Anchorage
I’ve been here just over 24 hours, and while a good chunk of that time was spent at the conference or preparing for my presentation in the afternoon (which went fine), I’ve already noticed a few things:
1) Many (but certainly not all) people here seem to be huge Palin fans. Go figure.
2) Everything downtown is closed on Sunday except for the bars (I ordered room service food for the first time in my life after wandering downtown for 45 minutes looking for some form of takeout after I arrived at the hotel Sunday night.)
3) There are no coffeeshops open past 7:00 pm (I’m sure this is not the case closer to UAA).
4) The liquor stores have Stone (surely it can’t be harder to ship to MN than AK?)
5) Maybe it’s just hazy, but you can’t see Russia from Anchorage.
6) It’s easy to tell who lives here year-round: they are the ones wearing shorts and sandals in 40-degree weather.
7) There’s about 6 hours of night currently, and as far as I can tell, Alaska is in its own time zone. Biological clock -> mtn.
8) I saw a bald eagle within a minute of leaving the airport. Guessing there is a good chance they outnumber people in this state.
9) Almost all of the vehicles on the street are pickups or SUV’s still sporting snow tires … in May. Also probably explains why most of the roads have ruts.
10) Everyone seems super nice… so far.
So yeah, got the presentation done today, now I can just sit back and enjoy the show until it’s time to go home, I guess. I had a halibut sub for lunch and some serviceable sushi for dinner (the salmon, naturally, was pretty awesome). Tomorrow’s plan is to attend conference, try out the brewery, and see if I can find some good udon.
I went down to the park tonight to get a better view of the sunset over Mt. Susitna. It’s pretty out here =)
