All I can say is that the Alaskan cruise was absolutely amazing! Shilpi and I had a Sky Suite that included a butler, his name was Lawrence!
The food and entertainment was great, and the best part of the cruise were the land excursions. Now I have WAY too many experiences on the cruise & land excursions to share them in this one post, so I’m going to talk about some of the more unique experiences that my wife and I had.
I already blogged about zip lining in a previous post, this time I want to blog about:
DOG SLEDDING
The dog slep camp, which is the biggest dog sled camp in the world that prepares dog for the famous Alaskan Iditarod, was located up on the mountains on a glacier!
The helicoper trip up to the glacier and glacier landing was amazing…
The dogs were not what you might expect, our guide told us that these dogs are not “pretty Hollywood dogs,” rather these dogs are bread for speed and endurance.
The dogs were super excited before our sled ride, they just love to run!
The dog sled ride was INCREDIBLE! The dog were running at least 15 miles/hr, our trail was about 2 miles of hills and lots of bumps. You really have to hold on, especially when you’re standing like I was.
Afterwards Shilpi and I had an opportunity to play with some of adorable puppies that were only 5 weeks old, check it out…
This was just ONE day in our Alaskan vacation, the rest of the trip was almost as amazing!
All I have to say is that I’m so glad I decided to do affiliate marketing, if I was still working at MIT I guarantee you that Shilpi and I would not have been able to afford to go on this vacation.
The final tab for our entire trip come to a whopping $20k!?! And the best part is that the entire vacation was paid for as a reward for being a top affiliate!
Affiliate marketing is the best business in the world. What other business allows you to live the super affiliate lifestyle? 
Awwwwww those puppies are so cute!
Would be able to tell us what affiliate company this is?
Awesome place to go Amit. Congratulations.
Wow, I didnt think it could be so cool to vacation in Alaska.
Nice posts, I really dig your vacation posts.
Thanks Amit
Warm regards
The True King Carlos
Amit,
Great Pictures and I’m jealous. You really know how to have a vacation.
Hey, Can I ask a question about Adwords and get your advice? In your “Summit” presentation you mention to start with a budget and hold to it. Would the “Budget Optimizer” feature be a good place to start? I am trying this on one campaign (just started) and I have notice the default CPC is very low. Then some keywords at random seem to have a boost in the default CPC. How are those random keywords with the boost chosen? And how can I control it? Or perhaps maybe I should not use this feature.
Sign,
a bit confused.
Thanks for the pictures and inspiration. Still very jealous.
Hi Ron,
Be very wary of the Google budget optimizer, I for one will not it with a ten foot pool. I’ve heard horror stories!
Sincerely,
Amit
Thanks Amit. I just finished talking with one of the reps at google about this feature. Mostly about CPC for keywords. It would seem I have no control on what keywords get used. Also it would seem that at the rate the clicks are showing up, it will be at the end of the month untill I really get any clicks. I also notice that my total impressions for this campaign drop by 10%. This is not a daily amount. This is the total for the campaign. How can you lose impressions? I know they were there.
The Iditarod is terribly cruel to dogs. For the facts, visit the Sled Dog Action Coalition website, http://www.helpsleddogs.org .
Here’s a short list of what happens to the dogs during the race: death, paralysis, penile frostbite, bleeding ulcers, bloody diarrhea, lung damage, pneumonia, ruptured discs, viral diseases, broken bones, torn muscles and tendons, vomiting, hypothermia, sprains, fur loss, broken teeth, torn footpads and anemia.
At least 133 dogs have died in the Iditarod. There is no official count of dog deaths available for the race’s early years. In “WinterDance: the Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod,” a nonfiction book, Gary Paulsen describes witnessing an Iditarod musher brutally kicking a dog to death during the race. He wrote, “All the time he was kicking the dog. Not with the imprecision of anger, the kicks, not kicks to match his rage but aimed, clinical vicious kicks. Kicks meant to hurt deeply, to cause serious injury. Kicks meant to kill.”
Causes of death have also included strangulation in towlines, internal hemorrhaging after being gouged by a sled, liver injury, heart failure, and pneumonia. “Sudden death” and “external myopathy,” a fatal condition in which a dog’s muscles and organs deteriorate during extreme or prolonged exercise, have also occurred. The 1976 Iditarod winner, Jerry Riley, was accused of striking his dog with a snow hook (a large, sharp and heavy metal claw). In 1996, one of Rick Swenson’s dogs died while he mushed his team through waist-deep water and ice. The Iditarod Trail Committee banned both mushers from the race but later reinstated them. In many states these incidents would be considered animal cruelty. Swenson is now on the Iditarod Board of Directors.
In the 2001 Iditarod, a sick dog was sent to a prison to be cared for by inmates and received no veterinary care. He was chained up in the cold and died. Another dog died by suffocating on his own vomit.
No one knows how many dogs die in training or after the race each year.
On average, 53 percent of the dogs who start the race do not make it across the finish line. According to a report published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, of those who do cross, 81 percent have lung damage. A report published in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine said that 61 percent of the dogs who finish the Iditarod have ulcers versus zero percent pre-race.
Tom Classen, retired Air Force colonel and Alaskan resident for over 40 years, tells us that the dogs are beaten into submission:
“They’ve had the hell beaten out of them.” “You don’t just whisper into their ears, ‘OK, stand there until I tell you to run like the devil.’ They understand one thing: a beating. These dogs are beaten into submission the same way elephants are trained for a circus. The mushers will deny it. And you know what? They are all lying.” -USA Today, March 3, 2000 in Jon Saraceno’s column
Beatings and whippings are common. Jim Welch says in his book Speed Mushing Manual, “I heard one highly respected [sled dog] driver once state that “‘Alaskans like the kind of dog they can beat on.’” “Nagging a dog team is cruel and ineffective…A training device such as a whip is not cruel at all but is effective.” “It is a common training device in use among dog mushers…A whip is a very humane training tool.”
During the 2007 Iditarod, eyewitnesses reported that musher Ramy Brooks kicked, punched and beat his dogs with a ski pole and a chain. Brooks admitted to hitting his dogs with a wooden trail marker when they refused to run. The Iditarod Trail Committee suspended Brooks for two years, but only for the actions he admitted. By ignoring eyewitness accounts, the Iditarod encouraged animal abuse. When mushers know that eyewitness accounts will be disregarded, they are more likely to hurt their dogs and lie about it later.
Mushers believe in “culling” or killing unwanted dogs, including puppies. Many dogs who are permanently disabled in the Iditarod, or who are unwanted for any reason, are killed with a shot to the head, dragged or clubbed to death. “On-going cruelty is the law of many dog lots. Dogs are clubbed with baseball bats and if they don’t pull are dragged to death in harnesses…..” wrote Alaskan Mike Cranford in an article for Alaska’s Bush Blade Newspaper (March, 2000).
Jon Saraceno wrote in his March 3, 2000 column in USA Today, “He [Colonel Tom Classen] confirmed dog beatings and far worse. Like starving dogs to maintain their most advantageous racing weight. Skinning them to make mittens. Or dragging them to their death.”
The Iditarod, with its history of abuse, could not be legally held in many states, because doing so would violate animal cruelty laws.
Iditarod administrators promote the race as a commemoration of sled dogs saving the children of Nome by bringing diphtheria serum from Anchorage in 1925. However, the co-founder of the Iditarod, Dorothy Page, said the race was not established to honor the sled drivers and dogs who carried the serum. In fact, 600 miles of this serum delivery was done by train and the other half was done by dogs running in relays, with no dog running over 100 miles. This isn’t anything like the Iditarod.
The race has led to the proliferation of horrific dog kennels in which the dogs are treated very cruelly. Many kennels have over 100 dogs and some have as many as 200. It is standard for the dogs to spend their entire lives outside tethered to metal chains that can be as short as four feet long. In 1997 the United States Department of Agriculture determined that the tethering of dogs was inhumane and not in the animals’ best interests. The chaining of dogs as a primary means of enclosure is prohibited in all cases where federal law applies. A dog who is permanently tethered is forced to urinate and defecate where he sleeps, which conflicts with his natural instinct to eliminate away from his living area.
Iditarod dogs are prisoners of abuse.
You know you’ve made it when PETA gets on your ass.
Hahaha nice call Alex
Sounds like a great trip Amit, I love reading these stories.