Campus life
For my next few years at the University of Alaska, I lived off campus. One year, I had convinced a buddy from New Jersey, Tom Bellamore, to apply to the school to study biology. We shared an apartment near the University and I was able to cross country ski to class. This was always such a great way to start the day, as I quite easily propelled myself through the evergreen forest usually blanketed by thick snow. On many days, I took advantage of the many trails on campus between classes and soaked up the beauty of the wilderness. Quite a few of these trails looped back and took me past the University of Alaska’ s Animal Research Station where I was always amazed to see the bison like Musk Oxen and my favorite animal- wolves. I had read just about every book written about these awe-inspiring animals and each time I saw them fairly close up was wonderful.
Frank Starr after skiing
On my daily ski to campus, there was a dogsled track that was frequented by many dogsledders. It was always a pleasure to see these beautiful wolflike dogs pulling the sleds. Most times, the dogsleds passed by absolutely quietly through the snow as there was no barking or verbal commands from the musher. One year I made it to the start of the famous Alaskan Iditarod dogsled race that commences in Anchorage and ends over a thousand miles away in Nome. This race takes mushers more than 11 days to complete as they travel through the incredibly harsh Alaskan terrain in freezing conditions. It would be had to find a more difficult race anywhere in the world. I did meet one of the winners of this race and got to see his dogs when they were training in Livengood.
Friends Frank Starr and Tom Bellamore
My studies of biological sciences at the University were fairly difficult and there were many 4 hour long laboratory sessions that were usually very interesting and I particularly liked the labs where we used the microscopes. The professors ranged from being a total asshole to extremely interesting. For example, each day that we saw our genetics professor his opening statement was that he hated all undergraduates as we kept him away from his research activities. He made our lives hell. Conversely, the most memorable professor taught advanced statistics. He intrigued us with his first words that informed us that this will be the toughest course we will ever take at the university. Many of us in the
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