But the boat didn’t dock until 2:30, though. And once we’d read the daily digest, it was
clear what we must do: attend the trivia contest! After all, I needed some measure of
redemption following my failure at the stupid Newlywed Game last night, and so
far every time I caught the tail end of the trivia games it was clear that I
was in a whole different league than these other crew passengers.
It probably helps that I’m not swilling down Bloody Marys at
9 in the morning, and also that about 32% of my brain is dedicated to
remembering useless trivia tidbits, like which country is jointly ruled by a
Bishop and by France (it’s Andorra, by the way, which I knew).
Angela, wanting me to feel like I’m not totally useless,
managed to get me down there well in time to make the trivia contest. It took us some doing, since the breakfast
restaurant was packed (including by a fairly hungover-looking Mr. Grumpy, which
made him look grumpier than usual). But
make it we did.
The instructions were to form teams, so we teamed up with a
couple and with a nice lady who shall remain nameless, but who had a cup full
of Bloody Mary at 9 in the morning. We’d
seen her yesterday, with the same cup, but full of beer.
There were 20 questions, and a possible of 24 points. I felt pretty bad at the beginning – after all,
I have no idea about Beach Boys album covers or Beatles records – but I came
through in the end when they asked for a bonus question about “what animal is
catgut made from?”
It’s Sheep, by the way.
I know, strange. But it’s sheep.
We ended up scoring 16 points, one off of the winning score of
17, so I felt vindicated by the time it was all over.
Once that was over, we wandered into a scavenger hunt, and
again found ourselves paired with Mrs. “I like to drink a lot.” That was a lot of fun, but we ended up also
losing that one, mostly because one of the other teams cheated. How did they cheat in a scavenger hunt?
I don’t want to talk about it, that’s how.
Then it was off to lunch.
Once again, the restaurant was packed, and this time we found ourselves
sharing a table with two nice older ladies who asked us very politely if they
could sit with us. I happily agreed, and
Angela wasn’t there to stop me.
Now, I don’t want to sound cruel – and I’m not trying to be
funny here – but we’re fairly sure that one of the ladies isn’t quite
there. Nice ladies, really good
conversationalists, but one of them – not all there.
They were both very jealous about our upcoming Helicopter
Dog Sled Glacier Adventure.
And then, finally, painfully, we were in Juneau. Hooray!
Helicopter Dog Sled Glacier Adventure here we come!
We de-boated and made our way up the gangplank, eager to be
on our way.
At least, I was eager.
Angela, as you may know, hates heights, is always freezing (even in an
oven), and gets motion sick sitting on a waterbed. So her idea of fun is not “let’s get in a
helicopter and fly up high and then go on a dogsled on a glacier with the wind
whipping around us while in Alaska.” But
it’s the only thing I ever accidentally showed her the price of, and she for
sure wasn’t going to miss this after I paid all that money for it, so she had
to come.
Advantage: Kurt!
First, though, we had to get to the
helicopter base camp. Which was more of
an adventure than we could ever have imagined.
Finding our group fairly easily, we noticed that there were
two fairly obvious groups together: one, a group of somewhat disgruntled
out-of-shape people who were angrily waiting.
Two: a calmer, more relaxed group that seemed to be younger and somewhat
fitter.
The leader of the disgruntled people was Dr. Butthead. While we waited for the whole group to arrive
from the boat, he decided to pepper the tour lady with helpful questions like:
“We paid for this, didn’t we? Why aren’t we going?”
And
“Is there going to be a bus?”
And
“What’s wrong with you people that you can’t be more
organized?”
Now, to be fair, they were disorganized. But I don’t know how organized they can be
when 2,500 people get off of a ship over a one-hour period and they all ask the
same questions to the first person they meet holding a clipboard. Things like:
“Are you the glacier dogsled group?”
And
“Are you the dogsled glacier group?”
And
“Are you the one-legged pirate performer who rides the
unicycle that we’re supposed to meet?”
You might think I’m kidding, but it’s true. And I have no idea what they’re thinking, because
often it’s obvious that the person holding the clipboard that says KAYAKING
ADVNETURE is probably not the person who is supposed to meet you for the
SNOWMOBILING REPAIR COURSE, so you might not ask them if they’re that person.
Eventually, she says “Okay, everybody follow me!”
So we followed, with Dr. Butthead saying helpful things like
“it’s about time” or “why didn’t you get started already?” or “I have another
excursion so it’s about time for you to get started!”
She took us and put us on the bus. But suddenly, I heard from outside “No, sir,
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bring you over here. You’re the dog sledding group so you have to
go back and wait for the next bus.”
Wait, what?
I looked around the bus.
I’m not going to say that I was surrounded by pasty people whose idea of
exercise was tying their shoes on a windy day.
But we were easily well younger than the rest of this crowd.
“Are we on the right bus?” I asked Angela.
“They took our tickets, didn’t they?” she said.
“But they turned that guy away,” I said.
“If they want to turn us away, they’ll come get us,” she
said. “Just let them do their job.”
Just then, the lady got on the bus: “Is anybody on here a dogsledder?”
I sighed. “I was
right,” I said as they de-bussed us. “We
weren’t supposed to be on that bus.”
“Where was that keen sense last night?” Angela asked as we
hiked back over to the waiting area.
Finally after a long wait, we were put on another bus. A bus driven by…
MR. CRAZY!
And that’s exactly what his name was. Okay, maybe not: it might have been Clowny
McClownicus.
But he was, in fact, Mr. Crazy.
First, he was completely befuddled by the tickets. Did he
rip them? Not rip them? Did we keep part of them? Did he need to rip them both at the same
time, or rip them singly? To answer this
dilemma, he needed to call in to HQ to find out (no, really).
After he’d loaded us all in, he came inside to give us a
safety talk and hit his head on the door of the bus, making him woozy. I thought it also made him less coherent, but
unless that lasted for about 4 hours, I think that wasn’t the issue.
Once he’d given us the safety talk, he finally took the
driver’s side and got ready to go. But
apparently it’s a safety rule that he needs somebody to wave him out as he
backs up, and despite his best efforts nobody would come over to wave him out.
Eventually, tired and ready to go, he just threw it in
reverse and hit the gas, and WHUMP!
He hit his wheel chocks.
Chagrined, he climbed out, pulled the out from under his
tires, and then the moment he got back in someone appeared to wave him out.
It’s like, seeing wheel chocks on his vehicle, they assumed
he wouldn’t be backing up. Probably
because he couldn’t.
After some time we arrived at helicopter base camp. Angela was handling the whole thing rather
well, only breaking one of my knuckles grasping my hand in utter terror at what
was to come.
After much running around crazily, they finally found us a safety
“instructor.” And I put in quotes
because this is the first thing he said to us:
“Okay, dudes, I’m going to give you the safety talk. Wow, I’m like, totally disorganized. Wow.
Just let me have a second to get
my head together, man. Wow. Totally.
Okay, I’m like totally ready to do this now. Just, wow.
Dude.”
I began to have second thoughts myself, and hoped sincerely
that the helicopter pilot and mechanic were significantly less half-baked than
everyone else I’d met with this company so far.
Once we’d seen the safety demonstration, we put on our
gear: a life jacket and big rubber
booties to keep our feet dry. I was
putting mine on when the woman came to help me and did it in about ten seconds. Then she went to help the woman next to me,
who yelled:
“DON’T TOUCH MY TOE IT’S BROKEN!”
Turns out, this limping woman who’s been with us has a
broken toe (or three, she doesn’t know).
I really admired her bravery: if it were me, I’d be laying in bed with
my foot up, but here she is out here, determined to make the best of her
vacation. Yikes! She did really good, too, all things
considered.
Once this is all done, and we’re suited up, it’s time for
the helicopter ride. Thankfully, this is
not one of those vintage 1960s-era ‘copters at a state fair, but rather a
modern helicopter piloted by a pretty competent-looking pilot. I felt reassured the whole time.
Our pilot was a woman, who had 9 years of experience, who
was really sensitive to the fact that two of our flyers were completely not
excited about flying, and did her best to keep us stable and comfortable the
whole flight. I tell you, in one trip
she did more to make me feel better about the half-bakedness of the other
employees.
(Side note: I never did see the goats she pointed out,
although Angela claimed that she did see them).
Once at the dogsled camp, I had to give Angela an
apology. See, I’d been sweating out my
ears all day at how hot I was in my coat.
Up on the glacier, though, it was colder than a mammer-jammer, and I
quickly found myself freezing in the wind.
Thankfully, I had my big heavy coat and my Wyoming constitution to make
me feel better, so I was okay.
The Californians, though, were not doing okay. They were not doing okay at all.
Once we’d gotten the basics of dogsled mushing (don’t fall
off, basically), we met up with our team and we started.
Let’s get two things clear right away: it’s not fast, and the dogs do poop as they
run.
But it is a singularly impressive way to travel. Yeah, it’s not terribly fast – about 7 to 10
miles an hour – but the dogs make it look so easy, over such horrible terrain,
that it’s amazing they go anywhere at all!
And they let you ride the back sled and put the brakes on, which is fun.
At our first stop, I saw something on the ground, so I went
to grab it (being ecologically conscious).
I saw that it was a dog bootie. I’d
just picked it up when the dogs, who were terribly amped up during their first
run of the day, started going again.
While I was standing in front of the back sled.
For a few moments, I was terribly concerned that I was about
to be run over by a dogsled. It kept
whacking me in the shins as the musher tried to get the dogs back under control
and stopped, and I just continued to stagger backwards and hope that I didn’t
fall and get under the treds of the sled.
Angela helped me by laughing.
With nothing bruised but my ego and my shins, soon we were
off again, this time with Angela of the Yukon mushing and me sitting. And I discovered, not for the first time,
that sitting is much better than almost anything else.
Once back at dog camp, we were ready to go. We’d ridden the sled and petted the dogs and
were pretty much ready to wind down this great adventure.
Only, the helicopters weren’t back. So we waited.
And waited.
And waited.
While waiting, I sat down on a box because sitting is much
better than almost anything else. And I
discovered that the box was very wet, and I now had wet pants.
Sigh.
So we waited some more, and finally the helicopters came
over the hill and we were out of there.
This time Angela sat up front and got some great pictures of
the flight, for which I was grateful.
This was particularly nice since she isn’t particularly fond of heights,
but she was willing to sit up in the glass front and look down and still shoot
all kinds of pictures.
Once back in Juneau, we were ready to head back to the
boat. After all, it’d been a long day,
and as exciting as Gatlinburg of the North was, we were pretty much ready to
retire.
Arriving back in our cabin, Angela’s stomach
decided to revolt – it was not at all pretty – and so we spent the rest of the
night in our cabin resting.
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