It is amazing what a little bit of almost daylight can do for the soul. Today is the first clear day since I’ve been here in Barrow. You can see the stars. You can see actual clouds in the sky. You can see a perpetual sunrise/sunset/absence of sun if you look towards the horizon.
Another thing that’s doing wonders for my soul is the fact that I’m leaving today. Any semi-shitty situation can be overcome when you know it’s going to be over soon. But before it’s over I hope one thing happens: I hope the northern lights come out. If there was going to be one day today is it, and I hope that the fact that my flight leaves for Fairbanks at 8:11pm doesn’t mean I’ll be leaving too early to see them. I was blown away when I walked outside this morning and realized it was clear outside. I knew it seemed brighter than normal. And then I pranced all over the city taking pictures and happily kicking snowdrifts, and I almost felt bad that I was so excited to be getting out of Barrow. I thought to myself, “Shit, too bad I’m not staying another night — I’d probably definitely get to see the northern lights if I stayed here through the night.” But then I thought, “Fuck that.”
The Barrow airfield as the sun inches towards the bottom of the horizon, only to shyly retreat before it ever gets there.
Roof of the Barrow Distribution Center, purveyor of alcohol and jolly times.
I wish so badly that this photo was in focus. Maybe I should consider acquiring a tripod.
I don’t know what happened here, but it’s rad.
Frozen power lines and an elevated view of the city.
Gnarler.
The King Eider Inn. I am not staying here.
The Barrow airfield.
This entry was written by , posted on December 22, 2009 at 4:39 pm, filed under Alaska and tagged ak, Alaska, alaska airlines, arctic pizza, barrow, barrow distribution center, osaka, pepe's, polar bears, whalers. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Some photos (and videos) from Barrow, AK:
My favorite photo I’ve taken in Barrow so far, taken yesterday at about 12:30pm when the sun was at its “peak.”
Preparing for a walking tour of Barrow, Alaska from Tex Avery on Vimeo.
Ready to seize the proverbial arctic day.
The Alaska Airlines terminal, Barrow, site of me being told I would definitely have to stay my full three days here and definitely have to go home to Seattle via Fairbanks.
Frozen telephone pole with ginger snap frosting.
Frozen cars.
Barrow Walking the Streets from Tex Avery on Vimeo.
This is a long video of me rambling on about how cold it is in Barrow. I apologize for the wind.
Only you can prevent polar bear problems.
Frozen fence.
Frozen town. Frozen right index finger. Frozen dreams.ww
This entry was written by , posted on December 21, 2009 at 3:19 pm, filed under Uncategorized and tagged Alaska, alaska airlines, arctic pizza, barrow, era, pepe's, polar bears. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Disclaimer: Cooped up in my hotel room all day with total darkness outside I’m sort of starting to go out of my mind, and it’s affecting my ability to write in an engaging manner. If you don’t want to slog through a bunch of mediocre anecdotes about me not being able to buy a tooth brush I suggest you just skip to the last paragraph, which contains all I really wanted to say in the first place.
I’ve done a lot today. I started by forcing myself out of bed just before 9am despite the fact that it was still dark outside and I felt like I could’ve slept for another three years. It’s always dark in Barrow (Side note: I’m actually sort of lying here: from about 12pm to 2pm today it was sort of bright outside, kind of what it’s like just after sunset in Seattle, and I was fucking ecstatic), and I’m just going to have to accept this. Then I ate a standard continental breakfast of poppy-seed muffin bread and Raisin Bran, and got ready to seize the day.
Seizing the day in Barrow requires, if you don’t have a car, putting on about 15-20 layers. After donning my down jacket and a complimentary layer of chain mail just in case I ran into a polar bear or a dragon, I made my way over to the Alaska Airlines terminal where I asked if I might be able to get off this desolate stretch of snowy rock a day earlier than scheduled and not have to stop in Fairbanks on the way home (the only other time I’ve been to Fairbanks my friends from my summer job in Cooper Landing and I spent a good portion of the time drinking lukewarm beers in a Fred Meyer parking lot and talking about which of our mildly attractive coworkers we wanted to bang). But it wasn’t happening; I’m not getting out of here any earlier, and I WILL have to go through Fairbanks. After the airport, determined to make the best of my time here (I did come here by choice, after all) I danced for five minutes to the song “Mundian to Bach Ke” in my hotel room by myself. Then I tried to watch another episode of Dexter, cooked a Banquet chicken nugget and macaroni dinner, and went for another walk.
On this second walk I was much more determined to get to an actual destination, and this actual destination was Arctic Grocery, which was closed. At Arctic grocery I hoped to purchase a tooth brush (which I forget 75 percent of the time I travel) and some accompanying tooth paste. On the way back I was picked up by an elderly man who was born in Barrow and has more or less lived here his whole life. He was seemed somewhat perplexed by the fact that I was walking. Since I arrived here I’ve seen very few people walking the streets. It’s almost like the people of Barrow don’t want anyone to walk, but as I have no car and no snowmobile, there’s not much choice.
(Side paragraph: Speaking of walking, yesterday I spent 15 dollars yesterday on a jug of orange juice. I thought it cost seven dollars but didn’t notice I was wrong until after I had already walked the mile-and-a-half back to my hotel room in -15 degree weather. I should have realized that something was off when the cashier rang me up and my order [which consisted of almost nothing apart from the OJ] cost just under 30 dollars. However, I rarely question the price a cashier quotes me, and this time was no different. When I later told my friend Jasmine about the mistake she said, “That’s going to be the best orange juice you’ve ever had in your life.” And you know what? She was fucking right).
But how IS Barrow? you may wonder. Barrow is exotic. Along with Cuba and Morocco, it’s probably in the top three most exotic places I’ve ever been in my life. This is because it’s different. It’s isolated. It’s dark. It’s cold. When you walk the streets you get the feeling that no one else lives in this town, save the occasional whine of a snowmobile in the distance. Then all of the sudden you walk through a door, and you’re sitting in a restaurant just like anywhere else in America, except for the fact that you feel like you don’t really belong there and most of all, like the restaurant itself somehow doesn’t belong there. It’s like Barrow exists in some sort of parallel universe where people come when they want to get away from the real version of the universe, and what they have constructed here to resemble the real version of the universe is almost convincing, but there’s something not quite right that you just can’t put your finger on. At first this, along with the fact that I got chased by a dog on the walk to my hotel from the airport, was kind of freaking me out. More than anything it was the lack of people in the streets, and the fact that everything here is literally frozen, caked with a kind of snow that looks like the frosting traditionally put on ginger snaps. But now that I’ve been here a little bit, and had some (semi) actual conversations with actual people, I’m a little less freaked out. It is a different place, but it’s 330 miles north of the Arctic Circle, so it’s bound to be a different place. And, after all, I came here looking for something different. Something unique. So if I need to get bit by a dog or wrestle a polar bear or pay 15 dollars for some juice, so be it.
This entry was written by , posted on December 20, 2009 at 10:09 pm, filed under Alaska, Travels and tagged airport inn, Alaska, alaska airlines, barrow, north slope, pepe's north of the border, things to do in barrow. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
I NEED A JOB. I don’t want a job. I hate working. But everyone hates working — and working does have its upsides. Mainly: Income, not feeling completely worthless all of the time, and being able to tell girls you meet what you “do.” Also, it’s very nice when crossing the Canadian border to be able to tell them you’re gainfully employed. There is nothing that makes a Canadian customs official’s ears perk up more than the word “unemployed.” It’s an instant red flag and you can be assured the next words out of his/her mouth will be, “Can you please step through the sliding doors marked ‘immigration’?” whereupon an unsmiling woman in a heavy-looking jacket will ask you all sorts of questions, and you will tell her you live with your parents, and that you “just graduated from university,” and you’re “just visiting a friend.” And then they will let you go, and you will get back on the bus everyone will look at you like you’re a convict.
Anyway, I need a job because the road trip is over. Back to “reality.” Yesterday on the flight back from Minneapolis I sat next to a 14-year-old kid I dubbed “porker” due to his generous proportions and the fact that he consumed sugar pretty much continuously throughout the entire flight. At one point he tried to order a Red Bull from the stewardess but couldn’t because he only had cash. He was crestfallen. I briefly thought about paying for it with my debit card and having him give me cash, but I thought, “You don’t need this, little man. You need a treadmill.”
Descending into Seattle and watching the sun set over the Strait of Juan de Fuca, I had one of those “Tomorrow is the First Day of the Rest of my Life” moments, where you think you’re going to get up the next day at 7AM, go on a 20-mile bike ride, eat a hearty breakfast, and grab the day by its proverbial horns. Now it’s 10:10AM, I’m sitting on the couch in my parents’ living room, my midriff is peeking out between my shirt and mesh basketball shorts, and I’ve spent the last hour talking to people on G-Chat. Maybe I’ll seize this afternoon by its horns.
-Wetzler
This entry was written by , posted on April 8, 2009 at 12:14 pm, filed under Uncategorized and tagged alaska airlines, Chipotle, coffman, mill district, minneapolis, mount rainier, puget sound, road trip, stone arch bridge, university of minnesota. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.