(Far) North to AK report Chapter 1: Leaving (Los) Anchorage

Of course, the snowmachine snafu was not what she was expecting when they started off to Ted Stevens International Friday morning.

As usual, Frank and Lori arrived at the airport extremely early, because in most cities this is required to start bargaining against late flights, cancellations, and other airline manglings. Suprisingly enough, Ted Stevens has never been closed due to weather, and most flights fly out on time unless there are big problems in Seattle. So they found themselves 2 hours ahead of schedule, making time to scour the new terminal for a Starbucks and bookstore. Armed with "Not Really an Alaskan Mountain Man" (which seemed fitting considering that they were going to Fairbanks), they waited for the plane to board.

The airline flight started off with a very cold shuffle outside to get on the plane. For some reason, although they had the walkway out, they decided to have us go outside and climb the stairs. The rest of the flight would have been uneventful, however, the guy sitting next to her during the flight was attached to an ice machine and hiccupping the entire flight. Since he had just had ACL surgery and was probably quite loaded on medicine, we tried to help give him the most comfortable experience he could have on a plane in those circumstances (he was flying to Barrow after we stopped over in Fairbanks!). Of course, there were sacrifices -- Lori had to sit cockeyed in the middle seat because he was taking up so much space (i.e. she lost the armchair superiority war).

Luckily, it's only an hour flight between Anchorage and Fairbanks. The first thing that you notice about Fairbanks when you get out of the airport is that it is COLD. Not COLD like ooh perhaps I should put on my coat, but more like you-will-die-within-minutes-without-protection COLD.

The second thing one notices is all these little poles popping out of the snow. Our car was plugged into a socket in the parking lot, and we were told that we would need this in order to continue to start our rental car. According to the rental agent, if it got under 25 below, we would also need to go outside and start our car "every couple of hours". We hoped that it would not get any colder than what it was already so that we didn't have to do this stuff.