Day02 == The Second Day

I ventured out into Anchorage proper for the first time today, finally seeing the city in what passes for daylight here. This really is the best kind of vacation, because everything I do feels like a game. Just walking down the street or trying to find my way from my hostel to a store is fun. Will it stay fun for two weeks? Who knows, but I don’t regret coming here at all. In a way, it’s like playing dress-up. I get to pretend I live this life for two weeks, where putting on heavy snow boots and five layers of clothing is necessary to survive. Because it is, but for everyone else here, that’s just de facto. I have largely avoided interacting with anyone, because I’m afraid it would ruin the magic here. For right now, I don’t want to hear that -4 degrees isn’t that special. It is to me! It snows here all the time, and I don’t want to feel like anything I’m doing here is work, not play.

I guess that sounds kind of spoiled, but this is basically my only Christmas present. I know I’m supposed to be growing up, but grown-ups get Christmas presents, too, right? Today, as I was walking back to my hostel, I stopped to regard a parking lot blank with freshly fallen snow. How could I have stopped myself from this?

The sheer whiteness of everything here thrills me. It’s not that sterile iPod white, it’s a white so powerful that it overpowers all the other colors in view, so that they’re still there, but you just don’t see them. Of course, there’s not much opportunity to enjoy the white, really, because the sun doesn’t come up until about 10am (when I woke up) and it sets at about 3:30 or 4 p.m. During that window of daylight, I trekked to a road with the wonderful name of Northern Lights Boulevard, down which I was led to believe existed a book store I would find interesting.

There’s so much snow to be cleared off the roads here that the detritus ends up piling up like a low wall cordoning off the sidewalk from the street.

Here’s what a very cold person who can’t see through their glasses looks like:

While walking toward Northern Lights Blvd, I ran into a guy on a bicycle who stopped to ask me directions to some place I couldn’t make out. He looked like Tom Smykowski from Office Space, if you tripled the size of his moustache and then froze it. The guy was pretty friendly, and when I told him that I had only been in Anchorage since yesterday, he immediately fell into the role of street-smart tip giver. He told me to stay out of this part of town (“this” being where my hostel is), especially at night. I asked why, what is it about this part of town? He leaned in a little bit and said, “Well, you know…all these pawn shops.” I nodded assent, and asked him what he recommended I do for fun. He told me that downtown had what I needed, so I asked him where that was. He waved his gloved hand vaguely what I suspect was the only direction his bulky coat permitted limb movement and mumbled a cardinal direction that I’ve forgotten. After thinking him, I walked to the corner where Arctic and Northern Lights boulevards meet, only to realize that I was short one left-handed water-proof glove. It must have fallen out of my pocket, because I’m stupid and didn’t pay attention to them while I had been on the phone with my dad before meeting the guy.

I started backtracking to find it, and ran into Frozen Moustache again, going the opposite direction.

“Hey again!” I said. “Did you happen to see a glove like this one on the ground?”

He said he hadn’t, but that he would look for it. I asked him if he’d found the place he was looking for. He hadn’t, so I told him to start spiraling outwards from where we were and he was sure to find it. I think it was a club of some sort. He seemed a little embarrassed to be asking for directions, now that I think about it.

I realized while backtracking that I really didn’t want to walk all the way back to my hostel just to find this glove, so I took advantage of the fact that I was walking past a park that had caught my eye the first time around and went to explore it. Everything in the park was frozen to the ground, even an empty bag of potato chips. A picnic table stood glazed with an inch-thick layer of sparkly snow crystals. I walked closer to it, and saw a black glove. I picked it up off the surface of the table, and enjoyed the way it weakly resisted before snapping out of the thin ice casing that held it to the wood. The glove was left-handed, and not much different than the one I retained. Knowing that many people, foremost among them my mom, would be horrified by the act, I nevertheless wiggled the abandoned, frozen glove over the lighter wool pair I still had and started back again for Northern Lights Boulevard.

On my resumed walk, I had occasion to notice this neat little pairing:

(this picture does nothing to express how quickly and strongly the view of these mountains takes my breath away)

I also saw this:

The book store, Title Wave Books, was awesome. It’s like a toy-store for twenty year olds. They stack their used books on big nice stained wooden shelves as if they were new, which I get a kick out of, and they’ve got a companion coffee shop right across the foyer that offers free wireless Internet. I bought a used mass-market paperback of Gravity’s Rainbow for $4, and would have spent far more on a leather-bound edition of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman if I hadn’t already bought myself a large bound hardcover of the same book at The Strand in New York this summer. Waiting in line to pay for the book, I noticed the woman in line ahead of me was holding a paperback of The Terror, by Dan Simmons, author of the legendary Hyperion series. I’ve not read the new one, but my boss did on my vouching for Simmons and said the worst part of it was that she couldn’t put it down for it’s 600+ pages. The woman in front of me asked the cashier if the book was any good, which she couldn’t answer, so I stepped up and said that my boss had read it and liked it, and that I loved the author. She seemed thankful, and a brief conversation between myself and the cashier sparked. It was rather pleasant, actually. I almost forgot that it was cold enough to kill me in under an hour outside. Also in the window, I saw a book whose title confused me:

I spent far too much time on the Internet at the place next door (I think it was called Karaldi Brothers or something? I’m sure I’ll be back there before too long). It’s basically where all the hipsters in Anchorage gather, and I found myself overhearing conversations about the concept behind some band’s album artwork versus some other blabbidy blah. Just looking at the way they delineate the restrooms into genders says all you need to say about this place. Big surprise that I ended up there on my first day out in the city >_<

I finally kicked myself off the Internet and went out to find more cool stuff. My camera had been acting wonky for a day or two, and I decided that it was the fault of the batteries, so I went off to find some. Upon exiting the building, I found that it was snowing! This lit up my spirits a bunch, and so I took some video:

Then I ran around some parking lots and roads (it’s hard to tell which when there’s snow everywhere and your (my) glasses are fogged to opacity) for awhile. I eventually made my way to the grocery store, which was jiltingly familiar inside, except for the fact that I bought my macaroni and cheese lunch from a woman whose nametag said FANG. I also bought some spring rolls and ate them. How adventurous of me.

I wanted to be outside, though, so I packed up the rest of my macaroni and cheese and started walking again. I think what I enjoy the most about Anchorage so far is the process of strapping all manner of cold-weather weaponry to myself and then stepping out to face the enemy of the cold. Although I barely see anyone else walking around, when I do they are always focused and driven toward their goals, it seems. But to me, simply walking around is amazing. There is so much beautiful stuff to see. For instance, when the cars drive by at city speeds, they leave behind swirls of snow dust that look ghostly. Especially as the sun goes down, the air turns a sort of ice-blue and makes the ghost swirls look even more fragile. It’s so cool.

I stomped homeward mostly enjoying the experience of being outside in the snow as the light died. I came across a wall that I think my friend Kate would like a bunch, so I took lots of pictures of it and stitched them together in photoshop. It’s a crude job, but I think you can absorb the coolness of the art:

(click it)

I paused at the park where I had found the glove to try to slow myself down a bit and take in more of the environment. I also wanted to finish my macaroni and cheese which, for some reason, I thought would be worth recording:

I got back to my hostel expecting to upload some pictures, write some blog stuff, and then lay down to do some reading, but I’ve been stuck here ever since. It’s 8:15 p.m. and hopefully I’ll get these videos and pictures uploaded before another hour passes. They take forever, but luckily I’m able to stay connected with an Ethernet cable.

The place where I’m staying is wrapped around a Turkish restaurant in an interesting way. There’s a door that leads from where I am, a sort of lobby-like raised area, straight into the main dining room of the restaurant, and their public bathroom is at the other end of the hallway from our private one. What this means is that when a little girl plays violin at the counter of the restaurant, I can hear it and sneak up to take video. Until she sees me, that is.

The other best part about sitting here is that I’m too lazy to take off all my gear, so I get rather hot inside the building. All I have to do to rectify the situation is jog outside for about 10 seconds, and I’m back to below equilibrium temperature. It’s quite nice. In fact, I think I’ll go do that right now. See you tomorrow. Maybe I’ll have pictures of the aurora borealis by then…

(don't be fooled, this picture was taken this morning)