yikes

I've finally arrived to a madhouse most people call Oklahoma. There is definitely culture shock. Driving in the bustling streets of Tulsa yesterday made me want to scream at the top of my lungs,

"Why don't you people go to Alaska!?"

But, I refrained from doing so. I wouldn't want to do that to Alaska.

As one can imagine, things seem much different than what I left from before. My brother thinks I've turned into a hippie. I shave though. There is no waving/smiling to the other car coming your way, there are religious stations on the radio rather than a scratchy npr, and sadly enough, there are no bears. All I have to worry about running into here is a skunk.

I've avoided fast food and television for the most part (minus watching the U.S. Open [tennis]). I've gotten a hair cut and immunizations for yellow fever and typhoid. I'm getting things done... keeping myself busy... breathing in the humidity and heat. Hm.

What is super duper nice is to see family again. Tomorrow is a birthday party at the grandparents house. If any of your grandparents are like mine, you'd be super stoked to get ice cream and cake too, with a "don't they feed you!?" attitude.

So yes, Oklahoma is a wonderful, beautiful place, but what I've learned again is that it is certainly not for me (in a good way).

Here are the pitchers:

http://melindawebster.com/alaska06

http://melindawebster.com/crazies

T-minus 10 days, plus Rain = 50 months^2.

I am almost certain it won't be sunny during my last 10 days here, but that's not horrible news to me. I'm soaking it up for what it's worth before I head back to the fiery lower 48. Ew.

Many people have already left to go back to college, grad school, jobs, etc. and it feels more like an epidemic where everyone's dropping like flies. We are the sad, loyal survivors and even at that, I'm still leaving this position a month early. Kudos to those Power Rangers, Captains, and Deckhands that remain strong!

Anyhoo, I've had time to think about how I should spend my last week in Alaska. I've come up with this brilliant plan: go to the local music night one last *sniffle* time and be a dancing fool, go up bay on the Baranof Wind to snap pics, fly to Dry Bay, play in the mud and find some interglacial stumps, go to two presentations given by geniuses, get evaluated on my last cruise ship day (not my choice but funny), go for a day paddle, eat crab/fish while it's fresh, get Homeshore Pizza which is the absolute tastiest pizza on this planet (Mars has better), take a picture of a porcupine, salsa with anybody willing, play in the rain, bicycle into "town," go to the lodge, and most importantly, bug everyone I see before I go.

The toughest part about this last week is accepting whether or not I'll be back next season. It's still undetermined and that's perfectly fine with me. Probably the two of the million things I'll miss the most are food and of course, the people (but not necessarily in that order).

Second reoccurring thoughts are "How much culture shock will there be when I get home?" I don't think I could handle Walmart just yet. Walmart holds more people than the town of Gustavus I think? Turning on a television seems like the strangest thing though my computer plays dvds just fine. No ocean? In Oklahoma? Mail can get sent/received in less than a week? I can get food immediately? Through a drive-through? Gross.

I'm not so sure if these "luxuries" are worth the "seclusion" of Alaska. Certainly there are things to look forward to, like driving a car and being able to swim in water without the danger of hypothermia. I'll have to weigh these matters out when I get to my temporary home.

chase the whales

Yep, I'm still here.

I have exactly two weeks left in this beautiful state before I run off to my next strange adventure. But what the heck have I been doing to be a slacker on this sweet, little blog of mine? Uhh, work. Late July and early August are supremo times for all the rangers' "sweeties" and "hunies" to visit them, which also means doing your "I. O. U.s" by working on their cruise ship days. Somedays, I truly believe I've got cruise ship loathing down to a perfection, but it's actually been pretty fun lately. Maybe because I'm escaping soon?

One very cool thing I was lucky to do: go out with one of the whale biologists in the park.

Ms. Whale Biologist and I ended up having one of the neatest days with humpback whales. The day started out with a thickening fog filling the bay. Our visibility was less than 50 feet. We went to Point Carolus in search for these infamous whales* I've been hearing about.


*This season has been unusually wetter and colder so most of the humpbacks have been in the Icy Strait area where their main food source is. Typically, there are about 50 whales in the bay each summer. The bay has about 15 this season so far. Cruise ship passengers do not like to hear this.


We hung out for about an hour, debating on whether or not we should move somewhere else since we couldn't see a darn thing. The frustrating part for Ms. Whale Biologist was that these whales were right next to us, literally. Their blows were so loud that it made me jump. They wheezed a lot too. I heard a "smacking" sounds in the distance. Whales were breaching all around us...

We still couldn't see anything from the fog until four whales swam right in front of our boat, probably about 20 feet away and that was pretty surprising.

We ended up moving to Icy Strait and good grief, we had whales galor! We spotted over 15 on separate occasions. My very favourite was this bratty calf. It caught us by surprise when it breached right next to our vessel. We saw its mother moving along, doing all these normal whales things like breathing and swimming.

The calf, however, was now spinning around in a bed of kelp. Really. It kept spinning around, sometimes stopping on its back and flapping its pectoral fins into the air. Then we saw the calf's tail come out of the water, then its back, then its head. It was swimming backwards! The calf continued being a weirdo for about 20 minutes, definitely being the funniest thing I've ever seen a whale do. Ms. Whale Biologist had never seen anything like that before either.



After a busy week with cruise ships, whales, and images, I am definitely ready to sleep.

survive: to remain alive or in existence.

Hallelujah!

The trip... was... wonderful! And now I sit at my desk, floating on the fact that I didn't get eaten by a bear.

So the trip, it lasted five nights, six days (of sun I might add), a rough estimate of 65ish miles was covered in a double expedition kayak from Blue Mouse Cove to Chocolate Falls in Johns Hopkins Inlet. Once I get smart, I'll figure out how to post our route when I get to Okieland.

The first five questions I received when I got back to rural, Alaskan civilization:
#1 Did you have fun? Yes, certainly.
#2 Did you see any bears? Yes, and very close too.
#3 Did you have good weather? Yep, typically my face isn't a lobster, fire-engine red.
#4 What did you see? Brown bears, harbour seals, bald eagles, icebergs, loons, cormorants, waterfalls, orcas, boats, mountains, Joe & Muz Ibach's Cabin, glaciers, and cruise ships.
#5 Where did you go? Johns Hopkins Glacier and back.

After telling this story approximately 8,824,246 times, I think I'll finally post it.

The beginning of our day was early and we had lousy weather. We rode on the Baranof Wind (day boat), touring the park ungracefully and seeing 10 bears throughout the day, which broke the bear sighting records for the summer. A perfect thing for newbie brown bear country kayakers to see before they get dropped into the danger zone...

At 2 p.m., we were officially dropped! By this time, I was extremely nervous. I was already looking over my shoulder to see huge, pointy teeth coming down on my little head. We loaded our kayak, which we named "The Cob" for it's lovely yellow colour, and pushed off into the somewhat unknown.

Not even 25 minutes later, we see two brown bears wrestling on their hind legs on the shoreline to our right. They... were... big. And of course, that made us just perfectly paranoid for our first night of camping.

[will insert picture one month from now]

The next day we awoke pretty darn early in order to make it through "the cut" on a high tide (this is a narrow passage that requires about 13ish feet to paddle through, very cool place, and a very nice buffet for bears during low tide). We had no troubles going through and made it out in about 30 min. making our way to a rocky point for a break and brunch.

Now this point looked like a sly location: Steep, rocky cliffs in the back and front, basically a perfect safe haven from bears. We were proud.

We laid about for three hours waiting for the tide to turn, eating oatmeal and nuts, and making fun of cruise ships digging through the bay. Eventually we stopped eating and decided to continue our virtuous paddle. We loaded The Cob, threw a few peanuts at each other, and pushed off.

I have a graceful manner of slipping right in a kayak without much trouble. The spray skirt, however, is more annoying than repetitive country music.

While I'm thrashing around with my skirt, my kayaking buddy says slowly, "Uh... you might want to start paddling.... Right. Now."

me: *thrash thrash, thrash thrash* "Huh? Why?"

I looked up and saw this massive brown bear swimming nearly 20 feet away from our Cob.

I freeze and look at this monstrous bear. Then I curse more than I ever have in my entire life and probably the quietest I ever have in my entire life too.

[insert photo in a month]

The monster bear cooly swam to our rocky cliff and simply walked up it, fur slicked down from the water and muscles rippling with each step. I've never see anything remotely close to this thing. Pure muscle and fat, a belly that could probably fit three or four of me in it. White claws longer than four inches possibly. (I'm horrible at estimating things like this). Sharp and dangerous, nonetheless.

It was HUGE!

The bear moved along surprisingly quick, not really caring that we were so nearby. In fact, I think it glanced at us with a "you-got-nothing!" type look. What scared us the most was the fact that had we been a minute later, this thing would've ran straight into us on our clever rock where there was no room to move out of its way.

We were lucky? I don't believe that bears are ruthless killers or anything of that sort, but I certainly have a whole lot of respect for them. I also believe that bears really don't care about you as long as you're not dangling a piece of chicken in front of their face or blocking their path.

During the last day of our trip, we were feeling a bit more relaxed and comfortable in bear country. We hadn't run into any bears since the massive bear on our non-clever rock spot. We thought that it'd be kinda funny if we saw one where we were about to get picked up by the day boat.

Well... yea of course we're going to see one after saying such a stupid thing like that! We were unloading our Cob and stuffing everything in plastic bags for our pick-up when I heard a snap.

My kayak buddy didn't hear it but I wanted to be humored and stuffed all our snacks in a bear canister. I asked him hypothetically what he'd like to do in case a bear DID come up just for fun. We both agreed that we'd stick by our gear and defend it like we had been told to do.

Then the kayak buddy said something along the lines of, "[edit] there it is!"
And here comes this, no surprise, large brown bear out of the woods walking right by us. Geez it was big.

What did we do? We both scooted back quite a bit, the kayak buddy grabbed a flare for just in case, and I went into the water, filling my boots and getting ready to push off in an escape.

Again, the bear couldn't have cared less about us and meandered away. As for not defending our gear (and as long as all food is in a bear canister), I'd like to think that we have a nice self-preservation buttons that work.

lean. mean. scanning machine.

Oh good grief, it's only 7 a.m.

The only slow days I have at work are office days, where I perch in a chair for approximately 10 hours scanning slides from the 60s and 70s. It really isn't all that bad, especially seeing a million photos from other photographers, but I do get pretty dang antsy when it's sunny outside.

Anyhoo, things are going extremely well. I doubled my workload for the past two weeks to sort out my weekends where I have precisely six days off to go on an "up bay trip."

Up bay: it is phenomenal.

In order to go camping and kayaking like yours truly, you have to get dropped off by a small tour vessel, which is pretty cool because they usually give out tasty cookies on board.

I have been planning this "extreme" camping trip all summer now, and it all begins on Friday, approximately 7 a.m. I have 72 hours...!

So I'm excited... and fairly terrified too. After conquering my monster fear of public speaking, it seems that I've developed a huge fear of bears now. Not black bears, but brown. And for your information, brown bears and grizzly bears ARE the same species, but brown bears are coastal bears and they tend to be larger in size because of their protein-rich diet.

Enough ranger jabber. Yeah, brown bears seem terrifying. I'll be up in brown bear country for nearly six days. We're going to a place called John Hopkins Inlet, which is home to 3-4ish tidewater glaciers, an "unbelievable" experience so I'm told, but a bit treacherous if you get tides wrong/get run over by a cruise ship.

I plan on bringing two GPSs I don't know how to use yet, a PLB (location beacon thingy), bear spray, food, camera, tent, bear canister, sleeping bag, kayak, and a fool I can outrun, or at least trip.

Probably the best advice I've gotten for this trip was from my dear senile father who said, "just put food in someone else's tent and you should be fine!"

Not a bad idea. People generally keep their food, along with food-smelly items such as toothpaste, chapstick, etc, in bear canisters at a good distance away from their campsite. I'll probably keep mine at a football field's length away.

Another possibly interesting experience: I am doing this trip in a double kayak. People call these kayaks the "divorce kayaks" for reasons you can imagine. The poor fool going with me has no clue how hilarious this is going to be (to me).
[Notice: fool]

Welp, time to scan! If I get eaten by a whale, I love each and every one of you. Kinda.

Alive and Well

I apologize for the slack of blogging. Let's continue...

Today I must describe probably the most mortifying experience of my life: The First Program.

When I first arrived to Park Headquarters, I realized that my First Program would be my only enemy here. I overlooked the filthy thing nonetheless, determined to soak up Alaska during my first few innocent days here. As the days began to pass, the First Program began to sneak more and more into my life, occupying the precious time spent soaking up Alaskan weather and culture. Before I knew it, time and the First Program were best friends, filling me with grief of knowing that soon, I would have to stand before an audience of 900 people.

Ack.

I slept very little during the week of my first program, so it wasn't very surprising that I passed out the night before the big day. I quadruple-checked everything in my bag the night before: program (check), script (check), self-esteem (check). I might be ready?

I awoke at 4 very refreshed, yet wary.

"Was today going to be the day that I wet myself in front of 900 people?" I looked in the mirror.

Once we got on board the cruise ship, I continued the routine of spunky ranger who could teach anyone about the goods of Glacier Bay. I still didn't know a whole lot by then, so I really had to work on my spunkiness to make up for it.

Then 12:30 came: Lunch.
Then 1:00 came: Crap. I had to find to the Princess Theatre. I was lost for 15 minutes.

When I found the theatre, there were already people waiting for the program. I saw the lighting guy, who obviously was dying from an overdose of tourists. Poor fellow, I wanted to sympathize. I tried to muster out a "Hi, I'm freaked out because I've never talked to a group of people before" but all I said was hello, lights, yep, thanks.

T-minus 10 minutes until I face my worst fear. Wow, that sucks. Wait, no. Go Melinda. Yeah.

I was told to walk around and talk with people beforehand to ease my nerves. Not a bad idea, so I tried it but conversations were strange for this terrified, little ranger. I think they could sense my fear, kind of like lions and tigers do.

5 minutes to go so I shakenly moved my feet towards the direction of the stage. It was funny to see what was probably 900 people watching me, like I had some idea of what I was doing when in reality, I was planning my escape. Crew members only door, port side, sprint, jump, left turn, sprint, dive overboard.

I grabbed the microphone and turned it on, while eyeing the door.

The next 30 minutes went as follows...

Welcome...
[editted]

I tried to say phenomenal... for about 5 minutes. It never worked out. Did I mention that the program was put on the cruise ship tv and radio?

[editted]

Good thing I had went to the bathroom before this.

[editted]

... Thank you.

Afterwards, my face was on fire and I wanted to jump under one of the seats in the auditorium. A few people came up to me. Oh crap. I turned around in a flashy paranoia style.

They asked about the whales, which I had covered in the beginning. I carefully told them each detail, as if they were spies out to get me. Then they walked off and I waited. I wanted to leave until I wouldn't run into anyone from the audience. Then, I naturally bolted for the door.

About 50 minutes later, I was standing outside of the Serac with the wind blowing my hair and feeling the entire shock of the First Program. The other rangers were worried and even did funny little jigs to comfort my weirdness. All I wanted was a hole, of course.

One of the rangers told me T-minus 45 minutes. What?

I'd forgotten I was volunteering with researchers that night. After bailing from the Serac, I raced home to pack, and boarded The Capelin not a minute too late. We made our way up Glacier Bay to a beautiful location called Russell Island. The sun was setting.

There, I laughed. And then I slept.

Power Rangers and Pirates

I would like to discuss the play-by-play action of boarding a cruise ship.

It can be a terrifying process, depending on how you think or whether or not you think at all. My brain typically doesn't function until about 9 a.m. so I'm never really worried. I usually wake up at 4 a.m. to begin my work day of going on an early cruise ship. From about 4 a.m. to 5 a.m., I have no recollection of what I do in the morning except that I find myself in the volunteer uniform, wearing shoes, and holding my government ID as I somehow make my way through the front door.

The first part of my walk at 5 a.m. is kind of a blur; some sort of mechanism I've developed over the former years of being a teenager. Then I get to the office and see our wonderful deckhands/captains who actually smile that early, which makes me laugh because they must be crazy. Then I wonder what I'm supposed to do and end up going to the bathroom before hopping in The Van. The Van is filled with the Power Ranger belongings and The Power Rangers themselves. The Captain or one of the deckhand drives the van down to the Bartlett Cove Dock, which they normally comment, "I like driving you all in the morning; it smells like a fruit basket in here!" (I've never received that comment at the end of the day).

On the dock, we secure our bags/cases on the front of our small pilot boat called the Serac. We pile in and make our way to the cruise ship. I like to stand outside during this trip and yell to the other Power Rangers in conversation. You can see humpbacks, sea lions, sea otters, and lots of birds during this ride. The Serac is about 30ish feet high. The cruise ship sinks into the water about 25-30ish feet in the water.

Cruise ships can cruise... fast. So they have to slow down to about 7 knots for us catch up. We cut across the wake of the massive ship in a fun bouncy motion and come along the side. At this point, I usually say, "This is INSANE!" as I look at the icy water flying between me and the massive ship. I look behind me and wonder how far would I be left behind if I fell in. It's still before 9 a.m. so I'm not freaked out.

After the captain has done a few nudges and bumps against the ship's side, he noses the Serac to the ship's side entrance and keeps an eye out for seaweed. The deckhands from the ship throw a rope ladder over and the fun begins. The Power Rangers form a line to the front of the Serac, and we watch for the Captain's "GO!" look. Then, it's my turn...

"OKAY SPRINGBOK!" yells the Captain. He calls me this because of my fancy rope climbing skills. He told me I'm not allowed to pronk though.
I place my first step on the ladder and look straight below me.

Right about here I ask myself, "Melinda... what are you doing?"

I answer, "I don't know."

And then I shimmy my way up the ladder.

After that, I talk to crazies all day. But there's something about knowing that I can fall full-well into deathly icy water that makes me love this job.