7/11/14
Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, Alaska (ANC)
This was supposed to be the first of three triumphant airport
entries. It will not be. This was supposed to be the best trip of my
life. As of yet, it has not been. Maybe, when I reflect months from now, it
will be. Sitting here at Ted Stevens
International, it is not. I suppose the
disappointment can be attributed to three things. The first was the lack of the Plaque and
proper Stamp at Glacier Bay. I had a
dream, a picture with a Plaque on July 4th every year from 2012 to
2017. I arranged this whole trip around
getting that July 4th Plaque picture at Glacier Bay, getting the
July 4, 2014 Stamps on my WHS stuff. It
did not go as planned, but everything worked itself out between Kluane and
Wrangell, properly finishing off The WHS.
When we got to McCarthy, it was still on track to being the best trip of
my life. The next morning, my foot
started hurting. I was fine with it, and
I wasn’t going to let a little pain ruin my trip. I would power through, and it would resolve
itself. The body is resilient. Big mistake.
This was not just going to be a mild inconvenience. The pain and injury had the potential to sour
my mood for the rest of the trip. I
could barely walk by the time we reached Seward, and I wasn’t quite sure how I
would properly enjoy the National Parks I had planned for the next couple of
days.
Once I got to Anchorage, I could
recover, but the next two days would have to be about fulfillment value, not
enjoyment value. I would do the bare
minimum I needed to do in each park to make it official. That was exactly what we did with Kenai
Fjords NP, and we headed straight to Homer.
After dinner, my spirits were buoyed once again. Everything would be all right. We woke up the next morning, rearing and
ready to go. Oh, how soon our hopes were
dashed. Nothing could lift my spirits at
that point, though I tried to enjoy the next day or so as much as I could, but
I knew that it would not be until we saw the midnight sun in Barrow that I
would be back to my usual self, except for my foot. It was bad again, really bad. I didn’t know how I would do any kind of
hiking on it.
My father suggested that I
call a doctor, so that was exactly what I did when I woke up this morning. We went down to get breakfast, which had ended
at 9 AM. I was shocked. Usually breakfast goes until at least 10
AM. We got some coffee, and I realized
that I wasn’t even that hungry. I made an
appointment for noon, which would give me enough time to run the couple of
errands I needed to do before the appointment, and enough time to get to the
car rental place after my appointment. Our
first stop was the business center at the hotel across the street so that I
could print out some paperwork to pay for my traffic ticket. From there, we headed to the gas
station. I got the pump started, and
Sokol cleaned up the car, while I walked across the street to the cigar store. The selection was sparse, and the shelves
were bare, but I managed to find a decent enough assortment to last me through
the rest of the trip. I could try the
other cigar shop in town next week, but I was good until then. It is a lot easier to drive from city to city
without GPS than it is to drive around in one city, but we managed to get to
the post office with no difficulty. I
mailed Matt my timesheet by “raven,” knowing he’d get a kick out of it. I also mailed in the check for my traffic
ticket. From there, we headed to the
doctor. It took a while, and they said I
should get an MRI, but I didn’t have time for that. They gave me a boot for my foot and told me
to follow up in New York. I was crushed
at this point. Walking around in this
uncomfortable boot was no way to enjoy my next week in Alaska. However, nor was steadily destroying the soft
tissue in my foot. Things were not going
as planned.
We then went to pick up our
Jeep that we would use for Phase 2 of the trip.
We transferred our stuff, parked the Jeep, and, ahead of schedule,
doubled back to a burger place for lunch.
It turned out they also had Chinese/Korean food, so that was what we
got, and it was quite good. Needless to
say, I have had neither the time nor desire for cigars today. After lunch, we headed to the airport,
dropped off the car, and went through security.
Sokol forgot to empty his water bottle and, as happened to me en route
to Chicago, he had to go all the way around through security again. We took unofficial Us and headed to our gate,
where I proceeded to write this entry, in full view of the beautiful Alaskan
Mountains, which I will now close. Phase
1 Complete, such as it is.
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