Contests

So in my free time in Detroit I have resorted to entering some contests on the internet. One that I found in the Budget Travel Magazine is called "True Stories," and it is a contest asking travelers to write down some of the crazy things witnessed when out and about in the world. The March winner was a hilarious story, which I will cut and paste right now:

"At Expo 2005 in Japan, robots were featured everywhere. The best ones were the multilingual information-bots that were programmed to answer questions about the event. These female robots looked, acted, and talked like real people. "You're very beautiful," I said to one. "Will you marry me?" Expecting her to tell me that she was programmed to only give advice about Expo, I couldn't believe her actual response: "Underneath these clothes I have a beautiful body," she said. "But I cannot take them off here."

I entered the contest this month with the following story and 2 pictures:
Three friends and I were hiking in Nelson Lakes National Park on New Zealand’s South Island. During our four-day tramp on the Traverse-Sabine route, we encountered multiple sets of signposts that would first advise us “Avalanche Path—No Stopping” and then later “Avalanche Path Ends.” At the end of hiking on one particular day, we reached the hut at which we were going to sleep, and the “Avalanche Path Ends” sign was just 15 feet from the hut! Since it was now summer and the snows had largely melted, Mike, Kevin, Andrea and I comfortably joked and laughed at the proximity of the sign. We asked ourselves why one would be placed 15 feet from a hut where people sleep, and perhaps more curiously, why a hut would be built 15 feet from an avalanche zone? Over dinner we agreed that the avalanche experts must certainly use a very conservative calculation when deciding where to place the signs and build the huts. Without much further thought, we all slept soundly after a long day of hiking.

The following morning as we continued, we reached the next “Avalanche Path—No Stopping” sign and realized our questions from the night before were not wholly absurd. To our amazement, this sign was bowled over by a slew of rocks and uprooted trees that had slid down the mountain that spring in—yes—a large avalanche.