| Saturday, August 6, 2005 |
20:41 - Plan B 1/2
|
(top)  |
Okay, well, today was going to be Barrow.
We got up at 5:00 to be out and ready for the River's Edge Resort shuttle bus to the airport; we stood in line, got our tickets, went through the stringent security for this flight to the heavily guarded terrorism-prone metropolis of Barrow, got on the plane, and sat down... but unfortunately it turned out that the flight (it's on a 737-200 Combi, a half-passenger half-cargo plane with room for about fifty) had been badly oversold, and our seats were being occupied by some people who had been booked straight through from Anchorage to Barrow and been told that their seats would not change for this leg. We clearly had the more morally-superior seating arrangement, but when after a lot of fluttering and barking between flight attendants and booking agents it became clear that they could just put us on tomorrow's flight and get us in with the River's Edge tour that would occur tomorrow, we volunteered to give up our seats in the interest of getting the flight off the ground. They gave us vouchers for a free flight anywhere Alaska Airlines flies during the coming year, as well as getting us booked on tomorrow's equivalent trip; pretty sweet, since it meant we could just use today as the do-random-stuff-in-Fairbanks day and have tomorrow for Barrow after being nice and rested. Plus it was raining in Barrow today, and not being able to see the sun there seems like a disappointment. (Further inspection reveals that tomorrow will be even more rainy up there, so I guess that's not really an improvement. But oh well.)
So Fairbanks it was, today. The forest fires continue to blanket the valley with all-concealing haze, but it didn't interfere with such things as a trip through the University of Alaska Museum, with a lot of great human and natural history exhibits. We also ate at a Pho place near the hotel; you can find good Pho just about anywhere, it seems. We also did laundry and put the car through three successive washes, both pressure-hose and hand-administered, to try to get the bugs and dust off. They've both proved quite resilient. The car's in for a serious hand-wash once we get home. Other than that, though, it's behaved very well, the only exception being that the cruise control stopped working as we came across the Yukon/Alaska border two days ago; it came back to life after the car was shut off and restarted, though, so whatever that was about, it seems to be over now.
It'll be an early night tonight, as we're repeating this morning's exercise tomorrow. I'm sure it'll be worth it, though.
|
|
Brian Tiemann
