a day in the Anchorgian Life
OK, back to my de-plane-ing, almost a week ago now.
It’s 11pm, but there is still a fair amount of light out, simply because there is waist deep snow almost everywhere, including fairly deep stuff on the roads, which reflects the street lights up, which in turn are bounced down off the clouds.
I wake up in the morning, and it’s still dark. Not to mention, cold, and snowy out. A 300m commute gets me on the ski trail system (I am still in town) and I skate ski on a bridge built for this task, over the highway and I’m linked up on to a ski system, which takes me over 100 miles, and links up ski areas all around town. It is interesting that each consecutive day is 5 minutes longer than the last, so at the end of a month I will have 2.5h more daylight than when I got here. Today is also the first day that I have managed to sleep until ‘morning’ when the sun came up.
Because of the cold, most houses have these ‘tweaked’ horizontal blinds, which when unrolled have hexagonal air channels for additional insulation. In the bedroom, the will have a tinfoil lining to keep the perpetual sunlight at bay during summertimes.
I ski and ski… past the University, and medical center, and eveywhere. There are two larger nordic ski areas, one with some flats, and classic winding trials, short hills which will be familiar to any Southern Ontario skier, and another one on the foothills of The Chugach Range, which is more uphill. The stellar part is that they are linked by a series of ski paths which links up the town, complete with groomed bridges over roadways. Grooming happens weekly or so, but it’s all free, so I can’t complain.
My first ski, I looked over and way two Moose in the bushes. I try talking moose. Well I don’t know moose, and they can’t talk seal, so we’re at a loss. I am then told that moose are pretty dangerous, and only talk during mating season, and in general I should avoid (talking to) them. I am predominantly skate skiing though I did bring/ borrow some classical nordic gear as well.
My second day in town I am at Lowes (yes replacing toilet, 2 windows, trimming windows, re caulking a bathroom – wait I though i was lazy) and park the car within 10m of a moose. I look up the road, and there is a snow covered roadway, with a string of traffic lights stretching up to white mountains. Looking down traffic lights down to the sea. And moose.
The lady which pointed this out to me is a classic Anchorigian, friendly, chatty, and not all that exciting to look at. In fact local people, are pretty missing-link-ish. No offense, but essentially every good looking person is a doctor, lawyer, or in town on business (or Samoan – I think their boat got lost going somewhere, landing here).
This is the view up the back porch, the mountain on the left is ‘flat top’ and the most commonly climbed hill in Alaska. 
I am excited to go back-country skiing up the hill this weekend
The Weather here is not all that bad. The past few days have been right around the freezing point, so some snow has been lost. It is one of the snowiest years, and there isn’t mind-boggling amounts of snow. I guess the main characteristics are wind and randomness, both because of it’s Seaboard location.
Now that I have found a camera, I will take some pictures of the skiing, and Denali (because it’s super cool) next time that I have a clear day.
Off to the wood shop
Nat
