Happy Winter!
Now Playing: Pink Floyd: Obscured by Clouds
Topic: Travel
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00:00 Tuesday, 15 February, 2005
Endwell, NY


I'm setting this to post in the future so no-one reads it before getting the letter I'm sending it in.



Monday, 31 January, 2005

Happy Winter!

I'm a month or two late for Christmas cards, but it's a miracle I got them out at all. I'm a trained procrastinator, and this is the first year I've successfully sent cards out. Every year I buy some, and then I never manage to do anything with them. So I had several years' worth of different cards to choose from here.
2004 had me starting out at my parents' house in Endwell, NY, working as a server at a Denny's restaurant. I worked late-night, meaning my shift was typically from 10pm until 6am, with some variation therein. This made for some odd sleeping schedules, but it was good money, and I loved being up at sunrise every morning. I spent a lot of time hiking when I wasn't working, and also planning for the summer. I was heading to Skagway, Alaska, on the recommendation of a friend I'd made on my way to Denali, AK, in 2002.
I started out my drive north by going south with my family to go to my brother's house-mate's wedding in Boone, NC. Soccer's been Hawk's best friend all his life, and has been a friend of the family, so we all wanted to go down for it, and decided to make a bigger trip out of it. So, after the wedding (which was beautiful), Mom, Dad, Hawk, JollyGreen, and I went to visit the Biltmore Mansion in Asheville, NC. We then drove through the Great Smoky Mountain National Park and went to Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, TN. From there we split paths, and I returned to the Smokies to back-pack a few days with my friend, Gypsy, who was down from CT job-hunting. I then drove up to Chicago to visit my friend and once-upon-a-time babysitter, Ribbit. There I picked up EagerBeaver, a good friend from home, to make the rest of the drive to Alaska with me. We toured the Loess Hills in Iowa, Badlands NP and the Black Hills NF in South Dakota, Devil's Tower and Yellowstone NP in Wyoming, climbed over the Rockies in Montana and the Idaho pan-handle, crossed Washington state to Seattle, and headed up through the Coast Mountains of British Columbia and the Yukon Territory to get to Skagway, AK. From there EagerBeaver had to fly back home to get ready for her mission trip in Santiago, Chile, and I started work as a kayak guide for the cruise-boat tourists.
It was an incredibly beautiful summer, and I loved working outside and with people. The job presented its own challenges, of course, as these were grown men and women who were not used to physical activity and had never done anything remotely like kayaking before, but it was immensely rewarding getting to expose these people to a pristine, alpine-tundra environment, something they'd never experienced before. We paddled around on a glacial lake in a high, mountain valley on the Canadian border, and I told them about the geology and nature around them, and about the Klondike gold rush that had stamped through that same valley from 1897 to 1900. When not working, I spent a lot of time hiking and hanging out with the friends I made at the church in town.
When all the businesses shut down for the season, I headed for my cousin's wedding in New Orleans, by a somewhat indirect route. I drove back down through the Yukon and British Columbia to Seattle, WA, and Portland, OR, and then to the coast, which I followed along Oregon and California to San Diego. From there I dipped briefly into Mexico before cutting across the bottoms of Arizona and New Mexico to drive straight across Texas to Louisiana. It was great seeing the whole family at the wedding, which was elaborately gorgeous. From New Orleans I headed north to visit a friend in Charlotte, NC, and stopped at the New River Gorge in West Virginia on my way to Grove City, PA (where I'd gone to college). There I stayed with Dawg & Mulderenvy a few days before finally making it home to my parents' house.
I decided to stay home for the holidays, and got a job working for UPS helping deliver packages during their busy season. It was a lot of fun, and I certainly wouldn't mind doing it again. However, their busy-ness was done by the end of December, which is an awkward time to find a seasonal job. So I searched around and applied everywhere, and was offered a serving position at the restaurant in Bullfrog Marina on Lake Powell in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in south-east Utah. Lake Powell is the reservoir formed by the Glen Canyon Dam, just up-stream from the Grand Canyon. It will be hot, dry, beautiful country. I start my drive out there around the 18th of February, and I'll probably be there until October or so.
I wrote more extensively about all of these trips and e-mailed them to people as I went, but if you didn't get them, I have them all up on my web-site now. It's one of those on-line journals, so there's all sorts of other interesting stuff to read there. The trip was from May through October, so that's where there are travels to read about. You can also scroll down to 2002 where I wrote a lot about traveling in China, if you never got to hear those stories. I also have lots of pictures on-line, and you can e-mail me so I can give you access to them.

Anyway, I hope this finds you well, and here's to a peaceful 2005.




Fidget
www.AngelFire.com/comics/fidget




In writing this letter, I had to cut some stuff out, but you can read it here:


It was an incredibly beautiful summer, and I loved working outside and with people. The job presented its own challenges, of course, as these were grown (and in many cases, over-grown) men and women who were not used to physical activity and had never done anything remotely like kayaking before, so they were a little scared of drowning and a little frustrated at their lack of coordination, and then had to listen to 'kids' half their age giving them advice. It was immensely rewarding getting to expose these people to a pristine, alpine-tundra environment, something they'd never experienced before, but some people never even noticed it because they were too busy trying to keep up with the group and not knowing how to deal with their own incapabilities. If the passengers would just allow themselves to admit that they were slower than others, we'd split the group and give them a personal tour at their own pace, allowing them the same amount of time to learn about and experience the nature around them but requiring a shorter distance for them to paddle, but many were too caught up in making it a competition and being determined not to be seen (by these people who don't even know them) as the slowest in the group.


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