Banff Film Festival

I just went to the travelling exhibit of the Banff Film Festival on Saturday on various outdoor adventures (mix of travel/water/kayak/snow/ice/desert/climbing/cycling)--it's a travelling exhibition, and it will be coming stateside soon. I'd strongly recommend seeing it--it was pretty damn cool.

They had a mix of short films (from 8 minutes to 52 minutes) of varied content, seriousness, and quality. They had an intermission (given the length of the presentation), and they also had door prizes (from the outdoor equipment sponsors). Nope, didn't win anything.

The showstopper for me was the last film, "Alone Across Australia," about Jon Muir, the man who walked solo across the entire Australian continent (south to north), with just the supplies he carried with him (300 lbs in a wheeled cart he was towing), and what he could hunt and gather off the land. Pretty insane.

Had great quotes along the lines of "...and what's for dinner tonight? Mmmmm... dried lizard...(crunch, crunch, crunch)." (for full effect, the line must be delivered in an Aussie accent). Other choice culinary moments included cutting steaks off a cow he discovers dead in a field, and demonstrating how to skin a rabbit with his bare hands.

As a side note, hello to Dan, who is a fellow grad of the Institute, a young prof at the esteemed university where I am studying, and a friend of a bunch of my fraternity brothers. He recounts accidentally coming across my blog here. Dan--I apologize for not saying anything in line at the grocery store--I thought it might be you, but wasn't really sure, myself. We can go grab a beer at the Heuther or a glass of wine at Solé sometime. Bring your sweetie, if you'd like to. I managed to snag the "batman" address at the 'tute's alum service (I figure that's convoluted enough to keep the web crawlers for spamming me).