There are no pics this week. I am writing this on Tuesday, August 27.
This was a very busy week and weekend. I spent a lot of time at Nick’s house, getting all their computers set up. Saturday (!) I went down to move their financial computer to the Executive Director’s residence and get that working with her laptop. Just as I was finishing up, I found that I had somehow downloaded a bad printer driver for two computers. This driver was worse than bad — it prevents all printing activities on these two computers. The Executive Director is on vacation this week, and I am on vacation next. We decided to solve this problem in September.
In addition to that, we had a neighborhood “Chill & Grill” Friday, followed by the movie “42” (about Jackie Robinson). Saturday, we had the Sabiston’s over for dinner. (I got home just in time to clean up from Danita’s cooking before the Sabiston’s came.) And Danita and I went down to Bud’s house Sunday. Danita is still sorting through stuff with her Dad. My job was to power wash the front porch and sidewalk. The front porch is a small cement pad, but it hasn’t been cleaned in many years, and it is slightly concave so it holds water after it rains. In addition, the porch, sidewalk, and top of the driveway don’t get much sun so black nasties grow in the cement. The porch was so bad I scrubbed it with “Krud Remover” 3 times before I even turned the power washer on. It was quite a job getting it cleaned up. Bud wanted me to wash his deck, but Danita helped me decline. Power washing a deck is harder than power washing cement. His deck is in such bad shape that cleaning it would result in it needing a paint job. And some of the boards really need to be replaced. If I opened that bag of worms, the job is big enough that I don’t feel qualified to finish it. And besides all that we have the James Bond movies! We ended up having “Breakfast with Bond” Saturday morning, because that was the only time we had available.
We’re gearing up for the big Denali trip. I’ve printed out Google instructions for the drives we have to take, in case the GPS has problems. We went out last night to get me some hiking socks and Danita some outdoor all-weather pants. Tonight I’m meeting Danita at UMBC at 5:00. We’ll go to a local bar for dinner. (They have pretty good hamburgers.) Then we will go to a member’s-only opening of the Black Reef exhibit at the National Aquarium. That’s the last big activity before traveling. We will have several days to make sure we have all the details of our vacation covered and fret about the forecast up there, which so far indicates temperatures in the 40s and 50s and showers every single day. After spending all that money to get to Alaska, you can bet we’ll be hiking around in the rain.
I kind of enjoyed the way I posted daily on my two bike trips. I plan to do the same for our Alaska trip. That lets me post a few pics and describe some highlights each day and prevents one huge, overwhelming post, which would never be finished. I can’t post on Crazy Guy on a Bike, because this isn’t a bike tour. So I will post on this blog, starting the evening of Monday, Sept 2 or maybe the morning of Tuesday, Sept 3. Of course, that assumes that the WiFi works where we’re staying. If it doesn’t, I’ll be posting to my laptop, and download the posts to the blog when I get WiFi access. You can wait for the Email to be delivered, or you can just check out this blog once a day, or you can wait and read a week’s worth of blogs all at once, or you can ignore it all together. That’s the beauty of the web.
Here’s the itinerary and contact info. I’m including hotel phone numbers because I don’t know how good the phone coverage is up there. Unless otherwise stated, all times are AK time zone.
Sept 1: UA 453 to Denver, US 1107 to Anchorage. Arrives 10:30 PM. Staying at
Quality Suites Anchorage Near Convention Center
325 W 8TH AVE
Anchorage, AK 99501
1.888.872.8356
Sept 2 – 6: Staying at
Talkeetna Roadhouse
Trisha Costello, Owner
P. O. Box 604 Talkeetna, AK 99676
13550 E. Main Street in “beautiful Downtown Talkeetna”
phone: 907.733.1351
Sept 7: Staying at
Camai B & B
3838 Westminster Way
Anchorage, Alaska 99508-4834
(907)333-2219
Sept 8: UA 1129 to Houston, UA 1717 to Baltimore, arriving 11:47 AM Eastern time on Sept 9 (overnight flight).
That’s all for now. I hope this finds everybody doing well.