Welcome Aboard the M/V Kennicott
When most people think of an Alaskan cruise, they think of the ships the size of small cities. We saw many of them in Juneau, docked, three, four, five at a time, inundating the town. In a town of around 30,000 the population can nearly double when five cruise ships are in port at the same time.
Juneau has a lot of services in place to handle the tourist demands. You can sign up for glacier tours, or whale watching tours, or both right at the landing dock. You can have a fine meal, you can buy tanzanite or brown diamonds, or fine sporting gear just across the street, or you can take a cable car up to the top of Mt. Roberts – right from the dock where you landed.
No. We didn’t do that.
We boarded the M/V Kennicott out in Auke Bay, where the Alaska Marine Highway Ferries come in and out shuttling the locals from town to town. There are ferry routes that are regional, like you can take a ferry to Haines, or Skagway, or Ketchikan, or Petersburg, places on the SE panhandle of Alaska, or you can, like us, take a ferry that goes all the way around the Gulf of Alaska from Juneau via Yakutat, Whittier, Chenega Bay, Kodiak Island to Homer. You can even continue on to Seldovia before you head back. Some years, when the ferry hasn’t broken down, you can take a ferry all the way down to Unalaska/Dutch Harbor, all the way down on the very tip of the Aleutian Islands. Wouldn’t that be a grand adventure!?
It’s all part of the Alaska Marine Highway System, a very practical part of the entire Alaska transportation system which is a lot like Africa. You take a big plane or a big ship to get there, then you take a smaller ferry or a small – even tiny – airplane to get to the more remote places. Juneau is not connected to anywhere. All the highways end. Kodiak Island is . . . well, an island. There are many remote places that there is no way to reach without ferry or tiny aircraft service.
We picked up our tickets at the Ferry Terminal a couple days in advance, and were surprised to see that while the ferry was scheduled to leave at 12:00 noon, boarding said 0900 in the morning.
No problem. We were packed and ready to go, grabbed a little breakfast and coffee, and the shuttle took us out to the ferry terminal, about 15 minutes away. The Best Western Country Lane shuttle makes everything so easy; they take you to the airport, they take you to the terminal, they take people to the restaurants they want to go to, they run you downtown – a trip that costs about $35 if you come in to the Ferry Terminal and want to go into downtown Juneau. The shuttle is one reason why we chose this hotel, and we were so glad we did.
So we arrived, on time, at 0900 to board the ferry and the guy at the counter looked surprised and said “You want to board now?” and I said “It says we are supposed to board at 0900. It doesn’t make sense to me, either, but here we are.” He said “OK, you can board if you want.”
It’s not like an airplane. It’s not like you see “Boarding at 0900” and it means you MUST be there at 0900, in this case, it means “you can board if you want to.” LOL, this is my culture, and it’s confusing to me!
Laurie, the boarding purser, checks our I.D. and checks our tickets and waves us to the vehicle entrance with our rolley-bags, saying “just go in here and take the elevator.”
It wasn’t until after the trip that I learned the M/V part of M/V Kennicott means Motor Vessel, i.e. this is a ship that transports motor vehicles. We love learning new ways how things are done, and the boarding and unloading of the vessel was endlessly fascinating to us. Great technology, and it also requires great planning and execution.
We went to the purser’s office to get our cabin, but the cabins weren’t clean yet. He suggested we go up to the forward lounge, have a cup of coffee, he would call us when the rooms were ready.
The forward lounge was full of Alaskan art objects. This is a shaman’s mask:
This is a Haida clam basket (basket weaving is so fascinating to me, all those patterns. How did people figure out, oh so long ago, how to gather living plant material and weave it in these ways? On our trip, we saw baskets woven so finely that you could boil water in them. Imagine!)
I explored around a little, well, I snooped. While the cabins were being cleaned, I looked in to see the various kinds of cabins. It was so interesting. The majority of the cabins did not have bathrooms.
There were one person little cabins, like a booth, with two seats that would slide down and together, and a table that could be clipped up when a person didn’t want to sit at the table and wanted to sleep on a flat surface. It was a pretty narrow surface, and a room like a coffin, but it locked, and it would be a safe place for one person to sleep and keep their bags safe, too.
There were two person roomettes, they also had a little table and two bunks that attached to the wall unless you wanted to sleep, in which case they came down.
There were four person cabins without baths and four person cabins with baths. If only two people were in the cabin, the unused bunks were attached up to the walls, and you had a couch to sit on during the day. The outside cabins had nice large windows, big square ones.
There was a solarium up on top designated for campers. There are a LOT of campers in Alaskan, not just Alaskans, but also visiting campers from all over the world. The solarium gives them a safe dry place to pitch their tents. There are also big lockers where they can stow their gear.
People are also allowed to camp in the aft lounges, upper and lower, but the signs ask that you only roll out your sleeping gear between 8 at night and 8 in the morning, so that all the passengers can use the lounges during daylight hours.
This isn’t a cruise ship. This is transportation. This is how people get from one place to another, how they take their kids to boarding school when their village is too small to support a school. This is how high school teams might travel to their away games. These are working ships.
When the purser announced that people could come check in to their cabins, I went, but I ended up at the end of a long line. I saw people get assigned and then the purser would hand them a set: one pillow, two sheets, one pillowcase and one blanket. (@) (@) ! No! No! I did not sign up to be making up bunk beds! Enough democracy!
Lucky me, those sets were for the roomettes, and you don’t even have to rent them, you can do without them if you prefer. I think the rental per night for the set is $3.00, but they also have it broken down, so if you just want to rent a pillow and pillow case it might be $1.00 per night, or just a blanket. Our cabin is beautiful and spacious. We have a big window, and dolphins romp by, and beautiful mysteriously foggy islands. We have our own toilet and shower, thanks be to God, and a washstand with plenty of clean towels. This is heaven. 🙂
The food is not elegant, but neither is it institutional. It is a giant step above McDonalds, or any of the fast food outlets. These are the menus posted in the hallway leading to the galley (kitchen):
There are a variety of food stations – drinks of all kinds on the left, a salad and soup station on your right. Every day there were three soup choices, a soup like chicken noodle or French onion, a smoked salmon or clam chowder, and a chili. There were four prepared salads, and a big bar with greens and accoutrements; carrots, tiny tomatoes, peas, etc.
There was also a deli sandwich and pizza station, where the lady would make you what you want.
There was another station, the hot station, where you could order several different hot things. There would be three main meal choices at every meal, like beef stew, salmon steak or pork fried rice, for example, and a veg and a starch. They even had brown rice.
After you paid, cafeteria style, you enter the dining hall. It’s a working ship, remember, so it’s not just paid eaters who eat there, but also there is a microwave available for people who bring their own food. I saw one young man who had the BEST food, the first day he had a cucumber with salt and pepper, and bread. At breakfast, he had brought his own granola kind of mix. (Then he was gone, it’s a ferry, and people come and go.)
There are families with children warming up spaghettio’s, and single women with bowls of Ramen. It’s all very democratic, everyone sitting in the same dining hall.
There is always a large display full of desserts; they must have specialized in desserts, very tempting desserts. AdventureMan succumbed one meal to a piece of Coconut Cream Pie, and I yielded to a Blueberry Pie at another meal.
They also had all kinds of condiments, in case you like a little kick with your foods, the more common ones, ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise you pumped into small containers, but there were also things like Thai chili sauce, Tiger Sauce, Tabasco sauce, soy sauce – things different people like.
There were several booths with Alaskan wildlife and bird life on them:
Near the dining hall, across from the gift shop was a small room for small children with a rubber floor 🙂
This is the bar, which was closed every day until around 5:00 and it was the only place on board that sold alcohol. You weren’t supposed to take it out of the bar. They had Alaskan beer, which is very tasty.
This was lunch our first day on board, Smoked Salmon Chowder and a shrimp salad:
After every meal, we walk the decks, and, in fact, other than climbing in and out of my bunk, most of our exercise was walking, walking, walking, and climbing stair up and down. It didn’t do us any harm 🙂 The scenery is ever changing. Our first day out, we pass the same humpbacks we had seen on the whale watch the day before, spouting, someone always can be counted on to shout “Thar she blows!” The Alaskan waters team with wildlife; sparkling fish jumping, dolphins, seals, sea lions, otter – we saw them all. I would be typing up notes in our cabin, facing out the window, and I would see a couple dolphins just zipping along, so graceful, just doing their dolphin thing.
A Whaling Adventure with Captain Alan on The Scania
This is what we were waiting for – a trip out to see the whales! We researched all the companies offering these outings, and Adventures in Alaska caught our attention because of the maximum number of people they carry – 12. On our trip out, there were 7 customers, Captain Alan, and his brother Andy.
Other whale watch trips were leaving at the same time – with twenty five or more passengers seated side by side in rows INSIDE. On The Scania, there is an upper deck, a lower deck, and an inside cabin and you can move freely up and down and from side to side for the best view, and the best angle if you are shooting photos.
Once we were all aboard, we zoomed down the coast, hoping to see Orcas, and there they were! It was such a thrill.
This is what other boats looked like:
Passengers have to shoot from inside:
Leaving Auke Bay en route to the Orcas:
Captain Alan moving out to insure that we see Orcas:
Our first glimpse of Orca
At first we saw dolphin . . . and then we saw Orcas moving really fast and then some commotion and then . . . no more dolphin. The Orcas are feeding:
Orca diving
These are my favorite moments of all – the baby Orca was just irrepressible, dancing, twisting, diving and twirling – so entertaining, and so cute!
We also saw Humpback whales, sea lion, and eagles. It was a truly grand day.
The Berry Patch Cabin in Eagle River Camp Grounds
As we were hiking through the Eagle River Camp Grounds, we could hear a dog barking, barking as if he were having a lot of fun. We saw a cabin, and one of the park rangers playing with a big brown happy dog. We walked over; he had just finished cleaning out the cabin and it was empty. He asked if we would like to take a look.
I hope you are sitting down. The rental of this beautiful cabin, per night, is $45.
This is the interior. You can see where people can sleep, downstairs and up. Maybe room for 8 – 12 people.
From the table, this is your view:
Sign on front of cabin:
View from your front porch:
You have to bring in your own equipment, including propane to run the heating stove, and your own bedding. There might be running water. You would need all your sleeping gear, food prep, and there are many electrical outlets in the cabin for charging up all the electrical gadgets you probably can’t use. I think we did have phone coverage in the area. 🙂
Although it feels remote, you are not that far from Juneau, and there are major grocery stores even closer. There is a Fred Meyer – where you can pick up just about anything – near the airport.
I dream of bringing our grandson here with us one summer. We’d have to be sure he was old enough to be careful about bears, and any other wildlife. At the same time I dread the logistics. Maybe if I think about it for a couple years, it can become do-able . . .
A Trip “Out the Road” to Eagle River
One of the things AdventureMan and I did in Juneau was to drive every road. It’s not hard. You drive all the way south, and all the way north on Douglas Island, then you drive out to Thane, then on the Juneau roads, up behind in the basin, and then “out the road.” Everyone in Juneau knows where “out the road” is.
When I was a kid, the road got bad just past the airport, on the way to Skater’s Cabin, which I thought was on Auke Lake, but discovered is really on Mendenhall Lake.
You had to go out the road to get to the airport. You still do, but it is only like six minutes, the road is so good, unless you hit a deer (which we saw happen) and have to stop and call Fish and Wildlife Rescue. You can’t leave an injured animal on the highway.
So we have a morning, and it is not raining! The sun is even peeking out now and then! It’s a beautiful day, we dress warmly and head out the road, out driving all the roads. Look closely, and you will even see blue sky in the photos 🙂 We drive the Lena Point road, looking at all the cabins where we used to go picnicing, then to Amalga Bay, with it’s beautiful still lake and reflections.
You’re just going to have to bear with me as I show you photos with a lot of green in them. It’s not that Pensacola doesn’t have green, but it doesn’t have Alaska greens. I remember in Germany, a long time ago, years ago, having a discussion with AdventureMan about how many different shades of green there are, and ever since then, he has reminded me of that conversation. This year, on this trip, he said “Now I know why you are so sensitive to greens!” Alaska is full of greens, and mostly they are blue greens, and oh, I love the spectrum of blue-greens. 🙂
As we approached the end of the road, there was heavy road construction going on. Winter is coming, to quote Game of Thrones, and in Alaska that means a short window for all the road reparations that can happen as a result of brutal, icy, rainy, snowy winters. The construction traffic controllers told us it would be about twenty minutes before the pilot car would be back to lead the next line of cars over the broken, rocky, off-road paths, and we decided, in our little 2 wheel drive rental, that we would forego that pleasure. We headed back for Eagle River Picnic Grounds, which were beautiful and serene:
This is one of the covered picnic cabins, heavy duty timber
You can see one of the ferries departing nearby Auke Bay from the ferry terminal
We head on a little further to the Eagle River Camp Grounds. We are in love! This place is beautiful, with hidden campsites with cabins and campsites for RV’s, but all hidden from sight. No indoor plumbing, but the public restrooms are clean and well kept. You can hike around, there are many trails.
Salmon spawning in the stream – the ranger tells us a mother bear and her two cubs were by earlier, but we missed them. You can smell all the rotting salmon on the banks and know that the bear are eating well.
An old dock, long gone, from Eagle River – and look at all those beautiful greens in the background 🙂
Seagulls feasting on salmon the bears left behind. Bears are not very efficient eaters; they strip parts of the salmon and leave a whole lot:
A Stellar’s Jay, the kind I grew up with. The Jays in Pensacola are more white with blue markings and much bigger. But look at the blues on his feathers, so intense, so radiant!
We love Eagle River campsites so much you will see more on our way back out through Juneau 🙂
Homecoming and Judgement
Home again, home again and the daily grind recommences. Giving up a vacation is hard for me. Part of it is my compulsiveness; my mind whirls with my must-do’s and almost all the things I really like to do are not on the must-do’s list. Must do’s include things like laundry and dishes, tasks which are mindless and I don’t really mind too much, but they get in the way of what I want to do, which is to tell you about our Alaska adventure 🙂 Before I can do that, in addition to the must do’s, I also have to transfer all my photos from my iPad to my computer, which makes blogging so much easier, so once again – something hard before something fun.
Am I grumbling? Sorry if it sounds that way. I love vacations. I love other people doing the cooking and cleaning and me just responsible for putting clothes on and figuring out what I want from the menu. I love the stimulation of seeing new things, smelling new smells, walking new paths.
As soon as we got home, we dropped our bags and zipped as fast as we could over to our son’s house to visit with him and his family. I got to hold my new little granddaughter for the entire visit – oh, so such a sweet tiny baby.
Yesterday, I hit the early service, hit the commissary, put all the groceries away and then AdventureMan and I took our little grandson to Red Robin, where . . . . in a momentary loss of my senses, I ordered a hamburger, my second of the year. It didn’t taste as good as my 4th of July hamburger, serves me right. But we had such a fun time, and here is the grand triumph – our grandson is using a napkin! He is wiping his hands and mouth with a napkin, not with his hand or arm! Wooooo HOOOOOO! He chats and makes conversations, oh, he is so much fun.
So today, on! On! Get that laundry done! Get those files transferred!
Yesterday’s sermon was on the tendency of the most Christian of Christians to want to sit in the highest seats, and Jesus’ words to choose the lower seat and allow the host to move you up, giving you honor, rather than choosing a high seat and being asked to move lower so that someone of higher distinction can have your seat. Father Neal Goldsborough mentioned that he sees the saving-of-the-seats, the tipped chairs, the stretched out handbags all the time, and we were all squirming. We’re all guilty. It was a great sermon.
From today’s Forward Day by Day readings on the daily lectionary:
James 2:1-13. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
It’s easy to pass judgment—she’s too liberal or too conservative, his clothes are too cheap or too rich, she doesn’t believe the “right” theology, his values aren’t properly aligned, etc. As easy as passing judgment is, it can do a lot of damage.
All too often, this judgment happens in churches. Comparisons and assessments pop up, and the pews that should be a safe haven for all people become trial benches. A 2007 Barna Group survey found that 87 percent of young non-Christians perceive present-day Christianity as judgmental—and half of their churchgoing counterparts answered the same. I’d be surprised by these numbers if they didn’t ring so true with perceptions among my own friends and acquaintances.
Putting mercy above judgment does not mean moving into a slippery relativism. It means embracing the radical Good News of Jesus and living as a conduit of Christ’s love to the world. Today’s passage from the book of James precedes tomorrow’s familiar proclamation, “So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (2:17). An act of mercy is a work of faith, a witness putting Christianity in its rightful place.
Here be Bears!
While our first day had been exciting, it was also full of drenching cold rains and while AdventureMan NEVER complained, I could see he was . . . hmmmm . . . . supportive but underwhelmed. Fortunately, our next day dawned with high clouds and not a drop of rain in sight. We went immediately to the Mendenhall Glacier, something everyone sees when they are in Juneau, and, thanks be to God, it was not fogged in nor covered with rain clouds, but there, in all it’s icy blue glory:
There were iceburgs floating away, looking cool and serene:
The glacier is always awe inspiring, but there is also something else. The municipality knows that all these tour boats coming in need things to do and see, so in addition to the glacier, they have built a state-of-the-art walkway along a stream flowing from the glacier, a stream full of salmon. And when there are salmon spawning – as they are in August – and bear who are trying to store up fat for the winter, there is a wonderful confluence of needs. The salmon need to spawn, the bear need to eat and the tourists need to see something exciting. Bear chasing and eating salmon fits the bill.
This was a very very good day 🙂
No Internet??? No Wi-Fi??? No Phone Service???
No, I have not abandoned you.
When my son asked about communicating with us from Alaska, I confidently assured him “oh, Alaska will be like Africa! Land lines are so expensive to install, there will be cell towers everywhere, and besides, my iPhone is covered everywhere! I can use the internet.”
Oh Pride, Intlxpatr, Pride. You speak whereof you do not know!
Our time in Juneau was a lot of fun. From the moment we arrived, it was just so smooth. The airport is small, like Africa. You can be in and out of the airport in minutes. We picked up our car; it was so easy, the reservation was waiting, and the car is out in the small lot. It is a car a lot like our own and we really like it. Not five minutes later, we are in our room at a nearby hotel, and it is a nice room, and of course it has Wi-Fi, that’s how I sent the earlier entries.
I called an old friend of my Mother’s, a friend I remember well from my childhood, she and my mother would laugh a lot together, and our families travelled together, out on a big old Coast Guard cutter fishing in Alaska, or out to islands where we would pick berries, or out, just out, because it was a beautiful weekend and when the weather is good, Alaskans go outside.
We planned to meet up for coffee, and when we did, she was just like the old days, only older. I laughed and told her I am now older than when I knew her before. She laughed at AdventureMan’s jokes, and she had a beautiful living place near where my family used to live, with a view to die for. It reminded me of Kuwait. I could lose hours looking out her window, if I lived there. Eagles flying by, cruise ships coming in and out, the weather changing on the mountain across the way – it was a magnificent location, and it was all made even better by good coffee, good conversation and a great deal of love based on old relationships.
But we needed to go! We had things we needed to see!
This is the view from our friend’s house in West Juneau:
My old school:
Alaskan Indian art, painted over a garage door:
The beach we used to go to, called Sandy Beach. Occasionally a dead walrus would wash up there, causing no end of excitement to us young people.
AdventureMan found a piece of the sea glass I love:
I thought this school above was a lot bigger than this . . . . I remember it being a lot bigger . . . LOL!
This is our old house, many many years ago. It used to have a much bigger front yard, before they widened the road. It also seemed farther from the little grocery store near the bridge that my Mom would send me to, but it’s gotten shorter!
This is the Baranof Hotel, where my parents met. It used to be a very grand hotel, but it is now a Westmark hotel, and while it pretends to still be grand, it is shopworn and tired, and needs a major overhaul to be back in the game. We ate lunch there – to honor my parents meeting – and it was also a very mediocre meal. The very chipper waitress, Holly, tried to make it nice, but the Capitol restaurant needs better lighting and brighter colors. It was very, very dark.
Some public art. Later as we passed the same location we heard guys call out “The police are coming!” and saw them approach three men who looked like maybe they were drinking or drugging.
AdventureMan is so patient with me. When I spotted a quilt shop, he said he was going down the street and to call him when I was finished. 🙂
The best part of the day was picking up our friend for dinner, and hearing her stories. We loved hearing about Juneau in the old days, and hearing her laugh.
The SeaTac Food Court
“Terminal T? Is that new? I don’t remember arriving at Terminal T before!”
Not even two weeks have passed, and we are going through SeaTac again, this time en route to Alaska. As we enter “Terminal T” we discover terminal T is like saying “Shrimp scampi” you are saying the same thing. T is the Terminal, it used to be the only terminal. It’s what used to be the original airport before all the South Terminals and North Terminals and others I don’t even know. Oh yeh, A, B, and C.
But the Main Terminal is a delight. Seattle loves public art, as do I, and arriving in Seattle at the main terminal, you find schools of little brass fish swirling under your footsteps, if you think to look. These little touches delight me.
We are flying out of Seattle to Alaska, and Alaska Airlines flies out of terminals C or N, and as it turns out, our flight flies out of N, or the North Concourse. On our way there, we are wondering if we will find something healthy to pick up for our dinner, when we come to the Food Court.
We’ve eaten here before, breakfast. They have an Anthony’s-in-the-Airport, and my best friend recommended their breakfast egg dishes. I hate oatmeal, but discovered that the oatmeal at Anthony’s is delicious! It must not be good for me; how can oatmeal that is good for me taste so good?
And, as it turns out, Anthony’s has a take-out section! Woo Hooo!
Well, hmmmm, not quite. They don’t have the Ceasar Salad with a piece of grilled salmon or halibut on the top, but isn’t salmon and chips almost as healthy? Although in intend to wait to eat on the plane, the odor of delicious deep fried salmon calls to me, along with a cup of freshly brewed mocha, and I go ahead and eat my dinner in the Seattle airport.
I love it that there are so many options. Anthony’s has a great restaurant, right in the old main terminal, with floor to ceiling glass, it is a glorious situation. There are other eating establishments where you can order and then sit in the same area at tables and chairs – Ivars, some Mexican, some others which are good, it’s just I love the take out from Anthony’s. Normally airport food can be a total drag, unless you go through Memphis and have some BBQ – or Seattle. Seattle does airport food right.
For Unto Us a Child is Given . . .
I am hearing those wonderful lines from Handel’s Messiah, because on this wonderful day, just after noon, a new child came into this world, a treasured girl-child, a warrior-princess is born. Thanks be to God, al hamd’allah!
Her Mother’s prayer for her is that she be the child that God created her to be. She hopes her daughter has courage, and a heart for adventure. When we met her, this amazing daughter-in-law, she played rugby, and she went off to France for a year to teach English.
We all pray that she will be healthy, and compassionate, with a heart for others. Courageous and passionate, and a woman of strength who will, like her Father, “give voice to those who have no voices.”
It is taking all our strength not to run to the hospital to visit. We feel very Middle-Eastern at this time; I am remembering my friend who went to Hamad hospital to have her babies. I took her daughters there the next morning, laden with canisters of coffee to serve guests.
“Guests?” I thought to myself. I had NO idea. Our Western idea is to give the new parents and their new baby time to recover from the physical and mental exertion of giving birth, time to bond as a small family unit.
When we got to Hamad Hospital, my friend had a huge suite, like a hotel suite, and her hospital bed was maybe King sized, with a curtain that could be drawn around it. She had a wall of mirrored closets and a seating area for about twenty people. No. I am not kidding.
We got there around seven in the morning, and within fifteen minutes, guests started arriving, all women, of course, come to give congratulations to the new Mom. Each came, greeted the new Mother, sat and drank a couple cups of coffee served by the delighted older daughters, greeted their friends, cousins and new arrivals, and then departed. Waves of guests arrived, and, thank God, waves of re-inforcing coffee pots.
So so different from our own customs, but today, oh, how I would love to fill a canister or two and be at the hospital sooner, rather than later, to greet the parents and to meet my new little lion-hearted grand-daughter, who insisted she would arrive when SHE wanted, LOL, not on schedule.
Here is the quilt I made for her:
And here is the guide to the colors; I bought the border five years ago:
When AdventureMan say it, he said “that doesn’t look like a baby quilt” because it is so black and white, but, if you have eyes to see, it isn’t all black and white, it also has shades of purple, fuchsia, and a celery Spring green. I made the center Kaleidoscope pieces with a variety of blacks and whites, because babies LOVE black and white, and it can fascinate them and calm them.
I call it “I See Things Differently” because no, it doesn’t look like a baby quilt, but it is very much a baby quilt, it just doesn’t meet our cultural expectations. The longer I live, the less I meet any one’s expectations, LOL!
Thanks be to God! Thanks be to God for the safe delivery of this precious baby!
ARCO Gas Station: Something Doesn’t Feel Right
Just before leaving Seattle for the airport, I filled my gas tank. I went to an ARCO station, opened my tank lid and went to swipe my card when I saw a sign saying everyone must pay inside.
Annoying. It’s so convenient when you can just swipe your card at the point of service. I go inside and the Ethiopian woman at the counter asks me how many gallons I want.
I said “I need to fill the tank; I don’t know how many gallons. Swipe my card and then I will come in and sign the charge receipt when we know how much it is.”
She said that’s not how it works, they need to charge me and then they will give me back change. My bad. At that point I should have walked. I should have gone to the next gas station. I didn’t.
So I guessed 15 gallons, and she charged me $60. My car didn’t even take nine gallons. When I went inside, she gave me back $26.81 in cash, not refunded to my credit card. That is just such a strange way to do business.
It bothered me. What bothered me more was that when I got home and looked at my receipt, I had been charged $61.00. It’s only a dollar more, but the cost of my gas ($33.19) and my change back (26.81) add up to $60. Why was I charged $61?
Here is my dirty suspicion – she thought for $1. no one will bother complaining. If you read my previous entry, you can see why – my life is busy in its own way, but other people’s lives are busy in their ways. Who is going to made a big deal over $1.00 overcharge?
I don’t have time to deal with it right now and I will hold on to the receipts to see if I want to spend my precious time later trying to make it right. Or will I just figure my time is more precious than arguing over $1. in which case the scam works every time?
If this was a $1. charge for something, I don’t see it anywhere on the receipts. Do you? Why would they charge me for the inconvenience of buying gas in such a convoluted way?
I will NEVER go to that gas station again.
Second thought: Maybe I should just think of it as a charitable contribution?
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