On a Rampage!

Three years ago, if you had told me I’d be running through a creek while it was snowing, I would have been certain that my future held a serial killer in a hockey mask. Or a bear with rabies. And then if you had told me no, I’d be doing it willingly while dressed like a leprechaun, I would have recommended a good rehab center so you could get help for your apparent crack problem.

And yet, there I was yesterday, splashing through thigh-deep water for no other reason than someone pointed an arrow and said, “run that way to the finish line.”

This is what happens when you get in shape. Because you are stronger, both mentally and physically, you gain confidence, and when your friend says, “I’m putting together a team for the Extreme Rampage. Are you in?” You say, “Sure. That sounds like fun.” And I’m not gonna lie. Until I had to step into that frigid water for the third time, I was having fun.

The morning started with a group text. Angie, our team leader, texted us to make sure we were still in. At 7:00 am, it was a balmy 28 degrees, and her husband had just wimped out. The rest of us, however, were hardcore…and even if we weren’t, none of us was willing to risk the derision of our teammates.

I sent this to the group. “You know it’s going to be a great day when you start by putting on your son’s football cold gear!”

The only guy on our team sent this in return. “You know it’s going to be a great day when you’re doing bourbon shots at 7:15.”

A distressed text from Angie. “My son plays an indoor sport, and I don’t have any bourbon!”

Not to worry, though. She is our high school’s cheerleading coach, and she had enough innate enthusiasm to keep her warm. She actually did cartwheels after we low-crawled under the cargo net.

We arrived at the course and took a group photo. In addition to my son’s Under Armor leggings and undershirt, jazzercise leggings and thermal running jacket, two pairs of socks, gloves, and a sock cap, I wore the team leprechaun shirt and Lucky Charms face tattoo. Why? Because Angie told me to?? Our bright green did make us easy to see in the mud on a gray, dreary day.

Anyway….we were a cute group.

As we made our way from the parking lot to the starting area, someone asked us who we were supposed to be. Angie replied that we were the special ed department at our school.

I added, "I'm the reg ed teacher that makes this whole ARC legal!"

The lady gave us an uncertain smile and jogged on by, but we were giddy and laughed uproariously at my education humor.

We had to sign a waiver promising not to sue anyone if we died. Then, we had to attach a chip to our shoes, presumably so they could find and identify our bodies if we never crossed the finish line. My fingers were already so cold, I could barely sign the waiver, and I couldn’t quit laughing. Somehow it seemed hilarious that we were agreeing to participate in something in which death was a possibility. Even more hilarious was the idea that I might spend my last moments on earth in that obnoxious green shirt.

Our hilarity almost made us miss the start of the race. We danced to the music blaring across the field, posed for the official race photographer, and vowed to leave no man or woman behind. Then, holy crap! The guy yelled go! We charged across the start line and our one guy promptly left us all in his dust. I would call him by his name, but after he left us and we didn’t have his help or encouragement on ANY of the obstacles, we gave him a different name. This is a family friendly blog, so I’ll simply refer to him as “that Y-chromosome.”

The first few obstacles were not particularly difficult…a mud pit, some tires, the low crawl, and a sandbag carry. They seemed more designed to get you muddy than to slow you down. The worst things on the front side of the course were the dang fences. We had to climb over three of those classic Central Kentucky three-rail white fences…no problem for my teammates with longer legs. For short legs like mine it was more of a challenge. I bruised some of my more tender bits pushing myself over the top of those things.

The real fun started when we hit the first wall. You had two choices: use a rope to climb a sheer wooden face or use a rope to climb a wooden face with two 2x4’s placed at intervals too far apart for short-legged people. I chose option 2 in spite of my short legs. Angie pulled herself over first, and her success gave me some measure of hope. I grabbed the rope, pulled myself up to the first 2x4, held for a fraction of a second, and then went cursing and flailing because of the snow built up on the edge of the boards. The guys monitoring the obstacle laughed at me.

Game on.

I put one foot up on the 2x4 before I pulled myself up the second time, and this time I stuck. The problem was that the second 2x4 was too far up to move my foot first. I had to use my upper body to pull myself up enough to gain the second board. Honestly, that was the scariest moment of the course. Upper body strength has always been a problem for me, and in that moment when I pulled up and took my foot off the lower board, I thought I might fall. Even worse, I thought those guys might laugh at me again. I HATE to fail at anything, so I didn’t.

As soon as my foot hit the second board, I pulled again and grabbed the top of the wall. I held on for dear life and slung my leg over. Twelve feet off the ground on a snow-slick wooden board, the waiver didn’t seem funny anymore, but both the laughing guys and my teammates applauded, so Yay Me! Bolstered by my success, Susan and Mandy followed, and Tina unapologetically walked around.

The high I got from climbing that stupid wall was euphoric. A hard-won victory is the sweetest. A big shout-out here to every Jazzercise instructor who has made me do push-ups and that infernal Calvin Harris arm routine. It paid off!

We ran some more, clamored around in a dry creek bed, and laughed about the fact that we were obviously last in our wave. (A new wave left the start line every half hour.) But we were a team! No soldier left behind! Girl power! Stupid Y-chromosome! Who needed him anyway?

Turns out we did at the next obstacle. It was another wall, not as tall as the last, but with no ropes or 2x4’s. The goal was to take a running leap, grab the top and pull yourself over. Baaaahahahahaha! Yeah, that wasn’t happening. Angie tried it once and bounced off. After we stopped laughing, we devised a strategy. The nice couple in front of us stayed at the top and we gave Angie a boost. They grabbed her arms and pulled her until she could get over. I went next. It was not pretty, and I’m sure there are pics because the course photographer was snapping away as I struggled, but I made it over. Since there were two of us at the top now, the nice couple left, and it was up to me and Angie to get the rest of the girls over. Mandy and Susan also flailed a bit, but made it without incident. Then it was Tina’s turn.

Lord.

The photographer put his camera down to boost Tina from below. We pulled from above and I managed to lock arms with her. Mind you…I’m standing on the edge of a slick 2x4 which served as the ladder to get down on the opposite side.

She screamed in my ear, “Don’t you let me go, dammit! Don’t you let me go!”

I was reminded of that scene in Backdraft where the firemen hold each other over the flaming pit and voices straining, say, “You go…we go!” Because if Tina went, there was a strong possibility I was coming back over the top and going with her. I’m typing this now with no major injuries, so yeah, we got her over, and it was awesome. We jumped around and high-fived like we’d just won the Super Bowl.

We were energized. We ran down the course whooping and hollering. Extreme rampage? This wasn’t even hard. So what if we were last? We owned this race! We weren’t even cold anymore!

Oh pride…you do like to go before a fall. See this map?

It’s the Extreme Rampage course. Notice how the first part of the course is on that open brown pasture? That’s the part we had completed. Now, notice how the second half follows that green tree line? Yeah, there’s a creek you can’t see under that tree line, and that tree line wasn’t green BECAUSE IT’S WINTER!

We pulled up short at the edge of the creek. The nice couple who had helped us at the wall was standing there, apparently in denial about the direction of the course. It was 30 degrees and snowing, and the course monitors seemed to think it was hilarious that none of us wanted to wade into the water.

Angie had taken the lead up to this point, but I stepped into the water first. This seemed to spur the couple in front of me, and they took off as well. I said something not repeatable on a family friendly blog, and ran like hell across the creek. The water wasn’t deep, only shin-high, but daaaaaammmmmnnn. That water was cold.

My psychotic sprint motivated my teammates, and they followed. We all got across and congratulated ourselves only to realize that the course continued down the creek for the length of a football field. We tried staying on the bank, but it was steep and muddy. I held on to roots and small trees for as far as I could, but a large tree had fallen across the creek. On the bank, the unearthed roots created an intricate mountain to cross, but further out in the creek, it was fairly simple to slide over the trunk.

Angie and Susan chose to fight with the roots. I decided to suck it up and take the “easier” route…aaaannd found myself in thigh-deep water. Oh holy cow it was cold! Heart-stopping, suck-the-breath-out-of-your-body cold! I climbed up on the tree trunk and crawled back to the bank and the root mountain. We still had 50 yards of creek to traverse, but this time I followed them up the steep, muddy bank and crawled through the brush with them.

I heard a distant curse, and when I looked back down the creek, Tina was on her hands and knees in the mud with her nose an inch from the water. Mandy was trying to help her up. Angie didn’t stop. I had to scream at Angie to make her wait for me to catch up. She had crawled through the mud on that bank like a rabid bear really was behind her, and Susan was right on her heels.

“Shouldn’t we wait for them?”

“They’ll catch up!”

Somehow, the cold water had dampened our leave no soldier behind vow, and I said as much. Angie said, “No. We’re wet. We have to keep moving. If a wild animal is chasing you, and you wait for your friends, after a few minutes, you have to assume the wild animal ate them.”

I sincerely hope I never have to rely on Angie when a wild animal is chasing me, because I’d be lunch. I gave her grief over it as we worked our way through a wooded area and a maze of bungee cords. She kept trying to justify it as hypothermia protection, and I couldn’t argue too much with that. My legs were stinging like they were covered in fire ants and my feet felt like bricks on the ends of my legs. And truthfully, I didn’t stop either.

We came out of the woods to find a mud trench with barbed wire over the top. I was glad my hair was safely tucked under my cap, and for once, I was glad I had short legs. I was able to squat walk across the trench without getting stuck in the wire. After the creek, the man-made obstacles didn’t seem like a big deal. Mother Nature is more extreme than anything the course designers could invent.

And of course, we crawled out of the trench and had to climb back down the creek bank. This happened two more times with a pile of logs, another wall, and a 20 foot net in between. Even rolling across that cargo net twenty feet above the ground seemed insignificant compared to my cold, wet feet. Susan and Angie did everything possible to avoid running through the water, but climbing through the brush on the bank was harder and took longer. My feet were already wet, so I followed the guys from the 9:00 wave who had lapped us right through the creek.

One guy smiled as he passed me and said, “I thought this was the Color Run.”

“My language has been colorful.”

He laughed. “So is your shirt.”

That moment of rampage camaraderie made me forget about my feet long enough to get through that last stretch of creek. Angie, Susan, and I crossed the finish line arm in arm, with a blazing 5k time of one hour and 18 minutes. By comparison, the fastest finish time was 29 minutes, so we were only a tad off the leaders’ pace.

Tina and Mandy crossed the finish line 10 minutes later, and we celebrated the fact they hadn't drowned or been eaten by a wild animal. We collected our medals and t-shirts and Y-chromosome who had been warming himself by the fire for 45 minutes. He couldn’t leave because his car keys were locked in Angie’s car. Ha! He did acknowledge that he totally sucked as a teammate, so we forgave him. We’re generous like that.

Some creepy dude took a picture of Angie’s ruined Nikes and offered to buy them from her. Because Angie is certifiable, she took them off and gave them to him right there in the middle of the field. Susan and I felt it a bad idea to encourage creepy dudes, but whatever, Angie is kind. Well, mostly kind. If a wild animal is chasing you or her feet are wet, you’re on your own.

We barely paused for an “after” pic on the way out because we were wet and it was still 30 freaking degrees out, but here it is…sans Y-chromosome who had grabbed his keys and hightailed it out of there.

I had my heater on full-blast for the 10 minutes it took me to drive home, but my feet still felt like bricks. It took me another 10 minutes to peel off layer after layer of wet, muddy clothes to get in the shower, and then my feet burned with the white hot fire of a thousand suns. It took most of the day yesterday for the tips of my toes to stop hurting. I’m reasonably convinced I was in the beginning stages of frostbite. I don’t recommend it.

Another group text last night revealed that we’re all sore and bruised. Susan said she looked like she had been in a car wreck and had hives on her face, and that the waiver hadn’t said anything about GETTING YOUR FACE MESSED UP! I reminded her that I ran through the creek instead of crawling through the bushes, so my face was just fine in spite of my brush with frostbite. Tina was going to a concert at Rupp Arena and was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to climb the steps. Y-chromosome’s feet still hurt, but felt better with every shot of bourbon.

I’m writing this today with some aches and pains, but I don’t regret my rampage for a minute. I have never laughed so hard in spite of physical pain. Our team was dead last in our wave, but every single one of us finished, and most of us did every single obstacle. I’m proud of that, and I’d do it again!

Next time, though, I’ll rampage in the summer.

Beef Jerky and Hot Dogs

Anyone who has been teaching for more than five minutes has had a class go off the rails. Stuff happens. An unsilenced phone suddenly blares, “I like big butts and I cannot lie!” Someone breaks up with someone right before class. A mouse sprints across the room. Gastrointestinal issues occur. Several years ago, when the school was under renovation, the pumper truck backed right up to my window to empty the construction port-a-potty.

The good classroom manager rolls with the punches, acknowledges the issue, and redirects students back to the lesson. The dumbass sends the class off the rails herself.

Today, I was the dumbass.

Basketball homecoming is on the horizon, and this year the high school student council decided to make two changes. First, they are replacing the winter formal with a homecoming dance, and second, just for kicks and giggles, they’ve decided to have an all-male homecoming court to balance football homecoming’s all-female court.

Preliminary voting to cull the four most popular boys from each class occurred during English today. Everybody, including seniors, has to take English, so our classes are the school’s polling places. For most of the day, I made quick work of the process. Then we hit 6^th hour…

“So,” I explained, “this year there will be a homecoming dance after the game, and the homecoming court is going to be flipped. It will be an all-guy court instead of an all-girl court.”

My class comedian piped up. “Oh man! It’s gonna be beef jerky and hot dogs!”

Laughter ensued.

Chalk it up to a long day, one too many interruptions, or the need for a Snickers bar, but I snapped.

“I don’t know what that’s a euphemism for, but it’s disgusting! Have some class!”

The laughter died to a few twitters, and the comedian wore a look of utter confusion.

“Euphemism?”

The kid sitting directly behind him caught on first and lost it.

“Beef jerky and hot dogs!” he howled.

“Yeah,” the original kid said, still confused. “That’s what we’ll end up eating at the dance if a bunch of guys are in charge.”

“Oh. Nevermind.”

And then the class went off the rails. Even the painfully shy girl who never speaks had her hand over her mouth to hide her laughter.

I apologized to the kid and collected the ballots, red-faced, laughing, and feeling like the dumbass I was. Roll with the punches. Acknowledge the issue.

I redirected them back to the lesson, but today, even Scout, Jem, and Boo Radley couldn’t hold a candle to beef jerky and hot dogs.

How eating lunch inspired me to fire up the blog, or why Cracker Barrel is the 4th level of hell

Hey blog readers(assuming there are still some of you out there)! Long time no see, huh? I had a meal at Cracker Barrel today, and I felt the need reconnect. And no, that is not a non-sequitur.

I may be the only person in the state of Kentucky, nay, in the whole southern tier of the US, who does not like Cracker Barrel. A bold statement, but judging by the mass of humanity in any given franchise on any given day, I don’t think it’s hyperbole. In fact, I probably just lost half my audience to daydreams of grits, beans n greens, chicken-fried chicken, and a heaping portion of hash brown casserole.

For me, that’s no daydream. It’s a nightmare. The mere thought makes me want to eat a roll of tums and curl up on the couch in a what-have-I-done food coma.

You’re thinking that’s nice, weird, whatever, but so what? This is a free country. You are an adult with free will. No one is forcing you into that bastion of down-home country goodness.

(Cue whiny voice.)

Except people are forcing me, dammit! They totally are. Not in a twist-my-arm-behind-my-back, threaten-my-loved-ones kind of way (because, well, they are my loved ones), but in an exasperated, why-does-everyone-have-to-suffer-because-you-are-too-snobby-for-down-home-country-goodness kind of way.

I am not too snobby for down-home country goodness. I was raised on down-home country goodness. And Cracker Barrel is NOT down-home country goodness! Cracker Barrel is the commercialization of someone’s idea of what down-home country goodness should be. And holy cow has America bought into it!

My good friend, Linda, will not allow us to begin a girls’ weekend without breakfast at Cracker Barrel. She was raised in Connecticut by her British mother. And ironically, we leave Cracker Barrel and go straight to Starbucks so she can get an iced mocha. Yep, a bonafide, down-home girl, that Linda.

Even worse is my husband, Bruce. He loves Cracker Barrel with the devotion of a true zealot. Grits, greens, chicken n dumplins, cornbread, and OMG…Uncle Herschel’s breakfast…don’t even get him started. Sounds like a good ole boy, doesn’t he? Bruce was born on Staten Island and raised in a large city north of the Ohio River.

So maybe Cracker Barrel is the place where wannabe down-home country folks go to get the food they never had as a child? That would be a nice theory if real, down-home country folks didn’t like it so much, but they do like it. They really, really do.

WHY DO YOU PEOPLE LIKE IT SO MUCH?!?!

I can picture my friends and neighbors out there shaking their heads, thinking, “Why do you hate it so much, Kathy? Geez, girlfriend, chill out.”

Okay…maybe I do need to chill out, but let me share. My husband got out of bed this morning and announced his intention to eat at Cracker Barrel. Normally, I would talk him out of it, and I’m pretty good at getting my way on this. He usually acquiesces because he doesn’t want to sit through a meal with a sullen, unhappy wife. I’m not proud of my attitude, but it is what it is. This morning, I made a half-hearted attempt. Something about how I could cook breakfast, blah, blah, blah. I didn’t really want to cook. Our youngest son was being a pain in the butt, and adding to his bad attitude didn’t seem reasonable, so I said, “Sure. Sounds good.”

Okay…I didn’t say that, but I did say something not sullen and unhappy, and I put the best possible foot forward given that Bruce was pissed at young son and I was smoothing the waters by consenting to eat at Cracker Barrel.

We drove past the long porch with its rustic, hundred-dollar rocking chairs and saw that the parking lot was completely full. We ended up in the back next to the dumpsters, and in the long hike to the door, we made small talk about the friend we had passed and mistaken for someone else because they were both so jowly. Really, I was mentally girding my loins.

Cracker Barrel on a random Tuesday night in April is not my favorite place, but on a Sunday morning two days before Christmas, it is the 4^th level of hell. People were packed wall to wall in the “Old Country Store.”

Bruce weaved his way through the labyrinth of humanity and kitsch and put our name on the list. Ten to fifteen minutes they said. And in spite of the crush, they were true to their word. I am thankful for this because I only endured fifteen minutes wedged against a display containing Mickey Mouse Pez dispensers, giant Hershey’s kisses, toddler-sized fedoras (wtf??), and holiday sweatshirts containing snowy landscapes and the implicit message, “I stopped staying up past nine o’clock ten years ago.”

We saw people we knew. I could not talk to them because I was trapped between the aforementioned display and people blocking every possible path to my friends. Bruce moved a box on top of the display, so I could at least smile and wave. The only open path led into the dining room, Shangri-La if you judged by the sheer number of people trying to get in. If there had been a kitchen fire, I’d be dead right now.

When our name was called, we made our way into Shangri-La, squeezing sideways to get past the servers in the narrow aisles between tables. I can only assume the fire marshal has seen the number and configuration of tables and deemed the place safe, but damn! Seriously…just damn…

I shouted my drink order to our server over the din of plates clanking, children screaming, and voices raised in raucous conversation and opened my menu. Oh, the menu! A culinary ode to all that is breaded, fried, buttered, and sugared! They actually have an entrée called chicken-fried chicken. My grandmother was born, raised, and lived her whole life in the country on a farm, and she made the best chicken that was ever breaded and cooked up in boiling Crisco (the kind that came solid in a large can). She spared neither the breading nor the grease, and even then we just called it fried chicken. Chicken-fried chicken??? What is that?

I’ll never know. I ordered a grilled chicken salad with the extra-creamy buttermilk dressing on the side. I’m not a health food freak, but I refuse to consume 10,000 calories in an insanely heavy “down-home” meal when I have the option of consuming 10,000 calories in rich and wonderful Christmas treats.

I don’t remember what Bruce ordered, but it made him happy, and I was glad. The conversation turned from the aggravating 18 year-old to more pleasant subjects. A couple of friends stopped by the table to say hello and Merry Christmas. And on the way out, when a Stetson-wearing fellow with long gray hair and matching beard (think Gandalf meets Waylon Jennings) grabbed a pecan pie off the counter display, I realized I had a story for my poor, neglected blog. And that made me happy.

I left The Old Country Store with a smile. (Knowing I was off the Cracker Barrel hook for a while didn’t hurt either.)

The Cult of Disney

My friends, Linda and Robert, are bona fide, Kool-Aid drinking members of the Cult of Disney. They have good reasons to be, and I, for one, am glad they are because I got to go on a cruise to Alaska with them. I am not in the cult, also for good reasons, and I observed some things from the outside looking in.

Cult members speak Disney. They discuss vacation points, exchange statuses (gold or silver), and rattle off the names of Disney cruise ships and their respective destinations like it’s their own personal fleet. They know the names of restaurants, rides, and shows both on the cruise line and in the theme parks. They know the names of the most obscure Disney characters.

During the pirate night extravaganza, a long-eared alien creature ran out to challenge Captain Hook and company.

“Who is that?”

Hannah looked at me like I had a second nose growing out of my forehead. “That’s Stitch!”

Oh, of course. How silly of me. How could I forget that classic Disney character, Stitch?

WTF?

Of course, Hannah is the same girl who won the trivia contest with young Aiden. Hannah knows her Disney so well, they didn't just win, they annihilated the competition. 

I’m so out of the Disney cult loop that I didn’t even recognize all of the Disney princesses. Oh sure, I could identify Snow White, Cinderella, Belle, and Ariel, but the pretty black girl in the green dress was new to me. I’m thrilled to see a non-white girl get Disney princess treatment, but I didn’t know who she was. (Yeah, yeah…Pocahontas and Mulan aren’t white girls, but seriously, are they ever included with the rest of the princesses?)

Speaking of Disney characters, cult members go to every show on the cruise. Our evening ritual was drinks in The Outlook Café or Diversions (yeah, that’s Disney-speak right there), show at 6:15, and dinner at 8:30. I’m not complaining. Nobody puts on a show like Disney, and honestly, who among us doesn’t feel something when the music swells and a powerful voice belts out “The Circle of Life?” Add a couple of glasses of wine and you have a freaking deep moment.

We went to Opening Night, The Golden Mickeys, Toy Story, and Disney Dreams. The productions rivaled anything I’ve seen on screen or stage. Amazing costumes and special effects, brilliant singers and dancers, and over-the-top acting all combined to delight the audience. Even our group’s 16 year-old contingent left the boys and the teen club to catch the show each night.

I’m not gonna lie. I laughed. I cried. I sang at the top of my lungs. 

Disney, man... 

They’re good at this cult thing. They built the tension toward the end of almost every show in anticipation of the arrival of the great one himself, and when Mickey finally entered the stage, I found myself cheering just as loud as the kids.

Nick and I tried to wear our non-cult membership like a badge of honor, this pic to the contrary.

In Nick’s defense, he has a child who was delighted by his participation in the madness.

At one point, though, during the parade of nations at the end of our Animator’s Palette dinner (OMG! I think I speak Disney now!) after the black and white room became a Technicolor dream and Mickey appeared in his Fantasia wizard’s garb, I leaned over and said, “They’re sucking me in, Nick!”

He clasped my hand and said, “Be strong, Kathy!” I tried, but it was hard!

Every Disney employee or “cast member” is Walt’s personal emissary. They are so friendly it makes your teeth hurt, and I’m no jaded, abrupt Northeasterner. I’m from the South for heaven’s sake. We had the same servers every night at dinner, Yansen and Recon, and they knew our names before the first meal was over. One evening, I asked for ketchup, and instead of handing me the bottle, Recon set a small plate down and painstakingly poured the ketchup in the shape of mouse ears. I must have worn an expression that said, “Seriously?” because she laughed, but she didn’t stop until I had perfect tomato-y Mickey ears for my fries.

While we were at dinner, the magic Cinderella mice entered our staterooms to turn down the bed and leave swans (or maybe a cobra?)…

Dinosaurs…

And monkeys…

Linda was so taken with the towel animals that she dragged Hannah, Kaitlyn, and me to a towel-folding class.

I took pictures and repeated instructions as Linda spent most of the time talking over the nice lady trying to teach her.

Even the Disney sub-contractors who ran the excursions were enthusiastic and friendly. This became apparent during my only non-Disney contracted excursion. Victor and I wanted to whale-watch while Linda and her crew were shopping, so we bought tickets after we disembarked. At every port, there were all kinds of folks trying to sell you something. The actual excursion was great, and we did, in fact, see the whales we paid to see…

…but holy cannoli, the tour operator was not in the Cult of Disney. He was everything Disney is not. You might even say he was the Anti-Mouse. This is John.

He was transplanted from Yonkers, but he was fond of slipping into a fake Russian accent. Why? I have no idea. Southeast Alaska is quite far from Russia, and John’s dueling accents were jarring.

This was our opening conversation. (I made the mistake of smiling when I greeted him):

“Well, hello Miss Nebraska with your pearly whites.”

“I’m not from Nebraska.”

“Yeah? Well you have that Rebecca of Sunnybrook farm look.”

Victor had only known me four days at this point, and still, he almost spit his coffee all over the pavement. Rebecca of Sunnybrook farm indeed.

Where our Davidson Glacier guides regaled us with tales of bears and wolves and the road kill club, John had this to say about life in Alaska. “This place was built on gold and greed and lives in its past glory. Everyone here is depressed. We drink ourselves to death or commit suicide. Oh yeah, there’s an eagle estuary on your right. But anyway, Juneau has the highest per capita rate of suicide in the nation.”

John never stopped talking in his Yonkers/Russian accent, and Victor and I were crying by the time we got to the marina. We didn’t realize we had paid for whale watching AND a comedy show. The Anti-Mouse piece de resistance was when we were exiting the shuttle, and John said, “See ya, Salsa!” to the gentleman from Phoenix. An audible gasp escaped the two young Disney cast members who had the morning off and had bought tickets to see the whales.

“Toto, I don’t think we’re in Disney anymore.”

So John was the counterbalance to the Stepford friendliness of Disney’s employees. When I ran in the morning, the same maintenance guy was always on deck sweeping water, straightening furniture, whatever, and every time I passed him, he stopped working and said hello. And I mean every time…every single lap. After the fourth or fifth lap, it became funny, and I couldn’t say good morning without laughing. He was from Indonesia, so I’m not sure if he understood why I was in hysterics at his greeting, and that brings me to another point…

Every Disney cast member on the cruise was from some foreign country. The only American employees were Jimmy, the cruise director, and a few ship’s officers who were introduced on opening night. Most of the workers were from Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia. They had interesting stories and were willing to share them with us when we asked. Many of them were saving up to start a business of some sort back in their home country. Several were married to other cast members.

One night toward the end of the cruise, the night of the epic waves I think, we were sitting in Diversions, watching the light fixtures swing back and forth when Nick decided to ask our server a personal question.

“Not to be nosy, but how much do you make?”

“$13.50.”

“An hour?”

A chuckle. “No. For the week.”

We all sat a moment in stunned silence trying to process that, and then I think we all said the same thing at the same time in the same incredulous tone. “You make $13.50 for the WHOLE week?”

“Plus tips.”

Nick, “Could you tell me who I can punch in the face for you?”

The guy laughed and went on about his business while we tried to sort it out. The ship is registered out of Nassau, Bahamas, so minimum wage laws don’t apply. Room and board was included for employees and Disney is aggressive in encouraging guests to tip well. A 15% gratuity was added to every drink we bought, and envelopes were left in our staterooms with instructions for tipping the housekeeping and wait staff. But still…

Hannah, a devout Disney cult member, said earlier in the trip that she would like to work for Disney someday. I think she was rethinking that after our conversation with the waiter. However, she still wants to get married at Disney World, so it didn’t disillusion her too much.

Shady employment practices aside, it’s hard not to at least sip the Kool-Aid. I skipped the character breakfast, but I did wear the pirate bandanna.

I didn’t recognize Stitch and the pretty black princess, but I know every word to “Can you Feel the Love Tonight.” I didn’t learn how to make towel animals…

…but I did learn how to make a Cadillac margarita.

I’ll never achieve gold status, but I’d go on another Disney cruise in a heartbeat.

The Road Kill Club

Alaskans are interesting folk, at least the ones I met. Take Jonah, for instance.

Cute, isn’t he? These girls certainly thought so.

Jonah was the captain of the boat (or as he called it, the Ferrari of the fjord) that took us across the fjord to our canoeing expedition. Normally, it’s a 30 minute trip down one fjord, around Haines point, and up another fjord to the drop off point. We did it a little differently because of turbulent seas at Haines point. Jonah piloted us to Haines where we disembarked, crossed the peninsula by bus, and then boarded another boat to the drop off point. The benefit to this more complicated route was that we got to see Haines, which was beautiful…

…and we got to spend more time listening to Jonah tell stories during the bus ride. It was during this bus ride that we learned about the road kill club.

In Alaska, you can sign up with the state police to be in the road kill club. Now, I don’t know if this includes all of Alaska or just the region I visited, but one of Jonah’s good friends was a member. The state police keep a list of names and phone numbers of people who so choose, and then when wild game is hit by cars, but is not too mangled, the police call the next person on the list who then has two hours to get to the scene and remove the carcass. This is not the sort of game you would expect to find dead on a Kentucky road, or really most of the lower forty-eight, like rabbit, opossum, the ever-present skunk, or even deer. I’m talking BIG game, like moose.

My car was almost totaled and sustained damage that took six weeks to fix last summer when it tangled with a deer, so I shudder to think what would happen if it had hit a moose. According to Jonah, unless a semi or other large truck hits the moose, most of the damage is sustained by the vehicle and not the moose. I believe him.

Alaskans as a whole are more tuned into Mother Nature than most. As Danny told us when giving us canoeing gear, Alaska will bite you in the ass if you turn your back on her. The extremes of Alaska make it what it is, and most Alaskans wouldn’t want it any other way, but you have to respect it. Part of that respect is an unwillingness to let a whole moose and all that meat go to waste if it gets hit by a vehicle.

So Jonah’s friend was on the list. He told us that one night, he and his friend and a few others were at a local watering hole. It was winter, and from what I gathered, the local watering holes are particularly popular in winter. His friend was more than a couple of glasses in when THE CALL came. He was in no condition to drive, and was smart enough to realize that, but he only had two hours to get the carcass or the police would call the next person on the list. Jonah had us all in stitches as he recounted his friend’s frantic scramble to find a sober driver, get to the moose on icy back roads, and load it, still drunk (the friend, not the departed moose), onto the truck under police scrutiny.

For Jonah, the moral of the story was that they all ate LARGE that winter…moose steaks, moose jerky, moose stew, etc. For me, the message was Alaskans are all a little bit crazy. Jonah’s story was hilarious and a little frightening at the same time. Alaska is a place where people will risk life and limb to get to a moose carcass to fill their freezer for the winter. The police have to manage the program because otherwise, according to Jonah, people would resort to stupidity and violence to get something as valuable as a dead moose.

Jonah keeps his own personal crab pots in the fjord. He pointed in this general direction when he told us about them.

He was anxious to drop us off at the end of the day and check them. The weather had been bad for several days, and the pots had gone unattended. This is a common enough practice that crab pot protocol exists among the locals. If you know someone can’t get to his pot for various and sundry reasons, it is considered acceptable to check it and take the catch as long as you rebait it and set it back where it was.

Alaska not only breeds people who are connected to the land and the sea, it attracts them. Jonah’s copilot, Jen, drives to Alaska every summer from Austin, Texas. Yes, drives to Skagway from Austin, no easy task in a state where many places are only accessible by boat or plane.

Our guides who led us to the Davidson Glacier by canoe live in primitive cabins close to the lake. There is no heat, and trust me, it was cold out there, and they use compost outhouses. They live this way all summer by choice. You might be tempted to think these guys were not the sharpest tools in the shed, except I’m pretty sure they were.

That's Danny checking the girls' life vests.

I had an extensive discussion about Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild with him, prompted by this bus in the middle of nowhere.

Although he understands that Krakauer identified with Chris McCandless’ spiritual quest, Danny thought McCandless was a just another dumbass who didn’t properly respect Alaska and got “bitten in the ass.” I tend to agree. Danny was also the one who gave me the Mark Twain quote I used in Blue Ice. Turns out Danny is only a glacier guide in the summer. In the winter, he works as a teacher in Haines.

This is Justin.

Justin was a wealth of knowledge about the lake, the forest, the glacier, and even the birds we saw. In the winter, he moves to New Zealand and actually leads hikers across one of the glaciers there. He told us about a “perfect day” he recently experienced. He wasn't working that day, so he decided to hike up the edge of the ice on the Davidson. On his way back down, he sensed movement, and stopped just in time to see a brown bear (aka a grizzly) come out of the brush. He sat quietly and watched until it wandered off. He was just thinking how cool that was when a wolf made an appearance. Davidson Lake is off the beaten path for most wolves in the area, so seeing one there was a very rare thing. If that wasn’t enough, later that afternoon, Justin went kayaking in the fjord with some of the other guides, and what do you think they saw? Yep, a humpback whale. It came right up next to them on their kayak.

These kids have chosen to live extraordinary lives, lives where you sign up to be in the road kill club, observe proper crab pot protocol, and drive five straight days from Texas to Alaska for the privilege of living in primitive conditions for five months. A life where a “perfect day” means seeing a bear, a wolf, and a whale within a six hour period.

Now…there is another breed of folk in Alaska as well. One who is less, shall we say, positive and optimistic about life. I met one of those as well, but I’ll save him for another day.

As we hiked back to our pick-up point on the beach, Danny called it the denouement of our journey. Oh, how I love a man who drops literary terms into his everyday conversation! Danny was wrong though. That excursion was the climax of mine.

Blue Ice

Thanks to Doug Jones for graciously allowing me to link to his personal photography site. I cite him often as my source, but this is a piece based on my experiences and observations, not a research paper. Any factual errors are my own.

“A man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificant by and by.” Mark Twain (A Tramp Abroad)

Mr. Twain, as always, hit the nail on the head. There are moments in our lives when we are confronted with just how small we really are, how our existence is an infinitesimal blip in both space and time. And this is a good thing. We who are glued to our phones, our computers, our televisions need reminding that most of it doesn’t really matter in the great scheme of things.

See this iceberg?

It existed as a hundred million snowflakes before Europeans set foot in North America. Chris Columbus has come and gone along with every American ancestor you have, and this chunk of ice is still here. Now that it’s broken off from the mother ship, otherwise known as calving from the glacier, you’ll outlive it, but it when it finally disappears, it will have existed over 500 years.

Before my cruise to Alaska, glaciers existed only in textbooks and documentaries. Thanks to Al Gore, I was vaguely aware that they were melting kinda fast, and that I should probably be alarmed, but since they existed only in textbooks and documentaries, I was only vaguely alarmed.

The best learning happens not in a classroom, but out in the world. Are you familiar with Plato’s “Image of the Line?” I’ve moved from the first level of knowledge, knowing only shadows and reflections, to the second level where you see the thing itself. I’ve seen a glacier dwarf a ten-story cruise ship, felt the air blowing over it to bite at my face, heard the thunder when a piece breaks off and falls into the ocean, and I’ve seen the bare canyon walls where it has receded. Glaciers are real now.

This is the Sawyer Glacier.

This is the Davidson Glacier.

These pics are more shadows and reflections. They don’t begin to do justice to the thing itself.

One of the smart moves Disney made on their Alaskan cruise was to hire a naturalist to sail with us. Doug Jones is a ranger with the U.S. Forest Service. His most recent post was at the Mendenhall Glacier in the Tongass National Forest outside of Juneau. He knows Alaska, and he made himself accessible throughout the cruise. After I skipped the Disney character breakfast to go listen to Doug, Victor took to calling him my Boo.

I mean, seriously? Why would I skip this…

…in favor of this?

Oh, I dunno? Maybe because I’m a big ol’ nerd who hasn’t drunk deeply from the Disney Kool-Aid jug? But that’s another blog post.

Doug gave four lectures during our cruise, including one on glaciers. And yes, I attended every one of them. He is wicked smart and brimming over with enthusiasm for his home state. He wants everyone to love and appreciate Alaska the way he does. He is also an amateur photographer, and his pictures are stunning. This link takes you to his photography site. It’s worth the click.

Doug narrated our cruise up Tracy Arm, the fjord which ends at the Sawyer Glacier. The vistas were absolutely spectacular.

I wish the pics could give you some sense of scale. These cliffs rise up over 2000 feet.

The water below the ship is another 2000 feet deep in places. The entire fjord was carved out by glaciers.

As we worked our way up Tracy Arm, icebergs became more prevalent.

Then we began to see these cute boogers on top of them.

We arrived at just the right time to see mama harbor seals and the babies they had just birthed.

Yes. Those smears of red on the ice are from that little guy’s very recent entrance into the world.

The closer we got to the glacier, the more seals we saw. Mostly, they ignored the ship. I guess these mamas felt we were sailing a little too close.

Orcas, or Killer Whales, eat harbor seals, but they won’t swim in close to the glacier where the ice is thick, so the seals get very close to the glacier to give birth. All of those little brown dots are seals.

Eagles like to hang out on the ice as well.

The Sawyer Glacier is a tidewater glacier. That means it flows all the way to the ocean. These glaciers are the ones we most often see in all those documentaries because when they calve, it makes for some cool video. The Sawyer Glacier originates in the Juneau Icefield. An icefield is a massive deposit of glacial ice at the top of a mountain range. Doug compared an icefield to a bowl of ice cream. If you keep adding ice cream, eventually it’s going to overflow and run down the sides. An icefield’s overflow is a glacier.

For reasons I don’t pretend to understand, glacial ice absorbs all the colors in the spectrum except blue. Don’t hold me to this, but I think it has something to do with the compacting of all those snowflakes. Regardless, the blue undertones are incredibly beautiful.

You can tell if an iceberg has recently melted enough that it has rolled over. Once the glacial ice makes contact with the air, it begins to turn white. The blue is always underneath, and so, gives the ice a luminescent quality.

Most of Southeast Alaska’s glaciers are in retreat. Note the bare walls around the Sawyer Glacier. The ice has receded so recently that vegetation hasn’t had a chance to reclaim the land.

I can’t remember the exact statistic Doug gave us, but during the 1980’s the glacier was retreating about 20 feet per year. Last year, it retreated close to a mile.

This lake, on which we are making like Hiawatha, didn’t exist 50 years ago. It was part of the Davidson Glacier.

Our Davidson Glacier guide, Justin (the guy on the back of the canoe), told us there aren’t even fish in it yet. It takes 60 years or so for the fish to naturally make their way into a newly created waterway. The lake feeds a river that didn’t exist 50 years ago. Crazy, right?

Global warming has become a highly politicized issue. Doug stuck to the science. He told us about ice core samples that have been gathered from around the world. Scientists can “see” back in time almost a million years through some of the samples.

“It’s extremely complex, but what the natural record tells us is that we are advancing the rate of melt more than 100 times where it has ever been during this part of the cycle. We can see 10 ice ages thru the 880,000 year old ice core sample. It’s never been this accelerated.”

We can argue until the cows come home about why it’s happening, but one trip to Alaska is all it takes to show you that it is happening. My favorite excursion was the canoeing adventure to the Davidson Glacier, and it blows my mind that my grandmother could not have made the same trip when she was my age because THE LAKE WAS STILL A GLACIER!

I wonder what will be left of the Davidson when my grandchildren are my age. I hope they have a chance to see this.

Glaciers are definitely real to me now, and I find myself moving to Plato’s third level of knowledge, the level in which you move from away from the visible to the intelligible. The “what” and “how” questions become “why” questions. Why do we need glaciers? Why are they retreating so fast? Are we responsible?

And then the fourth level…what does the nature of glaciers tell us about the nature of man?

Thanks for hanging in there if you read this far. My last couple of entries have waxed philosophical. Alaska will do that to you for real. I’m gonna switch gears next time and write “The Road Kill Club.”