Alcademics

It turns out that Wayne Curtis has a lot of connections in the iceberg business.

Wayne and I are co-leading a talk about Exotic Ice at the Manhattan Cocktail Classic on Monday, May 14th and we thought it would be cool to get some iceberg ice for it.

Because the rate of precipitation in the Arctic is actually pretty low, it's not that hard to get some ice that is 10,000 or so years old. The air trapped between the thin layers of snow compresses as layers add on top of it, so when you pour a drink over iceberg ice it can crackle and pop like Rice Krispies and you can breathe in 10,000 year-old air.

So anyway, Wayne put himself in charge of getting someone to mail us a glacier.

Along the way, he spoke with folks in Alaska, other people in Greenland, and the Newfoundland Tourism Board. Like I said, Wayne Curtis knows a lot of people in the iceberg business.

The "easiest" plan was to get a chunk of iceberg and have someone put it in a cooler in their luggage when they flew to New York. But alas the timing didn't work out. So now he had a fisherman (fisherperson?) snag part of an iceberg to mail via FedEx to New York.

But first it had to get special approval from NAFTA and the FDA, and then it has to get through US Customs. Then it makes its way to New York and hopefully it won't be fully melted by the time it gets there.

And if it doesn't make here as a solid block, we might still have time to resort to our backup ice.

Yes, we have backup ice. Because Wayne Curtis also knows people in the pond ice business.

More information about the seminar is here and on Alcademics here.