Day Twenty-One - 11/6/07 - Failure in Seward, Return to Muddy Anchorage

On the grand scale of almost all-encompassing Alaskan awesomeness, Seward scores a big fat zero. We had set aside today to go sea kayaking and then visit the Seward Sealife Center at this beautiful coastal town, but yesterday’s clear skies and incredible views were gone by this morning. Instead: fog, clouds, cold, and almost zero visibility. As we arrived at the docks and kayak rental place, we were pumped for maritime exploration and ready to over represent our kayak expertise (the kayak lady had grilled poor Gordon over the phone about advanced kayak navigation and emergency procedures). Looking out over the water, however, it was clear (haha) that you couldn’t see anything out on the water. It would just be a waste of money and time to paddle around in the dense fog.

Oh well, there was still the Sealife Center, right? Beluga whales and electric eels and Mr. Popper’s Penguins awaited us! …Only when we arrived, hoping to salvage our morning, the all-star lineup of sea creatures was on the other side of a devastatingly locked door. The aquarium had, insidiously, waited to see what day we would be in town, then invented a ludicrous line about being closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Brad, who had been the most excited about seeing the coast and the Alaskan sea life, looked to be on the brink of tears, and about to make this face:

We were deflated. Gordon had donned his spandex underwear for nothing,

we weren’t going to see any flipping fish, and this was our last stop along the coast before heading inland again. We stopped at a coffee shop to regroup, where many seats were already populated by the local salty sea dogs. These guys were perfect: wool caps, Carhart overalls, rubber boots and stubble. Brad sketched the rowdy lot as I quizzed us from Trivial Pursuit cards at our table. One question claimed that the Earth’s atmosphere was 120 miles thick, to which Brad snorted, eye-widened, table-pounded, and satisfaction-demanded. Prof. Brad Alston, our resident space and planetary expert, insisted that the atmosphere was no more than 30 miles thick. I told Brad that the benevolent and wise Trivial Pursuit would never lie, so we agreed to ask the great wizard Internet at the next opportunity, though acknowledging that the easily manipulated Minister of Knowledge Sir Wikipedia just the other day had flippantly called the northern lights “gay.”

The rest of the day was spent around Anchorage, which was wearing on me. I’ve enjoyed our time in the city, especially staying with our couchsurfing angel from heaven, Nick, but the city itself seems out of place in Alaska. Here in Anchorage, the American way is alive and well, equally bloated and commercial despite being thousands of miles from the geographical heartland. With the dramatic, pristine mountains as a backdrop, the Anchorage area represents the same urban sprawl one would find in some no name town in Jersey.

Despite my stated distaste, I was nonetheless happy to find a Wal-mart where I could get a full refund on the Canada purchased and fried power converter. To find Darren a new camera battery, we also stopped at a Best Buy, which inside looked like every other Best Buy you’ve ever seen, except this one had a demo station for the video game “Rock Band.” It’s just like Guitar Hero except it has a drum set and a vocal component too. I sat down at the drum set, Gordon manned the microphone, and we tried to play Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So.” The video game drum set turned out to be broken, so I sat sheepishly as my character quickly got booed off the stage, and Gordon continued belting out tunes. I don’t think he realized how loudly he was singing, but his heartfelt renditions of “Vasoline” and “Black Hole Sun” rang loudly throughout the entire store. Eventually a supervisor came over and told us that he knew we were having fun, but we needed to have a little less fun from now on.

Tonight, Darren went to see guitarist Bill Frisell in concert at the University of Anchorage, as Brad, Gordon and I went on a mission to the ocean. Having been thwarted at every attempt to experience the Alaskan waters during the day, we decided to simply drive to the Anchorage coast. This proved difficult, especially because of the crappy map we were using from our tour book. The Let’s Go! Alaska guide has been occasionally good to us (showing us the glacier from a few days ago, and pointing out a few nice hidden places to camp), and often very bad to us (claiming the Sea Center was open all week, and infuriatingly, mapping out nonexistent streets all over Anchorage). Anyway, we ended up having to scamper through a few back yards and hop a fence before wandering out onto what we thought was a beach. Through the darkness, the ocean seemed near, and so we ventured out on the frozen, partially grassy beach. As we walked, the ground became increasingly muddy and soft, like wet clay. The meager beams from our headlamps barely penetrated the mist, and we didn’t hear any ocean. Underfoot, the clay gripped each step with more tenacity, making wet macaroni shhplop sounds as we ambled forth.

At this point in the movie in which we were characters, the camera would zoom out to a long and high crane shot, showing the three unfortunate young men who suddenly realize that they’re standing on a giant sleeping mud monster. It abruptly wakes up and eats our heroes.

Still seeing no evidence of any water other than the stuff saturating the ground, and increasingly wary of mud monsters, we cut our losses and retreated back the way we came, back over shhploppy ground, through the drain tunnel, over the fence, across the backyards.

Eventually we found a park overlooking the water, where on a clear day one can see the peak of Mt. Denali/McKinley. The Anchorage skyline glimmered in the distance.

After picking up Darren, he told us a local story about the Anchorage mudflats, where we’d apparently wandered earlier. According to Nick, the flats get extremely dense and muddy during parts of the year. About a decade ago a fat woman walked onto the mudflats and sank in waist deep. When no one could pull her out by hand, the emergency crews strapped her into a harness which was tied to a rescue helicopter. The helicopter subsequently ripped her entire body in half trying to extricate her. Brad, as our certified skeptic and expert on mudflats, laughed incredulously and shouted that there was “no way that fucking happened.” Back at Nick’s house, we went online and saw that the story was indeed an urban legend. Also, the Earth’s atmosphere is apparently about 100km, or 62 miles thick. Brad called the Internet a liar.

The others finally turned in, and I stayed up late reading about the northern lights, plotting.

Day Twenty - 11/5/07 - Aurora Borealis Is So Homosexual

It was strange to see our surroundings in the daylight this morning. The Homer Spit is a narrow strip of land jutting out into Kachemak Bay on the Kenai Penninsula on the southern coast of Alaska.


All the Alaskans we talked to seemed to regard the Homer area as one of the jewels of Alaska, earning it the nickname “The Cosmic Hamlet by the Sea.”

We spent the early morning enjoying the view from the beach, which had cleared of the drizzle and fog of the night before to reveal sparkling mountains and a sleepy village seated on the hill behind us. The rocky beach was littered with driftwood and snake-like seaweed that had scared the crap out of us in the dark, and in the light were merely grotesque and kinda phallic.

Darren tames some phallic snake-seaweed

Brad engages in his daily morning chop

Before leaving Homer, we stopped in at the local meadery and brewery for a taste of the famous local brews, then were on our way to Seward, a city on the other end of Kenai Penninsula, named after the Secretary of State under Lincoln who, in 1867, negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia for 10 Chuck-E-Cheese arcade tokens and some pocket lint. Because of the influx of Russian Orthodox missionaries to Alaska during the years of Russian rule, much of the native culture in Alaska is still infused with Russian Orthodoxy. We stopped by a beautiful Russian Orthodox church on a hilltop on our way out of Homer.

At this point we’ve been in The Yukon and Alaska for nine days and hadn’t yet seen the fabled northern lights – many evenings have been overcast, and we didn’t camp outside during our time in Anchorage. Tonight, however, at a snowy campground about 30 miles outside Seward, the sky was cloudless, the moon was in hiding, and man-made lights were nowhere near. Conditions were perfect. After dinner, we decided the wood we’d gathered was too frozen for a fire, so Gordon and Darren retreated to the tent as Brad and I stood outside scanning the heavens for those unmistakable blue-green ribbons.

The Big Dipper was dipping, Mars was piercing and orange, and the Milky Way ran overhead like a galactic superhighway. Aurora Borealis c’mon dude what are you waiting for? We’re standing on a picnic table in Alaska, freezing our tails off, what more do you want? Do your thang, solar particles.

There Brad and I stood.

And stood.

And stood.

The stars were nice and all, but I came to Alaska with three explicit but attainable goals:

1.) See a moose

2.) See the peak of Mt. Denali

3.) See the northern lights

We’d seen a moose a couple days ago, and Denali was still coming up on the trip, but we were running out of nights to see these stupid lights. Every time we stopped in a gas station store and saw pictures of the northern lights all over postcards, books, and posters, taunting me, I’d get a bit angrier at the lucky photographers who were enveloped daily by streaming solar particles, and a bit anxious-er that we’d leave Alaska and not see the heavens open up and fart out those beautiful streaks of galactic green.

The northern lights were being shy, or jerks, or both. A piece of Wikipedia vandalism perhaps stated it best:

A few hours into our stakeout, a bit delirious from the cold, Brad and I spotted a light splash slowly appear on the horizon. Was that it? It wasn’t green, but it also wasn’t moving like a cloud would. It was just a bright smear absent any moonlight, and it sort of fazed in and out of existence.

“Is that it? It definitely is. What else could it be? Yep, that’s definitely the northern lights.” I tried to sound confident and convincing to Brad.

“No, we’re morons. It’s just a cloud.”

“…But no, clouds would move. It’s definitely the northern lights.”

This went on for a half hour before we decided to run over to where a light from a nearby barn seemed to be right under the phantom northern-cloud-lights. Upon reaching the light, we could no longer see the bright spot in the sky. We’d been duped by a barn light and some mist. We’d been just two suckers standing in the cold, borderline hallucinating, wishfully imbuing clouds with aurorial mysticism.

Brad (aka Kyle from South Park) rubs his feet for warmth as we wait out the northern lights

Although Brad even then wasn’t totally convinced of what we had or hadn’t seen, I said I’d had enough and we huffed our way into our sleeping sacks, pissed off at the Sun and the magnetic poles for failing us yet again.

Day Nineteen - 11/4/07 - The Homer Spit

Surprised that we felt rested on an average amount of sleep, we puttered around our cabin for an extra hour before the Pats game with our gift from grandpa daylight savings time. The start of the game was rough; Bryan and I watched as the Colts’ defense matched the Pats’ offense. Ray stopped by to drop off extra sheets and tell us we could watch the rest of the game. Bryan hinted at being the mother of his children, but Ray interpreted the interaction as a simple display of gratitude, leaving Bryan heartbroken. Good always triumphs, though, and the Pats finally exacted their revenge for last year’s AFC game. Brad was relieved that it was all over and we packed up. We noticed a Dior scarf on the table that we thought was Ivan’s, so we took it along. (Later, I called Ivan telling him that I had retrieved his scarf. He said, “What scarf?” I said, “The Dior one in Ray’s cabin.” He said, “I think that was decoration.” We had found our first present for Nick and friends.)

The drive from Kenai to Homer was unremarkable because we made it mostly in the dark. Upon our arrival in Homer, we drove to the famous “Salty Dawg” bar which we found, unsurprisingly, closed for the season. We made our way back to the little “park” which was a beach with a gazebo. Surveying the land, we found the gazebo the most suitable place for our tent, encouraged by the sign on it which read, “No Camping.”

The sand on the beach was covered with terrifying pieces of seaweed that in the dark resembled large snakes; they had round heads the size of softballs and long, hollow tails at least eight feet long.

With a tarp as a makeshift wall and some clam chowder, we hunkered down in the drizzle and rested for our tour of the peninsula the next day.

Day Eighteen - 11/3/07 - Kenai Join Your Band?

We woke up on Saturday, and readied ourselves for what would be the most exciting day we’d had in a few. (Note: If you sit around on your computer for 2 or 3 days straight, then whatever happens the next day will automatically be ‘the most exciting day you’ve had in a few’.)

The adventure of this day took place at the end of a random, bizarre and almost unbelievable series of coincidences:

1. Darren wasn’t even a part of our trip until later on. If we hadn’t met up with him during Outdoor Center, he wouldn’t have come with us.

2. Nextly (Is that a word? Sure. Cram the red squiggles up your ass, Microsoft Word) we decided to go to Anchorage first rather than Fairbanks on our way into Alaska, despite the trajectory of the Alaska Highway.

3. In Anchorage, we just randomly ended up finding Nick on couchsurfing, and he was the only one who replied to us.

4. Nick and his housemates happened to be part of a band.

5. We happened to be staying right until they played a show in Kenai.

6. Lee, the drummer, who according to himself is extremely organized with his bookings, and has never before in his life double-booked himself, double-booked himself for that exact show.

7. Darren is also a drummer.

You see where this is going. He gladly accepted their pleas, Lee went to do his other show, and Darren practiced with the band for about a day to sit in for Lee for the full show. Early Saturday afternoon we headed down to Kenai behind Nick and Ivan. For some reason Ivan was wearing his Halloween costume again.

We drove down with them, stopping only for pizza along the way, despite the fact that we were already late for the show. As we drove, we wondered where exactly we were going. What sort of show was this? Where was the venue? We hadn’t bothered to ask them, so we had no idea if it was some sort of dive bar, or jazz club or fancy restaurant. Two hours later we pulled into the parking lot of Kenai Central High School. That was unexpected. It turns out the band was playing as part of the Kenaitze Indian Tribe festival that was happening that day in Kenai. We helped the band move their stuff backstage, and were greeted with the “parents getting ready for a school musical” vibe behind the high school stage as we moved stuff in. We met Ira, the keyboardist, and a cheery guy called Steve who was one of the singers in the band, and then Gordon, Bryan and I went to take our seats in the auditorium, while Darren prepared with the band. When we were picturing the band playing in some seedy bar, we did not expect this:

Nick, Ivan, Lee and Ira, and sometimes Darren (It’s like the band members are vowels and Darren is ‘Y’) play as the rhythm section for a well-known Native Alaskan funk band called Pamyua (BUM-yo-ah). The band, which consists of four singers including Steve and his brother, who you will meet later, does traditional Yup’ik song and dance and modern funk interpretations from their native roots. It’s really spectacular stuff, and the only drawback was that we had to sit through the bizarre Kenaitze ‘school-play’ caliber opening performance before we could watch Pamyua perform. This was supposed to be a history of the Kenaitze tribe, but consisted of vague, awkward vignettes where kids who didn’t say anything stared at each other on stage.

We really enjoyed a fur-hatted portrayal of a Russian Orthodox missionary too

Then there was a part where 10-year-old girls posing as white tourists came and threw litter all over the stage for like half an hour straight while awkward, badly sung music played in the background. We found out later that Steve was sitting like 2 rows behind us with his daughter, looking toward us periodically to see if we were as weirded out as he was. We were.

After the opening act ended, and there was a brief intermission, we finally got to see the band perform. It started with just the four singers, doing traditional Yup’ik songs and chants and dances, which were really incredible. Then they did some beautiful a cappella tribal songs, and then the rhythm section came out and, now that they’d shown the roots of their culture and music, they went into their main funk world music, with Darren banging away in the background. It was an awesome show. The singers, from left to right are Ossie, Steve, Karina, and Phillip, Steve’s brother.

The band was really random and high-energy and would just improv stuff or dance ridiculously whenever they wanted to. Toward the end of it, Steve leaned off the stage and basically forced Bryan and I to join them on stage. A group of child athletes was also on stage doing triple jumps. To be honest, I wasn’t totally sure what was going on at this point, I was suddenly on stage dancing and competing with 9-year-olds. Steve, in the middle of the performance, had Bryan and I doing these jumps where we started on our knees and landed on our feet. He then took me to the front of the stage and tried to show me how to do a triple jump from watching the kids do it. I had a lot of trouble understanding how it was done. Steve then pointed at this tiny girl who was about to go, and with the intensity of Rocky’s coach, said, “You have to beat her!” I looked at the tiny little girl with her big Bambi eyes, and looked questioningly back at Steve. The girl did her delicate little triple jump. Steve all but shoved me into the front of the line, and I kind of shut my eyes, and did the jump as best I could. I actually went pretty far, and I definitely beat that little girl! Yeeah! Try that again in ma house, Bitch!”

After that, the show wound down and ended after a fun bit where there were just like a hundred people on stage dancing. I spent that time as the only white guy on stage, standing behind Ossie trying to copy the traditional dance he was doing. Once the show ended, we realized that we’d lost Darren’s camera case when we were taking pictures of him drumming, although we still had his camera. After searching the auditorium without success, we finally just piled into the car, and went off to get dinner. The four of us, along with Ira, Nick, Ivan, Phillip and Steve, grabbed some beers for later that night and went out to eat at the only open restaurant in Kenai at that hour. Steve’s young daughter Anouk also accompanied us. We had a grand meal at Louie’s Restaurant, whose walls were absolutely covered with animal heads and skins, as well as some weird human face thing.

Steve’s daughter, Anouk, was hilarious. I think she was about 5. At one point when we were done eating, Ira said something about her having a heart on her shirt, because there was a picture of a heart on her shirt. Anouk then started saying that Ira had a heart on everything. “You have a heart on yooour legs!” and “You have a heart on youuur head!” The faster she said it, the more it started to sound like she was saying ‘hard-on’ rather than ‘heart on’, so everyone at the table was laughing hysterically, while Anouk, being egged on by Steve, was laughing and shouting “You have a heart on your face!” “You have a heart on- in your mouth!” Steve’s suggestions for where he should have a ‘heart-on’ got more lewd and funny, until we finally paid the check and headed to wherever we were spending the night.

Our little band caravan headed into the cold, dark Kenai night, into these random back roads toward some lodge where we were supposedly staying. The band had been there before apparently, but we had no idea where we were going. We arrived at this gorgeous house in the middle of the woods, that was near a bunch of other smaller cabins. The guy who ran this place, a guy called Ray who was possibly one of the friendliest, most hospitable people I’ve ever met, gave us several places to sleep, including a small lodge that the we, the four travelers, had all to ourselves. We drove to our cabin, which was the most incredible, luxurious place we stayed on the trip, and unloaded our stuff, then had everybody over. A couple of people went to bed, but when we got out the beers, it was us four, Ivan, Phillip and Steve. Ray had said something about there being two 21-year-old girls in the cabin next to ours. I think Ivan and Gordon went to go say hi, but Ivan’s strategy of saying ‘hii’ in a deep voice and asking the girls if they were ‘shy’ didn’t work. They did not come over.

We played a breakneck game of Quarters, a pretty famous drinking game I’ve never played before, which has many variations. Ours went that if you could bounce a quarter into an empty glass in front of you, it moved on to the next person, and if you got lapped, you drank. We started with two glasses. I was absolutely god-awful at this game at the beginning. I got lapped like 19 times in a row and was well on my way beyond anyone else by about 10 minutes into the game. Steve and Phillip thought this deficiency of mine was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. I got better though, and started taking people by surprise and destroying others as the game went on. It turned into one of those great nights in life where everyone was so happy and having so much fun, that they just screamed ear-piercingly every time ANYTHING happened. Luckily Bryan took some photos during it:

After the game, things wound down a bit. Bryan fell asleep a little on the couch. Darren and I hung out on the porch with Steve and talked about Scandinavian Death Metal, Thanksgiving, and a myriad of other things. After a bit, we were back inside talking about things we should do on the Kenai peninsula. Steve and Phillip told us a million stories about their travels, about the time they banged up their rental car on the Alaska Highway, and all the things to do down south, including a beautiful Russian Orthodox church, and a drive you could do on the beach.

Finally, everybody left one by one as it got late. We said goodbye and got into our gorgeous beds of which we each had our own, and which were not air mattresses, tent floors or couches. It was a good day.

If you’re interested, check out the band at www.pamyua.com

Day Seventeen - 11/2/07 - A Lazy Friday in Anchorage

The Anchorage Museum of History and Art

We also saw “American Gangster,” which was kinda disappointing. C’mon Denzel you always act so self righteous. You’re supposed to be a freaking stone-cold killer gangster.

Day Sixteen - 11/1/07 - The Haunted Halloween Hangover/ Pickin’ Up My Dawg at the Bear’s Tooth

After staying up to an hour at which we would have seen the morning sun had we not been in Alaska, we groggily greeted the first day of November around noon. Despite the pounding in my head and the gang of gremlins in my stomach throwing a house party, it was comforting to wake up with a real roof over my head and a sparkling Gretsch drumset next to me. As much as I love these guys, there is something about the sight of beautiful birch drums waiting silently for me upon waking that soothes me to the core. They don’t snore, they don’t hog the blanket, and they don’t emit poison from their anus without warning, drums don’t even need an anus. They’re sort of like Jesus in that way (this relates to an earlier discussion we had about a 19th Century Pope declaring that Jesus did not defecate and therefore had no anus). As I stirred about in my toasty sleeping bag trying to figure out where I was and recollect the events of the previous night, only one regret came to mind: late night shots of Patron. I seem to have inherited this habit from my brother, but I tend to convince myself and those around me that expensive shots of tequila are just what the doctor ordered at the end of the night. Brad was smart enough not to give into my Halloween trickery, but the rest of us had to wrestle our Mexican cousins for the better part of the next day.

We slowly yet triumphantly emerged from our respective sleeping quarters, Brad and Gordon from the garage and Bryan and I from the basement music studio, and we gradually began to form coherent sentences. Our couchsurfing host Nick, who had not had anything to drink the night before, but partied just as hard as anyone and boogied down with the most beautiful girl in Anchorage, lent us the motivation we needed and soon we were off on foot to the local market to pick up some breakfast provisions: eggs, cheese, bacon, and toast. There’s nothing quite like the morning after camaraderie of cooking or going out for a big breakfast after a particularly exquisite bender. It’s one of those “we’re all in this together” sorts of things. You piece together the events of the previous night, tell some funny stories…that combined with some solid food quells the gremlins and turns them back into cuddly little mogwai.

We lazed about for most of the afternoon, taking much needed showers and getting entranced by our computer screens as we tend to do from time to time. Let it not be said that we are addicted to LCD, we are the computer generation, and our level of symbiosis with our electronic companions is frightening in a Terminator-we-elected-a-robot-from-the-future-to-be-governor-of-California kind of way, but normal in a hey-we-can-find-the-answers-to-our-questions-at-the-push-of-a-button kind of way. I think I’m somewhat of an anomaly in this scenario, because I hate my computer. The only reason I have it with me on this trip is so that I can complete this online course and finally graduate from college. It is absolutely the bane of my existence and I fantasize about throwing it off of tall buildings to its imminent and glorious demise. That this is not the normal response to the modern day necessity of computers has dawned on me only recently. I was initially astonished by the level of comfort and lack of frustration exhibited by Bryan and Brad whilst on their computers. Their laptops function as if they were some sort of cerebral annex, with no synaptic disconnect between the human body and its electronic counterpart. The fact that it takes Bryan’s computer 5 seconds to do anything that would take my computer 5 minutes probably has something to do with it, but in my family, the reactions to computers have always been confusion, frustration, and rage, tolerance at best. Though my current trajectory has me staying as far away from computers as possible (working in the woods where my most complex piece of equipment is a compass, maybe a cell phone), my experience on this trip may be enough to convince me that a peace between man and machine is possible…nah, that’s actually never going to happen, I will officially be reverting to the oral tradition for the remainder of this blog…

Okay, fine, but don’t think for a second that you’ve heard it all just because you’ve been reading the blog…there’s plenty more going on here than you computer-toggling jerks can tell, go out and ride a bike, play with your children, take a friend out to lunch, do something healthy instead of increasing the curvature of your spine as you drool all over your keyboard…

Sorry, got a little out of hand there, you’re not jerks, you’re all lovely people, it’s just kind of a touchy subject for me.

Anyway, after we came out of our trance, we got ourselves together enough to be proactive and go to the Bear’s Tooth to buy tickets for the evening’s festivities: The David Grisman Quartet live in Anchorage. To our dismay, tickets were sold out, so we pouted and went back to Nick’s place in order to see if we could find some online. We tried to no avail, resolving in the end to head to the show a bit early in hopes of sifting out some extra tickets from the crowd.

Now the Bear’s Tooth merits some explanation. It’s kind of like the Wal-Mart of Anchorage entertainment, but much cooler and lacking door-greeters with speech impediments. The Bear’s Tooth is a concert venue, movie theater, brewery, pizza/burrito joint and upscale bar and grill all-in-one. They use the same area for concerts as they do for movies. For movies, the place is set up so that there are alternating rows of seats with tables in between. You can head out into the lobby, pick yourself up an Alaskan salmon burrito and a fresh microbrew, take it into the theater and enjoy your movie. For concerts, they simply take out all of the seats and tables and you have a legit theater a la Orpheum, Colonial, or Palace (yeah collective hometown!). For this particular night, our homeboy Ivan Night was helping out with sound and it was excellent, but first I need to rewind a bit.

Trying to get 4 (it later turned into 5 with Lee’s arrival) tickets to a sold out show can be somewhat of a daunting task. Having been the scruffy longhair trying to score tickets everywhere from Phish shows at Hampton to Ron Carter’s 70th birthday at Carnegie Hall, I was up to the task. As politely as possible, this Masshole got up in the collective grill of the Alaskan bluegrass crowd and asked if anyone had any extra tickets. I was surprised at how nice and genuinely sympathetic these hearty Alaskans were, seeing these poor smelly young men from out of town eagerly hoping for their chance to see a living bluegrass legend. Our first ticket came from a woman whom we didn’t even ask; her husband couldn’t make it, so it was one down, three to go. This old guy came through and said he had an extra waiting at will call and he’d come right back out, he didn’t. Another guy said that we should await the arrival of a short woman named Abby who would have an extra ticket for us. So every remotely short or stocky woman who came by from then on got a tentative “Abby?” from one of us. Abby never showed up, but sure enough we got tickets one by one until we were all guaranteed entrance into the show. Lee showed up part way through and his tactics were much less subtle, yelling out “tickets!” to everyone within a hundred foot radius of the front door. We were relieved to have all gotten tickets, and even though we’d just been to the ATM, Brad needed to go again. So Bryan, Gordon, and I went in and grabbed a pitcher of freshly tapped beer as Brad proceeded to get lost within the five minute walk from the Bear’s Tooth to the ATM which we had just done a mere half hour before. Bryan was legitimately worried that something might have happened to Brad while I refused to accept that as a possibility. Gordon went out to search for Brad as Bryan and I sipped on the sweet nectar and soaked up the vibe. Soon enough Brad wandered in, issuing only a nonchalant “What? I got lost” in response to our collective “Whahappend?”

So we made our way into the theater minutes before the start of the show and breezed through the comfortably spaced Alaskan crowd to within feet of the stage. There were a lot of old timers in the crowd, a few dancing gypsies, maybe a shovel-full of people our age and a palpable excitement and anticipation of the show to come. Soon enough the lights were down and the maestros had taken the stage. For those of you who are not familiar, David Grisman, or “Dawg” as he is affectionately known, is a living legend of the mandolin. Famed for his solo work as well as his collaborations with the greats Stephane Grappelli, Doc Watson, and Jerry Garcia, there is no mandolin player on Earth who is as widely acclaimed as the Dawg. This was sure to be a treat, and they did not disappoint. Dawg has been doing his thing since long before the four of us were born, and I always enjoy seeing a performer who is fully actualized and integrated with their craft. The band took us through a chronology of Dawg recordings including blueses, waltzes, and some shredding uptempo numbers that really got the boots a thumpin’. Dawg was in a gypsy swing kind of mood, so they played a lot of stuff from his work with Grappelli.

Coming into the show, I was most excited to see Dawg, but what I was most impressed with was his band. Some of these guys have been playing with Dawg for over 25 years and had played on those classic recordings with Jerry Garcia. The interplay between the strings was remarkable in its subtlety and taste. Perhaps the best thing about the band was “Flutor,” the spandex-wearing flute player who was most entertaining during the other band members’ solos in which he would bop around with an ecstatic grin on his face as if each note was the greatest thing that had ever happened. The youngest and newest member of the band was the guitarist Frank Vignola, who bared an uncanny resemblance to Becket’s own Dave Cantler. According to Nick, Vignola is one of those guitarist’s guitarists who guitar nerds drool over at conventions the world over. Every single solo this guy took was amazing. I think the rest of the band was positively frightened by his prowess on the guitar and the rousing ovation he got from this Alaskan crowd after each solo. He even teased “Stairway to Heaven” while trading fours with the other guys in the band; that was enough to make everyone in the audience who’d ever touched a guitar squeal with delight. The bluegrass powerhouse rolled on, the microbrews kept flowing, and I felt extremely happy to be there. At the end of the encore, Dawg threw his pick out into the crowd, and it hit me in the chest. It took me a moment to realize what had just happened, but once I did, I took out my cell phone and used its light to search the ground for treasure. Sure enough I picked up the pick amongst the envious stares and comments of numerous grizzly Alaskan dudes. I felt just like Charlie Bucket…I wanted to run home and tell Grandpa Joe. I’ve never won anything in my life, not a raffle, not a lottery ticket, not a sports championship…actually I won the Dare poster contest in 5th grade, but that doesn’t have the same random component to it and that was 13 years ago. Anyway, I felt like the good graces of the folks upstairs were shining down upon me and rewarding me for taking on this great journey. To my delight and cosmic boon, this feeling stayed with me throughout our time in Alaska, and this was only the second night, read on…

Day Fifteen - 10/31/07 - Of Ents, Glaciers, and Chewbacca

We woke up this morning in our riverbed, eager to experience Alaskan metropolis. Forgoing breakfast, we jumped in the car and headed to our only stop on the way to Anchorage: Matanuska glacier.

At the end of a winding road, we found a gate blocking the way to our glacier. A store sat off the road, with a large and friendly wolf-dog guarding the entrance. With a tummy-scratch, we made it past the sentry and into the wondrous shop filled with walrus tusks, books on the northern lights, and candy bars. Behind the counter, almost blending into the wood behind him stood the keeper of the glacier. Creakingly coming to life, we were not entirely sure if he was all man or part ent. Lacking the courtesy to ask his name, we donned him Ent Man. Frozen by both his steady gaze and tufts of chest hair pouring from his many layers, we engaged in conversation.

We told him where we camped the night before, and he informed us that it often reached -40 there. Asking him if he had ever had the pleasure of staying at that campsite, he replied quickly, “Hell no!” Our halting conversation continued with Darren asking him if there was much snow on the ground around Anchorage. Before setting his mind to that question, the Ent Man explored the reason behind Darren’s inquiry. Socratically, he posed, “Do you want snow?” Brad and Bryan gave a delayed “ehhh,” I did a head nod/shake, but Darren saved us from noncommittal awkwardness with a heartened “Yes!” The Ent Man pondered over this response in the depths of his Ent brain and as light flickered back into his eyes, he set his gaze upon Darren and again digging to the depths of Darren’s being asked, “Is there something wrong with you?”

Emerging from his lair, we ventured toward the glacier, silently questioning our identities in light of the Ent Man’s wisdom. We parked the car and walked along a short path which led to a picnic table. On the picnic table was a sign reading, “Warning: do not proceed unless you are accompanied by a guide or have extensive glacier experience.”

Brad and Bryan, having recently studied a glacier at close proximity, declared their experience extensive and we wandered onto the awesome and potentially dangerous mass of ice. A light covering of snow frosted the hulking blue ice which was slowly pushing mounds of dirt and rock down the valley. Over a small ice ridge, we beheld a cerulean cavern and clambered quickly toward it to capture the most captivating pictures of our journey to date.

We explored, climbed, stomped, created echoes, broke icicles, and took in the majesty of this natural wonder. Finally we grew cold and hungry for the city and departed. Our first stop was the city library where we found free washrooms and internet. Darren also found a lady (for free) and the rest of us were openly astonished and secretly envious.

After checking our e-mail and developing hunger migraines, we discussed all-you-can-eat possibilities with a reference librarian who directed us to the Twin Dragons Mongolian barbecue. On our way out, we received a call from our first stab at couchsurfing.com: Nick, a twenty-eight year old jazz bassist who told us to meet him at a gig that evening and then crash on his floor. Excited to not spend money on a motel or camp in the freezing cold, we proceeded to the barbecue where we ate until we were sick.

We then met Nick at a mostly-dead somewhat-upscale bar where a family was casually eating around a high bar-table; two of them dressed as clowns. Remembering that this was Halloween, we were excited to hear that Nick was headed to a costume contest at a nearby bar, Humpy’s, and followed him there. Many strange coincidences occurred: Brad met a 70s girl who was from Gilderland – a town near his home; I met a couple, the Green Giant (female) and Nacho Libre (male), and found out the Sr. Libre was friends with a fellow leader of orientation trips at my school (Jim Murrett of FOP for those familiar); Darren saw the girl of his dreams dressed as Uma Thurman from Kill Bill; and Bryan found religion from the costume contest winner: Shaman. We moved from there to another bar where the costumes continued to rule – a bird owned house at pool, and sexy firefighters confirmed our assertion that for some reason men can dress up as whatever they want while women have to dress up as “sexy” or “skanky” whatever they want.

Outside the bar, we tried to convince Chewbacca to growl for us, but he instead classily flicked his cigarette onto a nearby car and muttered drunkenly.

At the end of our night, we witnessed a ghost from the Matrix movies (who we later met as one of Nick’s roommates, Lee) escort Nick home. Before departing, he told us that we must conquer the sun. This we did with joy, knowing that our first night in Anchorage foreshadowed good things to come.