Friday
As I flew into Fairbanks, I could see the frozen rivers and dead vegetation that covered the flat land. It looked so cold. South of Fairbanks there is 100 miles of marsh and bog that stretches down to the Alaska Mountain range. Most of it is still frozen, but it is beginning to melt. After I got out of the plane, I caught the shuttle to the company hotel. Travis had already checked in that morning and left his stuff to go exploring. The weather really isn’t that cold, it was about 45 degrees and I was able to get away with a light jacket. Travis later showed up with food from Fred Myer, a local grocery store, so we didn’t have to eat at the super expensive hotel restaurant.
Saturday
Travis and I began walking into town, our hotel is on the outskirt of town and we are not very near to many places. We visited UAF, University of Alaska, Fairbanks. It is the oldest largest university in Alaska, I think anyone educated wants to get out of Alaska. We tried finding used bikes for sale on campus but we could hardly find anyone, since they all sleep until 2pm on Saturdays.
We headed to an outdoors store and looked at their bikes but they were super expensive, we also caught the bus to Play it Again Sports, but their bikes were pretty expensive too. We ended up buying bikes at Wal-Mart; they had the best bike for our buck. Now armed with bicycles we were armed for some real adventure, and Travis was no longer subject to my super strong mission walking legs, but I was now at the mercy of Travis’ merciless biking legs.
We putted around town and found the stake center. The missionaries were there, getting ready for a baptism and they told us were to find the institute and what time singles ward met.
We headed home and picked up our backpacks and rode down to the Fred Myer so we could stock up on non-perishable food that we could eat without heating, mostly sandwich stuff. We keep a little refrigerator going with the hotel ice machine, it’s great, ice is unlimited.
People in Alaska are mostly the trucker type that you would see in the mid west. Most are white and many have tattoos. We often see Indian type people who look like Samoans or Asians.
The snow is still melting and since the ground is still quite frozen, the water doesn’t go into the ground very easily and there are lots of little lakes and ponds and puddles. Only about the top 6 feet of permafrost ground melts, which also inhibits the trees from sinking roots very deep, so non of the trees are as big as they could be like in south east Alaska and Washington.
Sunday
We rode our bikes to church; it was only about 15 minutes away. Elder Gledhill from the Placentia Stake is in the singles branch as a missionary. He was very happy to see me, he says he hasn’t seen anyone from Orange County during his entire mission. The singles branch is relatively small; there were only about 50 people. Guys already out number girls and as more drivers show up for the summer, the problem will only worsen.
The First Counselor’s daughter, Kiana, invited us to her house for Easter Dinner. We were very glad we had a place to eat real food, instead of hotel sandwiches for Easter Dinner. The Maines family is way cool, the are related to like half the stake and in their family they have many cousins and friends that are single and our age, so it was fun getting to know everyone and socializing.
Monday
We rode to work to check the place out and get a little tour of where we will be working. The seasonal training is starting off slow and doesn’t really pick up until next week so we will have plenty of time to study manuals and books about Alaska and it’s history. Travis and I visited the information center and went through the museum and its informational kiosks and booths that talked about the history of Fairbanks, the gold rush and the Indian that occupy the area.
We also visited the start/finish line for the Yukon Quest dog sled race in downtown Fairbanks. We talked to the lady at the counter in the gift shop and pestered her with all our dog sled questions. She being a musher herself, with no other customers to attend gladly entertained our queries, and told us all she knew about being a musher and building a dog sled team. Travis related everything she would tell us about training her dogs to his triathlon experience and she fed off his sports enthusiasm and went on to tell us more and more about the proper feeding and training of sled dogs.
After Travis quenched his sports/exercise passion, we visited Pioneer Park where many of the original pioneer cabins have been relocated to create a little tourist park with activities to do in each cabin. Each cabin has a little gift shop or restaurant to sell their overpriced tourist nick knacks that the golden generation loves to spend their 401K plans on. One of the cabins has a 40 degree below freezer where people can dress up in Eskimo pants and jackets and go into and have their picture taken. The old people just love stuff like that.
After our full day of tourism, we went to FHE with some of the people in the ward. Our FHE activity was a picture scavenger hunt at UAF. After FHE we had root beer floats and talked. One of the girls at FHE is from Nome, Alaska, and she was telling us how it never gets above 50 or 60 degrees in the summer and their houses are built on stilts so that they don’t melt the permafrost and destroy the foundation for their own homes.
(For economists only)
I was trying to ask about what they export to be able to be able to pay for all their imported food. She didn’t know much about economics and was convinced that they all make money for food by working at the gas station, hospital and things like that. I was trying to help her understand that you could just all work serving each other and still import food without getting money from exports to pay for the imports. She wasn’t really getting what I was talking about, but after a bit more of talking about her city Nome, it became clear that they got all their money from the government to pay for the food. The Indians in the near by villages have their allotment of money and they quickly spend it on food and alcohol, thus propelling the little economy of Nome. Other Government facilities, the hospital, jail and safe house also pump government money into the population’s pockets so that they can continue servicing the drunk Indians and buy their food. (All quite interesting from my view point)
Tuesday
Today we went into work, visited with some more people, and found out our schedule for team driving to get to know some of the different coaches we will be driving here in Fairbanks. Also to day we spent a good amount of time going over tour material and reading up on Alaska history. Tonight we have a guest speaker that will be talking on the Alaska pipeline. It should be lots of fun.
I’ll keep you all posted on our going-ons here in Fairbanks. If you have any questions about Alaska and such, feel free to ask and I will address them in my next update.
