Goodbye Alaska!

My time here in Alaska is coming to an end. It was a fun adventure and I am glad to have shared it with my two new traveling buddies Elizabeth and Jandiz. I am already beginning to feel the hot NY summer and am actually looking forward to it after weeks of cold grey rainy days. There was a chance I would return here in a couple of weeks, but that isn’t looking like it will happen so I have been cut loose and am attempting to get home on my own. If you happen to see me on the side of the road please stop and give me a lift. I have beer.

I am a Salty Dog

We recently landed in Homer, AK which is the last stop on our tour of Alaska. We didn’t waist much time and headed to the “Salty Dog.” The place looks like something out of a Scooby Doo cartoon. I met a few locals and sampled the local brews. The local brewery bottles their brew in empty Sobe bottles. Pure Genius. I know what I am telling Scott next time I am at the Captain Lawrence Brewery.

Spit Will Work in a Pinch

That’s according to a drunken fisherman in Sitka who gets all MacGyver when he forgets his moisturizing hand lotion after a long day in salty seas. Recently I was in a pinch as I was rigging a C-Stand and didn’t have a sandbag to counterweight the light. Fortunately Dan came through with a cinderblock that got us out of the pinch. A cinderblock will work in a pinch.

Learning to Fly

WOW! What a day of flying! We had to take 3 flights in order to get to a place that isn’t that far from where we started. That’s enough flying to turn Jandiz upside down. First we had a 6am flight from Sitka to Juneau on a Boeing 737. The flight lasted a whole 27 minutes. By far the shortest flight I have been on that actually landed where and when it was supposed to. We picked up passengers in Juneau and continued on to Anchorage in the same 737. In Anchorage we deplaned the 737 and switched airlines to one that had service to Kodiak on a Dash 8. This is where things got interesting. If you fly out of Anchorage on a small prop plane THERE IS NO SECURITY. That’s right – no TSA, no metal detectors, no x-ray machines, no nothing. Nada - zilch. You check in at the counter as usual, get your boarding pass, go down the escalator, and you are at the gate. All you have to do is show your library card and your boarding pass and you are good to go. The ironic thing is that from the moment you enter the terminal to the time you pass through the gate, a woman on a loudspeaker keeps repeating that the terror alert is code orange.

Speaking of flying, I have an interesting flight coming up next week. I’ll be flying from Kodiak to Dutch Harbor. The interesting thing about flying into Dutch Harbor is that THERE IS NO AIRPORT. Their “airport” is actually an emergency landing strip with a large mountain at each end and water on the sides. That design allows the pilots to have a large margin of error. This landing strip also intersects with the main street in the town, so when a plane is landing or taking off they have to block off Main Street - railroad crossing style! Wait, don’t go surfing for porn yet, there is more interesting info about flying into Dutch Harbor. You see, no airport means no instruments so everything is done visually. Not too big of a deal on a clear day, but in Dutch Harbor it rains at least 280 days out of the year and is cloudy for the remaining 85. So, as the pilot approaches the landing strip he radios to someone on the ground and asks if they can see the runway. This “someone” is usually a high school student on summer vacation or a retired WWII vet. If “someone” can’t see the runway the pilot will either circle and wait for the strip to become visible, or turn around an go back to the airport of origin in hopes of trying again the next day. Well, more variables = more exciting travel = more attendance at AA meetings for The Captain. Cheers.

A Drinking Town with a Fishing Problem

That about sums up the scene here in Sitka. A typical day for me begins with waking up at 8:45am, showering, walking down to the hotel conference room and shooting interviews in a dark room for 10-12 hours. Then we grab a quick dinner and head to the bars where we get assaulted by fishermen. The fishermen like Elisabeth and Jandiz but they REALLY like me. I never expected this. I feel very womanly even though one of the few women in this town told me that I am “oozing with masculinity.” It is getting weird here. Next town please.

Alaska Photo Album

Well, I am having a blast here in Alaska with the lovely Elisabeth and Jandiz. I just uploaded a photo album that I will be adding to as the trip progresses. You can check it out here:

Bill's Alaska Photo Album

Well, I have to run and get some sushi. Enjoy the photos!

Greetings from Sitka, Alaska!

Long time no blog. Things have been really busy since returning from China, but I have been a bad Captain and not blogging. I apologize to everyone who has been sitting at his or her computers anxiously awaiting a new blog post. I know there are many of you ;)

Anyway, I am on a new adventure. I am going to 3 towns in Alaska for a new project. Right now I am in Sitka, then off to Kodiak, and finally Unalaska. Sitka is an interesting place. It is ALWAYS cloudy and rains several times per day. It is a fishing town inhabited with mostly….fisherman. There are more mustaches in this town than women. When I showed up with my 2 female co-workers the female population doubled. It makes for a very interesting bar scene to say the least.

As soon as we landed we hit the trails and went on an awesome hike. The above photo is from the first moments of that hike. I have several more photos, so please stay tuned!