Written by Kelly Patterson for http://www.blog.couchsurfing.com.

In case it is not clear by now, there is not much “nightlife” out here in Homer, Alaska, save for really bad costume karaoke, playing pool at a scrubby but charming pub, bonfires with Chubby Bunny contests, Scrabble, “Netflix Night”, and the hot tub. Therefore, we at the Collective have to be very creative about our leisure activities. So inspired by the show “American Idol”, we hosted our own in-house, home-made Alaska CSC Talent Show last Thursday, July 10. It was a surprising success!

Despite being poorly organized by Mandie and myself, and in typical CS-fashion (meaning everyone does everything at the last possible minute!), we managed to come up with eight outstanding acts! In addition, we asked three colleagues to play the roles of the American Idol judges: Weston played “Randy”, Rachel played “Paula”, and then Cam played “Simon” (with incredible accuracy.)

Act One: Joel (our visiting French Chef) taught us all how to make Les Bananos Flambees in the kitchen…which involves rum-soaked, flaming bananas (with a side of fire extinguisher.)

Then we moved into the Dining Room for…

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Alaska’s Crow Pass Trail Part 1 – Glaciers, rivers, and mountains

I destroyed my legs this weekend. Absolutely tore them to shreds. I used one excursion point (we have 18 of them to spend on excursions that appeal to us) to go on a 25 mile long hike called the Crow Pass Trail. It started off with a 2,300 foot elevation gain in a few miles, and then kept up a slow but steady decline for the rest of the trail.

An outhouse along the way… (Photo by A. Otto)

The hike was one of the most beautiful I have ever been on and I cannot wait to do another one like it in the near future. We began at the trailhead which was at the end of a 10 mile long dirt road outside of a small town called Girdwood. We made it about five minutes up the trail before Andrew started to realize he had not packed his bag efficiently. We dumped it out, and helped him sort out some of the problem. 1 ½ pounds of Fig Newton’s, a box of chocolate wafers, some hot chocolate packets, a box of tea, a set of five solo cups, flip flops, extra bowls, and a roll of aluminum foil later, he was set to go.

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Seen the new profiles on Facebook yet? I didn’t think so. They will be rolling out the week of July 14th and they change a lot of things that have become comfortable to users.

Links to sections or "Boxes" will be at the top of the screen now and will be organized for easy access.

Interesting new layout that gets rid of a lot of the crap that has been building up because of worthless applications.

Also, in case you didn’t already notice, you can now comment on items in people’s mini feeds.

Facebook | Facebook Profiles Preview

My Parents just left Alaska. They were here for a week and it was a busy one. They didn’t make too many plans, which turned out to be just fine since my week ended up being pretty open. A lot of people left the collective this week for various reasons, and the house was pretty empty.

On Monday I left around noon and hitchhiked to Seward, which is a few hours North. My mom said she was willing to pay for a bus there, but the bus left at 9:00 am and took six-seven hours to arrive. Why bother when I can get there faster for free and meet some interesting people along the way?

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I have several forms of advertising on this site, all aimed at bringing in a little bit of money. Most of them do. Through various different affiliate programs and other ad setups, I have earned almost $2000 from online advertising since I started advertising on my blog. Not much in the long run, but it more than covers the cost of my web hosting fees.

There is one exception. AdSense. Here are my stats for Google’s AdSense program:

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Hey guys, I just wanted to link to the tutorial I posted on the CS blog. My first attempt at an online tutorial, and I think it went well enough. The second video is also one I made. The first video is by Lee Lefever, of Common Craft fame, also of The World Is Not Flat fame. What I wanted my web site to be, but didn’t have the time to set it up that way.

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