AN UPDATE ON THE PAST TWO WEEKS

Whew. So my camping trip is over. But not my time in Alaska. I’m still here. Sitting in the Anchorage airport. Stuck here for all eternity...well, at least that’s what it feels like.

Travel Troubles
I was supposed to fly out at 12:45am this morning, but United had booked the plane 36 people over so there was really no reason for my to stand around and fly stand-by. Luckily Brad’s mom and sisters were on vacation in Anchorage and had booked a fancy hotel for the night. I embarassingly returned from the airport at 1am and drove with Brad to interupt their family vacation. I was thankful that I didn’t have to sleep in the airport for the night, instead sharing a very comfy queen size bed with Brad’s sister. I was also very thankful for a shower! Anyways, it’s now Saturday afternoon, I was supposed to have been in Portland by now greeting my family and preparing to depart on our family vacation to Central Oregon tomorrow morning. But that’s not going to happen. Instead I’m waiting for the next flight (there’s only one a day) and praying that I’ll be able to get on. At the moment (still hours before boarding) the flight is overbooked by 10 people. It looks doubtful that I’ll be able to get on. But I have to somehow! It seems impossible to leave Alaska. If I was to buy a flight home right now it is over $550. I called the bus companies and I would have to take a $156 bus to Canada, which leaves tomorrow morning at 5am and arrives in White Horse at 11pm Sunday night. Then the next Greyhound bus south to the states in at 1:30pm TUESDAY. So that won’t work at all. Option D: train. Still to work this out. I have a feeling that it’s going to be as crazy as the bus. And probably very expensive. The biggest problem is just that everything in Alaska seems to be independent so you can’t just take a greyhound bus straight somewhere, or an Amtrak train. You have to take the private Alaska service and then somehow switch over. Uggg. We’ll see how this goes. I just really really really really need to make it on this next plane in a few hours. If not then I’ll have to wait another 24 hours to try to make the next one (which is also overbooked!). Stand-by is no good. Also, once I get to Seattle I have to track down my luggage somehow (which was sent there on the plane last night) and find a way to the greyhound station then take a 9 hour or so ride to Sisters, Oregon to meet up with my family. Actually, I really shouldn’t complain. I don’t mind all this travel business all that much. It’s kinda like an adventure. But the part that I hate is spending so much money and wasting time in the airport when I’m supposed to be seeing my family and taking off on a relaxing vacation.

Cinnabon
Ok, the Cinnabon place is about 100 feet in front of me. So hard to resist. So hard to resist......... I can’t do this much longer.

The Last 7 Days
So what have I been up to? you may ask. Well, it’s been about a 1800+ mile road trip. And that’s right: I don’t drive. Good thing Brad loves to. Recap: Fairbanks to Circle Hot Springs to Eagle Summet (camping) to Circle Hot Springs to Fairbanks to Angel Rocks (camping) to Fairbanks. Then after a tour on the Riverboat Discovery and spending some time at one of Brad’s friend’s houses we picked up Blassi in North Pole and took off for Anchorage. It was a nice little 6 hour drive despite the constant rain. REI, new zipper pants converted to shorts (I’ve been wanting these for years!) and three new pairs of socks. cheap! Met up with Ty and his wife Heather. They are so nice. It was a short but very enjoyable visit. :o) On the advice of the REI girl we took the Seward Highway an hour along the Turnagain Arm to Portage Glacier to camp. What a beautiful drive, so much like the Columbia River Gorge! Mountains on both sides of the water. Snowy peaks, glacial formations, rivers, some waterfalls, with Turnagain Arm (ocean) separating the two sides.

Portage Glacier: Midnight entry, as always. rain rain rain. fog. 76 situps, the new record. waking up to puddles in the tent. And a glacier over the shoulder. Hiked up to Byron Glacier and all around on the ice and rocks. Storms coming in. Patterns of clouds. impressive. I hope the pictures turn out.

Kenai Salmon galore. I wish I had a rod and reel. And an out of state fishing liscense. Camping another night. In an already-soacked tent. The floor was drenched. Move an inch off of the sleeping pad and you’re in for trouble. So much for a good rain fly. ;o) Smoke and Fire. Gin and hearts. Sleeping in. Passed Poppy Penguins Upholstery Place, Salvation Army with the purchase of a Kenai penninsula Harley shirt and nice Levi’s cords pants. Expensive dipnets.

Dipnetting at the Mouth of the Kenai
Twenty foot poles, and huge huge huge nets. Shovel handals, sleds, coolers, buckets full of fish. And the smell of rotting salmon and halibut. Fish heads as you step onto the beach at the high water line. This is the life. Hundreds of people in the river. To their armpits with the strong current ready to topple them over and slick mud beneath their feet. Remember those salmon games from middle school? With the jump rope “turbine” and the playing tag to symbolize anglers. It’s true. Those salmon do have it hard. All the rivers were lined everywhere I looked with anglers, dipnetters, boaters. All waiting for the perfect catch. I wanted to join in the fun.
Postcard Pictureman
I met the postcard gentleman. At the Girdwood Gas Station, restocking the postcards-just for me, he said. I make 11,000 at a time. Gotta keep em restocked in the summer. Taken almost every picture, every postcard on the rack. Which were excellent, the perfect postcards I thought. So I tell him that Fairbanks is lacking, and he agrees. I tell him of the need for a postcard picture of downtown with the mountains and a sunset, or the moon he comments. I tell him take it from Esther Dome, but he says he has the perfect spot on Famers Loop Road all ready. OH yes, he has it all planned out. He just needs good weather. Can I bring it? No, I said, but I can sure bring the rain, I’m from Portland. OH!~ I used to do Oregon postcards too. The Oregon Coast. You know Tolovanna? Oh yes, I say, I’ve been there. Yah? I grew up there. Cannon Beach. Tolovanna Inn, I say. Oh yes, but you know, that used to be a swamp. I used to catch frogs and tadpoles there. Back in the day. You know what?-also the governor wanted to cut down on costs, didn’t want to build roads, so you know what he did?-said that the beach was a road, the highway, so people used to drive on the beach. That’s what we did when I was younger. Oh yes, I say, I’ve seen that. And driving around Hug Point at low tide, there are pictures of that, in black and white. I’ve seen them. Know what? Think about the streets in Cannon Beach: Galeena, Sitka, Talkeetna, they’re all Alaskan towns! You know, the person who named the streets in Cannon Beach must have loved Alaska. Awesome. Me too. Nice to meet you. Good luck taking the perfect picture of Fairbanks, I’ll be looking for it. Nice to meet you too, small world we live in eh?

Friday
So it’s been two weeks since I’ve been online. It feels like a long time. And there is much to blog about. First, let’s start with my trip home. I finally made a plane to Seattle after almost 24 hours in the airport. Luckily at the last second they had a few extra seats...and I ended up sitting in first class! It was excellent. But I didn’t enjoy the nice luxury much because I slept most of the way (it was a 12:45am-5:00am flight). I did squeeze in a tiny conversation with the gentleman sitting next to me. And as we were docking in Seattle we chatted a bit more. He was a really nice guy. Graduated from Wheaton in the late 60’s, has two daughters, goes to a Presbyterian Church in Portland, owns three companies (one of them is a software computer thing) and lives in the rich Portland suburb of Lake Oswego. Also, he was planning on going down to Black Butte Ranch on Tuesday. (That’s where I am right now and am vacationing for a week). As it turned out he was also heading back home, but his connecting flight to Portland wasn’t leaving for four more hours. He wanted to rent a car and drive the rest of the way. So, he asked me to join him and I did. We talked the whole 3 hour drive down as we cruised the rest of the way home. He even drove me right up to the door of my house! I was so fortunate. It was nice not to have to take the greyhound for once.

Friends at 37,000’
I always seem to luck out on airplanes. I have met so many amazing people! These are the highlighted people that I’ve met just during plane rides in college: Who have given me inside information on places to go in Chicago, who work in DC and are the head of all the gaming casinos on reservations for Native American tribes, who make film documentaries, who are schoolteachers in the Bahamas who are living in Florida, a guy who lives in SE Portland but was vacationing on the same rural island as I was doing my Bahamian field course and we were both sitting in folding chairs on the runway waiting for our plane, nice New Yorkers, a guy who works a lot in Chicago but has his family near New York City. And the last three plane rides that I’ve been on I have met the best people. When I went to visit Michael in New York City for one weekend during spring quarter on my return flight to Chicago I met a nice guy who had just graduated from Columbia in computer science. He turned out to be interviewing for a new position as a professor at the University of Chicago’s computer science program. So he not only paid for my taxi ride back to campus (shared with him) but also took me out to a nice dinner at Medici! Then this past trip home from Chicago I had gotten to the airport early and was sitting around waiting for my flight and got into a two hour long conversation with a 40-or-so year old Pakistani-American who had just moved to the United States a few years back. We had an excellent conversation about religion, politics, travel experiences, family, and the media. And now this new friend, Peter.

FIRE & Evacuation
So how was my trip home? Good traveling to Portland. Then I had two hours at my house as my family packed up for our week long annual trip to Black Butte Ranch in Central Oregon. We were rolling along and I slept most of the way down during the two plus hour drive. I woke up just as we were really in Central Oregon. A few more miles roll by and we start to notice lots and lots of smoke to our right just off the road. It’s a forest fire! We continue our drive to the ranch and the air is filled with smoke. It’s a little hard to breathe. Airplane are whizzing by over our heads low to the ground and helicoptors are flying all about. Picking up water from the lake right in front of the Lodge. Right where we usually go canoeing. This is not supposed to be happening. It’s like it’s a movie or something. The sun looks orange and so strange looking up through the smoke. Like nothing I had ever seen before. The fire was then (we were told) a half mile away from the southwest end of the ranch. Too close for comfort, our eyes were glued to the emergency broadcasting and to the sky as more and more ash began to fall. Preparing to evacuate. Scrambling to throw stuff in the care. Following the procedures. Tying something white to the outside of the house to tell the rescue workers that we’re ok. Is this a dream? Or a video game or something? By the time we pulled out of the driveway there were pineneedles falling through the air. Completely blackened. The fire was close. Tears and disbelief. We exited the ranch, directed by emergency crews. Onto the deserted highway, which had been completely stopped of traffic. Through two baracades, past news trucks, into the town of Sisters, where most all of the shops were closed.

Away from the Forest Fire
Sunday night we were evacuated. And we couldn’t return to the Ranch until Wednesday 3pm. It wasn’t until we were listening to the news did we realize the extent of this fire. It was national news. Covered by CNN and featured on Good Morning America Monday morming! Thankfully only two houses on the Ranch burned completely on Fiddleneck. And the firefighters saved the rest of the houses and property. It’s one of the worst fire summers ever in Oregon. This week alone there are fifteen fires, and so far this summer 400,000 acres have burned (as of Tuesday). It’s one of the worst fire seasons on record, and there’s sure to be more.

Back to Black Butte Ranch
It’s nice to be back, though it seems like my vacation has been drastically shortened. Although the house that we stayed in for two nights along the Deschutes river near LaPine was very luxurious (a friend of Jim’s loaned it to us evacuees) and I even got to go kayaking in the river and tried my luck at fly fishing. One of the best things about this nice week at home has been hanging out with two little girls. Two year old Gracie and four year old Lauren. They are so much fun to play with and I am around them all day long, playing games, telling stories, giggling. I love little kids!

No More High Latitude
So to see my first sunset where it actually continued to be dark was so strange. It’s not like it should have surprised me, but for some reason it did. And still does. I just keep forgetting that I have to plan ahead to go out and ride my bike around, or go on a walk far from the house. And I completely forgot to pack my headlamp which I used all the time last year, or even a flashlight. But one thing I get to see that I’ve missed much...the stars. And meteors.

Black Butte Ranch
So I should probably explain a little bit about this place that I’m staying at for you all. It’s a resort community. Gated. In the high desert of Central Oregon. Only a few miles from the cute town of Sisters. It’s a gorgeous place, and a great place to relax. It’s a gated community with it’s own private fire, police, tiny store, and stables. It is complete with two 18-hole high class golf courses and two driving ranges (which is what it’s really known for-golf), somewhere around 40-50 tennis courts, and four swimming pools (each with a deep water pool, wading pool, and full size pool for lap swimming): Paulina Springs, South Meadow, and then the two that I frequent: Glaze Meadow and The Lodge, which also have hot tubs and saunas. The main mode of transportation around the ranch is on bikes, and the whole community is intertwined and connected with lots and lots of bike paths leading to any destination you’d want to go to. I pretty much know the place like the back of my hand now and know all the short cuts. It’s pretty fun. Especially riding around in the dark. I’m not sure how many homes are on the ranch but I would guess somewhere between 400-700 houses, many of them mansions, and many of them second homes/vacation homes that people rent out, though it also has a small retirement community. Sometimes we see famous people, but I really don’t care about that. Rick Adelman (former Blazers coach...now he coaches some other pro basketball team?) owns a house here. My parents have been frequenting Black Butte Ranch for over 25 years, and we go with the same family every year. Eleven years ago our family friend’s built a house on the ranch and so now that’s where we stay instead of renting. So they’re like a second family to me, and it’s neat to see them for at least a week each year, every year since birth. I love going to Black Butte because I know that I’ll have a fun week in the sun, with awesome and amusing people, lots of bike riding, and lots of hiking around Central Oregon in the Three Sisters Wilderness.

Central Oregon Hiking
Each year we spend at least one day off of the ranch hiking around. Usually I beg for us to go to Tenas Lakes, which are three glacial crystal clear lakes high up in the mountains. I think it’s about a six mile hike round trip. Pretty moderate. It’s a gorgeous hike through the forest, and the end is the best. To lakes that are awesome to go swimming in. And one of them even has high rocks on one side that you can use to jump into the water with. I love going back there. The drive there is also pretty beautiful. Through the Three Sisters Widlerness, past Little Belnap Crater, past a Lava Rock Castle, and huge mile long flows of lava. This year since we had to be evacuated from the Ranch we ended up going hiking closer to the city of LaPine (a small town just out of Bend), and we went to the Newberry Crator. It’s a huge caldera just like the caldera (from Mt. Mazama) that Crater Lake is contained in. But instead of just one lake in the Newberry Crater there is two, one of them being East Lake. In between the two lakes there is a bunch of igneous rock. The theory is that a long time ago there was only one lake in the crater but sediments build up and created a dam (that now has an 80 foot waterfall) that creates the two lakes. We (Jim and Kathy, my mom and dad and myself) ended up going on two hikes. First we drove up to the top of one of the peaks (6,000+ feet) and parked at the top and looked around. It was a GORGEOUS view! It was a sunny nice day with barely any clouds, but a little hazy because of all the smoke in the air. I guess on a clear day from that spot you are able to see Washington, California, Idaho and Nevada all at once! I’d love to go back sometime and take that sight all in. Also, random tidbit of information: this peak also hold Oregon’s highest outhouse. lol. (When I told people that I went there three people told me that fact!)

Tuesday, 5 August 2002
Home
Back again. Finally! It feels so great to be home. Back in the city I love. Back to my room, my stuff, lifelong friends.

Signs
I reluctantly went to Signs with my parents tonight. I’m not really a fan of scary movie, or fantasy or science fiction. And mixing them together makes it even worse. But my mom whined and nagged until I came along. It was actually way better than I expected...sorta like Reign of Fire was. It was nice to see one time, but it’s not the kind of movie I’d really want to watch multiple times. I think that I enjoyed it mostly because of the element of religion in the movie. It sounds dumb but the basic plot is about this pastor whose wife died 6 months before as she was hit by a car. The pastor then looses his faith and steps down from his pastoring. Through the course of the movie, as aliens invade earth and his farm, he grows closer to his family and finally regains his faith when he realizes that even through death and “negative” aspects of life, such as his son’s asthma, a his daughter’s strange habits, everything has a purpose for happening and fits together. There really is someone watching out for them.
Question to ponder from the movie:
What if there really is no such thing as coincidence?

Today I ...
*couldn’t find the $150 check I know is somewhere in my room
*ate all my meals on our front steps, as tradition in the summer
*thoroughly cleaned our huge claw-foot bathtub in anticipation for a nice soak in the tub in the near future
*heard my mom scream at the top of her lungs as she came inside with bees chasing her and was being bitten, there are now definite plans to kill all the bees nesting near our back porch
*wrote three letters addressed to Alaska
*really really missed Paul
*got a phone call from Henry!!
*finally got past the half way point in Anna Karenina
*realized that there is way too much to do in just the short month that I have at home
*was sad that the library isn’t open on Mondays. I have to check my email soon!!!-I haven’t in two weeks now
*placed the first sticker on my new Nalgene
*took the tag off my new pair of Carharts, and also discovered a well-used, very holy pair of my dad’s Carharts Overalls in the work closet in our basement
*happily retrieved the mail from our mailbox with glee. And received a letter from Jen in the Kingdom of Tonga, and a postcard from Ellen in Wyoming
*discovered and readmy Upward Bound Math/Science University of Alaska-Fairbanks journal which I wrote in thoroughly every single day when I attended the program five years ago. I noticed many similarities between what I wrote about way back then and things that happened this summer
*used glitter glue in excess

John Mayer Blues
Sad: So the John Mayer concert is this weekend in downtown Portland at the Schnitzer Auditorium and I really really really want to go!!! I actually knew about it months and months ago, and got a chance to buy tickets with awesome seats before they went on sale to the general public, but didn’t buy any because I didn’t have anyone to go with and because I thought they were too expensive (I think it was somewhere around $35, I forget). I was listening to John Mayer last night and blasting his Room for Squares CD throughout the house when my mom walks up to me and was like, oh I know him, John Mayer, I love his music, doesn’t he have a concert really soon? And then she mentioned that if I had asked her she would have bought a ticket and went to the concert with me. Ahhhh. Now it’s too late. Since she’s holding this big wedding reception at our house on Saturday (and I think? the concert is Friday night?) she said she can’t go now at the last minute. OH sad. But you know what, this is the dumbest thing ever to complain over. I am so fortunate for everything I have and for my family and all the experiences that I get to have, this isn’t even worth mentioning or getting frusterated about. But for some reason I just had to mention it. I love his music so much (thanks again Michael!). Maybe subconsciously in case I get a chance to post all of this before the concert and anyone wants to buy me a ticket? Hint hint, wink, wink. ;o)