Anchorage

This really is pretty far north and, even though we are now about seven weeks from the Winter Solstice, dawn is late in coming. That being said, I didn't awake until seven, local time which is 11:00 am EST.

Alaska should change the slogan on its license plates to read: "Alaska - We Invented Oh-Dark-Thirty."

The hotel I was staying at was one of the famous Westmark chain. Ok, not so famous Westmark chain. The staff was very kind and accommodating, but the hotel itself had almost an Eastern European feel. The hallways were narrow, the furniture in the rooms was - I don't know how to describe it - thin, somehow.

I went down to the front desk and asked where, within walking distance, would be a good place to go to breakfast. I wasn't leaving for Juneau until late afternoon and I wanted to test the Jack London theory of figuring out how cold it is by how long it takes spit to freeze on the way down.

I had dressed warmly. My never-used-for-their-intended-purpose-cold-weather-hiking-boots were firmly tied on to my feet. I was wearing pair of nylon warm-up pants, also never used for their intended purpose. These were the layer below my standard issue khaki slacks.

I had on a BUSH IS MY PRESIDENT t-shirt left over from the Florida re-count effort. On top of that I had a cotton button down shirt, then an Autobody Express sweat shirt I had purchased once in Santa Fe.

My woolen scarf - a present from The Lad - my cowboy hat, and a pair of lined nylon gloves completed the ensemble.

I didn't look exactly like the kid in the "Peanuts" cartoon, but I wasn't far off. I waddled a little. And my thighs sounded like I was wearing corduroy pants.

All this, to avoid ending up frozen to death in a snow bank, not discovered until the Spring thaw and only then as a bite-sized snack for a mother polar bear to feed to her cubs.

I was told that Blondie's Caf� on Fourth Street was the best place for breakfast. I went out, expecting to have a blast of cold air sting my face, watching left and right for Mushers and their dog sleds, maybe having to detour around the odd igloo.

Alaska has a population of some 600,000 people. Of those, about 450,000 live in Anchorage and its environs.

I could have been walking down Grand Avenue in Des Moines, Iowa during December.

Nevertheless, I made my way to Blondie's and, as the sign near the door directed, sat myself.

I had bought an Anchorage Times which had a huge picture of an Olympic ski jumper on the front page. The odd thing about this picture was that the jumper was not from Alaska. He wasn't even from America. But, the story said, Alaska did have a jumper in the competition and so that was enough of a local hook.

Blondie's was, in fact, a bar. It had a bar with four authentic-looking Alaskan guys sitting at it and one authentic-looking bartender tending to them.

On the walls were the usual road-house-type nonsense. A poster of "The Boulevard of Broken Dreams,"

The menus were on each table. Blondie's has come up with an interesting way to change prices: The menus are Xeroxed with the prices left blank. Then they simply write the prices in with a pen. But that wasn't the most interesting point about Blondie's menus.

On the breakfast page there were about 14 items. Omelets, French toast, and seven different types of pancake combinations.

Now, remember this was billed as the best breakfast place in town. Therefore, when I read at the bottom of the menu, "Pancakes not served during peak hours," I was, you know, flummoxed.

As it happens I didn't want pancakes so I ordered something else and all was well. The waitress delivered the food and coffee but there was no cream on the table.

I, wanting to be the Very Best Traveler That Ever Was, put on my kindly-but-not-condescending smile, walked up to the bar and asked the bartender, who was watching the TV which was hung high on a wall, if he had any cream.

"No." He said without looking away from some motorcycle race.

Hmmm. Now. If this were New York I would know exactly how to respond. If this were Washington, DC I would have a pretty good idea. In fact, if this were France I would immediately have demanded the man's surrender.

But this was Alaska. And, at that moment, the single most foreign place I had ever been in my life.

This was not a macho deal. The three remaining drunks did not turn and laugh at me. In fact they were watching the motorcycle race as well, and I'm not certain they even heard the exchange.

I did what I often do in restaurants to the delight of the Mullings Director of Standards & Practices as well as The Lad. I walked into the kitchen.

I found the large refrigerator, found the creamer cups, poured some milk into a cup and left through the "Out" door.

It was then that I noticed Blondie's had a whole 'nother side. The restaurant side which is still called "Blondie's" but doesn't look like Klondike Bill will pull a knife on you.

The waitress who had brought my food was startled to see me coming out of the kitchen. I said I hadn't realized there were two seating areas.

"I thought you wanted the smoking section," she said.

I motioned her over to the front door to show her that the sign which said "Please Seat Yourself" had an arrow pointing to the right - to the bar.

She looked at me like I had just grown a hand out of my forehead and said, "We don't get many tourists during the winter," and, deciding that was enough explanation for one such as me, walked away.

Juneau

If you are like me� all right, re-cast: If you are a typical American from the lower 48 (which some Alaskans simply refer to as "America" much as soldiers during Vietnam referred to any place not in Vietnam as "the World") you probably have a general idea where Alaska is. But you probably didn't remember that the capitol of Alaska is Juneau and, if you did remember that you probably thought Juneau is about where Anchorage actually is located.

I say this because Juneau is way, way far away from the rest of Alaska. It is in Canada. It is, in fact, connected to Canada. It is not in fact, connected to Alaska.

You cannot drive from Anchorage to Juneau. Why? Because there is no road. You can fly into Juneau. You can take a boat into Juneau, but you cannot drive into Juneau.

I am making a big deal about this because if you spend more then 17 seconds talking to anyone who lives in Juneau they will bring this matter up.

Why, you might well ask, don't they just build a road? There is a one-word answer: Environmentalists.

Most of the Alaskans I spoke to use the word Environmentalist the way Joseph McCarthy used the word "Communist." Think of Jerry Seinfeld saying, "Hello, Newman." Now, in that same tone of voice, with that same twist of lip, picture him saying "environmentalist."

You have it.

Juneau is also a rain forest. And it did rain. The entire time I was there. It poured. There was no slush on the ground. There were only mud puddles.

If Anchorage is like any other major city, then Juneau has a distinct frontier feel to it. The state capitol building was originally a library. There is a pretty new state office building, but many of the state executive departments are located somewhere else, not in Juneau.

The storefronts have sidewalks in front of them which are covered by overhangs. Just like in an old Hopalong Cassidy movie.

Actually, the more I thought of it the better I liked this business of cutting the government off from the people. If the citizens can't get to their government then, it stands to reason, that their government can't get to the citizens, either.

I think there is a good deal to be said for a pilot program whereby we shut down all the roads and bridges into and out of Washington, DC for a short period of time - say, 23 years - and see if anyone misses it.

The Westmark hotel I stayed at in Juneau was no newer than the one in Anchorage. In fact, the room key they gave me was (a) a real key and (b) had the actual room number on it.

When I got to my room there was a bed and a dresser facing it on which the television had been placed. To the left of the bed, unaccountably, were two wing chairs, a coffee table, a desk, a desk chair, and a lamp. All lined up against the windows facing the opposite wall.

I spent about a half hour re-arranging the furniture. And boy, was I thrilled about having the opportunity.

In Juneau, because the legislature is in session, this is the tourist season and the legislator season and the lobbyist season.

And they all met in the bar of this hotel.

The next morning, I was to meet some folks for breakfast and I got to the coffee shop a few minutes early. I asked the waitress where I could get a paper, thinking they had some for customers.

"At the front desk," she said. "But it's yesterday's paper."

. . .

Those dots indicate my lack of being able to think of anything to say.

"Allllll right," I said. "Is there anyplace where I might buy a paper?"

She leaned over and pointed out the window to a newspaper box on the opposite curb.

"There's a machine over there." I despaired of going out into the rain for a newspaper. "But," she continued, "that will be yesterday's paper, too."

It turns out that the Juneau paper is an afternoon paper. It also turns out that the Anchorage paper, which is an AM, doesn't get to Juneau until the first flight gets in which is sometime mid-morning. So, if you want a paper with your breakfast in Juneau, you have to read yesterday's.

I make a big point of this because during my speech, I told this story, to the delight of nearly everyone in the room. Especially when, as I began reciting some statistics, I said, "You've probably read these numbers - oh, no. You probably have not read these numbers."

Again to the delight of nearly everyone in the room.

The one person who was less than delighted was the publisher of the Juneau Twilighter or whatever the paper is called.

In fact, he was so not delighted that he bearded me after the event to tell me how much not delighted he was by my suggesting his newspaper carried yesterday's news.

Here was his argument: Alaska is four hours behind Eastern time. Noon in New York is 8:00 am in Juneau. Conversely, noon in Juneau, when they are putting the paper to bed, is already 4:00 pm in Washington. So, he continued, the headlines in the Twilighter (that isn't the name of it, but I'm writing this on a plane and I can't remember - I think it was something like the State-Empire -- not the Empire State) that his readers got to see at two in the afternoon (six pm in the East) were the same headlines the bigwigs in Washington wouldn't see in their Washington Post until the next morning.

I smiled and nodded throughout this and then asked: But what happens if you want a newspaper with your breakfast?

I asked how large the circulation of the Twilighter was.

"8,000," he said.

"Maybe that's why there are almost no afternoon papers left in America," I said.

Here's a business idea for some enterprising young reporter who has always wanted to move to Juneau. Get up early every morning. Cut and paste wire copy from the internet onto about four standard sheets of paper.

Have the local Insty-Print make about 200 copies front-and-back.

Distribute them to hotel coffee shops and state offices.

Charge a buck a day. People will pay it.

I would have.

Fairbanks

I do not want to give any impression of the people in Alaska other than this: They are nearly all very, very kind, thoughtful, and have a great sense of humor.

Fairbanks is pretty far north. It is about 150 miles south of "The Circle."

But even here I am nowhere near "The ANWR," as so many of you asked. When I was in Juneau someone e-mailed to ask me if I had seen where they want to drill in the Alaska National Wilderness Reserve. It is about the same distance from Juneau to ANWR as it is from Juneau to The Netherlands.

Alaskans have a good joke: Someday they're going to split Alaska into two states, then Texas will be the third largest state.

Did it tell you about their sense of humor?

Up here during the winter it is very dark all the time. In the summer it is very light all the time.

In the middle of February, however, it is like the rest of Alaska. Maybe, by the time I got to Fairbanks, I had become accustomed to the late mornings and relatively early evenings. It got dark around 5:15 not 2:15.

I wanted Fairbanks to be cold. Very cold. I wanted it, in fact, to be minus 40. Why? So I could show off a bit of esoteric knowledge which is this: The only temperature which is the same on the Fahrenheit and the Celsius scales is - minus 40.

Isn't that interesting?

I think it is. I'll bet you find some way to sneak that into a conversation before this winter is over.

So, I was really hoping for some cold weather. It was 18. Above.

In Washington, DC 18 above is mighty cold. In Fairbanks they have a school rule: The children have to go outside for recess as long as the temperature is above 20 - BELOW.

So at 18, people were walking around in tennis shorts, tank tops, driving with the top down. Not really, but it was obvious this was a pleasant warm-up.

The people of Fairbanks will tell you that because the humidity is so low, it doesn't feel as cold. This is exactly the opposite of what the people in Arizona say about the heat: It doesn't feel as hot because the humidity is so low. "It's not the heat. It's the humidity," is the saying.

For two days. Two Days every time someone mentioned this (which is about as often as people in Juneau talk about that damned road) I said, "So it's not the cold. It's the humidity," expecting, if not a hearty guffaw, at least a smile of understanding.

Nothin'. I needed a Secret Decoder Ring just to have a regular conversation.

And, in spite of their declarations to the contrary, when I tuned to the Weather Channel in my hotel room - a Westmark hotel, don'tchya know - it said the temperature was 23 with humidity of 80 percent.

Tell it to the tourists.

Fairbanks is the second largest population center behind Anchorage with about 40,000 people in the city proper and another 15,000 in the borough. Alaska doesn't have counties, they have boroughs. Which, as far as I can tell, act like counties and only differ in name, but it's possible there are some nuances I missed.

It was here that I ran out to see the famed Alyeska Pipeline, I did not, despite dozens of invitations, go to see North Pole, Alaska where all those letters to Santa Claus end up and the local service clubs take turns answering them.

I don't think I made anyone angry at my speech here. The only real disappointment was, because of the unusual high temperatures and high humidity, there was a heavy cloud cover and I couldn't, therefore, see the northern lights. That would have been excellent.

The next day I flew back to Anchorage for a 9:00 am flight back to Salt Lake City for my third and final visit to the aiport during this very exciting Winter Olympic Games.

When I got into Anchorage there were no cabs so I went to the Hertz counter to rent a car. There was a couple ahead of me who looked like they were going to hang out at Blondie's if they could ever get a car which they couldn't because every one of the 14 credit cards they tried came back "denied."

I finally got a car and a map, made my way back to - all together now - the Westmark and spent the night.

Returning my car the next day was the final adventure.

The signs to the Car Rental Return lot are pretty well marked. Except that the Car Rental Return lot is about a half mile from the terminal and there's nothing else there. No Hertz people offering to do rapid return stuff. No people in heavy clothing directing you to the spot where you should leave your car. It is, in fact, an empty field with some company signs near which you are to leave your car.

Then you put all your stuff on your rollaboard, and trudge TRUDGE, I tell you, through snow, then slush, then just water until you make your way back to the Hertz counter where you give them your keys, your mileage, and a really dirty look.

Then, you have to take what they say is a shuttle bus back to a completely different terminal to get to the Delta gates. This shuttle bus would be pulled over by the cops in Bangkok for being unroadworthy.

Nevertheless, I got to Delta. Went through all the security pat-downs. Got on the plane. And am making my way south to: Tucson, Arizona.