As we pulled over, a family with Colorado plates was also taking photos by the sign. We laughed haughtily at their quaint little drive up north. At this point, I might be impressed by Tierra del Fuego plates, nothing less.
Back in the good ol’ United States, where gas is in gallons and mileage is in miles (Do they call mileage “kilometrage” outside America? That just sounds stupid) we burned out another power converter. The 400 watt Walmart-made converter should be able to handle cell phone, ipod, and laptop chargers at the same time, but then again, Wal-mart is the devil’s manufacturer, so clearly Satan wanted us to wander the Alaskan wilderness with nothing to listen to but Gordon’s David Bowie greatest hits CD that’s been in his car since the beginning of my insanity.
As if on cue, a Radioshack appeared over the horizon, nestled in one of the borderline shanty towns along the AK Highway. Inside, a pudgy kid with a wispy Native American mustache to rival my own Chinese on-the-road facial hair sold me a 100 watt Radioshack converter that should suffice as long as we didn’t get greedy, and only plugged in one appliance at a time. As I navigated myself back into the Bryan-shaped pile of garbage that constituted my car seat, I swore to the others that this (our fourth) would be the last stupid power converter I’d buy, so we’d better take good care of this one, or I might be forced to firebomb Subaru, Wal-mart, and Radioshack, and then commit ritual suicide.
A few miles down the road, our brand new converter became burning hot, let out a pitiful whimper, and went with God. Haha guys, just kidding about the ritual suicide.
Back at the shanty Radioshack, chubby mustache kid had already started giving me a refund when his boss perked her ears from the back room and called out “How many watts did he have plugged in?” to which he promptly responded, “Uhhhh… ” Radioshackbosslady subsequently emerged from her lair and began berating this poor kid about proper return policy, saying that the thing didn’t necessarily support a laptop charger and maybe the customer had simply broken it. I helpfully pointed out that the box had a picture of a laptop plugged into the converter with the caption, “Charge your laptop in the car!” Reluctantly, she told her apprentice that this time they would “assume the customer is telling the truth.” I didn’t really understand how I could be lying about the converter not doing what it had clearly advertised in both illustrated and written forms, but upon receiving my cash I didn’t stay to argue.
We had hoped to reach Anchorage today, but we were hit with snow on the road that reduced our progress to a crawl, so we were forced to stop about 100 miles short. We built camp down by a little frozen creek just off the road.
Brad, austere as always, geared up to go take a dump in the woods
Most of the wood we were able to gather was frozen and soon to be wet, so after an exhausting hour and a half of blowing on a sputtering flame, we huddled around a modest fire, silently smoking celebratory we-drove-to-Alaska cigars.
I was on the air mattress tonight. Sleep was heavenly.
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