Gulf Of Alaska Quotes

Mothers are great heroes! When it comes to making babies, we men chip in a sperm while our wives essentially pull a dog sled from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico.

After the epic Exxon Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska in 1989, the company set out to catch and investigate every screw-up, however small. It walked away from a large drilling project in the Gulf of Mexico because, unlike BP, it decided drilling there was too risky. Safety is now such a part of the corporate DNA that every buffet laid out for company events comes with signs warning not to consume the food after two hours. In its cafeterias, the kitchen staff monitor the temperature of their salad dressings. Every time an error occurs at an ExxonMobil facility, the first instinct of the company is to learn from it rather than punish those involved. Employees talk about the “gift” of the near miss. Glenn Murray, a staffer for nearly three decades, was part of the Valdez cleanup. Today, as head of safety at the company, he believes no blunder is too small to ignore. “Every near miss,” he says, “has something to teach us, if we just take the time to investigate it.” Like the RAF and Toyota, ExxonMobil encourages even the most junior employee to speak up when something goes wrong.

If you are booking an outside stateroom on a northbound Gulf of Alaska cruise, ask to be placed on the starboard side of the ship so you will have views of the coastline from your cabin. If yours is a southbound cruise, ask to be on the port side. The same applies to flights to or from Anchorage – the starboard seats provide the best views when flying north; the port seats are best for southbound flights.