Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1514
Flying to Alaska, No Kings protests, Pioneer Park, seeing relatives, trip to Denali.
Good morning. Hello. How are you? I can say “morning” because it is still morning here in Fairbanks, Alaska. It is 10:18 AM. Greetings from Sophie’s Station Hotel. We are just returned from the delicious Sunrise Bagel and Coffee drive-up Kiosk over by Freddies. Emma is folding laundry. Jane is playing Mini Motorways. I just finished up sending out pool repair invoices and creating Slack Groups for Gaming Companies who are about to work with Nimbus. I am on vacation I shouldn’t be doing any of this today but, you know. One or two hours of work on a vacation week never hurt anyone.
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Let’s see. Where did we leave off. Oh yes, we were one hour in to our nine-hour layover at SeaTac. Well, that went shockingly well, actually. We got a seat at a restaurant that faced the giant window at SeaTac where you could watch all four runways and we sat there for three hours watching planes taking off. Jane got VERY into it: identifying the different airlines, getting excited when a big Dreamliner on an international flight took off. No 747s, alas. I reagaled her with stories about 747s. We talked about Alaska Airlines history. We talked about all the destinations the planes were flying to. It was lovely.
Then we wandered the airport for a while and found an entire mysterious abandoned-yet-new concourse branching off from Concourse D: Gates in the D20s, which is great for D&D humor. It had a pathetically small little play area consisting of, I kid you not, just three small humps in the ground. It seemed to be sponsored by a small town in Western Washington called Palouse. Population under 2,000. I have no idea what was going on with this thing. Did they pay for it? I don’t know. But they are probably not getting their money’s worth. Except here I am writing about Palouse to all of you so maybe they did. It is a paradox. I read the wikipedia page for Palouse, and it says they are very proud of their city flag. There was no sign of their city flag in this play area, which is weird. Like… if they were paying for this little play area, wouldn’t they put their beloved flag there? And if they are not, then what the heck is it doing there. Is there some native Paloussian who works for the Port of Seattle? Really does make you think.
Flight to Fairbanks was fine, I read a lot of articles, Jane fell asleep, Emma watched Bridesmaids. I have a lot of good articles for you — need to compile my ultra-rare link-roundup edition that I only do after a trip but it’ll probably not be till I get back. Read a lot of articles and papers about the cost of AI. Read a lot of grocery articles. Good stuff.
We got to the hotel round midnight and all passed out.
Saturday we woke up and went to McDonald’s, Jane loves McDonald’s and it was the weekend. Then we parked in front of the house I lived in till I was 2, on Hilton St, and walked to Pioneer Park to take part in the Fairbanks version of the NO KINGS protest. Easily the largest protest I am aware of in Fairbanks. It was great. I did not see anyone I knew, though I later learned that my cousin was there. I used to not be able to go anywhere in this town without being recognized, but that was 30 years ago and I looked like a goth Kurt Cobain and now I look like a sad old middle-aged man, so, you know. Fair’s fair.
It’s summer, Fairbanks is in the middle of a heat wave with 80°F+ days, and it’s almost solstice, and there was a fun run also leaving from Alaskaland Pioneer Park that morning, so the park itself was hopping. We went on the cute little park train — it was free! it did two laps of the park! Jane went on the vintage carousel. She made bubbles at a bubble-making station. She played on the old playground equipment that I remember was brand new in the late 80’s and actually is in still pretty decent shape even as they build a new playground next to it. We did not go into the transportation museum, but an old man told me it is moving to the other half of the old K-Mart that is not the Amazon distribution center. I told Emma and Jane about the sad old zoo in the back that has been, mercifully, decomissioned. It was lovely.
Back to the hotel then for dinner we drove out to Murphy Dome to my sister’s house and met up with her, her family, my aunt, one of my first cousins, and my aunt and uncle. It was lovely. I learned that my uncle Skip is in town and I will see him today. That is exciting.
Jane and her cousins had a lot of fun, though Jane got a little punchy, threw some dirt at my sister. But mostly she had fun tromping through the woods with them. Jane is not bothered by mosquitos. She would make a good Alaskan. Don’t tell her that.
The next day we got up early, went to the Alaska Railroad Depot and took the train to Denali. A lot of confusion around our tour start time and shuttles and stuff but we sorted it out. The train was lovely, as usual. We stayed in Denali Village in those cheesy cabins right on the side of the Parks (and the park! ha). One night only. A Concierge there did a very solid magic trick for Jane while they prepped our room. I regret not going to the cheesy-ass dinner theater show they had. It was too hot to make smores in the fires. They had a pretty nice river walk along the Nenana I liked that I always liked that river.
In the morning we took the National Parks bus into the park on the park road, which only goes 42 miles into the park these days. Apparently an entire mountain sliding down and the road has been destroyed? It’s been four years. And it’ll be two more till they have a new road in. Which means you can’t go all the way out to the Eilson Visitor Center anymore, which is now abandoned apparently. I am convinced there are probably some hippies living there. All the Park Rangers strongly implied no one’s been there in years. That place was nice!
Drive was lovely and we got to see Willow Ptarmigan with babies, weird little hedgehogs I didn’t even know we had in Alaska, we saw a Moose with some babies and some Caribou, barely. No bear. And the mountain is mostly not out this summer because of the British Columbia fires. But that’s okay. You go to the park expecting to see no animals and no mountain and you are almost always pleasantly surprised in some way. We got some good wildlife.
There was an old man in a DOGE shirt and he sucked but he was showily nice to my daughter so, you know. Multitudes, I guess. Or cluelessness.
Lots of eastern European workers - they have little tags on to assure you they are from, like, Montenegro and Ukraine and not Russia. ICE seems to be leaving everyone alone at the park. I suspect they’re all on some temporary VISA managed by Holland America but I didn’t know we had such visas. I did not see any of those signs telling us to snitch on history. The very stoned park ranger very happily gave thanks to the indigenous people who have been stewards of the mountain for millennia.
So, yeah. Yesterday was four hours on a bus into the park and back, and four hours on a train back to Fairbanks. It was great. So much scenery. Jane loved almost all of it. Only got cranky for like 10 minutes the whole trip.
Hats off, Jane.
We are, somewhat shockingly, done with a punk playlist. Been a long, long while. In five years, we have done 12. This one started last October. But we are done. Yay for us. I do like punk, but there’s not a lot that is new that I would call punk, and even some of this stuff feels like cheating. I read a review of the new Kranky records book on the plane and the reviewer said “look unless you’re the Beatles or something, genres suck but they’re also convenient and helpful to the listeners and to gaining recognition.” That kinda works with me and punk I guess. It’s no a genre I think about, though I listen to tons and tons of “punk” music, punk-influenced, inspired, etc.
I still haven’t listened to the new Turnstile — it’s in the queue, though — so we will just sidestep the hot new current debate about Turnstile and hardcore.
Over and out. Talk to you tomorrow.
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Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.