Inter-Galactic-Memo
To: All Personnel
Fr: W. Leavitt
Re: Pithy quotes at the expense of religion
August 22, 2009
Here is a quote I found on my Google homepage this morning. It is from Stephen Weinberg, arguably one of the most brilliant Physicists this country has ever produced. I have been reading his stuff or reading about him for thirty years. He was one of the three people who unified the Weak Force and the electromagnetic force, (a “really big deal”) and many other things. The quote:
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
- Steven Weinberg
Well, it’s pithy. And I’m sure he has genuine feelings about the subject, but it is always surprising when ostensibly intelligent people say patently ridiculous things. This statement is so obviously and purposefully a raging oversimplification, falsehood and deception that one staggers at its ignorance—especially in the light of an IQ hovering in the stratosphere. It is duplicitous and inaccurate.
Let’s turn it around, shall we?
With or without science, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes science.
How do ya like me now, Stevie?
I can name just as many egregious abuses in the name of “science” and research (especially if one includes alchemy) as he can religion. And who would even argue that good people do bad things? Or that bad people occasionally do good things? That should be so obvious that a pithy aphorism hardly seems necessary. But Steve felt strongly enough about this that he offered an inaccurate, provocative statement I’m sure he knew to be misleading. No doubt, like approximately everyone who feels this way, he had one or more negative experiences with religion. Well who hasn’t you sheep-dip swilling, emotional pauper?
This memo is not the place to list the intentional and accidental abuses of science over the centuries. But they exist. Why? Because people are Human. For those religionists out there, we call that Mortal, or Fallen. For Weinberg to suggest that there is some kind of division—a quantifiable demarcation—by which we can determine who is good and who is evil, is monstrous.
“Everybody who goes to church, stand over here. Okay, you guys are the only ones who ever do evil things.”
To suggest that only through the religious experience can evil be perpetrated on the world is really beyond the pale. If I were the Science Czar (and under Obama there is one) I would give Steve a long Time-Out. Bad boy! I would send him to a re-education camp like that modified drive-in in Red Dawn where Charlie Sheen fails to rise to the level of acting again. In fact, now that I think of it, let’s mention some of those real re-education camps, concentration camps, etc., of the last century. Hitler comes to mind, and his cadre of Third Reich scientists who came up with the Final Solution. How about Mao, and Pol Pot, Stalin and the Gulags? The North Korean regime? The North Vietnamese? The list goes on. All good little atheists, doing their things not only without the benefit of religion, but as various attempts to eradicate it. But hey, they only murdered 300 million people between them, give or take, so what’s the big deal? (That’s the population of the US, by the way.)
And yes, I can mention Jim Jones as well, and the Spanish Inquisition (which no one ever expects) and the Salem witch trials and Ireland, and on and on. So what?
The problem is this. Weinberg says something mildly humorous, stating what sounds like some kind of revealed truth, and doesn’t have the guts, or character, to think about the consequences. What if some redneck from Alabama read that? Lacking the IQ of most Opossums, he might feel as if he’d had an epiphany and abandon his snake-charming church forever. (You see what I did there? It’s so easy.)
Lots of people hate religion, and/or want nothing to do with it. That’s fine. Who cares? We can’t all be perfect. Besides, without them there wouldn’t be a Law of Opposition. But it gets really old when self-appointed arbiters of reality don’t even come close to their chosen goals. Weinberg is a physicist. His life-long pursuit has been to discover and describe “reality”, truth. And he says something like this? It kind of puts him in the same camp as Rowland and Molina, the “Hole in the Ozone” scamps. (Two more scientists who managed to do evil). Weinberg has been one of my heroes for years, but now I’m going to have to relegate him to “really-smart moron” status. It’s almost like scientists didn’t like Believers, or felt superior to them. But that couldn’t be right. Right?
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
IGM Death
Inter-Galactic Memo
To: All Personnel
Fr: W. Leavitt, former semi-guitar player
Re: A death
August 13, 2009
It is with profound sadness that I am announcing the death of the true father of Rock and Roll, and electric music in general. Earlier today, Les Paul died. Les invented the solid body electric guitar and in so doing changed everything. Not only did he invent it, he perfected it. I have played a few electric guitars, although I’ve never own one. Most of them are adequate. And despite my awe and appreciation for the two Fender icons; the Stratocaster and the Telecaster, the Les Paul Custom, by Gibson, was is and will always be, the best production electric guitar in the world. Just watch concert footage from the last fifty years and you’ll see what I mean. I sort of accidently got to see Led Zeppelin in concert in 1967 or 8, I think. Jimmy Page was playing a Les Paul. He used a violin bow a lot that night. And he was so loaded on heroine he could barely stand. But he made that guitar sing. It was incredible. A once in a lifetime thing. Maxine probably remembers.
Here is a story that is tangentially connected to this memo:
Once, many years ago, a young man and his wife, both sporting straight, long, blonde hair and prescription John Lennon glasses, were working in the food service industry in NYC, having run away together from the Dakotas. They were hippies, I guess . . . or close enough that it didn’t matter. Dan and Mary decided—who knows why or even how—to start a rock and roll band, despite neither of them knowing anything about music. They were living in poverty—a cold-water flat with little or no furniture—but they were young and in love and recently married . . . and truth be told not overly bright. They saved every dime they made except for rent and food and in two years took their loot to a pawn shop in Harlem, and bought everything anyone might need to start a genuine rock and roll band. Bass, guitars, trap set, PA with a mixer, microphones and stands, cables, amps—everything, picked up an old, beat up step-van, loaded it with their booty and headed west.
It is one of those mysteries of the universe how they ended up in Hobbs, New Mexico. I think they might have been heading for LA and ran out of gas. I met them when I came home from school one afternoon to find the van in our driveway and one of my roommates showing the hapless couple around.
(For a full account of this episode in my life, read Westbury: Chronicles of a Suburban Commune, by yours truly.) They were already moved in and the living room full of gear. For me, it was like ten Christmases all at once.
Obviously, one of the guitars was a 1956 Les Paul Custom with a gold-flake finish. Since I was the only person in the “House” (Which we referred to simply as Westbury—the name of the street) who knew anything about music, or guitars or amps or anything else, I got to play it at will for the better part of two years. It was an experience I will never forget. It was so easy to play all you had to do was look at it and it would make chords. It never went out of tune, and even back then (69-70), the electronics could make it sound like anything. That guitar doubled the quality of my playing just by being in my hands. I can’t explain it.
Even then I knew about Les Paul. He was a famous guitar player, producer, record exec. He played with everybody. Every electric guitar ever made traces its ancestry straight back to that first one Les made in his garage. Look what he started. Think of the legacy this man has. Think about all the (contemporary) music you’ve loved and listened to all these years and what it would sound like without those awesome guitar riffs and relentless rhythms, those screaming, crying, mischievous leads and breaks and effects. Les crossed all boundaries, infected all genre.
We will be hearing from the Rock greats for a few days, as their sound bites invade the story-hungry media, the internet, blogs, “entertainment shows”, etc. Clapton, Page, Satriani, Malmsteen, Vai, Chesney, Paisley, Stills, Young, Gill, Methany, Skaggs, Frey, Walsh, Wilson, Lee, Messina, Rhodes, Vanhalen, Robertson, Townsend, those guys from Dragonforce . . . . I could name pickers for pages. But none of them will feel a debt, or gratitude or loss any more than I do. John, you know what I mean.
Not many people get to say they changed the whole world. But Les Paul did.
To: All Personnel
Fr: W. Leavitt, former semi-guitar player
Re: A death
August 13, 2009
It is with profound sadness that I am announcing the death of the true father of Rock and Roll, and electric music in general. Earlier today, Les Paul died. Les invented the solid body electric guitar and in so doing changed everything. Not only did he invent it, he perfected it. I have played a few electric guitars, although I’ve never own one. Most of them are adequate. And despite my awe and appreciation for the two Fender icons; the Stratocaster and the Telecaster, the Les Paul Custom, by Gibson, was is and will always be, the best production electric guitar in the world. Just watch concert footage from the last fifty years and you’ll see what I mean. I sort of accidently got to see Led Zeppelin in concert in 1967 or 8, I think. Jimmy Page was playing a Les Paul. He used a violin bow a lot that night. And he was so loaded on heroine he could barely stand. But he made that guitar sing. It was incredible. A once in a lifetime thing. Maxine probably remembers.
Here is a story that is tangentially connected to this memo:
Once, many years ago, a young man and his wife, both sporting straight, long, blonde hair and prescription John Lennon glasses, were working in the food service industry in NYC, having run away together from the Dakotas. They were hippies, I guess . . . or close enough that it didn’t matter. Dan and Mary decided—who knows why or even how—to start a rock and roll band, despite neither of them knowing anything about music. They were living in poverty—a cold-water flat with little or no furniture—but they were young and in love and recently married . . . and truth be told not overly bright. They saved every dime they made except for rent and food and in two years took their loot to a pawn shop in Harlem, and bought everything anyone might need to start a genuine rock and roll band. Bass, guitars, trap set, PA with a mixer, microphones and stands, cables, amps—everything, picked up an old, beat up step-van, loaded it with their booty and headed west.
It is one of those mysteries of the universe how they ended up in Hobbs, New Mexico. I think they might have been heading for LA and ran out of gas. I met them when I came home from school one afternoon to find the van in our driveway and one of my roommates showing the hapless couple around.
(For a full account of this episode in my life, read Westbury: Chronicles of a Suburban Commune, by yours truly.) They were already moved in and the living room full of gear. For me, it was like ten Christmases all at once.
Obviously, one of the guitars was a 1956 Les Paul Custom with a gold-flake finish. Since I was the only person in the “House” (Which we referred to simply as Westbury—the name of the street) who knew anything about music, or guitars or amps or anything else, I got to play it at will for the better part of two years. It was an experience I will never forget. It was so easy to play all you had to do was look at it and it would make chords. It never went out of tune, and even back then (69-70), the electronics could make it sound like anything. That guitar doubled the quality of my playing just by being in my hands. I can’t explain it.
Even then I knew about Les Paul. He was a famous guitar player, producer, record exec. He played with everybody. Every electric guitar ever made traces its ancestry straight back to that first one Les made in his garage. Look what he started. Think of the legacy this man has. Think about all the (contemporary) music you’ve loved and listened to all these years and what it would sound like without those awesome guitar riffs and relentless rhythms, those screaming, crying, mischievous leads and breaks and effects. Les crossed all boundaries, infected all genre.
We will be hearing from the Rock greats for a few days, as their sound bites invade the story-hungry media, the internet, blogs, “entertainment shows”, etc. Clapton, Page, Satriani, Malmsteen, Vai, Chesney, Paisley, Stills, Young, Gill, Methany, Skaggs, Frey, Walsh, Wilson, Lee, Messina, Rhodes, Vanhalen, Robertson, Townsend, those guys from Dragonforce . . . . I could name pickers for pages. But none of them will feel a debt, or gratitude or loss any more than I do. John, you know what I mean.
Not many people get to say they changed the whole world. But Les Paul did.
Alaska Vacation
Inter-Galactic Memo
To: All Personnel
Fr: W. Leavitt Veteran Tourist
Re: Our vacation
07-03-09
As some of you know (fine, a good many of you were there actually . . .) Nita and I went on a vacation recently. For the last ten days to be precise. Since almost no one wants to hear anything about it, I will now give a detailed account of our travels.
First let me say that two of our nieces, Leah and Lanissa, made all of the arrangements, beginning months ago, perhaps more than a year ago, and through an unending and daunting process of negotiations, phone calls, emails, web-surfing, and bargain-hunting, booked flights, arranged transportation, booked passage aboard the Diamond Princess (a cruise ship bigger than Rhode Island), found and booked day trips including trains, fishing charters, glacier-hopping, National park visiting, motels, cabins, and on and on, down to the very last detail, and then, in a feat not equaled since Queen Elizabeth took off all her make-up, remembered it all, kept track of all of us, and managed not to kill anyone. All this for 26 people. All arriving at different times, from different directions, and for various reasons. Nobel Prize? Academy Award? Is there a lifetime achievement award for free-lance travel agents?
The first bit was Herculean in nature. We left Las Vegas (and heat venturing playfully into “Inferno” range) about 5:30 PM and flew to Denver, where we met several others of our party, mostly relatives plus a few friends, boarded another plane and headed for Anchorage, where we arrived at about 1:30 AM, their time. The first little glitch arrived with us. Nita’s suitcase went to some regional airfield in Fargo instead of Alaska. I was incensed, she shrugged and borrowed things for two days.
The Goddess Twins got us all into three rented vehicles at that ungodly hour (it had just gotten dark) and we drove nearly 6 hours through rain and forest and bogs and a Moose-sighting, on a two-lane hiway, all the way to Denali National Park, where we checked into our cabins, took a short nap, and then went sightseeing. And did we ever see some sights. By then we had had 2 hours of sleep in the last 30. Piece of cake.
A word about the cabins at Denali. The place was called The Crows Nest. Each cabin rested on a unique but interesting angle, varying from about 6 to maybe 15 degrees, and all in different directions. They were “Quaint” according to Leah, one of the Goddesses, whose world-view differs somewhat from my own. The cabin experience came perilously close to “camping”, a pastime of which I was once a devote, but am now long-since recovered.
Despite being sleep-deprived and having seen darkness for only 3 hours, we drove into the park, did a turn around the visitors center, then drove out to Savage River and took a long hike down and back through one of God’s best ideas. It was beautiful. Everything about Alaska is different than down here in the lower forty-eight. The Flora and Fauna, the mountains, the rocks—everything. It is unique.
The food was excellent wherever we ate in the little village. Our breakfast was in a café, on a wooden floor older than the last ice-age, and it slanted even more than the cabins. I sat on the down-hill side which made it easier to drink my milk. We did another half-day of sightseeing, which included three huge Caribou quite close to us, and some bears far away on a river—according to the less than reliable single men in our group—then headed back to Anchorage. We stopped for Pizza at Angela’s Haven, the address of which—and I am not making this up—is mile marker 117, Park Hiway, Alaska.
On a side note, we almost tossed my brother-in-law, James, out on his ear several times for various misdemeanors, mostly having to do with inappropriate puns and spontaneous conversations with random Alaskans, but cooler heads prevailed.
Back in Anchorage, we got to our motel—where Nita’s luggage was waiting for us—which allowed me to stop working on my hit list—and met the other half of our party, including Maxine (my little sister) and her husband Steve, his parents, two of their daughters and various hangers-on. (You know who you are). We spent a riotous night reading and sleeping in endless daylight, got up the next morning and boarded the cruise ship Diamond Princess. Everyone immediately purchased no-limit soft drink cards then went to find the food trough. Turns out the entire ship is a food trough.
We all got settled, went to eat again, did the safety muster, then went to eat again. This became a recurring theme throughout the voyage. Go do something, preferably for no more than an hour, then go eat again.
Then, disaster struck. The Coke mix at the buffet was unacceptably weak and flat. Now, I can put up with a lot. I am willing to sacrifice and compromise when necessary. But no one messes with my cola. Everyone agreed—it was bad. I filled out one of those suggestion-slash-info cards with a strongly worded protest. Nothing happened. Every spigot in the place was pouring brown water for the entire trip! I will be letting the Coca Cola corporation know about this travesty.
The ship headed for Skagway. The weather was chilly, misty, foggy, rainy, overcast and drab. Coming from Las Vegas, I loved every minute of it. I saw some dolphins or Orca’s at the far-reach of visibility, while standing on the promenade deck, enjoying the overcast and misty evening, but just their curving backs shrouded in fog. After such an exciting moment, I instantly headed up to find more food, then began looking for friends and family in order to regale them with my intrepid sea-stories.
The trip to Skagway was a two-day venture in the open ocean. Pacific ocean. Very large body of water. Many people were sick. The boat rocked back and forth like an autistic polar bear. Neither Nita nor I were bothered in the slightest. It was fun. We took advantage of so many people staying in their rooms to find and consume even more food.
We woke on the second morning to find Skagway like a gleaming gem, a bright present on Christmas Morning. Our first foray off-ship took us on a historic train-ride following the route about a million gold-stampeders took to the Yukon. A word here about the train ride. The scenery was breath-taking. High, steep mountains, the gray-green rivers full of glacial silt, tracks going over high trestles and along precipitous ledges. Really quite the thing for a morning outing. Except the train was very slow—it took over two hours to go twenty miles (and 3,000 vertical feet) and then, at the top of an isolated, deserted, long-abandoned mountain pass, we stopped, the engine slid onto a siding and went to the back of the train which then became the front, we all reversed our seat-backs, and we went back down as slowly as we had gone up. The point of this mild rebuke is, of course, there were no snacks. Not a vending machine in sight. We didn’t even get off the car. Why would someone take a train all the way up a mountain and then just go back down again? Imagine the missed opportunities for profit-making ventures! No gift shop, no quaint benches shaped like dogsleds, no coin-driven telescopes with which to see the remains of the thousands of horses and mules killed by the recalcitrant wanna-be miners when the animals could not carry their obscenely heavy loads any further. Nothing but a hiway in the distance with buses and RV’s heading for Whitehorse and parts east and south. (Nita and I have almost been to Whitehorse, but that’s another story). I managed to assuage my disappointment at the lack of even a small casino atop the mountain by purchasing a commemorative ball cap from the White Pass railroad, with the year emblazoned on the side (2009) which is the 50th anniversary of Alaska’s statehood. They can only be purchased on the train and only this year, so I have quite a prize. The downside of course is that I can’t eat it.
We arrived back in Skagway, walked through the town (a ten minute foray along one board-walked street) and then I skulked back to the ship, feeling somehow cheated, and drowned my sorrows in a fine meal at the buffet followed by more food that evening at the swank International Room.
From Skagway, we kept to the Inside Passage, which offers much calmer waters, until we arrived at Glacier Bay National Park. The Princess steamed up the fiords as we oohed and ahed (very sincerely) at glaciers everywhere, coming at us from all sides of the ship. It is difficult to describe not just the wild beauty, but the grandeur and majesty of natures ice-cube trays. (That’s an inside joke for my siblings—think Thule). The trip up the fiords took a while, but every inch of it was breathtaking.
Finally we arrived at the head of a bay where two tide-water glaciers meet the ocean. The Marjorie Glacier, and the Pacific International, both wandering for miles back into the mountains , both more than a mile across at their faces, one white and eerily blue, the other camouflaged in black dirt and rocks. The ship stayed for two hours, as close as it could get, while we watched ice calve from the face, otters play, icebergs wander, and a massive river of silt and water boil from beneath the Marjorie into the bay. It was magnificent.
We steamed back out, which looked much like the trip in, but reverse, and headed for Juneau and more food. The next morning we arrived in Juneau and walked around the town for a while, sampling fudge and ice cream, talking to the locals, and taking in the atmosphere, which was wonderful. Then we got on a small shuttle bus and drove out to the Mendenhall Glacier, which is only a few miles from town. Wow. That’s really all one can say. While there, we all got to star at a mamma brown bear and her two tree-hugging cubs. A ranger told us she likes to hang around there at the park.
After that, back to town where we got on a boat with fifty other people and headed out into the bay for whale-watching. After half an hour of wake-producing speed we slowed where several other similar boats were loitering and the Captain told us Killer Whales had been spotted in the vicinity earlier. This was a rare event—normally the tours don’t even look for them. And then, just a few dozen yards away . . . there they were, an entire Pod, at least six or seven, maybe an eighth-mile away, rising, blowing their sprays into the air, the adult male arching like a bow, its six foot dorsal shining black and wet and glorious, the others around it and behind it, again and again, coming up, blowing, doing a few loopy moves on the surface, then diving and coming up somewhere else. Very, very cool.
We left and sped to another part of the bay to yet another gaggle of boats, waited, saw plumes of air and water appear, and then the huge, arching, Quasimodo-backs with their odd shape and huge blow-holes—Humpback Whales hunting, feeding on herring. Unsurpassed for coolness. They were too soon gone, and it was back to the ship and another night of merry-making, endless card games, shows, comedians, music . . . and food. Glorious food. And for me, television. I’m not much of a party goer.
The boat traveled as we slept and we arrived in Ketchikan around 11 AM the next morning. Some of us went into town to shop while five intrepid American males and one guy from Scotland braved the open waters for the thrill of salmon fishing. Six brave men against the unrelenting dangers and the terrible deeps of the Inside Passage. (Okay, according to the depth finder we never got into water deeper than 200 feet, but that’s still pretty scary.) With four lines in the water at all times, we rotated by prearranged numbers. When one line began to shiver, the next guy in the rotation would grab the pole and begin the terrible, magnificent, puissant struggle with the wild fish. Naturally, while we all caught our limits (6) I caught the most fish by tonnage, plus everyone caught Pinks but me. I caught two enormous Coho’s, three or four times the size of the Pinks. (Oh, and Steve caught a nice Coho, but that’s hardly worth mentioning in the light of my own spectacular success. You can see how unimportant it is by the parentheses.) We split the fish 3 ways (William, from Scotland, couldn’t take his home) and are having them processed and shipped home. It will be the most expensive fish we will ever eat. We never understood a word William said, so thick was his brogue, but we kept him talking all afternoon because we all loved to listen to him. (Actually, he was a wonderful gentleman. He was the veteran of the group, having done the salmon thing before, as well as halibut.)
We arrived back at the ship, had seven or eight quick slices of pizza, and then we compared notes with the women, at which time we determined by unanimous proclamation to have won the day, and all went down and aft for a wonderful dinner.
At some point my wife did laundry while I watched television. The next two days were spent on the open seas, making the long, last leg of our journey, heading to Vancouver, British Columbia. (I did a report on British Columbia in the 6th grade. My research indicated, among other things, that enough lumber had been harvested from the province to make a road four inches thick and 28 feet wide that would loop around the equator 27 times. That would have been circa 1962-ish). This was our second time in British Columbia, but that is another story as well. I spent most of the two days working on a book I’m writing.
That night several of our group went to the karaoke bar and made complete fools of themselves while I continued to work on my novel. We all met in the International Room for one last gourmet meal. I ordered two entrées, a steak and a nice piece of Barramundi, which was the best thing I ate the entire cruise. The staff brought out huge platters of Baked Alaska and formed a conga line, dancing their way around the room—I’m not sure why. We tried to eat the dessert but there was just too much of it, so we ordered apple pie and sorbet as well. Oh, and somewhere in there we all sang happy birthday to Rob, one of our dangerously unmarried men, which was a completely humiliating experience. I don’t think Rob liked it much either.
One last breakfast and they shoved down ramps and into chutes like cattle into a stockyard and we were of f the boat and in Canada. Some of us caught a shuttle to the airport and others to a motel— again, all neatly arranged by the Travel Goddesses. We took a little walk—about a million miles—to find a post office that was “just around the corner” in order to exchange our (real) money for some Canadian fun money, but it was Saturday and they were closed. No one wanted to walk all the way back, so, for fun, and because of Leah’s lamentable emotional problems, we took the bus-ride from hell into downtown Vancouver to tour a “classical Chinese Garden”. I suppose it was very nice, but at that point I would have been more impressed with the comforting embrace of the Grim Reaper. The ride back was better. We spent our last night in International Land, had a fine breakfast at the motel café, and a few of us at a time took the shuttle to the airport to meet various flights. Our shuttle was the last one and our driver was a fine Persian man named Essi, who is an accomplished musician. (I know—I Googled his website). We were not allowed to eat on the trip to the airport. Fortunately it only lasted seven minutes. The flight back was pretty cool, if you enjoy being stuffed into aluminum cans the size of . . . well, aluminum cans. But We had great views of Mt. Rainer, and Mt. Hood, then Mt. St. Helens. I could see where the eruption tore the mountain apart and where the lahars flooded down into the valleys below like the fates own judge. California was on fire, but it’s August and California is always on fire then.
When we arrived in Vegas, our luggage had taken a vacation of its own, no doubt to Hawaii. (We got it back the next day.)
All things considered, it was a smashing success and everyone had a good deal of fun and collected—I’m sure—several priceless memories. I know I did. I just can’t remember what they are . . . Which reminds me of that great Groucho Marks line; “I’ve had a wonderful evening . . . but this wasn’t it.”
To: All Personnel
Fr: W. Leavitt Veteran Tourist
Re: Our vacation
07-03-09
As some of you know (fine, a good many of you were there actually . . .) Nita and I went on a vacation recently. For the last ten days to be precise. Since almost no one wants to hear anything about it, I will now give a detailed account of our travels.
First let me say that two of our nieces, Leah and Lanissa, made all of the arrangements, beginning months ago, perhaps more than a year ago, and through an unending and daunting process of negotiations, phone calls, emails, web-surfing, and bargain-hunting, booked flights, arranged transportation, booked passage aboard the Diamond Princess (a cruise ship bigger than Rhode Island), found and booked day trips including trains, fishing charters, glacier-hopping, National park visiting, motels, cabins, and on and on, down to the very last detail, and then, in a feat not equaled since Queen Elizabeth took off all her make-up, remembered it all, kept track of all of us, and managed not to kill anyone. All this for 26 people. All arriving at different times, from different directions, and for various reasons. Nobel Prize? Academy Award? Is there a lifetime achievement award for free-lance travel agents?
The first bit was Herculean in nature. We left Las Vegas (and heat venturing playfully into “Inferno” range) about 5:30 PM and flew to Denver, where we met several others of our party, mostly relatives plus a few friends, boarded another plane and headed for Anchorage, where we arrived at about 1:30 AM, their time. The first little glitch arrived with us. Nita’s suitcase went to some regional airfield in Fargo instead of Alaska. I was incensed, she shrugged and borrowed things for two days.
The Goddess Twins got us all into three rented vehicles at that ungodly hour (it had just gotten dark) and we drove nearly 6 hours through rain and forest and bogs and a Moose-sighting, on a two-lane hiway, all the way to Denali National Park, where we checked into our cabins, took a short nap, and then went sightseeing. And did we ever see some sights. By then we had had 2 hours of sleep in the last 30. Piece of cake.
A word about the cabins at Denali. The place was called The Crows Nest. Each cabin rested on a unique but interesting angle, varying from about 6 to maybe 15 degrees, and all in different directions. They were “Quaint” according to Leah, one of the Goddesses, whose world-view differs somewhat from my own. The cabin experience came perilously close to “camping”, a pastime of which I was once a devote, but am now long-since recovered.
Despite being sleep-deprived and having seen darkness for only 3 hours, we drove into the park, did a turn around the visitors center, then drove out to Savage River and took a long hike down and back through one of God’s best ideas. It was beautiful. Everything about Alaska is different than down here in the lower forty-eight. The Flora and Fauna, the mountains, the rocks—everything. It is unique.
The food was excellent wherever we ate in the little village. Our breakfast was in a café, on a wooden floor older than the last ice-age, and it slanted even more than the cabins. I sat on the down-hill side which made it easier to drink my milk. We did another half-day of sightseeing, which included three huge Caribou quite close to us, and some bears far away on a river—according to the less than reliable single men in our group—then headed back to Anchorage. We stopped for Pizza at Angela’s Haven, the address of which—and I am not making this up—is mile marker 117, Park Hiway, Alaska.
On a side note, we almost tossed my brother-in-law, James, out on his ear several times for various misdemeanors, mostly having to do with inappropriate puns and spontaneous conversations with random Alaskans, but cooler heads prevailed.
Back in Anchorage, we got to our motel—where Nita’s luggage was waiting for us—which allowed me to stop working on my hit list—and met the other half of our party, including Maxine (my little sister) and her husband Steve, his parents, two of their daughters and various hangers-on. (You know who you are). We spent a riotous night reading and sleeping in endless daylight, got up the next morning and boarded the cruise ship Diamond Princess. Everyone immediately purchased no-limit soft drink cards then went to find the food trough. Turns out the entire ship is a food trough.
We all got settled, went to eat again, did the safety muster, then went to eat again. This became a recurring theme throughout the voyage. Go do something, preferably for no more than an hour, then go eat again.
Then, disaster struck. The Coke mix at the buffet was unacceptably weak and flat. Now, I can put up with a lot. I am willing to sacrifice and compromise when necessary. But no one messes with my cola. Everyone agreed—it was bad. I filled out one of those suggestion-slash-info cards with a strongly worded protest. Nothing happened. Every spigot in the place was pouring brown water for the entire trip! I will be letting the Coca Cola corporation know about this travesty.
The ship headed for Skagway. The weather was chilly, misty, foggy, rainy, overcast and drab. Coming from Las Vegas, I loved every minute of it. I saw some dolphins or Orca’s at the far-reach of visibility, while standing on the promenade deck, enjoying the overcast and misty evening, but just their curving backs shrouded in fog. After such an exciting moment, I instantly headed up to find more food, then began looking for friends and family in order to regale them with my intrepid sea-stories.
The trip to Skagway was a two-day venture in the open ocean. Pacific ocean. Very large body of water. Many people were sick. The boat rocked back and forth like an autistic polar bear. Neither Nita nor I were bothered in the slightest. It was fun. We took advantage of so many people staying in their rooms to find and consume even more food.
We woke on the second morning to find Skagway like a gleaming gem, a bright present on Christmas Morning. Our first foray off-ship took us on a historic train-ride following the route about a million gold-stampeders took to the Yukon. A word here about the train ride. The scenery was breath-taking. High, steep mountains, the gray-green rivers full of glacial silt, tracks going over high trestles and along precipitous ledges. Really quite the thing for a morning outing. Except the train was very slow—it took over two hours to go twenty miles (and 3,000 vertical feet) and then, at the top of an isolated, deserted, long-abandoned mountain pass, we stopped, the engine slid onto a siding and went to the back of the train which then became the front, we all reversed our seat-backs, and we went back down as slowly as we had gone up. The point of this mild rebuke is, of course, there were no snacks. Not a vending machine in sight. We didn’t even get off the car. Why would someone take a train all the way up a mountain and then just go back down again? Imagine the missed opportunities for profit-making ventures! No gift shop, no quaint benches shaped like dogsleds, no coin-driven telescopes with which to see the remains of the thousands of horses and mules killed by the recalcitrant wanna-be miners when the animals could not carry their obscenely heavy loads any further. Nothing but a hiway in the distance with buses and RV’s heading for Whitehorse and parts east and south. (Nita and I have almost been to Whitehorse, but that’s another story). I managed to assuage my disappointment at the lack of even a small casino atop the mountain by purchasing a commemorative ball cap from the White Pass railroad, with the year emblazoned on the side (2009) which is the 50th anniversary of Alaska’s statehood. They can only be purchased on the train and only this year, so I have quite a prize. The downside of course is that I can’t eat it.
We arrived back in Skagway, walked through the town (a ten minute foray along one board-walked street) and then I skulked back to the ship, feeling somehow cheated, and drowned my sorrows in a fine meal at the buffet followed by more food that evening at the swank International Room.
From Skagway, we kept to the Inside Passage, which offers much calmer waters, until we arrived at Glacier Bay National Park. The Princess steamed up the fiords as we oohed and ahed (very sincerely) at glaciers everywhere, coming at us from all sides of the ship. It is difficult to describe not just the wild beauty, but the grandeur and majesty of natures ice-cube trays. (That’s an inside joke for my siblings—think Thule). The trip up the fiords took a while, but every inch of it was breathtaking.
Finally we arrived at the head of a bay where two tide-water glaciers meet the ocean. The Marjorie Glacier, and the Pacific International, both wandering for miles back into the mountains , both more than a mile across at their faces, one white and eerily blue, the other camouflaged in black dirt and rocks. The ship stayed for two hours, as close as it could get, while we watched ice calve from the face, otters play, icebergs wander, and a massive river of silt and water boil from beneath the Marjorie into the bay. It was magnificent.
We steamed back out, which looked much like the trip in, but reverse, and headed for Juneau and more food. The next morning we arrived in Juneau and walked around the town for a while, sampling fudge and ice cream, talking to the locals, and taking in the atmosphere, which was wonderful. Then we got on a small shuttle bus and drove out to the Mendenhall Glacier, which is only a few miles from town. Wow. That’s really all one can say. While there, we all got to star at a mamma brown bear and her two tree-hugging cubs. A ranger told us she likes to hang around there at the park.
After that, back to town where we got on a boat with fifty other people and headed out into the bay for whale-watching. After half an hour of wake-producing speed we slowed where several other similar boats were loitering and the Captain told us Killer Whales had been spotted in the vicinity earlier. This was a rare event—normally the tours don’t even look for them. And then, just a few dozen yards away . . . there they were, an entire Pod, at least six or seven, maybe an eighth-mile away, rising, blowing their sprays into the air, the adult male arching like a bow, its six foot dorsal shining black and wet and glorious, the others around it and behind it, again and again, coming up, blowing, doing a few loopy moves on the surface, then diving and coming up somewhere else. Very, very cool.
We left and sped to another part of the bay to yet another gaggle of boats, waited, saw plumes of air and water appear, and then the huge, arching, Quasimodo-backs with their odd shape and huge blow-holes—Humpback Whales hunting, feeding on herring. Unsurpassed for coolness. They were too soon gone, and it was back to the ship and another night of merry-making, endless card games, shows, comedians, music . . . and food. Glorious food. And for me, television. I’m not much of a party goer.
The boat traveled as we slept and we arrived in Ketchikan around 11 AM the next morning. Some of us went into town to shop while five intrepid American males and one guy from Scotland braved the open waters for the thrill of salmon fishing. Six brave men against the unrelenting dangers and the terrible deeps of the Inside Passage. (Okay, according to the depth finder we never got into water deeper than 200 feet, but that’s still pretty scary.) With four lines in the water at all times, we rotated by prearranged numbers. When one line began to shiver, the next guy in the rotation would grab the pole and begin the terrible, magnificent, puissant struggle with the wild fish. Naturally, while we all caught our limits (6) I caught the most fish by tonnage, plus everyone caught Pinks but me. I caught two enormous Coho’s, three or four times the size of the Pinks. (Oh, and Steve caught a nice Coho, but that’s hardly worth mentioning in the light of my own spectacular success. You can see how unimportant it is by the parentheses.) We split the fish 3 ways (William, from Scotland, couldn’t take his home) and are having them processed and shipped home. It will be the most expensive fish we will ever eat. We never understood a word William said, so thick was his brogue, but we kept him talking all afternoon because we all loved to listen to him. (Actually, he was a wonderful gentleman. He was the veteran of the group, having done the salmon thing before, as well as halibut.)
We arrived back at the ship, had seven or eight quick slices of pizza, and then we compared notes with the women, at which time we determined by unanimous proclamation to have won the day, and all went down and aft for a wonderful dinner.
At some point my wife did laundry while I watched television. The next two days were spent on the open seas, making the long, last leg of our journey, heading to Vancouver, British Columbia. (I did a report on British Columbia in the 6th grade. My research indicated, among other things, that enough lumber had been harvested from the province to make a road four inches thick and 28 feet wide that would loop around the equator 27 times. That would have been circa 1962-ish). This was our second time in British Columbia, but that is another story as well. I spent most of the two days working on a book I’m writing.
That night several of our group went to the karaoke bar and made complete fools of themselves while I continued to work on my novel. We all met in the International Room for one last gourmet meal. I ordered two entrées, a steak and a nice piece of Barramundi, which was the best thing I ate the entire cruise. The staff brought out huge platters of Baked Alaska and formed a conga line, dancing their way around the room—I’m not sure why. We tried to eat the dessert but there was just too much of it, so we ordered apple pie and sorbet as well. Oh, and somewhere in there we all sang happy birthday to Rob, one of our dangerously unmarried men, which was a completely humiliating experience. I don’t think Rob liked it much either.
One last breakfast and they shoved down ramps and into chutes like cattle into a stockyard and we were of f the boat and in Canada. Some of us caught a shuttle to the airport and others to a motel— again, all neatly arranged by the Travel Goddesses. We took a little walk—about a million miles—to find a post office that was “just around the corner” in order to exchange our (real) money for some Canadian fun money, but it was Saturday and they were closed. No one wanted to walk all the way back, so, for fun, and because of Leah’s lamentable emotional problems, we took the bus-ride from hell into downtown Vancouver to tour a “classical Chinese Garden”. I suppose it was very nice, but at that point I would have been more impressed with the comforting embrace of the Grim Reaper. The ride back was better. We spent our last night in International Land, had a fine breakfast at the motel café, and a few of us at a time took the shuttle to the airport to meet various flights. Our shuttle was the last one and our driver was a fine Persian man named Essi, who is an accomplished musician. (I know—I Googled his website). We were not allowed to eat on the trip to the airport. Fortunately it only lasted seven minutes. The flight back was pretty cool, if you enjoy being stuffed into aluminum cans the size of . . . well, aluminum cans. But We had great views of Mt. Rainer, and Mt. Hood, then Mt. St. Helens. I could see where the eruption tore the mountain apart and where the lahars flooded down into the valleys below like the fates own judge. California was on fire, but it’s August and California is always on fire then.
When we arrived in Vegas, our luggage had taken a vacation of its own, no doubt to Hawaii. (We got it back the next day.)
All things considered, it was a smashing success and everyone had a good deal of fun and collected—I’m sure—several priceless memories. I know I did. I just can’t remember what they are . . . Which reminds me of that great Groucho Marks line; “I’ve had a wonderful evening . . . but this wasn’t it.”
Inter-Galactic Memo
To: All Personnel
Fr: W. Leavitt Veteran Tourist
Re: Our vacation
07-03-09
As some of you know (fine, a good many of you were there actually . . .) Nita and I went on a vacation recently. For the last ten days to be precise. Since almost no one wants to hear anything about it, I will now give a detailed account of our travels.
First let me say that two of our nieces, Leah and Lanissa, made all of the arrangements, beginning months ago, perhaps more than a year ago, and through an unending and daunting process of negotiations, phone calls, emails, web-surfing, and bargain-hunting, booked flights, arranged transportation, booked passage aboard the Diamond Princess (a cruise ship bigger than Rhode Island), found and booked day trips including trains, fishing charters, glacier-hopping, National park visiting, motels, cabins, and on and on, down to the very last detail, and then, in a feat not equaled since Queen Elizabeth took off all her make-up, remembered it all, kept track of all of us, and managed not to kill anyone. All this for 26 people. All arriving at different times, from different directions, and for various reasons. Nobel Prize? Academy Award? Is there a lifetime achievement award for free-lance travel agents?
The first bit was Herculean in nature. We left Las Vegas (and heat venturing playfully into “Inferno” range) about 5:30 PM and flew to Denver, where we met several others of our party, mostly relatives plus a few friends, boarded another plane and headed for Anchorage, where we arrived at about 1:30 AM, their time. The first little glitch arrived with us. Nita’s suitcase went to some regional airfield in Fargo instead of Alaska. I was incensed, she shrugged and borrowed things for two days.
The Goddess Twins got us all into three rented vehicles at that ungodly hour (it had just gotten dark) and we drove nearly 6 hours through rain and forest and bogs and a Moose-sighting, on a two-lane hiway, all the way to Denali National Park, where we checked into our cabins, took a short nap, and then went sightseeing. And did we ever see some sights. By then we had had 2 hours of sleep in the last 30. Piece of cake.
A word about the cabins at Denali. The place was called The Crows Nest. Each cabin rested on a unique but interesting angle, varying from about 6 to maybe 15 degrees, and all in different directions. They were “Quaint” according to Leah, one of the Goddesses, whose world-view differs somewhat from my own. The cabin experience came perilously close to “camping”, a pastime of which I was once a devote, but am now long-since recovered.
Despite being sleep-deprived and having seen darkness for only 3 hours, we drove into the park, did a turn around the visitors center, then drove out to Savage River and took a long hike down and back through one of God’s best ideas. It was beautiful. Everything about Alaska is different than down here in the lower forty-eight. The Flora and Fauna, the mountains, the rocks—everything. It is unique.
The food was excellent wherever we ate in the little village. Our breakfast was in a café, on a wooden floor older than the last ice-age, and it slanted even more than the cabins. I sat on the down-hill side which made it easier to drink my milk. We did another half-day of sightseeing, which included three huge Caribou quite close to us, and some bears far away on a river—according to the less than reliable single men in our group—then headed back to Anchorage. We stopped for Pizza at Angela’s Haven, the address of which—and I am not making this up—is mile marker 117, Park Hiway, Alaska.
On a side note, we almost tossed my brother-in-law, James, out on his ear several times for various misdemeanors, mostly having to do with inappropriate puns and spontaneous conversations with random Alaskans, but cooler heads prevailed.
Back in Anchorage, we got to our motel—where Nita’s luggage was waiting for us—which allowed me to stop working on my hit list—and met the other half of our party, including Maxine (my little sister) and her husband Steve, his parents, two of their daughters and various hangers-on. (You know who you are). We spent a riotous night reading and sleeping in endless daylight, got up the next morning and boarded the cruise ship Diamond Princess. Everyone immediately purchased no-limit soft drink cards then went to find the food trough. Turns out the entire ship is a food trough.
We all got settled, went to eat again, did the safety muster, then went to eat again. This became a recurring theme throughout the voyage. Go do something, preferably for no more than an hour, then go eat again.
Then, disaster struck. The Coke mix at the buffet was unacceptably weak and flat. Now, I can put up with a lot. I am willing to sacrifice and compromise when necessary. But no one messes with my cola. Everyone agreed—it was bad. I filled out one of those suggestion-slash-info cards with a strongly worded protest. Nothing happened. Every spigot in the place was pouring brown water for the entire trip! I will be letting the Coca Cola corporation know about this travesty.
The ship headed for Skagway. The weather was chilly, misty, foggy, rainy, overcast and drab. Coming from Las Vegas, I loved every minute of it. I saw some dolphins or Orca’s at the far-reach of visibility, while standing on the promenade deck, enjoying the overcast and misty evening, but just their curving backs shrouded in fog. After such an exciting moment, I instantly headed up to find more food, then began looking for friends and family in order to regale them with my intrepid sea-stories.
The trip to Skagway was a two-day venture in the open ocean. Pacific ocean. Very large body of water. Many people were sick. The boat rocked back and forth like an autistic polar bear. Neither Nita nor I were bothered in the slightest. It was fun. We took advantage of so many people staying in their rooms to find and consume even more food.
We woke on the second morning to find Skagway like a gleaming gem, a bright present on Christmas Morning. Our first foray off-ship took us on a historic train-ride following the route about a million gold-stampeders took to the Yukon. A word here about the train ride. The scenery was breath-taking. High, steep mountains, the gray-green rivers full of glacial silt, tracks going over high trestles and along precipitous ledges. Really quite the thing for a morning outing. Except the train was very slow—it took over two hours to go twenty miles (and 3,000 vertical feet) and then, at the top of an isolated, deserted, long-abandoned mountain pass, we stopped, the engine slid onto a siding and went to the back of the train which then became the front, we all reversed our seat-backs, and we went back down as slowly as we had gone up. The point of this mild rebuke is, of course, there were no snacks. Not a vending machine in sight. We didn’t even get off the car. Why would someone take a train all the way up a mountain and then just go back down again? Imagine the missed opportunities for profit-making ventures! No gift shop, no quaint benches shaped like dogsleds, no coin-driven telescopes with which to see the remains of the thousands of horses and mules killed by the recalcitrant wanna-be miners when the animals could not carry their obscenely heavy loads any further. Nothing but a hiway in the distance with buses and RV’s heading for Whitehorse and parts east and south. (Nita and I have almost been to Whitehorse, but that’s another story). I managed to assuage my disappointment at the lack of even a small casino atop the mountain by purchasing a commemorative ball cap from the White Pass railroad, with the year emblazoned on the side (2009) which is the 50th anniversary of Alaska’s statehood. They can only be purchased on the train and only this year, so I have quite a prize. The downside of course is that I can’t eat it.
We arrived back in Skagway, walked through the town (a ten minute foray along one board-walked street) and then I skulked back to the ship, feeling somehow cheated, and drowned my sorrows in a fine meal at the buffet followed by more food that evening at the swank International Room.
From Skagway, we kept to the Inside Passage, which offers much calmer waters, until we arrived at Glacier Bay National Park. The Princess steamed up the fiords as we oohed and ahed (very sincerely) at glaciers everywhere, coming at us from all sides of the ship. It is difficult to describe not just the wild beauty, but the grandeur and majesty of natures ice-cube trays. (That’s an inside joke for my siblings—think Thule). The trip up the fiords took a while, but every inch of it was breathtaking.
Finally we arrived at the head of a bay where two tide-water glaciers meet the ocean. The Marjorie Glacier, and the Pacific International, both wandering for miles back into the mountains , both more than a mile across at their faces, one white and eerily blue, the other camouflaged in black dirt and rocks. The ship stayed for two hours, as close as it could get, while we watched ice calve from the face, otters play, icebergs wander, and a massive river of silt and water boil from beneath the Marjorie into the bay. It was magnificent.
We steamed back out, which looked much like the trip in, but reverse, and headed for Juneau and more food. The next morning we arrived in Juneau and walked around the town for a while, sampling fudge and ice cream, talking to the locals, and taking in the atmosphere, which was wonderful. Then we got on a small shuttle bus and drove out to the Mendenhall Glacier, which is only a few miles from town. Wow. That’s really all one can say. While there, we all got to star at a mamma brown bear and her two tree-hugging cubs. A ranger told us she likes to hang around there at the park.
After that, back to town where we got on a boat with fifty other people and headed out into the bay for whale-watching. After half an hour of wake-producing speed we slowed where several other similar boats were loitering and the Captain told us Killer Whales had been spotted in the vicinity earlier. This was a rare event—normally the tours don’t even look for them. And then, just a few dozen yards away . . . there they were, an entire Pod, at least six or seven, maybe an eighth-mile away, rising, blowing their sprays into the air, the adult male arching like a bow, its six foot dorsal shining black and wet and glorious, the others around it and behind it, again and again, coming up, blowing, doing a few loopy moves on the surface, then diving and coming up somewhere else. Very, very cool.
We left and sped to another part of the bay to yet another gaggle of boats, waited, saw plumes of air and water appear, and then the huge, arching, Quasimodo-backs with their odd shape and huge blow-holes—Humpback Whales hunting, feeding on herring. Unsurpassed for coolness. They were too soon gone, and it was back to the ship and another night of merry-making, endless card games, shows, comedians, music . . . and food. Glorious food. And for me, television. I’m not much of a party goer.
The boat traveled as we slept and we arrived in Ketchikan around 11 AM the next morning. Some of us went into town to shop while five intrepid American males and one guy from Scotland braved the open waters for the thrill of salmon fishing. Six brave men against the unrelenting dangers and the terrible deeps of the Inside Passage. (Okay, according to the depth finder we never got into water deeper than 200 feet, but that’s still pretty scary.) With four lines in the water at all times, we rotated by prearranged numbers. When one line began to shiver, the next guy in the rotation would grab the pole and begin the terrible, magnificent, puissant struggle with the wild fish. Naturally, while we all caught our limits (6) I caught the most fish by tonnage, plus everyone caught Pinks but me. I caught two enormous Coho’s, three or four times the size of the Pinks. (Oh, and Steve caught a nice Coho, but that’s hardly worth mentioning in the light of my own spectacular success. You can see how unimportant it is by the parentheses.) We split the fish 3 ways (William, from Scotland, couldn’t take his home) and are having them processed and shipped home. It will be the most expensive fish we will ever eat. We never understood a word William said, so thick was his brogue, but we kept him talking all afternoon because we all loved to listen to him. (Actually, he was a wonderful gentleman. He was the veteran of the group, having done the salmon thing before, as well as halibut.)
We arrived back at the ship, had seven or eight quick slices of pizza, and then we compared notes with the women, at which time we determined by unanimous proclamation to have won the day, and all went down and aft for a wonderful dinner.
At some point my wife did laundry while I watched television. The next two days were spent on the open seas, making the long, last leg of our journey, heading to Vancouver, British Columbia. (I did a report on British Columbia in the 6th grade. My research indicated, among other things, that enough lumber had been harvested from the province to make a road four inches thick and 28 feet wide that would loop around the equator 27 times. That would have been circa 1962-ish). This was our second time in British Columbia, but that is another story as well. I spent most of the two days working on a book I’m writing.
That night several of our group went to the karaoke bar and made complete fools of themselves while I continued to work on my novel. We all met in the International Room for one last gourmet meal. I ordered two entrées, a steak and a nice piece of Barramundi, which was the best thing I ate the entire cruise. The staff brought out huge platters of Baked Alaska and formed a conga line, dancing their way around the room—I’m not sure why. We tried to eat the dessert but there was just too much of it, so we ordered apple pie and sorbet as well. Oh, and somewhere in there we all sang happy birthday to Rob, one of our dangerously unmarried men, which was a completely humiliating experience. I don’t think Rob liked it much either.
One last breakfast and they shoved down ramps and into chutes like cattle into a stockyard and we were of f the boat and in Canada. Some of us caught a shuttle to the airport and others to a motel— again, all neatly arranged by the Travel Goddesses. We took a little walk—about a million miles—to find a post office that was “just around the corner” in order to exchange our (real) money for some Canadian fun money, but it was Saturday and they were closed. No one wanted to walk all the way back, so, for fun, and because of Leah’s lamentable emotional problems, we took the bus-ride from hell into downtown Vancouver to tour a “classical Chinese Garden”. I suppose it was very nice, but at that point I would have been more impressed with the comforting embrace of the Grim Reaper. The ride back was better. We spent our last night in International Land, had a fine breakfast at the motel café, and a few of us at a time took the shuttle to the airport to meet various flights. Our shuttle was the last one and our driver was a fine Persian man named Essi, who is an accomplished musician. (I know—I Googled his website). We were not allowed to eat on the trip to the airport. Fortunately it only lasted seven minutes. The flight back was pretty cool, if you enjoy being stuffed into aluminum cans the size of . . . well, aluminum cans. But We had great views of Mt. Rainer, and Mt. Hood, then Mt. St. Helens. I could see where the eruption tore the mountain apart and where the lahars flooded down into the valleys below like the fates own judge. California was on fire, but it’s August and California is always on fire then.
When we arrived in Vegas, our luggage had taken a vacation of its own, no doubt to Hawaii. (We got it back the next day.)
All things considered, it was a smashing success and everyone had a good deal of fun and collected—I’m sure—several priceless memories. I know I did. I just can’t remember what they are . . . Which reminds me of that great Groucho Marks line; “I’ve had a wonderful evening . . . but this wasn’t it.”
To: All Personnel
Fr: W. Leavitt Veteran Tourist
Re: Our vacation
07-03-09
As some of you know (fine, a good many of you were there actually . . .) Nita and I went on a vacation recently. For the last ten days to be precise. Since almost no one wants to hear anything about it, I will now give a detailed account of our travels.
First let me say that two of our nieces, Leah and Lanissa, made all of the arrangements, beginning months ago, perhaps more than a year ago, and through an unending and daunting process of negotiations, phone calls, emails, web-surfing, and bargain-hunting, booked flights, arranged transportation, booked passage aboard the Diamond Princess (a cruise ship bigger than Rhode Island), found and booked day trips including trains, fishing charters, glacier-hopping, National park visiting, motels, cabins, and on and on, down to the very last detail, and then, in a feat not equaled since Queen Elizabeth took off all her make-up, remembered it all, kept track of all of us, and managed not to kill anyone. All this for 26 people. All arriving at different times, from different directions, and for various reasons. Nobel Prize? Academy Award? Is there a lifetime achievement award for free-lance travel agents?
The first bit was Herculean in nature. We left Las Vegas (and heat venturing playfully into “Inferno” range) about 5:30 PM and flew to Denver, where we met several others of our party, mostly relatives plus a few friends, boarded another plane and headed for Anchorage, where we arrived at about 1:30 AM, their time. The first little glitch arrived with us. Nita’s suitcase went to some regional airfield in Fargo instead of Alaska. I was incensed, she shrugged and borrowed things for two days.
The Goddess Twins got us all into three rented vehicles at that ungodly hour (it had just gotten dark) and we drove nearly 6 hours through rain and forest and bogs and a Moose-sighting, on a two-lane hiway, all the way to Denali National Park, where we checked into our cabins, took a short nap, and then went sightseeing. And did we ever see some sights. By then we had had 2 hours of sleep in the last 30. Piece of cake.
A word about the cabins at Denali. The place was called The Crows Nest. Each cabin rested on a unique but interesting angle, varying from about 6 to maybe 15 degrees, and all in different directions. They were “Quaint” according to Leah, one of the Goddesses, whose world-view differs somewhat from my own. The cabin experience came perilously close to “camping”, a pastime of which I was once a devote, but am now long-since recovered.
Despite being sleep-deprived and having seen darkness for only 3 hours, we drove into the park, did a turn around the visitors center, then drove out to Savage River and took a long hike down and back through one of God’s best ideas. It was beautiful. Everything about Alaska is different than down here in the lower forty-eight. The Flora and Fauna, the mountains, the rocks—everything. It is unique.
The food was excellent wherever we ate in the little village. Our breakfast was in a café, on a wooden floor older than the last ice-age, and it slanted even more than the cabins. I sat on the down-hill side which made it easier to drink my milk. We did another half-day of sightseeing, which included three huge Caribou quite close to us, and some bears far away on a river—according to the less than reliable single men in our group—then headed back to Anchorage. We stopped for Pizza at Angela’s Haven, the address of which—and I am not making this up—is mile marker 117, Park Hiway, Alaska.
On a side note, we almost tossed my brother-in-law, James, out on his ear several times for various misdemeanors, mostly having to do with inappropriate puns and spontaneous conversations with random Alaskans, but cooler heads prevailed.
Back in Anchorage, we got to our motel—where Nita’s luggage was waiting for us—which allowed me to stop working on my hit list—and met the other half of our party, including Maxine (my little sister) and her husband Steve, his parents, two of their daughters and various hangers-on. (You know who you are). We spent a riotous night reading and sleeping in endless daylight, got up the next morning and boarded the cruise ship Diamond Princess. Everyone immediately purchased no-limit soft drink cards then went to find the food trough. Turns out the entire ship is a food trough.
We all got settled, went to eat again, did the safety muster, then went to eat again. This became a recurring theme throughout the voyage. Go do something, preferably for no more than an hour, then go eat again.
Then, disaster struck. The Coke mix at the buffet was unacceptably weak and flat. Now, I can put up with a lot. I am willing to sacrifice and compromise when necessary. But no one messes with my cola. Everyone agreed—it was bad. I filled out one of those suggestion-slash-info cards with a strongly worded protest. Nothing happened. Every spigot in the place was pouring brown water for the entire trip! I will be letting the Coca Cola corporation know about this travesty.
The ship headed for Skagway. The weather was chilly, misty, foggy, rainy, overcast and drab. Coming from Las Vegas, I loved every minute of it. I saw some dolphins or Orca’s at the far-reach of visibility, while standing on the promenade deck, enjoying the overcast and misty evening, but just their curving backs shrouded in fog. After such an exciting moment, I instantly headed up to find more food, then began looking for friends and family in order to regale them with my intrepid sea-stories.
The trip to Skagway was a two-day venture in the open ocean. Pacific ocean. Very large body of water. Many people were sick. The boat rocked back and forth like an autistic polar bear. Neither Nita nor I were bothered in the slightest. It was fun. We took advantage of so many people staying in their rooms to find and consume even more food.
We woke on the second morning to find Skagway like a gleaming gem, a bright present on Christmas Morning. Our first foray off-ship took us on a historic train-ride following the route about a million gold-stampeders took to the Yukon. A word here about the train ride. The scenery was breath-taking. High, steep mountains, the gray-green rivers full of glacial silt, tracks going over high trestles and along precipitous ledges. Really quite the thing for a morning outing. Except the train was very slow—it took over two hours to go twenty miles (and 3,000 vertical feet) and then, at the top of an isolated, deserted, long-abandoned mountain pass, we stopped, the engine slid onto a siding and went to the back of the train which then became the front, we all reversed our seat-backs, and we went back down as slowly as we had gone up. The point of this mild rebuke is, of course, there were no snacks. Not a vending machine in sight. We didn’t even get off the car. Why would someone take a train all the way up a mountain and then just go back down again? Imagine the missed opportunities for profit-making ventures! No gift shop, no quaint benches shaped like dogsleds, no coin-driven telescopes with which to see the remains of the thousands of horses and mules killed by the recalcitrant wanna-be miners when the animals could not carry their obscenely heavy loads any further. Nothing but a hiway in the distance with buses and RV’s heading for Whitehorse and parts east and south. (Nita and I have almost been to Whitehorse, but that’s another story). I managed to assuage my disappointment at the lack of even a small casino atop the mountain by purchasing a commemorative ball cap from the White Pass railroad, with the year emblazoned on the side (2009) which is the 50th anniversary of Alaska’s statehood. They can only be purchased on the train and only this year, so I have quite a prize. The downside of course is that I can’t eat it.
We arrived back in Skagway, walked through the town (a ten minute foray along one board-walked street) and then I skulked back to the ship, feeling somehow cheated, and drowned my sorrows in a fine meal at the buffet followed by more food that evening at the swank International Room.
From Skagway, we kept to the Inside Passage, which offers much calmer waters, until we arrived at Glacier Bay National Park. The Princess steamed up the fiords as we oohed and ahed (very sincerely) at glaciers everywhere, coming at us from all sides of the ship. It is difficult to describe not just the wild beauty, but the grandeur and majesty of natures ice-cube trays. (That’s an inside joke for my siblings—think Thule). The trip up the fiords took a while, but every inch of it was breathtaking.
Finally we arrived at the head of a bay where two tide-water glaciers meet the ocean. The Marjorie Glacier, and the Pacific International, both wandering for miles back into the mountains , both more than a mile across at their faces, one white and eerily blue, the other camouflaged in black dirt and rocks. The ship stayed for two hours, as close as it could get, while we watched ice calve from the face, otters play, icebergs wander, and a massive river of silt and water boil from beneath the Marjorie into the bay. It was magnificent.
We steamed back out, which looked much like the trip in, but reverse, and headed for Juneau and more food. The next morning we arrived in Juneau and walked around the town for a while, sampling fudge and ice cream, talking to the locals, and taking in the atmosphere, which was wonderful. Then we got on a small shuttle bus and drove out to the Mendenhall Glacier, which is only a few miles from town. Wow. That’s really all one can say. While there, we all got to star at a mamma brown bear and her two tree-hugging cubs. A ranger told us she likes to hang around there at the park.
After that, back to town where we got on a boat with fifty other people and headed out into the bay for whale-watching. After half an hour of wake-producing speed we slowed where several other similar boats were loitering and the Captain told us Killer Whales had been spotted in the vicinity earlier. This was a rare event—normally the tours don’t even look for them. And then, just a few dozen yards away . . . there they were, an entire Pod, at least six or seven, maybe an eighth-mile away, rising, blowing their sprays into the air, the adult male arching like a bow, its six foot dorsal shining black and wet and glorious, the others around it and behind it, again and again, coming up, blowing, doing a few loopy moves on the surface, then diving and coming up somewhere else. Very, very cool.
We left and sped to another part of the bay to yet another gaggle of boats, waited, saw plumes of air and water appear, and then the huge, arching, Quasimodo-backs with their odd shape and huge blow-holes—Humpback Whales hunting, feeding on herring. Unsurpassed for coolness. They were too soon gone, and it was back to the ship and another night of merry-making, endless card games, shows, comedians, music . . . and food. Glorious food. And for me, television. I’m not much of a party goer.
The boat traveled as we slept and we arrived in Ketchikan around 11 AM the next morning. Some of us went into town to shop while five intrepid American males and one guy from Scotland braved the open waters for the thrill of salmon fishing. Six brave men against the unrelenting dangers and the terrible deeps of the Inside Passage. (Okay, according to the depth finder we never got into water deeper than 200 feet, but that’s still pretty scary.) With four lines in the water at all times, we rotated by prearranged numbers. When one line began to shiver, the next guy in the rotation would grab the pole and begin the terrible, magnificent, puissant struggle with the wild fish. Naturally, while we all caught our limits (6) I caught the most fish by tonnage, plus everyone caught Pinks but me. I caught two enormous Coho’s, three or four times the size of the Pinks. (Oh, and Steve caught a nice Coho, but that’s hardly worth mentioning in the light of my own spectacular success. You can see how unimportant it is by the parentheses.) We split the fish 3 ways (William, from Scotland, couldn’t take his home) and are having them processed and shipped home. It will be the most expensive fish we will ever eat. We never understood a word William said, so thick was his brogue, but we kept him talking all afternoon because we all loved to listen to him. (Actually, he was a wonderful gentleman. He was the veteran of the group, having done the salmon thing before, as well as halibut.)
We arrived back at the ship, had seven or eight quick slices of pizza, and then we compared notes with the women, at which time we determined by unanimous proclamation to have won the day, and all went down and aft for a wonderful dinner.
At some point my wife did laundry while I watched television. The next two days were spent on the open seas, making the long, last leg of our journey, heading to Vancouver, British Columbia. (I did a report on British Columbia in the 6th grade. My research indicated, among other things, that enough lumber had been harvested from the province to make a road four inches thick and 28 feet wide that would loop around the equator 27 times. That would have been circa 1962-ish). This was our second time in British Columbia, but that is another story as well. I spent most of the two days working on a book I’m writing.
That night several of our group went to the karaoke bar and made complete fools of themselves while I continued to work on my novel. We all met in the International Room for one last gourmet meal. I ordered two entrées, a steak and a nice piece of Barramundi, which was the best thing I ate the entire cruise. The staff brought out huge platters of Baked Alaska and formed a conga line, dancing their way around the room—I’m not sure why. We tried to eat the dessert but there was just too much of it, so we ordered apple pie and sorbet as well. Oh, and somewhere in there we all sang happy birthday to Rob, one of our dangerously unmarried men, which was a completely humiliating experience. I don’t think Rob liked it much either.
One last breakfast and they shoved down ramps and into chutes like cattle into a stockyard and we were of f the boat and in Canada. Some of us caught a shuttle to the airport and others to a motel— again, all neatly arranged by the Travel Goddesses. We took a little walk—about a million miles—to find a post office that was “just around the corner” in order to exchange our (real) money for some Canadian fun money, but it was Saturday and they were closed. No one wanted to walk all the way back, so, for fun, and because of Leah’s lamentable emotional problems, we took the bus-ride from hell into downtown Vancouver to tour a “classical Chinese Garden”. I suppose it was very nice, but at that point I would have been more impressed with the comforting embrace of the Grim Reaper. The ride back was better. We spent our last night in International Land, had a fine breakfast at the motel café, and a few of us at a time took the shuttle to the airport to meet various flights. Our shuttle was the last one and our driver was a fine Persian man named Essi, who is an accomplished musician. (I know—I Googled his website). We were not allowed to eat on the trip to the airport. Fortunately it only lasted seven minutes. The flight back was pretty cool, if you enjoy being stuffed into aluminum cans the size of . . . well, aluminum cans. But We had great views of Mt. Rainer, and Mt. Hood, then Mt. St. Helens. I could see where the eruption tore the mountain apart and where the lahars flooded down into the valleys below like the fates own judge. California was on fire, but it’s August and California is always on fire then.
When we arrived in Vegas, our luggage had taken a vacation of its own, no doubt to Hawaii. (We got it back the next day.)
All things considered, it was a smashing success and everyone had a good deal of fun and collected—I’m sure—several priceless memories. I know I did. I just can’t remember what they are . . . Which reminds me of that great Groucho Marks line; “I’ve had a wonderful evening . . . but this wasn’t it.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)