Friday, November 30, 2007

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.

1 comment:

^Patty.Yang^ said...

it seems u r experiencing an exciting life. enjoy it and good luck on u^-^