A week of close calls.

*Sorry this took so long to post, written on the ferry and continued on...*

And so the journey continues though not uneventfully! Currently I'm in the "computer room" of the Alaskan Ferry with Sibod and we have spent the last few hours wandering around the deck and watching Vancouver's city lights go by just recently. I must say I am relieved to have arrived here on time! It's definitely been a week of close calls and weird twists of events. Here I was thinking today would be totally uneventful and boring and yet it leads me to being stranded in Boise for a couple hours and consequently hours late arriving in Seattle. This of course leads me to stressing about how in the hell I was going to make it to the ferry by 6pm if it takes 2 hours to drive to Bellingham.

*SIDE NOTE*
I really need to learn how to write properly because I'm sure it's super frustrating to you, whoever reads these (Liz!) because I go all over the place. I like to think I'm setting up some kind of suspense but I'm sure I'm failing terribly! Or I end up making it sound enticing but then fail at delivering.. maybe you should tell me these things, or maybe I should keep thinking nobody reads these.
*END NOTE*

ANYWAY!
So we left off in Chicago, where I manage to survive checking in at 0345, the super long security line, the temptation of buying a tea from starbucks and a fully packed plane to Phoenix. It's not long until I'm boarding the second plane and settle into my very own row of seats, mini pillow in hand (or rather, under head). All goes well until I wake up with the feeling we have been in the air for a particularly long time. My fear is confirmed with the pilot's announcement that Seattle is covered in ice-fog and that while he, with this plane, has the technology to land in low visibility the planes before him do not. Therefore they have been hanging out circling Portland for a while but are running low on fuel and are probably going to land in Boise for the meantime. On the way to Boise I think about asking one of the hostesses for the time because at this point I am getting worried about catching the 1:15 greyhound bus with Si (it would take me about an hour to even get to the station from the airport too) but instead I ask the guy sitting behind me. He tells me it's 10:40 PST and then asks me if I'm meeting anyone because of course there's a look of concern on my face. I mention having to catch a greyhound to Bellingham for the ferry and he mentions the woman who was sitting next to him (but changed seats as there were so many to choose from) lived and worked there. I thank him and continue to imagine different scenarios in my head of what I can do.

-If we land in Boise, maybe that'll be 30 mins there, then back up and maybe another 40, I can land by 12pm and catch a cab to the station just in time...
"So it'll be about an hour until we know what's going on in Seattle"
-I'll text Si, maybe I can get my bus ticket moved to the 3:15 which will get me there at 5:15...It's about 12pm in Seattle at the moment, if we leave soon I can probably make it...
"Ok folks, so it's clearing up but now there is a 'wait in line' deal so we're going to be on the ground for another hour and a half"

So there went my 3:15 bus plan, now wtf am I supposed to do? I remember the woman the man behind me mentioned and I ask him about her "she just left, the one in the maroon jersey". "Ok." I think. So how should you go about this, what are your options here? I couldn't afford to miss this ferry. The next 20 mins are left watching the door and rehearsing what to say to this woman, maybe she wasn't going up there this afternoon? "So I know this is an odd question..." It's now hitting 1pm in Seattle and I am getting nervous.
A line of people walk in. Two in maroon jerseys, "ah shit, which one?", I hesitate a moment and let them all settle in again. One of the hostesses comes down the aisle and accounts for everyone's last names on a piece of paper, when she's done I get up and talk to the blond woman sitting a few rows behind mine.

"Hi, were you sitting in row 18?" (I can't believe I'm doing this, but this is probably my only option)
"Yes."
"Oh great, the man sitting behind me, he mentioned that you lived in Bellingham?"
"That's right"
"I know this is strange, but are you perhaps driving up this afternoon?"
"Did you need a ride?"
"Oh that would be fantastic! I need to catch a ferry that leaves at 6, and I've missed the last bus that will get me there."
"Oh yeah, no problem, Travis (points to a man across the aisle) and I were renting a car, I live just near the terminal, we would have to drop him off along the way, I'll keep an eye out for you when we land. I'm Sheri."
WHEW! She says later that apparently it was pretty random for me to find out that she lived in Bellingham because she hardly talks to people next to her and this was the rare occasion she did, seriously.
I return to my seat, elated, and a few moments later we're taking off from Boise and finally on our way to Seattle. We land at about 1440, find our luggage after a bit of confusion while Sheri rents a car and off we go! She asks me about what I'm doing and my plans, what I'm doing in Bellingham etc, the usual, and I answer. I find out during the drive a few things one that she has two sons, one of them 19 who she says wishes could meet me because she wants him to go travelling and not get stuck in the usual routine they have of school/work/family. Another is that her boyfriend is also a traveller and would drop everything for a year to go somewhere and hope he got work when he got back (which she envied), and now and then on road trips they would just drive anywhere and pull up wherever and camp out, like lakes and rivers and things which I think is pretty neat. At the start of the trip she gave me her card with her phone number on it in case we needed anything in Bellingham if we stopped by again or since I was in Vancouver, if I needed anything, advice or help to call her. I found out she works for Shell as an environmentalist which is pretty cool. The traffic out was terrible for the most part which delayed us quite a bit so we managed to get to the terminal with about 15 mins to spare! Thanks Sheri! I gave her my email for if she and her BF decide to visit NZ which was all I could do since she wouldn't take any cash from me (company was paying, what luck!). Good thing Si sorted most things out so all I needed to do was show my passport twice and off we were to settle in.

And so that's where we are now! Thank goodness for the kindness of strangers. Most of the people on this boat seem friendly enough, albeit a bit strange, but friendly. Si and I went up to the Solarium to have a look as that was the other option for sleeping if one wished to camp out under the stars or sleep under the heated shelter. The place where we are (as we didn't hire a cabin) is just a lounge, most of the tables with long seats were taken and the chairs in the middle all have arms running through them. We were thinking that by comparison the solarium was a pretty cool place to sleep since you could see the stars and they had beach chairs but unfortunately we didn't have any sleeping bags. We got to talking to one of the guys up there and found he was moving to Sitka to do environmental work and consequently when they do car calls (which allow people down to the car deck for 15 mins) he could grab some blankets for us if we wanted to join the group that were already set up up there, sweet! Also, would we like some whiskey? Si was about to say yes when I remembered we hadn't eaten yet and the kitchen was probably open by now. So off we went to the expensive cafeteria and bought a meal to share, afterwards deciding that we could probably live off mashed potatoes since a large bowl was $1.75.

So uh, that's all so far. See you when we have internet? Also, we're not sure where we're staying in Juneau yet, yay!

Ferry, Day 2.
Seasickness is something we did not account for on this trip! About 3 and a half hours total on the open seas and Si and I were done, ready to be off this ferry already. The first round was the worst, the second, a few hours later, was barely noticeable. Si and I found the Aft Lounge with fairly comfortable seats lining the walls and took a nap, it seems that being ill takes it out of you! The morning was pretty uneventful before that, Si and I were out on deck keeping our eyes open for whales and dolphins and other wildlife to no avail. We had split up, I was looking to the east while Si took the west, and nothing. I did mention the friendly but strange people on here right? Well after a while an older man wearing nothing but jeans and a short sleeved shirt (outside! I was bundled up myself, the wind in itself was pretty cold) wanders out of the forward observation deck (which we were standing in front of) asks me where I'm going and where I'm from, after my answer (I make sure to mention I'm with Si) we talk a little and he turns around and goes back inside. Ok, cool. I go back over to see if Si has had any luck and after about 10 mins the short sleeved guy comes up to us again,
-"So do you have snakes in NZ?"
-"Nope, nothing dangerous really, there are snakes in Australia though"
-"Oh, ok, it's summer there right?"
-"Yeah, pretty nice weather there right now."
-"I miss summer" *wanders back inside*

Right.

After deciding to take a break inside and play a bit of cards (it had started raining) another guy who was also out spying for wildlife ran into us asking if we saw the porpoises that swam by about 10 mins ago? Of course we had retreated inside by then, so no! What luck. The rest of the day was filled with being ill, naps and reading up on Juneau (after we were told there may be booklets up near the pursers by a nice man from Ketchikan who also happened to have come from Boise, where I was stranded on the plane, to visit his grandson.). We now have some idea of what to do while we're there so that's cool. After a bit of research we settled in downstairs and played some more cards, woo! A little while in the short sleeved man walks in the room,
-"So this is where you're hiding"
-"yup, just playing some cards."
-"Ok, you kids have a good trip."
*exits*

Awesome.
The guy from upstairs who offered us the blankets ran into us earlier saying that he had them if we were still up for sleeping up in the solarium. We decided to go up about 9.30 to check it out but he was already asleep and we didn't want to wake him, also it was raining some (wusses! hehe). Apparently he woke up to some snow so that would have been, uh, cool.. *ahem*. So anyway, we end up sleeping in the Aft Lounge after watching WALL-E which I had not seen yet.

The next morning we port in Ketchikan and I realise there is reception! Well, there is reception for others but not me, I wonder if my Rogers sim will work instead of my NZ one (it is weird about picking up on Canadian signals) and yes! Of course I have no credit on rogers, but thankfully I had bought a $10 card before leaving, good thinking Lian! So now I can get Joey to look up that hostel and send me the address/phone number so we'll have it when we hit the next town, whew. (Also I can tell him I'm still alive so he doesn't have a heart attack stressing out that I did get murdered on the way down to the ferry, his response was pretty straight forward though, I don't know if I'm being a dork and reading too much into that but I probably am.) We were offered the use of a table up in the recliner lounge by a man, Robin, who was sharing it with his son, so we decide to take him up on that offer today so we could save 50c on the use of a locker. The rest of the morning is spent entertaining 4 year old mohawked Austin with photos of places and games until he is dragged away to play down in the arcade. We meet Samantha who lives in Juneau and spend some of the afternoon with her and the crew upstairs in the solarium. The remainder of the day is spent here and there and basically filled with messages over the PA system for all the rowdy kids who boarded that morning.
"There has been a hat found, a young man's hat, if you can describe it it's yours, down at the pursers desk."
"There is no running on deck, all of you, young AND old, there is no running."
"For those of you throwing things off the back of the ferry stop it, that is against the law, it is also littering."
and so on and so forth. Man, it was so much quieter before they jumped on.
Before heading up to brave the cold night in the solarium we talked to a couple of guys who were standing their ground after the aft lounge was taken over by the bunch of high school kids who boarded in Ketchikan. One of them moving to Anchorage said to call him when we got there and he could drive us around, sweet. Not much to report after that. Si and I went upstairs to sleep/escape the teens, at about 1am he and Sam went back inside because they were getting dripped on and cold, while I stayed up top bundled up with Ben (the guy who lent us the blankets etc). I did not sleep well at all! But eventually it was morning and eventually we docked in Juneau.


DRY LAND!
Or not so much as it was pretty much pouring down when we got off the ferry. We call a taxi and manage to make it to the hostel before it closed up at 9am, the rest of the day we wander around town, make it to the visitors centre to get ideas for the rest of our trip and decide to take a random bus to Douglas Island to see where that would take us. Thankfully it ended just before an historic trail which lead us through snow to a beach! Crazy. We make it back to town, buy some groceries from Rainbow Foods (an organic store nearby), make dinner at the hostel, shower, catch up with everyone (2 days without internet leaves a lot of catching up to do!) and then crash only to wake up at 7.30am the next morning. I really would like a sleep in sometime soon. Tuesday we plan to head out to a trail near Auke Bay so after having breakfast at The Silverbow Bakery (specialising in bagels, but also have a cinema, restaurant and inn!) we hop on a bus, and then another bus and get dropped off at Alaska University horribly confused. Somehow finding our way towards the bay we ask the local gas station if there is a trail around somewhere (we don't mention it's because we want to see some wildlife but this is mainly the plan). Some guy is like "oh yeah, I know... I can see it in my head where it is, let me drive you" so off we get into some stranger's car like it's cool and he drives us off to the trail
"it doesn't look very fun, look at all that snow, are you sure this is what you want?"
"not really no, we're just trying to fill time."
"how about I drive you back, you don't want to go in there."
and so around we go back to the station. Perhaps we want to go look at the boats in the harbour so we get dropped off at the harbour, thanks random guy. So we look at some boats and we try and call this number about some kind of snow shoeing event organised for Weds/Sat because man that would be awesome. Somehow I get cheated out of 0.50c so we decide to head back into town and see if maybe the ladies at the visitors centre can help us out with that (0.50c plz.). Apparently the events are organised by the council so unfortunately we'd need our own gear, *sighs* oh well, there goes that plan. The rest of Tuesday proceeds uneventfully. It is 8am Wednesday and I wish I were still asleep. Weds was mostly roaming around downtown (randomly stopped by one of the guys from the ferry who was in a meeting for his new job, I don't know how cool it was to just run out of a work meeting but it was nice to see him again.) and the ports where the cruise ships usually stop in the summertime. The whole area is closed down for the season and it's a little creepy. Si and I play around in the snow, making snowballs and snow angels (unsuccessfully!), I read about lighthouses (I mainly just wanted to clear all the snow off the signs) and the random things/drama some of those live in keepers came across before everything was automated in 1976. Si is seen trying to juggle snowballs by the local newspaper photographer and is asked to do it again for his camera, he does and we talk a little about Juneau and what we're doing, he says to look out for us in tomorrow's paper and we go our separate ways. We somehow manage to make it through another day, that morning we were told that a group of 20 kids were staying at the hostel that night but we get back and they are nowhere to be seen. They end up arriving at about 9pm and it's a bunch of kids aged between 5 and 15? One of them decides to come up to me while on the computer in the lounge (my laptop isn't picking up the wireless) and tells me about a site called penguinclub where you can design your own penguin and make friends, I think he is about 7. I am hoping that I still have the one room by myself, which I do, thanks owner lady! I decide to go to sleep relatively early again which brings us to Thursday! Thursday we have a definite plan to see the Mendenhall Glacier since the visitor's centre will be open but first, breakfast. We stop off at a Heritage coffee shop (opened in Juneau in 1974) for tea and pastries when OH MY, the local newspaper has Si and I on the second page.
http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/020509/loc_385027250.shtml
Si is quite pleased with himself and as we are leaving to find another copy a woman walks in and recognises us! "Oh, you're the two in the paper today! Have fun on your travels!" tee hee. It's glacier time! After about an hour on the bus we still have a mile and a 1/2 (2.4 kms!) to walk, oh my. Thankfully a lady drives by, turns around, and offers us a lift the rest of the way saying she remembered her first trip to Juneau, taking the bus out and walking with the same tired look we had on our faces. I think she was moving here from Skagway and had just come from the glacier herself, just beautiful today, one of the best she's seen. It wasn't that long of a drive (I think we had walked about halfway by the time we were picked up) but we find that she herself has visited NZ about 15 years ago, Rotorua was her favourite place and in no time at all we were sitting right in front of a gorgeous mass of blue and white. Thanking her we hop out and wander into the visitors centre to ask about trails we can take and about how close we can safely get. We end up taking a trail up the side of the mountain towards the waterfall, trudging through the snow for about an hour we finally make it to a clearing where we can see the glacier closer up. After a break for lunch we keep going to see about this waterfall, we come to a sign which points us to the right but where is the trail? There is a clear trail going straight ahead so we give that a go and end up winding around the mountain heading to the top. Not knowing where and when it will end we decide to turn around so as not to be stuck up there in the dark (it's now about 1330, not too late, but late enough to not risk the unknown trek) maybe we should try the fall path after all? No luck there so we turn around and head back to the visitor centre in better time than it took to head up. A bit of wandering around the centre and it was time to catch the bus back to town. We get recognised a second time from the paper by a man on the bus and he proceeds to tell us about his trip to NZ in the mid 90s with his dance group and how they were shown all around the north island by a Maori tribe, best trip of his life. We miss our stop but make it back to the hostel with dinner in hand, the woman from the hostel says she saw us in the paper too, we're famous! Not much else to report, that brings us to today, Friday. The weather outside is pretty terrible, unfortunately it's a day of staying in with nowhere to stay in. We have taken up a table at the local coffee shop for the past 1.5 hours, maybe we should jump around somewhere else? Who cares. There's today and tomorrow left here in Juneau and I think we've done all that we can do in the winter here.

Next stop, Anchorage!

And so a new journey begins.

So at the moment I'm sitting at Chicago airport, I arrived at 10:30pm, it is now 1:20am, I still have about 3.5 hours to wait until my next flight. It's really kind of eerie, there's been this one old man polishing the same strip of floor with his machine for the past 20 mins, people sleeping on seats, no doubt also waiting for their early flights. So what adventures did I face to get here and what adventures are to follow?

So as you may know from my last report I had sent off my passport application to London and was waiting on it's return with anticipation. What you don't know is the following Monday the 26th your heroine recieved an email from the London Embassy which very vaguely (and unprofessionally, I mean, who uses '...' in official emails?? That made me think he was trying to hide something.) stated that "We recieved your application everything is fine with that" but could we charge you 15 Pounds for courier because we don't use Fedex (which is the return envelope I sent along). Ok, I think to myself, but I wonder if they mean everything's fine as in it's finished and they are sending it the following day or what? And why didn't they send an email stating that they recieved it on Weds or did they just open it today? All these questions but nobody to answer until the following morning because the timestamp on the email was 12:06pm which, over in London, is 5pm home time, thanks guy (this is another reason I thought something was up). So of course most of Monday is spent stressing out because I have no idea what's going on. What better way to handle stress than to bake, so bake I did. Mango and coconut muffins which didn't have that much flavour in them, probably because my mango wasn't that ripe, and spinach and feta pastries, which also went wrong because I bought the wrong kind of pastry =( Oh well. I also cooked myself a proper meal too, which I hadn't done for a while - herbed turkey breast, kumara mash with onions and steamed brocolli, mm. (I'm getting hungry sitting here in the terminal)

So anyway, it's 1am Tuesday 27th and K's overnight show on CKLN is coming up and since it was always an idea that I go up or call in and talk to them about the NZ music scene I decide to join her and PAH on the radio since it would be my last chance to. My first time in a studio and it's kind of crazy. K thought I was just going to call in and not physically go up with her so she didn't tell PAH that I was coming and they still had their theme of the night which was "If you could only have one mix tape what 6 songs do you have to have on there?". The lists kept them both pretty busy as they tried to find one or two to play from each person who submitted. The songs ranged from Maddonna, Alt 80s pop, classical instrumentals, indie and obscure 18 min long synth. I'm just watching them for a couple hours, I even have a couple songs that were requested, and then it's my turn for an interview and a few NZ songs here and there. So I get set up in the next room by myself, looking at the two through the window, headphones on and a big red mic in front of my nose and everything goes totally fine (probably because I know not that less people are listening then what there could be?) except my laptop kept asking for a pw whenever it woke from sleep so K couldn't play my songs straight away, and something was wrong with the equalizer when they did play so they sounded terrible! But alas, such is equipment sometimes, these are the things you learn while working on radio.
So it's still Tuesday morning, we get home about 8am and I have not slept yet. It's just about time to call London and ask them what the deal is before passing out so I call them via Skype and some woman answers. I wanted to talk to the guy who emailed me but she said he was away (spineless in my opinion) so how could she help me?

Me: Yeah so Mark sent me an email regarding my passport and I want to know what the status of it is.
Woman: *laughs* uh, no, he sent you one about the courier.
Me: Well, yeah, but essentially about my passport, what's the status of it, is it ready, are you sending it today?
W: Well no, not today, we only got it on Weds, it'll be the end of the week at least, you didn't mark Urgent on it.
M: Well the payment I made for the ETD said it included the passport processing fee so I didn't mark any of the payment details..
W: No, that payment is only for the 10 day regular service, you would have to pay extra for urgent.
M: Well shit, is there anyway we can speed this up or is there no point in asking that?
W: *laughs* (grr) well we would have to charge you 80 GBP and then we can send it out today.
M: *sigh* fine.

So basically I had to bribe them to send my passport that day otherwise they would have held onto it for another week, how fucked up is that? Note for anyone who goes through this, just go straight for the urgent passport it will be faster and cheaper because this new passport cost me about $600NZD to get and took 3 weeks from when I declared my other one lost. *sigh* So lame. It's ok though because I got to pass out for a couple hours before waking up feeling extremely ill from some kind of food poisoning and feeling nauseous for the rest of the day (and day following) as I tried to sleep it off. Wednesday was basically housekeeping things, constantly checking my passport tracking number, packing, booking the rest of my trip with Si and exchanging music with K which brings us to Thursday, the longest day ever.

I am all packed up and ready to go. I am super tired from not having enough sleep the past few days and tonight is not looking any better. I wake up and call DHL to check what time my package was arriving and he says between 9 and 1 which is a fairly large window, so I ask if maybe he could call if he gets nearby or here since we are downstairs and he says to call back about 11 and he'll page the driver. I decide to stake out the front window in case he comes before then, so I have my laptop out and am copying a few more of K's cds and admiring the snowy rooftop across the road which has blended in with the sky, the phone rings, it's the driver! He totally slipped by me, I am a terrible spy. I scramble up the steps (as they are covered in snow and very awkward) to sign for it and rejoice, 11am, not bad, there's still time to change money, eat, finish stealing music and say goodbye to the cats. I swear Demetrius knew I was leaving because he was spralled out all over me and generally he's a wild tryrant so that was a nice change. It finally reaches about 5pm and it's time to head to the airport. I should have been sad to leave but I was more relieved to move on from the whole passport mess than anything. My flight is not scheduled until 8:20pm but I decide to get there earlier in case I have a problem with customs (which I have a feeling I might) and yup, I do. I was trying to get away with a visa waiver (since I haven't got my b1/b2 visa reissued yet) on a one way ticket "And you know it's against the law to do that?" says the big black man in a loud voice. Oh boy. A few questions later a "WHAT?" here and there from him (I think he was semi deaf? But it was kind of intimidating, maybe that was the point?) and a weird look when I explained the concept of a 'working holiday' like wtf would want to do that? He says "Ok, I'll let you off this time but NEXT TIME YOU KNOW NOT TO DO THIS AGAIN" and I am all "yes sir, thank you, sorry, won't happen again. (hopefully I can get my visa reissued without any problems...)" Good thing I was still on time for my flight to board! A few delays later, a gate change here and there and much confusion we finally get ready to board the flight to Chicago while in the meantime I make friends with a 2 year old. That brings us to Chicago, now almost 3am. When I got here there were announcements about closing down the terminals from midnight - 5am except for staff and ticket holders which had me worried for a while because I had nowhere to go if they were kicking me out for 4 hours. But everything turned out ok, I asked a staff member and she says I'm fine in the public area of the terminal and maybe I want to go to Terminal 5 because they have food (which I think she forgot was inside so I am starving.) and it's much nicer over there, which it is! For starters they have nicer seats and power points so I don't have to make the terrible decision to use my battery power here or on the ferry (since there are no power points until we get to Juneau). I said for starters but I think that's about all. So that brings us to the question, what's coming up?

In about 40 mins I am going back to terminal 2 to see about checking in and finding something to eat. My flight leaves at 5am to Phoenix and then from there to Seattle, landing at 10:37am. From there I have to take a bus downtown to the greyhound station where I meet Sibod and we travel 2 hours north to Bellingham ferry terminal. From there it's 2 days on a ferry up to Juneau, I'm hoping the scenery is stunning on the way up, I'm hoping I don't miss too much when I pass out upon boarding, although I'm not sure how much luck I'll have since we didn't hire out a cabin and we'll both have to sleep in public areas... I'll probably be able to find a quiet spot somewhere. We're in Juneau until the 8th in which we fly over to Anchorage and stay until the 13th and then it's back to Seattle for a day or so, we'll do the underground tour, Si will go up to catch his flight home from Vancouver and I, I am thinking of putting my Portland/San Fran trip on hold because I'm not sure I can afford it straight after this trip because of all the money I lost with this mess. I'm sure they'll both be nicer in the summer anyway. So I'm probably going to spend some time with Joey before landing in Vancouver myself to settle in for another few months.

And that's that! The next update will be about how terribly cold but awesomely awesome AK is probably. Thanks for keeping me entertained for about 2 hours, you're the best!

xx.


Ogod I'm hungry.