on enjoying the journey

There is snow covering the pretty yellow leaves that have not even had a chance to fall completely to the ground yet. Why the hurry? Why do we have to run to the destination called winter or next week or next year or grad school or marriage or career or house or children? Today I wish the snow would have a little patience and let the leaves dry up and fall down before it takes its place on the branches. Today I would like to give the leaves their moment.

The Bus Cont...

Well, we made it! Danny gave the full low down, lots of pics, and his experience on his blog - dannyhoerman.blogspot.com.

What he didnt tell you was how he practically had to drag me down the trail at some points, it was quite a physical push for me. The bear and the river were no big thing to him but seriously, waist deep swift moving water, Andrew falling back on me, Danny pushing me forward, me squeezed between the two while trying to keep up with Andrews big steps and trying not to fall and be buried under the Teklanika, I thought we were goners.

And the bear? Andrew hears the bear and what does Danny do? Take out his bear spray and walks forward to check it out. He sees the bear sit up and as I am crappying my pants he slowly backs up, calmly shouting at the bear and yelling to me that it would be fine. At the risk of sounding cliche and a bit extreme I felt like I was watching him make the spiritual quest he had been looking forward to for so long and I got to ride on his coattails and enjoy the spice of the adventure!

10 blisters later on my feet and hands (word to the wise: if a rock has just been pulled out of the fire, it is not a good idea to try and pick it up) I feel like I can add my name to the crowd of hippies and vagabonds who have made their way down the loooooooooong trail to the bus.

In the Land of the Midnight Sun

I have all but given up on our internet and momentarily find myself with a friends computer and seem to have a good enough connection to make a blogtastic post. Hi! I miss you! Thanks for coming and seeing how we are doing. I am going to put up lots of pictures (hopefully) mostly for the benefit of dannys and my moms because they have to care but viewing is optional for anyone who does not fall into that category.

Time is passing quickly and things are happening fast and we find ourselves spending many many hours driving buses or waiting to drive buses and watching the scenery out the window but we have found some time to have some good adventures.

Quick run down:
* My dad came to visit and we had four straight days of ATVing, Dinner Theatre, hiking, riding on buses into the park, making fun of tourists, more hiking, watching my dad beat every guy in our housing at ping pong (and de-throning danny), more making fun of tourists, a little more hiking, walking on beaver dams, listening to dad yell cat calls at the caribou we spotted, etc. It was good times. Now we are awaiting the arrival of Danny's parents in a few weeks.
* We have just passed the longest day of the year where the sun did not, in fact, set at all
* 2 months have officially passed of real bus driving and marriage and neither of us have hit anything or each other (knock on wood)
* For Steven: I ate at..... wait for it ..... the northern most Dennys IN THE WORLD! It took forever for them to take our order, food was sub-par, and it smelled like old bacon and smoke, keepin it real up here in Alaska!
* Danny has honed his Ansel Adams skills and taken some awesome pics of the wildlife/nature we have seen
* I smashed my camera on one of our hikes
* Danny is currently winning the race to more tips because he is really good at telling bad jokes
* We packed up our neat-o new packs and hiked a couple miles out, set up camp, slept in our tent, spent the next day climing a peak watching caribou and an eagle swoop around over our heads, and felt quite hardcore

On an entirely different note, about a month ago I started reading the novel, Reading Lolita in the Tehran, by Azar Nafisi and it has not only reminded me how much I love literature and how important it is but it raised my interest and awareness to life in Iran during the revolution of the late 70's early 80's. Interestingly enough all of the current happenings in Iran are a direct consequence of the change of regime that happened then and this author that was so insightful to me was on CNN a few nights ago talking about the current situation in Iran. She was articulate and gracious as she tried to explain to an audience of people so habituated to individualism, self proported creativity and openness how quickly a society can choose to give up choice , often in the name of God. I don't claim to understand or get exactly whats going on but my heart has been going out to the people there, especially the women protesting for the freedom of basic human rights. If you get a chance, give this book a look. I've been trying to remember to be grateful for the choices I have, to live where is choose, dress in a way that is comfortable to me, read, watch, and say what I please, marry or not marry whomever I want, etc. You've heard it all before and it is so far away but this is where my thoughts have been as of late.

I Work At A Senior Citizen's Summer Camp

Sour looking man, looking Betsy up and down as he follows a line of people getting off the train and onto her bus:
"We got ourselves a lady driver?"

Betsy, immediately feeling defensive: "Well you've got me unless you want to walk"

Man, stopping the line and irritating everyone behind him: "Did you remember to check the transmission?"

Betsy, in a high voice: "Whats a transmission?"

Man, getting a little sparkle in his eye: "Oh thats smart, I do have a question for you before I get on your bus"

Betsy, tired of answering questions for old men getting on her bus: "And whats that sir?"

Man, gearing up for a good one: "Whats the difference between a brunette and a garbage can?"

Betsy: "I bet your gonna tell me"

Man, already proud of himself: "The garbage can gets taken out at least twice a week".....

and up he goes.

by land, by sea... or by dog sled

Before I can go on with this post with a good attitude I have got to get something off my chest. I just had a run in with the cafeteria nazi and he has left me in a seriously sour mood (or totally pissed off if I can really be honest).
So, first of all, I eat three meals a day out of a cafeteria, I will leave my complaints to myself because I know I was fully aware when I signed up. When you go into the cafeteria there is a big hand washing station with about, oh I don't know, thirty signs that say "Wash your hands before entering the cafeteria". I get that, germs, lots of people, fair. However, the water that comes out of the spout is about 45 degrees below (no, I am not exaggerating and yes, I know its weird that it can be that cold and not actually turn into ice) and after washing my hands the first 10 meals here I couldnt help but think that nothing was cleaner about my hands after putting them in arctic water, and the only thing accomplished was that I couldn't feel them for another 5 or 10 minutes.

Solution? The bathroom, right next door to the cafeteria has perfectly warm water. So what do I do? I go into the bathroom, wash my hands, and then come out to get my food. This evening I did as I explained and entered the cafeteria, grabbed my tray, and headed down to get a healthy helping of yesterdays pork.

Enter, little man with chefs hat and obnoxious accent:
"Um, excuse me."
I keep on walking toward that pork.
"EXCUSE ME."
I hear him, but I don't want to hear about washing my freaking hands.
"MISS EXCUSE ME YOU MUST WASH YOUR HANDS!"
I turn and very calmly state, "Look, I washed my hands in the bathroom."
I hold them up, "See, still wet."
"It does not matter, you must wash your hands or you can't eat."
"I'm sorry but the water is so..."
"YOU MUST WASH YOUR HANDS."
"But..."
"NO WASHING HANDS, NO FOOD."

Not that the pork was all that enticing but seriously? I just stare at him for a second, hands in the air, wet spots on my shirt, normal body temperature about to meet its plunging fate, waiting for it to register to him how ridiculous he sounds.
"YOU MUST WASH YOUR HANDS WHEN ENTERING THE CAFETERIA, YOU SEE THE SIGN?"
No, actually missed that, thanks for pointing it out.
Now that everyone in the vicinity is staring and Danny is energetically piling pork and beans onto his plate while heartily laughing at me, I give in. I'm not ok with it though. I went through my whole meal, not feeling my hands and plotting how I can get little cafeteria-power-trip-guy back... I think from now on I'll just fake the washing, haha jokes on him.

Wow, felt good to get out, now I can move on.

So anyway, in the last 5 days Danny and I have gone in and around Denali National Park on foot, in a van, on a bus (driving and riding), on a train, in a boat, in a small airplane, and on a dog sled. The scenery hasnt gotten old yet! Mt. McKinley (tallest mountain in North America, highest vertical rise in the world) poked its head out of the clouds while we were on the train and we poked our head through the clouds on a plane to get a glimpse of the summit and even saw about 10 climbers attempting to reach the top.

Here are pictures of each transportation adventure except a bus... funny enough its the only thing I didn't take a picture of this week.

Van - Exciting, I know




Foot - Me checking out some moose tracks and us hiking around near where we live




Dog Sled - Huskies! Ohhh, look at the puppy!



Boat - Jet Boat "Safari" Tour... though we didnt see any lions or zebras



Train!



Plane - Mt. McKinley



We spent a night at the McKinley lodge about 2 hours south of us and then we took the train all day to Fairbanks (normally about 2 hrs north of us) and spent the night there. Upon leaving Fairbanks Danny's bus internally combusted (shocking, eh?) or whatever you might call it and dumped all its transmission fluid on the ground, that proved to be quite a hold up and not all that good for the bus, surprisingly enough.

Today was take-off for driving buses with real passengers in them as the first train transporting guests arrived. Danny had a good start but I'll let him tell you about that. I didn't drive but I gave the little speal to the guests and am officially winning the race to more tips, any additional help would be appreciated.

Betsy Hoerman... its got a nice little ring to it

So, the wedding happened, I'm a married woman now. I have to say that it was everything I could have ever dreamed of and more. Absolute downpour the whole day and the sky cleared for the hour and a half pictures were scheduled, my bridesmaids were gorgeous, desserts were scrumptious, my nephews pulled faces in all the pictures so they are bound to be cute, once we bailed and arrived at the Hilton we were upgraded to the two story pent house suite, oh yea, and Danny was pretty cool too. Then we were whisked away to the magical land of Denali National Park.

Today is our one week anniversary and we have already put in 50 hours of work since we got here! Its not all bad though, they made us drive a bus full of employees through the breathtaking interior of Alaska, we had to go on an ATV tour yesterday, tomorrow we have to go in a plane around the summit of Mt. McKinley, and Monday night we have no choice but to go on the big dome train about 4 hrs south to the Mt. McKinley lodge for an overnighter and ride the next day into Fairbanks and back. Pretty tough honeymoon so far.







We stay about 10 minutes north of the park in a town called Healy. We live in an old hotel/army barrack type place made out of wooden panel and tin with a hoppin' bar downstairs, plenty of interesting people to keep us laughing and a full size bed. There is a cool rec room with pool and ping pong and a library of romance novels that have kept many other Alaskans warm through the cold nights. We haven't really had any of our own time to go exploring but tomorrow is our first day off so we can go check it all out.

Its strange though, all the planning for the wedding and it was over so fast and now it feels like it was so long ago. I have not even had a 5 minute conversation with anyone but Danny to re-hash the whole thing and give it proper analysis. I have no idea how it went for anyone else. Maybe its better that way, it can just remain this perfect little moment in time. Sitting with Danny for a few minutes before we went in to be married had to of been the highlight of the day. We had a few mushy things to say to each other but mostly we sat there giggling and trying to be reverent even though I just wanted to jump up and down and release some of my excitement. Excitement to be marrying Danny, excitement to see all the people in the other room, excitement to start a new chapter in my life. I was so glad that I was there with Danny and that life has brought us, in a round about way, together. Not a bad twist to things.