Woman ‘jet hikes’ across country riding in private planes

Amanda Nolan is trying to reach all 50 U.S. states catching rides on private planes (Facebook)

Amber Nolan ’s story might not sound all that original at first. She’s attempting to hitchhike around the country. But this is what sets her journey apart: Nolan is traveling to all 50 states “jethiking” by private plane .

Nolan, a travel writer, started her journey in July 2012 and only has eight states to go before completing the unusual voyage. She’sbeen chronicling her journey on the Jet Hiking blog, and on her Facebook page, where she logs each of her stops along the way.

“As a travel writer, I've been all over the world but I hadn't seen much in my own backyard,” Nolan said in a recent interview with the Daily Mail. “I wanted to experience the United States in a unique way and started brainstorming ideas.”

She’ll have officially knocked out all 50 states once she’s able to hitch a ride to Alaska, Hawaii, Utah, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. Most of the states on that list are clustered next to each other, so it’s entirely possible Nolan could wrap up her quest before too long.

Still, the trip has been far from easy.

“I spend hours and hours contacting people,” Nolan said. “I'll go to the airports and tell people what I am doing and wait around - and sometimes it is days before I find someone heading the direction I am.”

She’s even run out of money along the way, taking temporary jobs in some of the 250 towns she has visited along the way until she has the funds, and a ride, to head out on her next leg of the trip.

Interestingly, Nolan is not a pilot herself but said she would like to get her pilot’s license once her journey is complete. And she hopes to inspire other travelers around the world to consider her experience as a viable alternative to typical hitchhiking and couch surfing ventures.

"I think an organised ride-share system between pilots and travelers to cut costs on both ends could make this a reasonable option for travelers with a limited amount of time,” she said. “I definitely recommend visiting a local airport or flying club and seeing what the general aviation side is all about."

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Man swims across Detroit River, prompts rescue

DETROIT (AP) — A man who wanted to prove he could swim across the Detroit River from Canada to the U.S. after a night of drinking ended up prompting an international rescue operation.

John Morillo told The Windsor Star that Monday night's swim from Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit, was "really stupid" and said in retrospect he shouldn't have done it. He was cited for being intoxicated in a public place and released from jail Tuesday.

"I was drinking, but I wasn't really drunk," Morillo, 47, of Windsor, said Tuesday. "The thing is, I've been telling people I'm going to swim across the river for years and they're like 'yah, yah, blah, blah, you can't make it.' So, I don't know, last night I just decided it was the time to go."

Morillo said he regrets causing problems for authorities, including Windsor police and Coast Guard crews from the U.S. and Canada. Three boats and a helicopter responded, The Detroit News reported, and authorities warn the river's current makes a dangerous place to swim.

"As soon I saw the helicopters going by and the boats looking for me, I was like 'oh, this is really stupid,'" Morillo told The Windsor Star.

Police in Windsor initially responded around 11:30 p.m., when a neighbor of Morillo called to say she had lost sight of him about a half-hour earlier.

Morillo made it across to Detroit, getting out of the water near downtown's Renaissance Center, and was swimming back when he was found about 12:50 a.m. Tuesday by the U.S. Coast Guard. During his stop on the Detroit side of the river he said people wanted to take his picture.

"There was one woman, she said she was from Windsor and she thought I was crazy," he said. She was right."

Morillo said he was told that he'll also likely be fined for swimming in a shipping channel, which could be $5,000 to $25,000.

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Japanese fish survive 5,000-mile trip across Pacific in tsunami boat

By Elaine Porterfield

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Scientists are baffled as to how a group of small fish native to Japan survived a journey across the Pacific after they were found on a boat swept away by the 2011 tsunami and washed up last month on the coast of Washington state.

The batch of striped beak fish - five in all - were discovered submerged in the hold of the 20-foot-long fishing skiff, dubbed the Sai-shou-maru, on Long Beach in southwestern Washington.

The vessel, found beached right-side-up, was confirmed this week to have originated from the region of northern Japan devastated in the immense tidal surge generated by the March 2011 Fukushima earthquake.

Other boats carried away by the tsunami have previously washed up along the U.S. Pacific Northwest and Alaska, as have chunks of piers and large quantities of other debris. But the fish found aboard the Sai-shou-maru are the first vertebrates - animals with backbones - known to have made the voyage.

Marine biologists studying the phenomenon are puzzled over precisely how striped beak fish, natural denizens of warmer, shallow southern Japanese waters, ended up as live stowaways in the well of the boat, and how they endured a two-year journey across the ocean.

"It is quite remarkable," Curt Hart, a spokesman for the Washington state Department of Ecology, told Reuters. "Everyone is very amazed that these fish survived for two years in that hold."

The fish were apparently swept up with the skiff as it was washed down the coast of Japan and out into the Pacific.

Scientists surmise that the fish made their home beneath the boat for much of the trip as it drifted upside down and partially submerged, feeding on other organisms that became encrusted or otherwise attached to the inverted vessel. Then they might have been scooped up into the skiff's hold when wind or waves righted the vessel, Hart said.

NOURISHMENT MYSTERY

The middle of the Pacific is far less rich in nutrients than coastal waters, raising questions of how the fish found enough food to survive the trip, said Jeff Adams, an expert at Washington Sea Grant, an agency supporting marine research.

The 6-inch-long striped beak fish, named for their protruding mouths and black-and-white striped markings, were the most surprising of an estimated 30 to 50 species of marine organisms that hitchhiked across the Pacific with the skiff.

Other stowaways included various types of algae, anemones, crabs, marine worms and shellfish.

Many were believed to be non-native species, and all were treated as potentially invasive - capable of displacing native organisms and disrupting the natural ecological balance if allowed to escape into the environment and propagate.

As a precaution, state officials swiftly removed the Sai-shou-maru from the shoreline before samples of organisms were collected for study, and the boat was scraped and steam-cleaned, Hart said.

Four of the fish found alive in the boat on March 22 have since died, and the lone surviving specimen has been moved to an aquarium in Seaside, Oregon.

The Sai-shou-maru is not the only Noah's ark of potential invasive species carried to the U.S. West Coast by the tsunami. Several more Japanese boats have washed ashore since last year in Washington, Oregon and California, and a fishing vessel found drifting off Alaska was scuttled by the Coast Guard.

Dozens of non-native and potentially invasive species - more than hitched a ride aboard the Sai-shou-maru - were previously found attached to two large hunks of piers that washed up, one in Oregon and one in Washington, Hart said.

(Editing by Steve Gorman, Cynthia Johnston and Patrick Graham)

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