Dawn Sunrise in Homer, Alaska
Our first morning in Homer is a flashback to the perfect weather we had there last August, a total change from the previous drizzly day. This is what sunrise looks like in Homer:
Those mountains and glaciers thrill my heart.
AdventureMan was instructed to have a good breakfast; they won’t be back until late afternoon, so we head to Dunken Inn, where we had such a good breakfast last year. We get there just in time – there is no line, and there is a table waiting for us, but five minutes later, there is a line.
AdventureMan has stick-to-your-ribs-while-bear-hunting biscuits and gravy:
And I have the 2 – 2 – 1, which is two eggs, two slices bacon and one blueberry pancake. I don’t even really like pancakes, but these blueberry pancakes are SO good 🙂
We drove around a little until drop off time; AdventureMan spotted a Sandhill Crane and this wonderful local yard art:
When Salmon Jerky and Japanese Crackers are Fine Dining
It’s a small thing, but just goes to show how much faith we put in planning, and how little control we really have. We’ve just settled in to our nice room at the Driftwood Inn, and a little after four, we get a call from the nice lady at Captain Patti’s, the restaurant where we have reservations for dinner.
We have no power, she tells us, and adds that the power is out on the entire Homer spit. They are closing for the night. Hmmm. We will have to find someplace else. We have some ideas, so we get in the car and head out, but it gets worse. The stoplights are out. The stores are all closing because they can’t run their cash registers, or run a credit card. The restaurants aren’t opening for dinner at all. The electricity is not just out on the spit, it is out in Homer, too. We briefly consider driving up to Soldatna to see if we can get a bite to eat there, but AdventureMan checks in the office at the Inn, and is told that the electricity is down on the entire Kenai peninsula. Holy tamole!
No food available, no food for sale. We have a package of Japanese crackers, which we love, and some salmon jerky, which AdventureMan is surprised to find that he likes, too. We have some breakfast cereal if we really need it, and milk in the refrigerator downstairs, so it’s not like we’re going to starve.
AdventureMan gets a call now that his flight will be departing for the bear hunt at 11 the next morning. I guess you can’t gas up planes without electricity these days, either.
The power came back some time close to nine, but by that time, we didn’t care to go out; crackers and jerky had done the trick.
Juneau to Anchorage on Alaska Airlines
I have such mixed feelings towards Alaska Airlines. I am about to vent, so if venting bores you, just skip down to the pictures.
I love that Alaska Airlines is truly Alaskan, formed of a conglomeration of smaller companies that used to fly Alaska, and that they truly serve Alaskans well. Alaskans get all kinds of perks on Alaskan airline. So when they board, it’s like “these special people, and then these special people, and these special people, and all the rest of you” and like there are six of us not-so-special people still standing there waiting to get on. After my first flight with Alaska, I learned not to carry any carry on baggage; just a large handbag I can tuck under the seat in front of me; all the overhead compartments are full.
Yes. I know. It sounds like sour grapes, and it is a little bit. I’ve been special too, on other airlines, and you get so you kind of like being treated special. I just take a deep breath and tell myself that old saw “every monkey gets his turn in the barrel” which is sort of a karma thing, everybody gets lucky some time and other times everyone has to take a turn in the barrel.
Here’s where the grapes really got sour. I am a cherry picker when it comes to trip planning. I don’t always get it right, but I put a lot of planning into finding the right small tours, the right schedule, the right seats, the right accommodations. I love the special details, and I take pride in juggling all the factors and getting a strategic plan together.
I found the perfect reservations, reservations that got us from Pensacola to Juneau in one day, and then from Anchorage back to Pensacola in one day. For three months, I gloried in the perfection of those reservations, until Chelsea called me and said they had changed everything.
It was horrible. I had to make decisions I wasn’t prepared to make. Chelsea did her best, but I was no longer in control (OH NO!) and I just did the best I could. She really did work with me. I was mad about the circumstances, but she did her best to find a solution. Just about every change cost me money, including the worst of all, because I am not special on Alaskan Airlines or American Airlines, we had to pay $25 every time we checked a bag, and every time we had a (mandatory) overnight, we had to pick up our bags and PAY AGAIN THE NEXT DAY! It irked me because I had us starting off with Delta originally, where our bags go free. Hey, these $50 (for two people) charges add up fast!
Of course, any seasoned traveller will laugh at “perfect” travel plans. It is a set-up. There is no perfect; God-with-a-sense-of-humor will always humble our human arrogance when we think we have achieved perfection.
So you know our trip started badly with the continuing weather delays in Dallas Fort Worth, and that was not American Airlines fault, but even so, neither was it a fun way to start our vacation.
Now, leaving Juneau for Anchorage, it’s a piece of cake. The hotel is five minutes from the airport and car rental drop-off is just out the back door. Juneau airport is small, and friendly feeling. The Alaska Airlines baggage check-in was compassionate. She looked at our trip history so far and said “you guys don’t have to pay today” and that small gesture really made us feel good.
At our gate, I took a photo of the entire upstairs waiting room. This is the whole Juneau airport:
At our gate is a pictorial history of Alaska aviation, but it doesn’t answer my question: What was the other airline that flew alongside Coastal Airlines out of the downtown amphibious airport?
The plane we are on is kind of old-timey, and it is stopping in Yakutat and Cordova, two fishing villages, en route to Anchorage. There is no first class on this flight, but there is freight, and evidently a whole lot of freight. I have never seen this before, but the front part of the airplane is all blocked off with this black curtain/built-in thing for freight:
Sitting next to me is a man exactly my age who grew up across the channel from me. We were the same year in school, and he is cousin to the girls I played with when I was a kid. We didn’t know each other. As a grown-up, he piloted ferries for the Alaskan Marine Highway System and now does special contracts, guiding the large cruise ships through the various ice fields. And, he tells me, the other airline flying out of Juneau when we were kids, the one with the green planes, is Ellis Airlines. Wooo HOOOO! He tells me before we take off so I quickly text my Mom’s old friend because she was stumped, too! I knew it started with an “S”, LOL. Isn’t life funny, how you can end up sitting next to the right person at the right time and place, and ask the right question?
Anchorage airport is much larger than Juneau, but as we pick up our rental car, the man behind the counter learns we are former military and gives us a great car, and map, and lots of good directions to get us headed towards Seward. Life is sweet, in spite of all my griping and sour grapes.
An Ice Cream Break and Totem Cones in Juneau
“Are you from the Philippines?” AdventureMan asked the man behind the counter as he dished me up a cone of Huckleberry (Blueberry) ice cream.
“Yes, there are many of us here,” the man answered, and told us how one of the fastest growing demographics in Alaska is the Philippine community.
“At home, we are so poor,” he explained. We are lucky to have a one room shack for a family, and for water we have to walk a long way for running water. It is very bad.” He looked serious.
“How do you like it here?” AdventureMan asked, and the man grinned. “Life is good!” he said, with enthusiasm. He also mentioned the Mexican population in Alaska is growing almost as fast as the Philippine population. Who knew?
Normally, I don’t eat ice cream, but I have been craving something with either blueberries or rhubarb, two fruits that grew in Alaska when I was a kid, fruits we ate, jellied, froze, stored for later use. I had seen neither. Some might argue that huckleberries and blueberries are not the same. I don’t care. It is close enough for me. I also love that the cones are so extraordinary, artistic even, with their Alaskan Haida-esque sculptural quality:
And here is the proud cone-maker, also from the Philippines, who has a view to die for, the same view as from The Hanger on the Wharf, as she makes her specialty cones:
They insisted on giving us a 10% discount when they spotted my husband’s retired military ID card as he pulled out his wallet. They also shook his hand and thanked him for his service, a sweet and unexpected kindness in faraway Alaska.
The Hanger at the Wharf in Juneau
First, we really love eating at the Hanger at the Wharf. So does just about everyone else. Twice, we got really lucky. It is easier getting a table if you are just two people, and it is easier getting a table if you eat early. As we are still on Pensacola tummy time, we are in luck. As the Celebration 2014 parade ended, we zipped straight over and as larger groups waited, we were immediately shown to a table for two.
No wonder The Hanger is so popular. The food is terrific and this is the view – straight down the Gastineau channel with Douglas and the cruise ships. As the sun slides behind the mountain, it is a stunning view:
Some hardier souls were eating outside on the deck. I used to be this hardy, but my years in the Middle East have softened me, made me not so good at eating in cool and drafty places, even in the middle of the Alaskan summer.
Inside The Hanger: great, courteous, friendly and efficient employees
Every table taken, the bar is packed, and people are waiting in the hallway to be seated:
My halibut tempura:
AdventureMan’s halibut burger and fries:
We liked the food and atmosphere so well that we went back a second time during the ceremonial dances and were happy to see a lot of the dancers eating there, too. I had the first mate’s plate, with salmon and halibut and a berry chutney and AdventureMan had grilled halibut. We both left happy. We would go there again in a heartbeat.
There is only one little thing about The Hanger that makes me uneasy, and it has nothing to do with The Hanger. When I was a little girl, living across the channel, I would watch for my Dad to come home – this was the airport for the amphibious planes, Alaska Coastal Airlines (now part of Alaska Airlines) and Ellis Airlines. When his plane would land, we would all rush to the car and drive like crazy across the bridge to pick him up (no cell phones then, LOL). So I still feel a little frisson and feel the ghosts of the past when I eat there.
Crisis of the Week: F-9
Move 30 times? Check. Manage finances? Check. Buy or sell a house? Check. Buy a car? Check. It’s not that hard. You figure it out, you do it.
Every now and then you have a crisis that’s outside your comfort zone. This week we ran into one of those.
We’ve had a microwave, a wonderful huge microwave, with a platter that runs back and forth, instead of a circular revolving plate. About a year ago, it started stopping in mid-cook and the display would show “F9”, not a big deal, with a little jiggling, a little work around, we could get it working again and it worked most of the time.
We bit the bullet. OK, just time to get a new microwave, go somewhere where we can buy it and have it installed, because installing is outside of what we can do well.
We get to the store and discover that 36″ microwaves are very special. So special that the only one carried runs in the over $1000 range. We go to another store, same story. Evidently 36″ was to go over a 36″ range, which we have, but is no longer so trendy. Oh aarrgh. We decide to go home and do some online research, only to learn that the 36″ version for over $1000 has very poor ratings and the same problem that we currently have, made by the same manufacturer. Double aarrgh, and double aarrgh again because while AdventureMan and I are good problem solvers, we are out of our pay grade when it comes to kitchen design and installation, but we know enough to know that it has to look right.
(Does it seem to you like American appliances don’t last as long as they used to? Some old appliances I have had run forever, but I feel like I am constantly replacing or having repaired the newer appliances)
When we bought our house, we bought it from a man who has a lot of fun redesigning and remodeling and updating houses. The kitchen is small, but beautifully high end. Fortunately, he is local and I have his number so I called him and asked for his design input. He gave me several good ideas, and even better, we had a great, wonderful chat and I was able to tell him how much we enjoy the little touches he put in the house to make it special. By the time I finished, I had a plan, and it dovetails with some other work we have scheduled, to have a tankless water system put in.
Years ago, a friend gave me a book mark I still have, a quote from Bishop Sheen that says “All worry is atheism, because it is a want of trust in God” and while I believe that is true, and have greatly banished worry from my daily life, every now I find myself that squirrel running on that wheel of anxiety, knowing I am worrying for nothing, but unable, in my own strength, to get off the wheel. Thanks be to God, in his mercy, for leading me off that fruitless path!
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Americanah
“Ouch! Ouch, Chimanda! Stop!”
(Oh wait.)
Don’t stop.
It’s me who can’t stop. I read everything Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writes. I only started reading her by accident, when I was facilitating the Kuwait Book Club I never intended to belong to, and found myself reading so many books by authors I had never heard of. We were reading Half Of a Yellow Sun and all of a sudden, I WAS Nigerian. She can do that. She uses the senses, she uses the thoughts in our head. We are really not so alien, us and the Nigerians I start to think. I have Nigerian friends, from the church. We all get along. We have a good time together.
“Not so fast!” Chimamanda tells me in Americanah, her newest book, which I put off buying until I could find it in paperback. “You are very different! You think differently! And growing up in a country where there are black and white, race becomes an issue that it is not when you are black, and everyone is black, and you are growing up in Nigeria.”
Hmmm. OK. That makes sense. I mean, I thought I was Nigerian because in Half of a Yellow Sun, I was Igbo, living in an academic community in Nigeria, and hmmmm. You’re right, Chimamanda, there were no white people around. Just us Nigerians.
Chimamanda, with her sharp, all-seeing eyes, her sharp ears and her sharp tongue make me cringe as she comes to the USA and comes up against assumptions many have about Africa. Do you even know where, exactly, Nigeria is? Do you know where Ghana is? Most Americans can find Egypt on a map of Africa, and MAYBE South Africa, but the rest is . . . mostly guesswork. Because we send clothing and food aid to African countries, we have the idea that all Africans are poor, but that is not so, and is insulting to the middle-class and upper class Africans who travel elsewhere for leisure – and education.
I don’t know how much of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s book is autobiographical and how much is fiction. I know that her observations are acute, she nails expat friendships, she spotlights our blind spots and hypocricies, and she holds you in her grip because she is no less harsh with herself – if, indeed, her Ifemelu, the main character in Americanah, is reflecting Chimamanda’s own experience. The experiences, coming here, the overwhelming differences in manners and customs, even volume of voice and width of hand expression, are so immediate, so compelling, so well described that they have to have been experiences she herself had, and had the eyes to see. She must have taken notes, because she totally nails the expat experience.
Book ads and book reviews focus on Americanah as a book about being black in America, and it truly is that – as seen from the eyes of a non-American black, as she often reminds us.
She is hard on herself, returning to Nigeria, and quick to note that much of the change is in herself and her changed perspective. While I love the romantic storyline, I was disappointed by the fantasy ending, given how self-disciplined Adichie is at keeping it real in every other facet of the novel. On the other hand, I am still trying to think of an ending that would work for me, and I can’t. While her ending wraps it all up neatly, it’s the one part of the book where her sharpness dulls.
One of the things I liked best about the book was going behind the scenes, being Nigerian, going to school, having coffee, working, going to parties with other Nigerians, chatting with my girlfriends. We’ve done things with nationals of different countries before, but you know as soon as you walk in that your presence changes things. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie takes me with her and no one knows I am there, observing, learning, figuring out how things are done when it’s “just us” Nigerians.
Here’s why I am a Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie addict. She keeps it real. She has eyes that see, and ears that hear, and a gift for capturing what she sees and hears and a gift for writing it down. She has insight, into herself, into others, into character and motivations. She is sophisticated and unpretentious, she admires and she mocks, but when she mocks, it is as likely to be self-mockery as mockery of another person, class, ethnicity or nation. Reading Adichie, I understand our similarities – and our differences. I believe she would be a prickly friend to have, but I would chose her as a friend.
Awards
● Winner of the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
● One of The New York Times’s Ten Best Books of the Year
● Winner of the The Chicago Tribune 2013 Heartland Prize for Fiction
● An NPR “Great Reads” Book, a Washington Post Notable Book, a Seattle
Times Best Book, an Entertainment Weekly Top Fiction Book, a Newsday Top 10 Book, and a Goodreads Best of the Year pick.
Blinded by the Light . . .
Yesterday I had my annual eye exam. This is the South. I could hear them all talking in the back, talking about personal things, and OTHER PEOPLE! I used to run a library, and one of the very very first things I would tell my library workers was NO PERSONAL CONVERSATIONS when we had the library open. Keep your private life private! I’m not all about the library being quiet, but I am about it being not-annoying. Hearing gossip, hearing details of your last medical procedure, hearing about Maizie, bless her heart, who just lost another husband – these things are not my business, nor the library customer and are not appropriate for a discussion where the public may be listening in, even when they don’t want to be.
OK, OK, I know these are dated professional standards, but I can’t help it. Please. Do not burden me with overhearing your latest disaster unless we are friends and sitting down together over a cup of coffee.
At 30 minutes past my appointment time, I went back to see if my paperwork had been misplaced only to be told they were just a little behind and I would be taken soon. Fifteen minutes later I was in the office.
Now, when they dilate your eyes, you can still drive yourself home. It was a little bright, but I managed. Things are a little blurry.
Fast forward to last night, driving home, WOW. Every streetlight, every headlight, even the beautiful thin crescent moon had a spiky halo. It was like I had that sparkle lens you can put on your camera, only this was on my eyes.
This morning when I got up, I thought it would be all over, but my eyes are still dilated, and still sensitive. They must have given me a wallop of a dose.
But for the drive home, it was all Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds . . . it was so incredibly beautiful, it felt sort of surreal.
Empowerment
I’m working with a group, one of whose goals is empowerment. They are all from the same country, but not the same parts of the country, nor the same ethnicities, but they all get along well with one another and the group does fine. I admire each of them, and even better, I like these women.
(Photo removed 17 Aug 2021 due to potential political impact on participants)
Here’s the LOL, empowered people have ideas and opinions. We have a format to adhere to, and empowered people come up with other ideas and alternatives. Here’s the problem: other ideas and alternatives, especially good ones, mean a lot of extra focus, it creates more work for facilitators and program managers. Sometimes you need permissions, sometimes you need transportation arrangements, and always, you need to assure a delegate’s safety. All this on top of the changes that will have to be made because of this unusual weather.
First, yesterday as I met the group, I had to apologize for the weather – usually mild, sunny Pensacola was having a howling storm; sheets of water being blown by a raging wind, tree limbs falling, the sky grim and dark and grey the entire day. In the midst of this, I was with one delegate on a tour of the Port of Pensacola, where it was like being in the middle of a huge storm at sea, with squalls. The man giving the tour carried on, they had a great discussion while the wind howled around us and at times the rain fell so hard on the tin roof that we couldn’t hear one another.
(Those lines you see coming in through the door are wind blown rain. The drops on the camera lens – ditto)
Here is what I truly admire about this group, all their empowerment is for the good, their suggestions are making this visit even more productive and helping them exceed their goals. Their alternatives were doable, and will be accomplished. I can also tell you that at the end of a day dealing with a lot of good ideas and changes, my brain is happily fried. Guess the LOL is on me.
I’m Screwed
It runs in my family – I can remember my Dad on the phone for hours, booking our hotels for Italy, especially, making sure everything was perfect. We like to be in control of the details, we like to make sure everything will run smoothly. We like to have records to back us up and to insure our trips will not run into any snags.
Oh well.
Yesterday, on the way to our son’s house to take care of the sweetest little baby in the world, I got a phone call from Alaska Airlines that my carefully crafted reservations, all paid for, were not going to work now that there had been a schedule change.
For a minute, it was like my brain went on hold. I had worked SO HARD to make those reservations, with just the right routing and just the right amount of connecting time and everything was PERFECT and now it wasn’t going to work? She was offering me alternatives, but all I could think of was having to change our cat’s reservations, having to re-arrange all my PERFECT arrangements.
Hmmm. . . Even at the time, I could laugh at myself and my horror that now it wasn’t going to be PERFECT. Even at the time, I could hear God laughing and saying “maybe I have something better in store for you.” I could hear him, but getting off that hamster wheel in my brain is like trying to make a steaming locomotive make a 90 degree turn. I need a few minutes for the gears to shift, for the impetus to slack; change does not happen quickly, it happens in stages.
She had an idea, but had to call me back. That gave me the time I needed to take a deep breath and roll with it. When she called back, I was ready for her suggestion, which involved switching to an airline I never fly, a route I avoid, etc. but I was ready. The timing achieved the goal I wanted, which was to fly from Pensacola to Juneau in one day.
Then, as it turned out, there was also a problem with the return, same deal, something about being or not being a code share flight, or being or not being an Alaska Airways flight. Here is what I am experiencing with all my flights – these airlines might SAY they are a team, but when I call Air France to use my frequent flyer miles, they always want me to fly Air France, and they have these routes that will take me from say Atlanta to Paris to Kenya to Johannesburg, rather than putting me on the partner flight that goes directly from Atlanta to Johannesburg. And here is the line I hate: They haven’t released any seats on that flight for us to use.
Here is the truth as I see it: anything is possible. I have seen it happen. There are phrases bureaucrats use to put up barriers, but if they want to help you, those barriers can fall.
OK, OK, back to the subject. I am grateful to Alaska Airlines for calling me and sorting out the problem with ME. At the same time I just happened to check on some other reservations I have only to discover, online, that the reservations had changed from something I loved to something I hated, and when was Delta going to tell me? There is a disclaimer at the top saying I can try to change the changed portion or I can cancel my trip. If I hadn’t checked, how would I know??
I admire Alaska Airlines for stepping up to the plate. It can’t be easy for their people to face the wrath of people like me who don’t want their plans changed, who liked their plans just the way they are.
When these things happen, once I have a chance to cool down, I think about some changes and disappointments as being a protection. I don’t always understand why something didn’t work out, but I believe it was for the good. There was a house I did not buy on a slippery, landslide prone area in Seattle, a house with a magnificent view. I still think about that house now and then, and now, with the tragedy in Oso, I am thankful I did not buy it. I had put an offer on the house, then changed my mind, knowing I would worry all the time I was overseas about it slipping down the hill. It was enough to deter me, knowing I would worry too much about it, and always be looking for signs of instability, that I would become anxious when it would rain – and if you know Seattle, you know that rain is a given.
The screwed part is really that no matter how carefully we plan our trips, if we are flying we are at the mercy of large bureaucratic airlines who really don’t care about our comfort or convenience. They don’t care about the hundreds of thousands of miles on my frequent flyer card; I am just a logistic to them. Within the US, most ‘business class’ isn’t that much better than economy, and ‘economy comfort’ is still squished three abreast in seats that are too narrow and so you are touching shoulders with your neighbors. That is just wrong. A shift in reservations should trigger at least an e-mail, so people to whom it matters can make necessary changes. It’s not just me, we are all screwed.
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