You have The Con, on Chicken Ridge

Tuesday September 8^th

Juneau, Alaska

We arrive in Juneau early in the morning, about 7:00 a.m.for a five hour visit. For north-bound travellers, the schedule works extremely well because there are no middle of the night ports of call so there is always a shore visit rather than a pillow visit. The ferry terminal is a long way from town so our only option is to catch a taxi. We have a very amiable driver and, notwithstanding that there are four cruise ships in town this day, he is waiting along with a handful of other taxis for ferry passengers doing what we are doing. We make arrangements for him to drop us at a good breakfast place and then pick us up at 11 a.m. to get us back to the ferry for our 12 noon departure. 

Juneau is the capital of Alaska and is clearly more affluent than Ketchikan but like Ketchikan, is accessible only by air or sea; no roads connect it to the main highway system and our tax driver tells us that the half a billion dollar price tag to build a road to Skagway was deemed too much money.  And, like any port of call for cruise ships, immediately upon exiting the cruise ship are countless shops of kitschy stuff, art work and jewellery stores.  It is the same all around the world and I sometimes wonder how every town on every cruise ship itinerary can sustain itself on this business when each place is exactly like the place before.  There are a couple of things that Juneau has to offer that might not be seen elsewhere, though: there is a tramway that rises above the town 1,800 feet and ostensibly offers a great view of the inlet, when it is a sunny day, which today is not, or at least, at this point. The other thing is that it is a relatively short drive to the nearest glacier, and for anybody that has never set foot on a glacier, there would be plenty of tours and taxis willing to take them. 

That is a tomato sauce on the  eggs benedict.

We get deposited at a hotel for breakfast and for me, this seems like a good option because I know there will be internet and I need to do some work. Once again, the Motorcycle Food Tour is in gear and the hotel has some interesting options, including elk hash (Niels), crab cake eggs benedict (John, Stan) eggs and reindeer sausage (me).

Elk hash, man.

After breakfast, Nan and I hang at the hotel and the guys go exploring however, the internet is so slow that it doesn’t have the bandwidth for me to successfully log in to the office and stay logged in. Eventually, we just abandon it and I haven’t achieved what I needed to get done. On the other hand, we went for a walk around the residential part of town and got some good views of the city plus an interesting perspective on the local flavour of housing. We stopped in at an historical house on Chicken Ridge, built in 1898 and once owned by James Wickersham, a pioneer judge and the lone territorial delegate to Congress.  Despite the name of the district, Chicken Ridge was actually the area where the affluent built their homes; the name came from wild ptarmigan that lived on the hill, not because it was the local chicken aviary. The house was beautifully maintained/restored and furnished with the judge’s personal effects, offering a glimpse into early 20^th century living.

A pretty standard view of a Juneau residential street.

The house pictures are from up at Chicken Ridge

This was just plain weird.

The steet was more like a "lane" with houses adjacent directly to the road.

Nan getting a dog fix.

The inside of the judge's house.

Ships in port.

Nan and I convene at the taxi stop at about 10 to 11. It occurs to me that I could have reasonable cell service if I just find myself a domestic SIM card so when I spot a shop that I think will be able to accommodate me, I figure I can easily get it all done in ten minutes. I rush over there and indicate my intentions and they shop owner is sorting it out for me. He tells me that his 16 year old son is playing for the Saskatoon Blades and has NHL aspirations and that another son is playing down in Arizona. Meanwhile, the SIM card is not working and it is exactly 11:00 a.m.; I tell him time is now becoming a factor for me because my crew and taxi are now waiting. Anyway, he works quickly to get a new SIM card installed and operating; it was good he set it up because it would have taken me hours to figure out, I’m sure but I pay and am on the way, nine minutes late. This is where the proverbial “hot tongue, cold shoulder” come into play.  I caught a few choice words in the taxi but several more once we got back to the boat. At 11:30.

Amazingly, we get a respite from the weather. It hasn’t rained on us, and we see the occasional peek of blue through the clouds. As we depart the harbour, there is increasing evidence that the weather is going to at least partially break; we see the sun shining on the Mendenhall Glacier and the patches of blue are growing bigger. 

 

Around mid-afternoon, we are about to head up to the theatre to see a documentary on the Whittier area when we get a knock on the door: it is the purser and he has come by to tell us that it is our time for a bridge tour.  I rush up to the theatre and pull the guys out of their front row seats; on the way to the bridge, the purser tells us that the captain has issued a course change to take us through the Inian Passage, a fairly narrow but very scenic diversion from the regular route and the duty office, Matt Taylor, has invited us up.

The bridge is large, with lots of equipment and a handful of people around, some working, some not. Matt is 2^nd mate on the Kennicott and is youthful and relaxed. We all introduce ourselves and Matt introduces some of the bridge crew.  I must be getting old because everybody looks so young. I always think that anybody with this much responsibility should be older than me, look grizzled and weathered and maybe use a lot of colourful language. Especially when it comes to ships. 

Second Officer Matt Taylor, our host on the bridge.

This is the business area.

 One of the people on the bridge is a retired captain; he looks older than me, grizzled and weathered, though he did not swear in front of me, so not entirely sure he was a real captain, though he did resemble a slightly shorter Captain Picard. He takes a about a trip a month. Sometimes, he just goes out for the sake of going out but this time, he is on his way to visit his sister in Anchorage. It is like the ultimate busman’s holiday: he has spent his life in wheel houses of ships and here he is in retirement doing the same thing. 

They actually say "you have the Con".

Another bridge officer is Elise. She is just sitting in one of the big easy chairs chillaxing, so it seems. She is watching what is going on around her and at first I wondered if she was somebody’s daughter but she is in uniform. Confident and engaging, Elise is all of 22 years old. She is a 3^rd Mate, in training, and getting paid overtime on this day because she has basically been on the ship for weeks in a row, far past the usual two   She is on the job getting paid to learn; her responsibility is to be learning the route and build up her hours to qualify for advancement where “learning the route” means not only knowing where she is going but to be tested on the route and know where each buoy and marker are from memory. That seems onerous but she comes by it honestly because her grandfather was a merchant mariner and her father has sailed for fifty years, so it seems like it might be genetic for her. Elise has just graduated from the state of Massateusus Maritime Academy (aka Starfleet) in June with a BSc and has been working for the Alaska Marine Highway since June 22^nd.

week stint of crew.

I get a pretty good first-hand account of what she has gone through to get to where she is and what is in her future. School was tough, and a school day might be up at 4:45 to be cleaning by 5, inspection at 6:30, classes from 8 to 4, sports, dinner, required study time and, on occasion, midnight watch. It sounds a lot like the military. Once graduated, the learning continues because there are numerous requirements to move up the food chain besides just time in the Big Chair, which would include technical courses and leadership courses.

I ask her what are her ambitions. She is not sure where her career will go but she sees a few possibilities; she has a boyfriend who will graduate from Starfleet six months behind her and she knows that it would be hard for two people to have the same career since shipping out can mean weeks or months apart.  The ultimate job, she says, is to be a harbour pilot, which is to go out to arriving ships and steer them to the moorage at a local harbour. However, she thinks destiny will play a role and whatever happens will be because it was meant to be.

Excellent adventure aboard the MV Kennicott. That is Captain Matt in jeans; he is not on duty, just came up to make sure things went smoothly through the narrows.

It seems that we are victims of our own success because the captain has arrived on deck to ensure the ship safely navigates the narrow passage and sees that we are a distraction, so boots us out. If we had just stood back, kept our mouths shut and not asked questions, we would probably have been allowed to stay longer but that would not be in our nature since we are all inquisitive people. 

It was not all bad though because we are enjoying out best weather of the voyage: we have quite a lot of blue sky and the water is very calm. We can see the mountains which are rising dramatically above the ocean and, even though I don’t believe they are higher than many mountains closer to home, because they are situated next to the ocean and sea level, they have the appearance of being much higher.  There are several glaciers and some pouring into the ocean and we pass by little fishing communities that seem so isolated that it begs the question, how do you survive out here?

Elfin Cove, Middle Of Nowhere, Alaska. You just can't believe how isolated this is. They get their supplies flown from Gustavus, a town of 400, which also happens to be in the Middle of Nowhere.

Mt. Bertha. You'll have to just trust me.