Weeeee! let the games begin!!

If ya really wanna know, theres a flying eagle on top of the totem pole!

Arrival at Ketchikan, AK 2pm

Ketchikan is known as the first Alaskan City, due to the fact that the first gold prospecters came to this place first to load up and wander the vastness of Alaska. I think they left all their goods here 'cuz every other store here is either a jewelery shop or a tour trap shop. Yep, more Alaskan Ulus, t-shirts, smoked salmon, and shot glasses. The town reminds me of South Lake Tahoe, where the town wraps around the shore in the midst of a forest.
Saw the red light district where you cross a bridge to this alley surrounded by more tourtrap shops n what not except one place called Dolly's House. In front of the bridge is a sign 'Where salmon and fisherman come to spawn.'

To the right the red light district, after you cross this bridge!

Did my laundry, todays food was Filet Mingon with Lobster Tail and a mad Truffle dessert. More chocolately then my past standard the Cappuchino Chocolate Cake at Houlihans! Fluffielady purchased the cookbook that the chef makes, i hope this cake is there! Now i feel like i need to run a dozen laps to burn this stuff off!
Todays the last port of call, donezo, now back to the real world soon. Nooo!
At midnight we ventured to the Dessert Buffet, quite a display of yumz. The string quartet was there bumpin it.

The Backside of the Governors Mansion At Juneau.

Arrived at Juneau, AK
Happy Birthday Dad-in-law!

The capital of Alaska, finally some something that even looks like a town. Founded as a gold mining town by a Mr. Joe Juneau and Richard Harris. Turned Capital in 1912, now a town with a wharf. How come all state capitals are kinda weak? This is the one port in which all the other ships hop around. Today theres 6 ships with 1 in the bay waiting a parking spot. Cool thing about this town was that it's nestled next to all these tall hillsides, kinda like Sausalito.
Skipped around town and saw all the tour-trap shops, jewelery shops, some alaskan blade, called a Ulu, which is sold EVERYWHERE, and a bunch of real fur shops. Saw the Governors Mansion, State Capitol Building (yuck, the building my dentist is in is way better), and doted back into the ship for lunch.
Laterwards went back to the city and actually paid for online access (!!@?!), even with that i could only post the past June 23-27. Oi! Ran out of time and had to go back, today is the second 'formal' dining night and it's a special Master Chefs Dinner. Everybody got chef hats and the waiters danced along with the onboard dance group. Food was excellent and dessert was off the wall. Calories calories calories! The oddest thing about this cruise is that once you sit down at dinner it felt like you're full, before the food comes. Too much food!

Dinner with Aunt-in-Law Cookie and Uncle-in-law Dick!

Another tidbit about this town, Juneau is the only state capital in which you cannot drive to by car!
Theres quite a bit to do onboard at the evening. We eat at 6pm, and theres a 8:15pm show by the crews dancers every other day and special guests inbetween. Afterwards theres a jazz singer with band in one lounge, theres a string quartet in another, a piano player and singer in a third, theres daily movies in a theater, a library, and the big casino.
Oh and one last thing, since on a cruise time matters but the day of the week doesn't. The only way to remember is by looking at the floor of the elevator!


Under the chefs hat is smooth silky chocolate mousse!

Hanging out at the Haines Police and Fire Station in one! Check out the Whale!

Arrived at Haines, AK

Finally our first town that we can actually walk around. It's pretty small but thats alright. The morning was all drenched in rain. Folks are calling this 'very unusual weather, last week it was 75 degrees.' I betcha it's bloody sunny at Pacifica! Haines is the land of Totem poles. Originally the town was a fort. At the parade grounds is a Totem pole center and saw peoples doing the spiffy work carving n carving. Too bad these suckers are too big to hang off of.. heh
Fluffielady n i wanted to take a ferry to the nearby town of Skagway. But 50$ each for a round-trip just to stay 2 or so hours wasn't going to be worth it. It seems that the businessfolk of Haines doesn't like much of Skagway. Calling it owned by the Cruise Lines and done up accordingly. Skagway is made up to look like period Alaska during the good old days. Also all the tourist books have some crazy coupons for many of the places there. Oh well, we probably wouldn't buy anything anyhow then feel jipped of going all that way. i still can't seem to find a net connection, oi!
Funny thing is that the ship did a drill, and the announcer states that the oncoming messages are for staff only. The first thing he says is, 'Passengers and Staff, please return to your rooms and put on your life vests.. there is a fire in c-section... Crew, please make ready the life rafts... ' and every once in a while the announcer said that the announcements are meant for staff. Next was 'abandon ships, crew and passengers must load on the rafts and egress.' We just happen to be done with lunch and went to the room to change to run around town and we find a bunch of passengers dressed in their life vests in a panic. DOH!
But the best thing i saw was the Hammer Museum!

Outside view of the Margerie Glacier. Which moves at a rate of 6-8 ft a day.

Arrived at Glacier Bay, AK

No egress to port today either. But the ship went up a fjord and hung out around 2 different styled glaciers during lunchtime. The water as well as the glacier has a blue glow to it, and todays water is smooth like glass. Time seems to be flying by yet all we do is look at an ice cube. It's bright n sunny but 52degrees. Just like home!

Random tidbit of the day. John Muir was here!


Inside view with a Pastrami Sandwich and a Strawberry Sunday.

Purdy!

Woke up at 9am!!
We're in the middle of sea, the boat wants to charge 75cents a minute for online access! Lordy! Talk about flashbacks of 1996 internet, when such places as AOL charged 20$ a month for 20 hours or what not. But after roaming the boat, I spy a bottle of Johnny Walker Green Label that piques my eye!
Food is pretty good, 24-hours of it! Woo! But of course they wanna charge you for everything. The only thing going for us is a 20-soda package for 25$, which is alot cheaper than 1.75$ a can with 15% automatic tip. This automatic tip kinda sux 'cuz since it's built in, the service is spotty. We can grieve it at the end, its kinda silly.
The bar at the 12-floor forward (Not 10-forward but 12) is pretty spiffy with 270-degree view.


Can i have this in my living room?

6-hour Boat tour around the Glacial Fjords, then Onward onto the Boat.

Started at 11:30am, at least we woke up in a decent time. Got the motion patch going, and i don't know if it worked or not but there were only a few sections of rough rockin n rollin on the boat. The tour was pretty cool, there was a drizzle here n there but, got real close to the Glacier to hear n see the snap-cracklin-n-popin of the ice. The glacier has this real pretty blue to it. It's like someone dumped a whole lotta coloring on the ice. But the melt isn't from global warming, it's just that the glacier moves one to two feet per day into the water. Saw Orcas, Humpback whales, Bald Eagles, and the cute Puffins!
Tis the last day on land, we got rushed into the boat fairly quickstyle. The bad part is those stupid welcome photographs. How does one suppose to look after being in windblown air for a few hours and then hurried into tour buses into the Terminal.
The crew is mostly indonesians!

I've gotta figure out why it's called the m.s. Ryndam. Wheres Mr. Ryndam?

Our room ready in the nini mode.

3-hour Bus ride from Anchorage to Seward, AK

Woke up at 2am, and at 6am with an upset tummy. At least at 2am it was dark! Oooo.. I think i've figure i slept a total of 19 hours yesterday and today. Now this is what i'm talking about. I have never sat for so long and slept for so long in my life!
While on our way to Seward we stopped at a animal preserve which had all the animals that our 7-hour bus ride had and more!
This is the Alaska that everybody seen on the Tele. This port town is purdy surrounded by the Snow capped peaks. We're staying at the Windsong Hotel, and the room has that cabin feel, since it is stuck in the middle of the woods. Roamed around downtown Seward and found the two chinese buffet restaurants, it must be chinatown!!

8-hour trainride from Denali National Park to Anchorage, AK

Man am i tore up. I think it's the combination of greasy 25$ buffet food and the rocking and rolling of a 8-hour train ride. But my tummys all tore up! I don't remember anything from that train ride. The nice thing though is our tour group is starting to know each other and they're all caring for my welfare. One lady lent me her one of those motion wristbands that uses electrical pulses on you. They sell these at Sharper Image and on those airplane catalogs. I don't know if it helped much. But it was a nice thing people are doing.
That train ride is the most rockiest, bumpiest ride ever!
All i know is, we arrived in the hotel at 9:30pm and i zoinked out just like that. We stayed at the Hilton Anchorage and it was the smallest of rooms! And they had 2 double beds oi!
Random Tip of the day: People who went on the rafting (Class 1 + 2's) went on water thats 8 hours old!

Theres no wireless connection at our place, so i gotta walk up to the chalet and upload 2 days worth of bloggin! Woot!

i've heard of a nature hike, but a 7-hour nature bus ride??

Woke up at 4am to the pitter patter of the rain. It's began sprinkling here n there, now it's raining constantly. Last minute before leaving for Alaska i decided to bring my gore-tex jacket instead of my nifty blue superlight jacket. I'm glad the gore-tex came along!
So our 5:30am venture is a 7-hour bus ride in and out of the only road in the Denali National Park. Why am i up at 4am? i have a mission to do. Go to the 24-hour subway, which has a sign saying 'open early.' How early is early for a 24-hour operation? These guys are our lifesavers, it's either a 6$ 6-inch sub or a 12$ 'Snack pack' sold by the tour center. Oh and this center with the tour bus is partially owned and run by Aramark Parks divison! Aramark owns all!
Aramark took the contact from the National Park to tour people in and out of the park. The park is 6 million acres big, and with only one road thats pretty good. The first 15 miles private vehicles can enter, the remaning 80 miles is reserved to permitted private vehicles and these tour and shuttle buses.
The place is vast and huge, but it's all green. Parts of Alaska is stuck on permafrost, permanently frozen ground, where there are more freezing days than thawing days. This limits the amount of nutrients for the plants to grown. The result are these sickly looking trees that look like sticks. At this park is also the treeline, the point in which trees no longer live north of the equator. This park of Alaska has a higher than average treeline compared to Canada and Syberia. What grows north of that is just shrubbery, bushes and moss n iddy-biddy things.
Ok i blabber, so within this 7-hours the goal was to see the 4 biggest mamals in the area. We happen to do that and exceed, we saw: Grizzly bear and her kid (cutecute!), Moose and her kid, Dall sheep (like mountain goat but mountain sheep), and Caribou . We also saw Snowshoed Hare, a bald eagle (!), some little fuzzies like artic squirrel and some other things.
The funny part was that if we saw an animal we yell out to stop the bus and to describe and direct the people to look for whatever they saw. The bus was a little better than the standard yellow-school bus. But when someone saw something the bus stopped, and everybody crammed to one side peering all over the palce to find whatever it was to find. Then you break out the camera and snap like no other. Kinda goofy, but hey if you wanna see, then you gotta look. We got to pit stop about 4 times down the park and 3 back each lasting 10 minutes and the bus driver was adamant on being on time. She asks "whats the difference between a tourist and a hitch hiker? ... 30 seconds." We had one guy almost become one and she got kinda ticked to the fact that we're now 2 minutes delayed and the bus behind us is now in front, Oooo! At the turn around point, 53 miles (in 4 hours!) in we got to hang out for longer and play with some discarded Antlers n what not, those things are kinda heavy! Can you imagine 20-30 pounds popping out of your head every year?
So we roam back and get back home at 1pm and fluffielady and i zoink out till 5pm. While the rest went to check out the parks visitor center till 3pm, now they're back zoinked out as i scribble this. It's 6pm. I dunno where we're going to eat, maybe the Princess Line Hotel next door with their pizza joint is something to do.
But for now i gotta do my laundry! Tommorrow it's not that bad, sorta. Wake up and put your bags out by 9am and a 8-hour train ride (same train as the one from fairbanks) to Anchorage!
This tour is kinda odd, fluffielady and i don't like the fact that all we do is sit and look. Yesterday when we arrived i had to go move around, walk somewhere, breath some outdoor air. Isn't this what we're supposed to do?

There he goes again..

Da train da train!
Happy Summer Solstice!
Daylight: 21hrs 49minutes!!

Waking time: 5:30am
Yesterday the gang woke up at 6:30am to do the riverboat ride and gold panning. Today we gotta get up 5:30am to get onto a 7:45am train to the Denali National Park. Tommorrow we gotta get up at 4:30am to get to a 5:30 bus ride. This is silly, talk about gogogo!.
So we ventured on a 4hr train ride 130 or so miles. Pretty senic, nothing but trees until the last 10 miles where the rail goes next to a meandering river valley. Arrived at 1pm and stuck with chingching lunch, reindeer burgers! Man am i killing these things or what! So reindeer is the domesticated (?) version of the Caribou. Whats a domesticated deer? i never did find out, it's not like a pet or something you have in the house i don't think. But they were domesticated so that the Eskimos can have a better food source.
We're at the border of the Park and it's got 3 hotels owned by 3 different tour lines a row of tourist junk shops and 2 restraunts. Thats it, it's like being stuck at pier 39 and the only restraunts are a 24-hour Subwway and a rinky dink Salmon Bake restraunt.
These tour guides are going crazy in trying to get us to do 'optional excursions.' Some sound good but cost an arm per person! Also the timing of these excursions is whacked! For example, we arrive 1pm. Say you wanna do a 139$ per person 4x4 jeep ride. Which starts at 2pm, so you gotta eat like a savage, get to wherever people are meeting up. Do the thing be done around 5pm and then theres another excursion dinner show at 52$ a person at 5:30pm. If you can't make that, then you can catch the 8:30pm dinner and show. But wait, tommorrow we got a 7-hour bus ride (?!) through the Denali National Park starting at 5:30am(!!!). And then they want you to book something after?! These guys are machines!
I wish there were two excursions that existed:
1) Go Zap a 4-legged animal.
2) Helicopter to the top of Mt Mckinley and snowboard down it.
i'd pay for that!

i forgot to mention the housing, at Fairbanks our tour group was split between 2 hotels. The one we went to is the newer of the hotels, so when the tour bus got into our parking lot the people who were put in the other hotel wanted to know how it was. They didn't like their housing situation, and that it was a shanty of a place.
Here in Denali everybody got the newest of lodges in the place, it's pretty fancy woodsy cabin feel. Pretty comfy kinda like 10-7M's place, but no stuffed beaver to hang out with. =(
Cabin Hotel at Denali 2nd floor. Chess Anyone??

So the only thing that sucks is everywhere we go it feels like 6pm! Perpetual twilight, when we got off the train it felt like 6pm, when we got out of dinner at 9pm(!?) it felt like 6pm. Goodness! For dinner went to the rinky-dink salmon bake, and i had a salmon chowder, pretty good! I don't feel hungry, maybe it's the 6pm feel.

Hello Fuzzy Reindeer!

Speaking of which, yesterday i had a reindeer sausage sandwich. It's a non-greasy pretty tasty sausage! So today we wakie at 6am, eat 10$ breakfast buffet and leave 8am to a riverboat ride. The ride is cool, it's a touristy one! Everything here is setup pretty well where your stuck. I think the most odd thing is while travelling up n down the river, the announcer was talking about who lives in what home thats next to the lake. We saw some huskies in action and in training, and also reindeer and some Eskimo lifestyle stuff. Done by 12:30pm.


Next was another venture to a gold dregging area. You hear about how people went and destroyed nature to get the gold! Of course at the end you get to pan your own! Everybody got about an average of 6$ worth of gold flakes.. Oooo!


After some backbreaking work, we stopped by a spot on the Alaska State Oil Pipeline.

So far this is what i learned:
Holland America owns all!: the Grey Line tour buses, and this and several hotels along the way.

Delays that made us on time(?!).

San Francisco to Seattle to Anchorage to Fairbanks. 9:00am-7:30pm with a 1-hour time zone fallback. 4 Planerides in 10 hours holy! First flight was delayed at San Francisco and once it landed we went immediately to the Anchorage flight at Seattle. No hour layover, bam! in-n-out! That caused a delay to Anchorage. Once we get to Ted Stevens International (that question was on who wants to be a millionare: Where is Ted Stevens International Airport?) was supposed to be a 3 hour layover to Fairbanks. But due to the delay it was shortened a bit. it's all good,Now it's 11pm and it's bright outside. I asked our bus driver when will the sun set, he tells me in 2-3 months.. Lovely! The air is clear and clouds are quite defined. It's not all snow around the area and actually it's 68 degrees in fairbanks.


I've got lots of time to tour the gift shops! If i actually did buy this, when would i wear this??

Tommorrow the day is already jam packed, a 4-hour steamboat ride in the morning and another 4-hour gold panning action at a gold mine. Then our tour guide tells us, when we are done around 5pm we can book more excursions! What the ... Talk about moving like theres no end! Gogogo!

This is whacked yet.. kinda cool. I betcha it causes lots of trauma for little kiddies.

it's a Homegrown USB memorystick stuck into a teddy bear made by some dood in france.. Talk about smuggling information!

Aww how cute! hello lil bear!

Quick steal the data.. must.. pop.. head..

Oh my god! Teddy's stuck in the computer!


hahah!

Cheeze!

Good times roll at the Hyde Street House! Thanks for everybody who came and i hoped everybody enjoyed their yumz. This was the first time eating oysters (12 for 12$ from 5-7pm and 2$ draft beers) that actually had a name to them.

For me, it's a piece of cake to eat this piece of art!

Thankz Roz n Robyn for hosting the after dindins. The question still lingers, was it a strawberry or a raspberry cake?

Now i must pack, i hope theres wifi connections wherever i go around in alaska! If not i'll be back the 4th of july!

Level Of Difficulty at Work: 0.5 out of 10
NapTime During Lunch: Zip

It works! The insulation! The house feels more 'evenly' heated. The temperature sensor is downstairs and at times it would turn the heater on constantly, the end result would be the upstairs being hot! Now both floors seem acoustically more sound and the temperature is more even between the two. Sweet! Good 210$ spent!

And on another note. YouTube.com OWNS! i can put up my favs for yall to watch!

Woot! i ain't going to work! tis mah berfday..

so what did i do for this joyous occassion? Well in the mail comes this Lowes 10% off coupon that expires july 6th or 7th. Since i'm not gonna be here starting this monday till the 5th of july i had to act quickstyle. Fluffielady n i always wanted to install insulation for the crawlspace. Since last year was putting the fluffie (yet bad to the lungs and skin) pink stuff. This year i went for the encapsulated stuff for the underside. It's slightly damp down under so making it somewhat resistant to moisture is the way to go. So got RangerBoBs truck, got some packs of R-19 and off we go!

I had to assemble my spec-ops team..
#1 RangerBob:
Duty Supplied the transportational vehicle to handle such items. Couldn't make it to the fun though. Boo.
#2 Capt'D:
Duty: to implant the insulating batts from the outside inward. (yes thats the 'service entrace' to get into the crawlspace)

#3 My brother:
Duty: Transitional and relay services. This is the tightest space within the crawlspace of the house. Capt'D brings it in, my brother shuttles it to me.

#4 Myself:
Duty: to scurry about the undergrounds and install these insuating batts.

The damage afterwards. Capt'D had the least 'damage' being the outside guy. My brother was wearing a jumpsuit borrowed from Capt'D and didn't move much. I on the other hand was all over the place down there. (next time, if there is one, is to use the elbow pads as well!)

This reminded me of the days in which the mountain biking crew would go drive out to Northstar-at-Tahoe and downhill all day. Come home and take a shower and the shower water would be brown from all the dust n dirt that latched onto your skin and hair. Ahh yea the good ol days. People exfoliate by using creams n what not, this is how i do it!

It didn't take long, only about 2 hrs to do the whole underside. i dunno if i feel the effects of it yet. Tommorrow we'll see.
Came back from eating dindins with my brother n Jenny at the macaroni grill.. Mmm yumz.. Thx ppl for all the help!

Oh ya speaking of work, i've gotta change my duration times of napping. It *may* exceed expectational limits. So i'm gonna use such verbage as:
Light: Less than 30min
Medium: Less than an Hour
Heavy: Less than 1.5hrs
and finally Good Lord!: Yes.. goodlord!

Spooky.. 6:06pm on 06/06/06!!

Work for me has gotten another twist. Being sent to timbuktu is gonna be interesting to be at. My new schedule involves alternating weeks of 8am-4pm or 9am-5pm. Sweet a regular Nine to Five. Soon i'll setup to where i go back to my parents house and ride my bicycle to work. The gym isn't working for me anymore.

Relay: 1
Target: 10
Offhand: 175-2x
Rapid Sitting: 92-2x
Rapid Prone: 94-0x
Slow Prone: 99-3x
Total: 460-7x

Woke up at 6:30am, it seemed like the whole house was lit up AND the all the blinds were closed!
The weather was excellect, clear blue sky, really warm weather. Instead of seeing the Golden Gate, 'cuz of the Bay bridge closure. So the view of the city and the bay bridge was quite clear. Coming out of the avian flu that i got somehow on tuesday, my concentration wasn't as good. It's amazing how little things such has 1)pulling the trigger, and 2) hitting the middle is affected. Fluffielady's dad came along and i convinced him to bring his rifle with him. He did pretty well for 2nd time ever shooting a high-power match with no gear, a 402.

It's been a while since i posted. Monday was a cool bbq, chilled n hung out with the peeps. The weather was nice there as well. Thx for all da goodies everybody! Friday, the in-laws come to visit. Saturday the plan was to go to this church rummage sale. Well the sale was cancelled, so we roamed around looking for garage sales. Its a hobbie for these three.
Today we shot, and when we got back my brother had a multi-person birthday bbq at bakers beach yesterday and had leftover shish-kabobs.. Mmmm yummz!

Tommorrow it's back to work and tuesday i hear that i might be shifted over to YGC. Juvie!

Labels: High Power Rifle