Orange but Not Evil

Oh office job, how you warp a human being…  I broke a personal vow to never create a PowerPoint presentation today.  All I did was copy some cat images from the internet and make a slideshow (well, I didn’t actually use the slideshow function, I just put the pictures onto subsequent slides) for my upcoming safety lecture on sunburn prevention.  (In the interest of “safety first,” every work center conducts a weekly safety meeting in which very important topics are discussed.  I thought some visual aids in the form of a kitten wearing a sombrero would energize the otherwise blandly informative content.

We all kept an eye on election results throughout our Wednesday afternoon.  Things were not looking good when I took a break for dinner and band practice.  I was at the Coffee House when the blow struck; I kept looking beseechingly at the messenger for ten minutes, waiting for the  “Just kidding!”  And then the thought that all this life, work, and play here might shudder to a halt due to lack of interest and funding threatened to swamp us all in grief, which we fought back with more wine.  It still feels far off, but the distance back home shrank quite a bit.

Tonight is the long-awaited, one-time-only performance by Cold As Ice - Antarctica’s Premier Foreigner Cover Band.  Things are shaping up for a rager of a Saturday night, but as I have a pressure ridge tour to lead tomorrow morning, I’m shooting for 2am bedtime.  As always, safety first, and remember to cover up in the sun.

SKIIIIII

Something fairly magical happened: after two years of meaning to cross country ski the ice shelf in Antarctica, I finally DID.  A six-mile chunk of it, at least.  Everything was just right, from the perfect weather to the energetic pal that skis up to 20 miles a day.  When we stopped, just a few minutes short of catching a ride home on a shuttle van, we barely waited until a delta (big ol’ industrial truck) came trundling up at 8mph and gave us a lift.   Being out in the sun was refreshing, and I felt better about the slab of melted brie I had eaten at brunch.

So, work – that’s right, I work here.  The data entry is rote but not so bad; it’s the tiny bullshit like accidentally sending the Northbound Priority List instead of the Northbound Packing List that gets me flustered.  (Such incredibly different things, maybe we should differentiate their names a bit?)  I get an odd satisfaction from printing labels and stickers (always been a sticker fan), and while filing itself is a blah activity, I like the facility of referencing a physical record.  And then there’s afternoon hot dog break.  One of my coworkers gets pretty snacky near the end of the day, and has developed a rotating menu of hot pockets, empanadas, chicken nuggets (microwaved), and hot dogs on the Foreman grill.  It’s pretty entertaining to see it sizzling away in front of our window framing remote snowy mountains across the sea.

The near-eternal South Pole winter finally came to an end, and a few pale friends stopped over in town for a day or two before being released back into the greater world.  I thought a year of two-minute showers, spotty 3am internet access, and nowhere near enough marshmallows would have them looking hollow-eyed and shell-shocked, but relief at leaving put huge smiles on their faces.  I hope they continue to come back to life in New Zealand, back home, and beyond.

Bad Self-Portraits in Jazz

It’s a bit like shining a flashlight into an old attic: “Oh yeaaah, I forgot that was back here…”  As I wrote out rehearsal times for this week I realized it’s been almost half my life (several more than ten years, anyway) since I practiced music every day.  But after a mere two years of cultivating friends and asking around, the stars aligned and I found some people that like jazz standards.

I happened to walk into the Coffee House one night where a few people were chatting, and a guy strummed guitar off to the side.  I stopped in my tracks and cautiously interrupted to ask, “Are you playing ‘All of Me’?”  Fast forward one week to happy hours of imitating my favorite singers, going over beautiful old tunes, and throwing in some more bluesy-rockers to even out the set, and we’re on our way to something great.  I’ve listened to that Lake Street Dive song at least two hundred times, and got just the right edge of frustration to describe taking landscapes and still lives, taking night classes and making sculptures, and painting bad self-portraits.

The one downside is that I have barely been outside, and haven’t taken any pictures.  And it’s been pretty gorgeous lately; quite cold, but almost windless, and clear clear clear, with fata morgana (inverted reflection mirage) of the mountains in the distance. 

So instead of pretty photos, I’ll leave you with the mental image of a jazz-style cover of Green Day’s “Pulling Teeth.”  (“I’m all busted up, broken bones and nasty cuts, accidents will happen, but this time I can’t get up.”)

Goo Blobs of the Deep

Maybe because the view is so familiar, I keep forgetting to photograph (digitally snap?) my snowy volcanic surrounds.  I did pretty thoroughly document the creatures in the “touch tank,” though, so here you go:

These guys are a starfish and a nudibranch.  When out on business, the divers pick up various harmless undersea blobs for us to *carefully handle* and increase appreciation of science, or something.  It was really interesting to hold them, though I wondered how my really warm hand compared to their typical 29F saltwater environment.

In work-related news, I have wrangled with many a spreadsheet; most frustratingly while trying to update instruction sheets and forms that we display, poster-size, in the warehouse so people properly categorize their packaged cargo.  The pain of formatting everything was redeemed by using the science lab’s giant-ass printer (or “plotter”).  This beast stands almost as tall as me, can print four feet wide, and automatically cuts its fancy paper upon completion.  After witnessing this technological marvel, it was fun to fire up the ol’ Master Lam 72 laminator, straight out of an early-90s elementary school.  It did a fine job, though, and I happily adhered my new posters to the warehouse wall.

Other than that fieldtrip, there have been lots of barcodes and phone transfers.  And then I signed up to shovel snow for two hours on my day off, to hasten the reopening of my favorite hiking trail.  There are some real gung-ho shovelers in this town, let it be known. 

Rough Rider

It seems this throwing up on planes is becoming a thing (thanks for not being openly hostile, LA to Auckland and Auckland to Christchurch seatmates).  My brother, who intercepted a shoe-full one memorable flight when I was about three, will be not at all surprised, but I had thought of myself as a normal, non-airsick person for many years.  Ah well.  A mere two flu-shivery nights in Christchurch later, I was privileged to board this big gray guy and fly down to the Ice once more (didn't throw up on this one!).

Now that I'm back in an office with my own computer, and my boss keeps the TV on (muted), my sense of geographical isolation has diminished.  I also realized how static-y hair gets down here, and, that it is cold.  (-4F not counting wind, for inquiring minds.)  When you're not scampering between ovens and grill tops and heaving hundreds of pounds of trash into bins, an extra sweater becomes necessary.  Even, dare I say, gloves.

There are no deep drifts, but it was blustery and dusk-dark with snow last night.  I had a drink with friends and cringed at karaoke before giving into a firefighter looking for a second person with whom to perform "Rawhide" (you know, that song from The Blues Brothers?).  And so the third season begins...

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Hiiiiii.  There are lots of boxes and bags happening right now.  And allergies (I still love you, Michigan).  How about an indulgent interstitial post to transition from Alaska to Antarctica?  And how about we include lots of unnecessary interrogative phrases and marks?

That drive up the Dalton Highway?  Not too shabby.  After reading warnings of basketball-chomping potholes, my already vigilant eyes and white knuckles shifted into DEFCON 2, and though my giant SUV got totally covered in mud, it wasn't hurt a bit.  But you don't want to hear about paranoid parallel pipeline propulsion, do you?  (Disclaimer: this is not the highway, but you can see the pipeline pretty well, right?)

Now you've seen what it looks like by the Arctic Circle.  Also, there were crazy auroras shimmering iridescent green and purple spanning the entire Milky-Way-bedazzled sky.  What, iPhones don't take great pictures in low light?

Chris and the crew at Coldfoot made me very welcome, complete with raging 20-foot bonfire, tour and talk with local off-the-grid-subsistence-hunter-log-cabin guy, and my first (last?) time shooting a revolver (guns are fun?).

A nice 12-hour train ride gives one plenty of time to contemplate the past, present, future...really, any thought you've ever had swirls through your brain when trying to pass the time.  To be fair, one hour was pretty spectacular, taking in the gorge near where I worked.  Isn't that nice?

Now, what trip to Alaska would be complete without a jaunt in a small plane to some remote locale?  More than twenty years later, I still have a healthy fear of living out the story in Hatchet, where a kid crash lands in a bush plane and survives alone in the wilderness thanks to his hatchet.  So I went on a small jet to Dutch Harbor, America's answer to Scandinavia's charm-packed, mountainous fishing outposts.

Is that a picture of an ancient Greek temple?  No, it's the view of Captain's Bay halibut processing boats from inside a WWII concrete bunker.  I'm sorry, what?

Let's move on, then, shall we?  The last leg of travel took me south to Cooper's Landing and more good company.  With little warning, Cat kindly hooked me up with my own tent, got me fed and watered and sauna'd and river dunked, and guided me to one of the prettiest hikes this side of a waterfall as well as to the Exit Glacier toe.  See how much it's receded since 2010?

And that's going to have to be enough Alaska to be getting on with for a while.  A new era has begun: I purchased a new backpack today.  How many dirty bus station floors will you scoot across, New Blue?  How many tiny travel bottles of shampoo will ooze into your pores?  Will you be too young to remember your first trip to New Zealand, innocent and free of invasive plant materials?  Reader, tune in to the next post to find out.

Last Hurrahs

It's September the 1st, time to get on the Hogwarts Express.  Tomorrow, actually, I'll step aboard the Denali Star and head north to Fairbanks.  From there, I'll start a long, arduous journey to visit some far-flung parts of the state, including Coldfoot (hi Chris!), Dutch Harbor, and Cooper Landing (hi Cat and Jams!).  After semi-solo-touristing, there's just time enough for a whirlwind visit to Michigan to procure new shoes and sock and attend my brother's wedding (YAY!), before continuing on to Antarctica.  For those of you in this only for the penguin photos and not the bitter vitriol, congratulations, there's just a few more weeks before the regularly scheduled program returns.

So many fun things happened this summer, I'm really happy two of the best were saved for (almost) last: I made it onto the catwalk under the big bridge over the river.  The views are stunning, and you can hang your feet over the edge and feel a little badass.  The other great thing I did was whipped-cream-pie one of my favorite coworkers in the face yesterday at the end of my last shift.  He is known for perpetrating this act, so I was simply acting in preemptive defense.  I even hand-whipped the cream.