Anatomy of a Random Walk

- by Andrew Clark and Andres Naranjo, 
MBA Class of 2010, University of Chicago GSB

Let me just say up front that Random Walks are absolutely worth it. Totally underrated. The biggest case of underpromising and overdelivering that I have seen so far. In the interest of documenting some whacky stories, we have decided to let you know how our random walk went down.

By accident or design, we had chosen the only homegrown random adventure as our destination: Alaska. Some of us loved guns, some of us were running from the border police, some of us thought bears were cute- we all had our reasons to stay in the US. Our first day started flying to Anchorage. All would have been well if the leathery flight attendant hadn’t been hitting on our new buddy JK. The conversation went: “Chicken or Fish? I turn 40 today and my husband is going to be a long way away in Seattle”. Lifejackets on, people! We eventually had to beat her with a stick to let our man rest in peace.

Upon our arrival to Anchorage we did the first thing that apparently any MBA student does, hit a pub – even though it was 12:00 midnight. On a Sunday. One drink later, we went to the most (in)famous restaurant in Anchorage - Leroy’s, where there was a dish called “12 dollars” that you could purchase for $5.95. A couple of able GSBers all went and ordered this in hopes of making a killing on the arbitrage…. But “12 dollars” turned out to be a turkey sandwich in glazed sugar French toast - bad luck boys, no one would swap it for a share in Lehman Brothers.

We spent our first night in a lovely B&B, where, for breakfast, the resident owner cooked black bear meatballs and caribou sausage with fresh pancakes, all while her husband told us about the dangers of becoming a tent burrito while going hunting. You are a tent burrito if a bear grabs you in your tent while hunting for deer.  This guy had more stories than the bible and we could have listened for hours.

Our first drive to the Glaciers in Whittier was heightened after we noticed that our driver, Leal, a lovely American-Israeli second year, has her brain motor functions attached to her arms motor functions, thereby causing us to veer off the road when she looked at any scenery. Scenery: nice, driving: scary… and our buddy Will probably has bruises on his arms of how many times Andres held on to him for his life. The glaciers were lovely and sipping “hot otters” while watching the glaciers was memorable. “Hot otters”, by the way, are not heated, liquidized versions of the similarly named animal, but a lovely cocktail containing hot chocolate and “whatever alcohol they could get their hands on”.

On our second day driving north to Talkeetna, our other trip leader Ricky took us all fishing… that’s Ricky you know? The kinda guy that takes you fishing, gives you beer, and talks about the rims on his car. We love this guy!  All was good until bam! Fish on hook! Amateur firsherman! Since nobody knew what to do with the big fellow, Will-The-Whacker grabbed a huge rock, jumped as high as he could, and at the highest moment, threw the rock down for it to gain maximum gravitational pull. He missed! Then he tried again and guppy was out cold.  Eventually Andres-The-Cleaner stepped up to chop the head off and gut it, all while Andrew turned the color of an unbaked scone. Will honored the fish by glazing it with his signature Korean dressing in a BBQ a couple of days later. That same BBQ, in the Alaskan midnight twilight, saw the creation of a new signature dish for these parts – the Drewes Dog, affectionately known as a “Double D”. It was a special Leal concoction: take a loaf of bread and fold in half. Now smother in Thousand Island Dressing (TID). Now fill that bad boy up with canned corn. Now… slice a turkey sausage in the weirdest way you can imagine, make slivers as uneven as possible. Put those in there. Roll up and enjoy. Note that Drewes Dogs are enjoyed most if you have to take a long drive to purchase the dressing in a remote Alaskan town. Challenge Everything? Challenge the culinary arts, for sure.

It’s worth mentioning that the man who rented us all our fishing gear was named David Fish… how often does this happen? And we also kept David Fish’s business card because being the Alaskan Confucius he was, he was filled with fishing metaphors such as “Sometimes you just gotta swim upstream” and “Life is a fish, and then you marry one”.  There was something kind of weird about this whole situation and I can’t help feeling that Ashton Kutcher was about to pop out of the van with glazed windows around the corner, informing us that we had been “punk’d”.

Next day, we hit Denali National Park. This was our test: nothing had been pre-organised and we had to get into the park, complete a hike, and get back. It started badly, when no-one knew where the park actually was, despite it being the size of Belgium. As we pulled in, there was dawning realization that you can’t explore it in a couple of hours in the afternoon, and we really should have been up earlier. It is that big that even to get half way in, the national park buses take 3 hours each way! After a considerable amount of administration, we managed to get in a bus – driven by Lois Berry, otherwise known as the People’s Grandmother. We saw wildlife aplenty, and ticked off nearly all of the ‘Big Five’ animals – indeed, by the end of the day, we had become insulated to the sight of a bear from miles away, and of a Dall Sheep (which appear to be “just big white sheep”).  The hike was interesting, as there were no trails, and no obvious destination. So we just climbed, through 3-6ft tall bushes, to the top of the first summit we could find. At one point, we found a river, just slightly too wide to cross; for most of us, there was no choice – shoes off, feet wet, cross river. Not for JK. He’s an expert long-jumper don’t you know? And sure enough, he took a huge run and made the most spectacular jump you had ever seen! Spectacular because it didn’t go very far, and he ended up with the wettest feet of all.

On our fourth day we went rafting in Healy on the Nenana River – which got its name after two drunk guys argued over its name. The first one thinks it should be called Sourdough Bear River, and the other one says “na na na, I don’t think so…” and so Nenana came from the negating reply.  The highlight was “Peaches”, our rafting guide. “Peaches” is the original California dude, gone pro-kayaker and now “doing summers in Alaska”. Peaches would simply blurt out rafting lingo like we understood him, something like this “Dude... so we ran this sweet little creamy terminal hydraulic which is supposed to be a grade VI, but its actually a V+ commercial, and we got totally stuck in the whirlpool and just had to go ragdoll for 30 not to max out our energy”. We’ve decided that any day now we are going to go ragdoll in class to save up our energy so we can just ride it out.

 The trip was nearly over, but we still had time for more outdoor adventures! We managed to get up in a small plane to see the glacier network in central Alaska from above. It was truly amazing and a sight many of us will never forget. After a little bit of bargaining on the price, we got the opportunity to land on the glacier. Snow fight! The final full day, we then took a river cruise to some “grade VI rapids”… you could imagine the horror of Peaches, who had told us the previous day that you had to travel to Africa to find real grade VI. It was all very serene until right at the end – the boat had been specially designed to go on pretty much any rapid, anywhere. And so we did! For as much as it looked like a conservatory-on-river, that boat could actually do some pretty mean turns.

That night, we hit the town pub to support local hero “Heather” who had just signed up for the 2009 Iditarod race. After getting bidding numbers, downing a few beers and eating yet more caribou burgers, we got right into the bidding action. We bagged amazing items such as a loaf of bread for $25 (a gift to Will who was turning 29), special edition t-shirts with Fast Eddie, Heather’s favourite dog, on them for $ 25, and Andrew bought a state-of-the-art Artic Cat Snowmobile Backpack. Nothing topped Andrew taking the microphone and asking the auctioneer in his flawless English manner “So I can attach this to my snowmobile?”, and all the Alaskans nodding “oh yeahhh”. It’s all about machinery in Alaska.

We headed back to Anchorage, stopping at one last pub, and then safely flying back on the red-eye. Thanks to every one of our crew who provided amazing memories, and the leaders for making it happen.  This is one trip where we certainly lived up to the name ‘random’.