bear-proof data backup, reindeer meat, and beaver blankets

on my day off over the weekend, i went to the library and was flipping through this magazine creatively titled "alaska" -- reading about how these tiny chickadee birds can survive the -40F winters in fairbanks and how beavers have shaped alaska (by having to constantly be gnawing on something so their teeth wouldn't overgrow) more than any other animal -- when i heard, "hey maria." before looking up, i thought, "well, this is strange because i only know like, 2 people in town." but it turned out to be one of my clients from work on a group outing to the library. she then said, "i swear i'm not stalking you, but this is juneau for you!" guess it's a much smaller town than i anticipated.

anyway, as interesting as the articles in the "alaska" magazine were, the advertisements were just as interesting, if not stereotypically exotic.

my nerdy engineering self perked up at this ad:

"fail-proof, freeze-proof, quake-proof, wave-proof, bear-proof, fool-proof data backup" by Alaska Communications



Then there was this "luxury" beaver blanket that provides "ultimate warmth":





and this brief article on reindeer (for real) meat that costs $25/lb:





my co-worker took me to explore more of the town these couple days since tuesdays and wednesdays are our days off (don't ask). we went downtown yesterday and saw the alaska state capitol, which looks like an apartment building from the back:

the rear view of the Alaska State Capitol. apparently, as Urbanist wrote on Epinions.com about juneau: one could always "join the natives in a worry that's gone on for 20 years, but which seems freshly worrisome with each new dawn: the capital move. Juneau, the capital of Alaska, has no connections to the Alaskan mainland except by air...and sea. Juneau has roads, but they don't connect to the continent's road network...As a result, relatively few eyes are on the Legislature as they do their business. You can't really have a proper rally on the Capitol steps when you have to fly your crowd in from Anchorage at $600 each. Besides, the Capitol, which is smaller than most lower-48 courthouses, has only about four steps, after which you're in the street, where it's raining. And since the street in front of the Capitol is barely two lanes wide, it's hard for the press to get a good camera angle anyway. A nice situation for Legislators, really, but an obvious nuisance for Alaskans who live up on the mainland. So for decades, Alaska has pondered a proposal to move the capital to a more central location, a sunnier spot of real estate a bit north of Anchorage. Once again this fall, Alaskans will vote on this scheme, though the costs of such a massive project are always a deterrent. Even if this year's measure passes, it's unlikely that the capital will move anytime soon. What's certain, though, is that Juneau will continue to fret about it."

too funny. To see the entire hilarious review, including "how not to be a tourist," see "When Seattle is Just Too Sunny..."

After the capital, we drove past cruise ship docks preparing for the summer and all the local businesses closed for the winter, and soon found ourselves on a narrow 2-lane at the foot of a mountain, 2 miles of which were considered an "active avalanche area," where signs warned "DO NOT STOP." along the way, we probably passed about 50 very cute waterfalls, some frozen, some running down green moss-covered rocks:





today, my dear co-worker drove me 15 miles on the other side of town to this hidden sanctuary, the Shrine of St. Therese by juneau's own Pearl Harbor. it was a island-like area by the water and the cultivated paths ending in a small chapel and several wooden cabins seriously felt sacred. it was right at the end of sunset -- the first time i've seen sun in many days -- but i sinfully left the camera at home, and could only grab a second-rate picture with my phone:


meditating by the water

must return here soon.

if i'm gonna live somewhere that rains 300 days a year, i might as well look rain-fashionable

ok let's be honest here: this post is about fashion. a lot of you will probably automatically check out right here, but if you do keep reading, you may find some interesting things that just might come in handy if you ever live somewhere cold and wet, and where the sidewalk and salt are not BFFs.

first of all, every time i leave the house to go to work (or the grocery store, or the library), i look like i'm going backpacking. other than a weather-proof backpack, i wear pants that are water-resistant/quick-drying, and i almost always wear B's super spiffy Marmot green rain coat over whatever jacket i wear underneath. not to be a walking or blogging ad for Marmot or anything, but this rain coat is seriously that most awesome piece of clothing i've ever encountered. it is super light and can be stuffed anywhere. it looks a lot like this. i dubbed it "InstanWarm" because no matter how cold or wet i am to begin with, i instantly feel so warm and safe inside this cocoon.

anyway, other than the rain coat and backpack, i am always, and i mean always wearing hiking boots. that is, until the rain came down and haven't stopped for the past week. at first it was nice because the temperature rose above freezing -- a welcoming change from the single-digit weather of last week. but 24 hours of continuous rain later, all the sidewalks of juneau became one single solid block of ice with a lovely layer (thickness = 1 feet +/- 1 foot) of water on top. other than not being as waterproof as they were advertised to be, my boots also felt frictionless on the ice (try walking a mile on a frictionless surface!). since juneau has never heard of "salting the sidewalks," i was left to search for more suitable footwear.

it wasn't difficult. at all. this one specific pair of rain boots has been in my face since like, day 1. if you lined up all of juneau's residents on the street, you would think that the mayor forced everyone get uniform boots or something. it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that 3/4 of the town has them, even fashionable women (they're also the boots featured on the Alaskan Brewing Co.'s main webpage, so obviously 100% alaskan). a quick search on the internet (by googling "juneau rain boots") landed me the brand: Xtratuf, and i quickly realized that everyone wears them for a reason: they're like a second layer of skin that's anti-slip. as customers reviewed online, "When you think of XtraTufs, think rubber moccasins. They do not allow your feet to slide around and create blisters. They hug your foot and calf, keeping debris out,and if you get into water over your boots, for a short period, they can keep the water out," and "They are like putting on a pair of slippers as far as comfort goes and they withstand some really harsh environments...and my feet never got cold EVER." so...one paycheck and almost a hundred dollars later, i still can't walk on water, but i sure as hell can walk on ice! that's the fun part about living somewhere rainy without a car: i get to splurge on rain fashion. and they actually look pretty ruggedly cute paired with skinny jeans tucked inside. cute enough, anyway, to wear to a party, where there were already many Xtratufs lined up at the door...

a black and white glacier

i used to live 2 miles from the ocean, but it took me a month and a half of living there to actually go to the beach for the first time (yeah, don't know what i was thinking). now i live 2 miles from a glacier, and it's only taken me a week and a half to visit it, so i'm doing pretty good here (and maybe that's why i've once contemplated being a glacierologist, but never a marine biologist :P).

getting there itself was quite the hike. the bus drops you off well over a mile away from the visitor center, where the glacier first becomes visible, but i missed the bus, so i ended up walking all the way there. along the way, i encountered this bad boy of a sign, whose siblings i've seen many times before ((e.g. with SR & TD in SoCal) and who always promises a good adventure (the difference was that we used to drive for hours and hours to get to this point):




then after the sign, things were much less exciting for a good 20 minutes, when i seriously felt like the snowy road would NEVER END. but thank god it did, because i finally saw this:


everything looks black and white because of extreme overcast, but the blue-tinted snowy "ribbon" in between the mountains is the Mendenhall Glacier. it stretches for ~12 miles and ends here, in a frozen lake in front.

after a while, i saw two people walking across the frozen glacial lake toward the glacier terminus:


a few minutes later, i decided to follow in their footsteps, literally. the frozen lake was covered with 4 or 5 inches of snow, and there was a couple trails with well defined footprints that lead across the lake and to the glacier terminus. i was definitely concerned about the solidity of the ice, but considering the fact that there were a few other people jogging and walking their dogs on the ice, i figured it was probably fine. the crossing was maybe a little over a mile one way, but took me 40 minutes because of the snow...and updating my facebook status...and taking pictures of these icebergs that broke off from the glacier and are now in the middle of the lake:


the bright dots in the third picture were from the falling snow, for it had begun to snow quite a bit by the time i was in the halfway across the lake, and visibility was decreasing horrendously. by the time i finally reached the glacier terminus, i was just so glad to have made it across alive that all i did was touch the edge of it with my fingers, and turned right back. i know that people take helicopters that land directly on the glacier to explore and whatnot, but this was the best i can do yesterday. i probably won't ever be doing helicopter tour, but someday, when the ice melts, i hope to be doing this!


on my way back, visibility was pretty much down to zero, and i could barely see the glacier behind me anymore:



so, very glad i got a panoramic shot of the place while it was still clear. again, i apologize for the black-and-whiteness of it all, but this is pretty much what juneau is like 80% of the time, so i wouldn't expect color photos anytime soon if i were you :P

amazing: 1. wearing more clothes really does keep you warmer; 2. the bus actually shows up

i've been going to work in single-digit weather for 3 days now, and it just so happened that i was always either catching the first bus running in the morning or the last bus of the day at night. at times like those, when i was waiting in the dark at 6:30am or 10:30pm, it honestly seemed pretty much a miracle that the once-an-hour bus actually came. on time. it was also at times like these that whenever i felt the least bit ridiculous in my extremely fashionable 2-sweaters-2-coats-and-multiple-pants getup, i would take one look at the austere snow-covered mountains around me and remember that i do, indeed, live in a frozen tundra rainforest.

so far, i've been dealing with all the unusual things happening at work surprisingly well. by "unusual," i actually mean "quite usual" for this job. we lock up all the sharps and medication at work, but someone still managed to get ahold of an x-acto knife elsewhere and cut their genetalia. the hardest part is to remember that as much as i want to be their friend, the most important part of my job is to role model healthy adult/care-taker behavior (most kids there come from alcoholic and/or incestuous families), which includes a significant amount of "holding the kids responsible for their own actions," and we all know that kids tend not to like that.

anyway, at the end of the x-acto knife day, B took me to experience my first taste of the famously local Alaskan Brewing Company, which only has this one brewery, but exports to 9 states in the western continental U.S.. The ABC ("alskan," not "ann arbor," that is) offers free samples anytime, and i tried their smoked porter and barley wine, both very delightful. for all you microbrew enthusiasts, check them out: http://www.alaskanbeer.com/home.html

sunrise. sunset.

it's 3:30pm AKST, got my comfy pants on, for the sun is settling in for the night, and so am i. a couple years ago, i remember reading about a virtual daylight clock that someone designed and was trying to sell. i wished that person good luck because i never thought i'd ever want to pay for something that only shows sunrise and sunset (okay, maybe also twilight, no pun intended). i still don't want to pay for it, but i did download the "daylight" app onto my phone. and now, most of my life revolves around trying to race the precious sun. actually, it's kind of a relief every afternoon when the sun hightails outa here, because i can finally stop trying to make the most out of daylight and can now make a nice cup of hot tea and logs into the computer without feeling like i'm wasting anything.


























another reason for this sun race is that juneau is apparently the rainiest city in the entire country. that's right, forget seattle or portland, juneau gets ~100 inches of rain, twice that of the seattle or portland. as someone reviewed online: "Sure it's raining, or just-finished-raining, or just-about-to-rain. Dress for it, though, and you'll come home knowing more about rain than you ever thought there was to know. Invent your own 30 words for different kinds of rain." wikipedia says juneau gets an average of 226 precipitation days a year, compared to say, Ann Arbor, which only gets 128 days (and we all thought ann arbor was grey enough). although currently, it kinda feels the opposite: juneau is enjoying 8 straight days of cloudless sunshine. kinda makes me feel like i hit the jackpot and landed in an alpine southern california.

all this clear weather, however, is making the air feel cold as...well, alaska. i was thinking of checking out the glacier (real glacier, not dry land that used to be a glacier thousands of years ago), but it was really just too cold to be hanging out outside for any significant amount of time. no matter tho, i visited a potential new home, since my current apartment is rather temporary. the new house has 3 other guys, one of whom is native alaskan, and was doing arts and crafts at the time. he's also learning how to tattoo, so maybe i'll start thinking of a design.

random observation: a girl walking to the University of Alaska Southeast (formerly known as U of Alaska - Juneau) was wearing ugg boots today. good to know that college students everywhere follow similar fashion rules.

last rays of sun:

it's so beautiful here, like i'm living inside a national geographic documentary

after arriving in the middle of the night and seeing absolutely nothing, i stepped outside the apartment building this morning and pretty much died: there it was, a perfect snow-capped mountain straight ahead. nothing here feels suburban or city-esque, both of which i expected at least a little, considering it's the alaskan capital and all. but no, it's just like a national park. alaska isn't fucking around. so yeah, i died and am now living in heaven.










the goal for the morning was to go to the nearby "mall" in town to get a bus pass from the library. but i couldn't really stop taking pictures and missed the bus, which only comes by every hour. oh well, i just took more pictures, all the while trying to hide the camera with my half-finger mittens so as to not look like a completely clueless tourist who got confused and decided to vacation in alaska in january.

when i finally made it to the library, the librarian turned out to be a michigan grad (2003, english major). ironically, he didn't seem all that excited to be meeting another ex-wolverine, (unlike the graduation speech given by the dean), but was helpful enough and said that there are many people from the midwest here. who would have thought?

on the way back, i decided to walk the 3 miles back home (aka more picture-taking). so, here's what was on the side of the road, you know, no big deal or anything :P









if i had a car, i would park it right about here:



















the lake by my house (auke lake):



















currently wondering: how normal/safe is it for drivers here to stop and ask if you need a ride? does the answer change if the driver is extremely attractive? again, if liz gilbert ("eat pray love") can stay single in rome, i can do it here. it's difficult to imagine that alaskan men can be more irresistible than italian men, but you know, i could be wrong.