a couple things one how many hours of daylight you had you were concerned about uh whether you're going to finish a 30-mile course although i have seen you out cross-country skiing i think you are swifter than you're letting on but uh hours of daylight what were the temperatures like during the day and at night while you're out there mike great questions um as far as the daylight it was amazing we were only there a week and you could see literally they were gaining daylight five or six minutes a day and by the time we left the last day of march it did be a hint of twilight in the air at 10 o'clock at night but as far as sun above the horizon it was generally about i'd say 7 30 to about five o'clock or so but gaining greatly each day as far as temperatures this was a warmer event than previous years it can be bitter in fact some years they've actually canceled one of the days because it was so dangerous to ski because of the cold we would set out in the mornings would be in the upper teens and lower 20s and by you know by the end of the day it'd be near 30 so we were very lucky it was blue wax or green wax and the fellow did a great job of waxing our skis you you never had to stop and relax and he took all the stress out of that so i must say greenland was much more developed than i had anticipated i think that was my biggest surprise any other questions or thoughts or no we have some compliments for what an excellent slideshow and i would certainly certainly escort those and uh just say that uh we were talking before the show started about how excited we're gonna be when we leave the remote setting and are back in person and for anyone who hasn't seen a michael perry slideshow live i will uh throw in a plug when when hopefully next winter when we're needing entertainment we can get you over here to the schwartz outdoor leadership center to do uh some of your shows live which will be wonderful yeah uh michael i think uh we don't have any further questions but uh i just wanted to thank our studio audience for joining us this afternoon and um i think if people enjoy this sort of presentation they should pester rhodey lloyd to bring brewing us bring michael perry back for another one i know you have an inexhaustible supply of slide shows of your outdoor adventures for many years so um well this is and this is rhody lloyd and it won't take much pestering [Laughter] both of you back i knew i would draw her out i know i did just want to note there are a few more questions in here uh-oh good there you go this is why i should not be allowed to be the moderator for these events let's see michael i actually was wondering about this myself how can people find out more about the ski event in terms of where to look it up and what what what you need to qualify are there are their criteria and how do we how do we find that information well um if you just google up arctic circle race you'll get all you'll get their website although this year's event has been canceled so the next one will be 2022. it's usually held the last week of march or the first few days of april um as far as level of fitness who should go to this event one is you should have a very you should be very fit you should be have a very positive outlook in other words you're going to start skiing and you ski until they tell you to stop and if you're happy at the end of the day doing something like that this event is for you some of the skiers like the two women from london england they had not been on skis all winter they had used nordic track to train london england not having much snow but they just had a great attitude they were going for the experience and um they had the time of their lives so there was a fellow the fellow from boston he'd done very little on snow training uh because of wasn't much snow around boston a couple winters ago so again just a positive outlook a strong just a strong positive attitude and one can participate and it truly is a an adventure of a lifetime it it i'd say i've done a lot of interesting things in the outdoors and this is at the top of my list great yeah well i was thinking as long as that uh aid station woman with the platter of chocolate was short enough intervals i could keep going all day you know oh great um let's see i i know you claim not to be an expert on denmark but we have one copenhagen question which whether the amusement park uh garden uh called tavoli is still there uh the person peter driscoll was there 51 years ago and he's wondering if you you saw that while you were there you know we were there for such a short amount of time but it is still operating it's one of the highlights of a copenhagen visit so we you know it also it wouldn't be in its prime uh offering when we were there but i hear it's doing very well great wonderful you got me nervous with that denmark question mike michael i was amazed in the few minutes you spent on denmark how much information i learned i you know or was reminded of people i had heard of and didn't realize they were danes so there we go it's all good well michael thank you again for uh this wonderful show and as i said i am planning on getting you back here and i know rhodey uh will also do that in a heartbeat so um thanks to everyone who joined us and uh get out there hopefully we have two inches of snow in brunswick so if you're uh if you're so inclined you can get out and play in the snow today anyway thanks again michael and thank you all for joining us thanks amy thanks rhodey take care

2021-02-04 06:38

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