Alaska - Day 16 - "8 for 8"

7/18/14

Anchorage, Alaska

“One Day More!  Another day, another destination” on this never ending road to Complete.  Tomorrow, we will be in Seattle.  This is our last day in Alaska, and the day that will make or break the trip.  The weather is looking nice, and I can see the mountains in the distance that we must cross to get to the last two National Parks.  After I closed last night from Wien Memorial, we boarded our plane that would take us to Anchorage, stopping in Nome, which I kept in insisting on pronouncing in a long, drawn out fashion.  One of the flight attendants was a definite “Oh, yeah” and had the Northern look.  It was a bizarre conundrum, though.  From a 90-degree profile, she was gorgeous.  From a 45-degree angle, she was good-looking.   From 0 degrees, she was just okay-looking.

Sokol slept while I read NFPA 25.  I then messed with my photos and got my blog ready to publish.  When we landed in “Nooooommmmme,” I was starving, and we had a 45-minute layover, so I asked if I could buy one of the snack boxes.  I wound up buying two boxes, giving Sokol most of the carbs.  She joked that she was going to charge me double for coming back during the layover, and I said that was okay.  It would still be cheaper than the prices in Kotzebue.  After my unofficial meal in Nome, I took an official U so that I could say I unofficially visited Nome.  I did not take an unofficial picture, though.  Once we were up in the air, we soon had Wi-Fi, so I was able to upload my Travelogue.  Once we landed, Sokol said that I was acting toasted, and he believed I had something to drink on the plane.  The truth was that I was just so giddy about our last day.  The second to last day of a big trip (I am considering Phase 3 a separate trip, really) is always a special one.  You are in full wind-down mode, and you can finally start to relax.  We stopped at the previous hotel to get our stuff before having the cab take us on the Hilton.  We were laughing and joking the whole evening, something that had been missing to a large degree for the trip.

When we got to the rooms, we had a room facing northwest, which was the exact direction that the sun was setting at 11 PM.  Sokol said that he needed to get rid of his hat, as it was a gift from his ex, so I told him to throw it out the window.  He did.  It landed on the sidewalk in front of someone who looked up.  My head was out the window, so I waved to the guy, who nervously waved back.  Someone from the hotel was helping him with his luggage, and they looked up and pointed at me.  I told Sokol that we couldn’t start smoking, as we would probably be getting a knock on the door in about 5-10 minutes, so I washed my filthy socks in the meantime.  With no knock after about 30 minutes, we lit up the same pipes we had in Copper Center, me opting for the Ser Jacopo this time.  My reservation said that I had requested a smoking room, and they didn’t tell us it was non-smoking, nor were there any signs.  However, there was no ashtray in the room, and there was a smoke detector.  We took all of the usual precautions.   As we sat down, it was such a beautiful vista, that I said, and it was true, “I could live here.”  Never before I have truly said and meant that in any place other than New York.  I don’t know how the winters are, but they’re probably not too brutal, being on the coast.  The only problem would be the short days.  I doubt you can find Chinese at 2 AM in Anchorage.

As we were falling asleep, we joked about all of the crazy adventures of the past two weeks, especially about the angry phone I would get from Go North when they realized that the car had truly been to Hell and Back.  It smelled like smoke, was dirty inside and outside, had low gas, a dead battery, and a blown gear shift module.  I woke up early so that I would have time for breakfast, a smoke, a shower, and this entry.  I was delighted to see the mountains off in the distance, which meant that we would have good visibility.  Breakfast was a buffet, and they called the buffet “The Complete.”  It was a very good sign.  I started off with salmon and fruit, followed by reindeer sausage, eggs, bacons, and a small biscuit with reindeer gravy, along with coffee.  Sokol had a lot of sugar.  After breakfast, we back up to the room, I lit up a Fuente, proceeded to write this entry, and played “One Day More.”

Aboard N52004, En route Brooks Camp to Anchorage – Lake Hood Seaplane Base (PALH)

It is a dateline that speaks for itself, and it means one thing: 8 for 8.  It means we did it.  It means the trip was a success.  It means that I will soon forget everything bad or negative that happened in the past 16 Days.  It means that when I fully reflect on it, this trip will have a chance to vie for a spot in the top five.  I don’t see it displacing Eurotrip as number one, but it will be up there, and it’s not even done.  We still have our final night in Anchorage, along with our weekend in Seattle and Oregon.  I will be happy to get back to New York, to see the people I know, to eat Chinese food made by actual Chinese people, to get new cigars, to wear clean socks, but tonight is about Alaska.  We will be at Ted Stevens in 12 hours, where I will be writing a very triumphant airport entry.  It will be good to fly first class to SeaTac, to go to the convention, to see my brother and his fiancé at their new place, to check off a few boxes in Oregon, but today is about Alaska.

8 for 8 was the very definition of success for the Alaska portion of this trip, and we did it.  8 pins, 8 t-shirts, 8 stamped brochures, 8 Cubans.  There were no irregularities, no exceptions that had to be made, no reasons to have to come back.  I will come back to Alaska.  That is for sure, but not before I’m 30.  In fact, once we cross the 60^th Parallel in about an hour, I will not go north of it west of Greenland until I’m 30.  It feels good to say that, really good.  It was not Alaska Complete, and that was never the goal.  Next time it will be the goal.  This trip had a very specific goal.  8 for 8, and that was what we did.  We also got in the stuff in Canada, midnight sun at Point Barrow (such as it was), the Dalton (such as it was), an NM, and a NPres.

This is a day that I will remember the rest of my life.  In contrast to our first day in Kotzebue, which had shitty weather and an apathetic (but highly talented) pilot, I enjoyed myself today.  Day 14 was all about fulfillment value.  Today had plenty of enjoyment value.  I had included two “Dutch Days” in my plans for this trip.  I called them “Rest and Relax” to make it more appealing to Sokol, but I knew that we would neither rest nor relax on those days.  The first one was burned by sleeping in and then running errands around anchorage, including my time at the doctor.  Today was necessary for that last charter flight.  I knew something would go wrong, terribly wrong, at some point during the trip.  I knew that I would need an extra day to accommodate that.  That was what today was about.  Without this extra day, we would not have gone 8 for 8.  Without our crazy drive from Fairbanks to Anchorage, we would not have gone 8 for 8.  Without our highly skilled pilot on Day 14, we would not have gone 8 for 8.  Without the luck of beautiful weather today, we would not have gone 8 for 8.  A lot went wrong during this trip, but I lot could have gone a lot worse.  We went 8 for 8.  That was what mattered.  As I was writing my entry this morning, I got a text from our pilot.  He was getting an early start and would be there to pick us up in 30 minutes.  I would not have time to finish my cigar.  I didn’t care.  It meant that it was a go.  Until I got that text, I did not believe we would go 8 for 8.  I ditched the cigar with about half of it left.  It wasn’t smoking great, anyway.

We headed down, and he was waiting for us.  As soon as we got in his truck, I wrote him a check.  I brought three checks with me to Alaska.  I wound up using all three of them.  The first was to pay a speeding ticket.  That didn’t feel so good.  To write the other two, the first the most expensive thing I ever purchased in my life, felt really good.  To be able to use the wealth I have created with my capacity to think to trade with someone to help achieve one of my desires is every Objectivist’s dream.  Sokol was tagging along.  I had made a trade with him, too.  He cleaned my apartment for me in exchange for a free trip.  The amount that I paid for his transportation (and some meals) was more than worth the clean apartment.  Having that clean apartment changed my lifestyle.  It has made me want to get up early for a morning cigar while I worked from home.  It made has made me want to spend more weekends in the city so that I can do touristy things and come back to a clean apartment instead of a war zone.  We headed to Lake Hood, which is basically the backyard of Ted Stevens.  All throughout the day, people kept telling us that we picked a great day for this.  We didn’t pick today.  It picked us.  I don’t believe in luck.  Aristotle tried to explain, but I didn’t quite understand it.  Basically, it goes like this.  Luck was not the Efficient Cause of the good weather.  Some meteorological events were the Efficient Cause of the good weather.  It was lucky that they aligned, but luck did not cause anything.

The views were so scenic, and maybe southern Alaska has better mountains than northern Alaska because the mountains did not lose any of their grandeur as we overflew them.  Steve showed us some interesting sights along the way, from the duck cabins that hunters set up to the timber forests that was supposed to be the destination of the “Bridge to Nowhere.”  I was so excited.  This was actually happening.  Once we got out of range of ATC, he put on his wife’s iPod.  If I thought that I couldn’t get any happier, I was wrong.  The second song was Taylor Swift, followed by Frozen, followed by Taylor, followed by Reba, followed by ABBA.  It was as if it was my own personal playlist.  Soon enough, we landed at Twin Lake’s, the site of “Dick’s Cabin.”  Richard Proenneke spent 30 years at a cabin he built in the park, and it was all still up.  There were actually some other people around, and the groundskeeper was doing a tour.  That was the last thing I wanted to do.  Instead, I lit up my Fonseca, and we went on a little nature walk, taking our first official Us of the park on the way.

We soon came to a big opening with wonderful views.  After taking some official pictures there, we walked to the lake and back around the beach.  I asked, Sokol if he knew where our plane was in the same way that I might have asked him if he knew where we parked our car.  It was fun to say that.  We got back and then went to the cabin.  They even had a stamp there.  We walked around a little more and found Dick’s official toilet, which looked to still be fully functional.  After I finished my cigar, we got back on the plane to head to the VC in Port Alsworth.  It turns out that there are commercial flights to Port Alsworth, and I could have chartered a plane there.  I also could have taken a commercial flight to King Salmon and a taxi to the park from there.  It would have been a little cheaper to do that, but I would have had to leave Sokol in Anchorage, and it would have been less fun without our own plane.  We headed to the VC, and someone on an ATV offered us a ride, so we hopped on the back for a very fun minute.  The VC had stamps, pins, t-shirts, and a bathroom.  That was pretty much it.  Oh, they had a movie.  They asked if I wanted to watch a movie.  That was pretty much the last thing I wanted to do.  Steve found us at the VC, and we headed to the picnic tables for lunch.  He had some fresh salmon salad that he had made from fish his daughter had caught yesterday.  The only problem was that there was some mustard, just a little.  I am allergic to mustard, but I can handle it in very small, very dilute quantities, sometimes.  I really wanted the salmon, and I knew that it would be my only chance to eat anything other than Quest bars or slow, overpriced food.  This was free.  I went for it.  It was a mistake, but not a big one.  I soon felt the familiar tiredness and general sense of malaise that follows whenever I eat mustard.  Some grapes and a cracker abated most of it.  When we took off for Brooks, the excitement of going 8 for 8 abated more of it, and the nap I took on the plane abated the rest.

When we landed at Brooks, it was a pretty happening dock.  Lots of big charters were there, which includes the traditional Japanese tourists, who will spend untold amounts of money and time to show their friends back in Japan a picture of a bear.  We had a different a goal.  A stamped brochure, a pin, a t-shirt, a Cuban, and a picture with a bear.  We got all of them.  The ranger had a bit of an attitude, and he also said that we had to watch an orientation video.  There was a list of rules for “platform etiquette,” which, sure enough, included no smoking, not that would stop us.  Actually, the no smoking rule only applied to the bear viewing platforms, not the walkways or trails.  We headed towards the platforms, and I lit up my Cohiba along the way.  After I took my official U, and we took our official picture, I announced, for neither the first nor last time, “It’s official.  8 for 8.”

Steve joined us after we crossed the river, and we all took a picture together.  He was part of the team now.  When we got to the holding area, I started walking towards the main platform.  I then heard someone say that the guy with a suit and a cigar had walked through the barricade.  I definitely had to sign in and wait my turn, but they debated whether I was allowed to smoke my cigar.  In the end, they agreed that I could smoke it on the trails on walkways, but not any of the platforms, including the holding area.  They did not fully convey that to me, just saying so smoking on the platform.  I put the cigar down and signed us in.  There was another platform with only a few people, so I grabbed my cigar.  Steve went back to the plane, and Sokol came with me to the platform.

There was a great view of the bears, but we didn’t get the same up close view we would have gotten from the main platform, not that a few bears didn’t venture over.  Soon enough, a ranger told me no smoking on any platforms.  That was fine.  I put the cigar on the railing.  After it was out, I ashed it and put in my shirt pocket.  After a while, we had enough and went back to the holding area.  It was still some time for us to wait, and we gave it about ten minutes before calling it quits and heading back towards our plane.  The ranger at the VC had told us that we should leave at least an hour before we needed to get back to our plane, and I asked him what he meant.  He said something about when our flight was scheduled to leave, and I responded in a very pompous manner that we had our own plane.  It would wait for us.  This was the great thing about today compared to Kotzebue.  Steve is far more relaxed and chill than Jim was, and he really does this as a hobby.  We negotiated a price, a very fair price, and it included all the ground time I wanted.  If I wanted to spend an hour at Brooks or 3 hours that was fine with him.  The only time crunch was our 7:30 PM dinner reservation.  He picked us up at our hotel at 8:30 AM, and when I told him about the reservation, he been thinking we’d want enough ground time to get back to Anchorage at 8 or 9 PM.  With Jim, he presented me a calculated bill at the end based on the hourly rate we had discussed.  He was supposed to charge me for ground time, but since we spent like 30 minutes at each site, he waived it.

As soon as we started walking back to our plane, it started to rain.  I realized that one thing was missing from my official trip to Alaska: something for my dresser.  I figured that a bear would be perfect, and this would be the perfect place to get it.  Sure enough, the Trading Post had a great selection of carved bears, and I got two.  Sokol had said he would meet me by the gear cache where I had left my bag, which was next to the food cache where I had left my Quest bars.  I had taken the beach route, and I saw Sokol there.  I started to walk towards Sokol when a ranger came out practically screaming for everyone to get down to the beach, and Sokol ran into the VC.  About a minute later, I saw a big bear walk right in front of the VC.  After it was all clear, I told Sokol that I wanted to take a picture in front the official sign.  I did not want to carry my bag in the picture.  We had been told during orientation to never leave out anything with food.  Then Sokol did something that really irked me, not a minor quirk that irritated me, something that actually irked me.  I’m sure we did plenty of stuff to irritate each other during the trip, but this was different.  He grabbed my computer bag and the Quest bars.  What was I supposed to do with the bag now?  A fucking bear had just walked by, and he brought food out, expecting me to leave it on the ground.  He told me to quickly hide the Quest bars in the bag before a ranger saw it.  I wasn’t concerned about a ranger seeing the food.  I was concerned about the bear smelling it!  I did it anyway, and we very quickly took our official pictures.  I then retrieved my bag, and we headed to our plane.  A few minutes later, we were off with plenty of other planes trying to escape the weather.  I proceeded to write my entry as soon as we were airborne, and it has been very bumpy due to the weather, but it looks to be clearing up ahead, and we are making great time.

Throughout the day, I have been thinking about how much my mother would have loved the sites we saw today, except that there was no way in hell she could have handled this small plane, especially this bumpy ride without yakking for days.  Steve put on his wife’s iPod again, but I offered my phone instead with my Best of Avril playlist to play while I typed.  I will now close so that I can reclaim my phone and take some pictures of the gorgeous view that we are now having.

Anchorage, Alaska

It’s funny how things never work out quite the way you plan.  Well, some things work out that way, while others don’t.  I did a very good job this trip planning for the unexpected, and it paid off.  Some of the highlights of the trip were supposed to be my stamp and plaque at Glacier Bay NPP, glacier hiking, midnight sun at Point Barrow, and the Dalton Highway.  Glacier Bay NPP had neither an official stamp nor plaque, the days for the glacier hikes were cold and rainy, the sun was not visible at Point Barrow, and the Dalton was a disaster.  When we first found that gift card, I told Sokol we would use it for a celebratory dinner tonight.  Instead, we spent it on our first few meals and, while we did have the dinner tonight, it didn’t feel celebratory.  Sure, part of it had to do with the meal.  They tried too hard.  It was fresh, Alaska fish.  You grill it and put it on a plate with some sides.  Anything else you could do to it diminishes it.  The beers were good, though.  We were going to have a pair of Opus X, but we had them in McCarthy instead, and I smoked the one I had been saving for the final drive on Sunday while Sokol passed out.  I never smoked my Dunhill or Brebbia pipes.  The place I went to reload on cigars in Anchorage had a shitty selection.  The things that we will remember will not be the highlights of the trip that I had been touting when we were planning.  Instead, it will be me being chased by a bear in The Yukon and our crazy Kotzebue Run.

I also thought that having him along with me would make it even more epic.  If I had done it alone, and I could have, not much would have been different.  I don’t know if I would have gotten stuck in the mud, but that would the only game changer.  It was fun being with him, but we also argued a lot.  Trying to find a way to insult me, he called me selfish, not realizing that I take great pride in being selfish.   He said that I treat people poorly, not realizing that I treat people with the respect that they earn, with the love that they earn, not out of any social contract.  I make no secret of the fact that I don’t give two shits about strangers.  He is not like that, but it is not the big things that drive two people crazy who have known each other for so long.  Those things are discovered very quickly and either accepted or rejected, ending the relationship.  A friendship, a romance, it’s the same, and it’s always the little things.  Sokol has a right to privacy, so it would be beyond this scope to list the little things that annoyed me, and I’m sure he would have a list of his own.

Suffice it to say, it was not what I expected, 18 Days of us laughing and joking and pulling pranks.  Sure, there was plenty of that, but there was also plenty of time where we drove each other crazy.  When we got back, I uploaded my photos and proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can upload it, pack, and get to sleep before our early flight.  As I smoke my last cigar in Alaska, I can finally relax.  It is celebratory, and we still have two more Days in Seattle and Oregon.  Maybe when we get to my brothers place, we will have our true celebration, but is not tonight, not on the day that said “8 for 8.”