Day 8: June 25th
Destination: Tok Anchorage Fairbanks Anchorage, Alaska
Driving Through: Yukon Territoy, Alaska
I made it.
But let’s take a step back shall we?
When I woke up in Whitehorse I was headed to Tok, but before I got there, I drove through a cute little place called Destruction Bay.
Not only do they have one of the coolest names of all time…addition to an amazing view, but they also have a wooden police car cut out to prevent speeders.
And…at a distance, it’s not too bad (though…pictures don’t really do it justice), but as you approach it, it becomes terribly obvious.
After some gas, I headed to the border. But before I got there, I stopped and got a coffee and some banana walnut bread at a place called Buckshot Betty’s:
Then I got to the border.
I pulled up and spoke with the border patrol officer. It went something like this:
BPO: How ya doin’?
Me: Pretty damned good, thanks.
BPO: What brings you to Alaska?”
Me: I’ve got a job interview with Safeway.
BPO: Do you have any weapons?
Me: Yes, sir. A shotgun.
BPO: No handguns?
Me: No, sir.
BPO: Did you buy anything in Canada?
Me: Well, a sweatshirt and a couple of shirts.
This is where the BPO waves his hands in a warding off gesture.
BPO: My gift to you. Good luck with the interview. Welcome to Alaska.
Me: Thanks.
I nodded, smiling and pulled away, crossing the the U.S. border in the process, thinking that those three words meant more to me than he could have ever known.
Welcome to Alaska.
I fucking made it.
The drive kept getting more and more beautiful. Eventually it was too much and I had to pull over.
Let’s throw it down to Moe at the scoreboard, MOE! (oops…sorry…I always wanted to be on Global Guts…I mean let’s go to Frisco on the field)
The original plan was to stop in Tok, about a six hour drive from Anchorage, but then I showed up at 3…and I was in the zone.
I had a hotel booked and I called and canceled it. I had already done research in Anchorage and had found a very modestly priced weekly hotel. I called them and made a reservation and started out.
My GPS went Terry Shivo (I told you guys I was going hard), as it did most of the way through Canada and I had to turn it off because I got sick of it rerouting me onto roads that weren’t there.
I literally came to a T in the road with one arrow pointing to Anchorage and the other to Fairbanks. There was a decision to be made and I sat there for a moment. And turned, heading toward Anchorage.
The lack of road signs was disturbing at first, but I was used to driving down bullshit roads by this point. The fact that I drove an hour without seeing an “Anchorage _____ Miles” was starting to get to me. I had a bad feeling that I was heading the wrong direction.
It turned out that bad feeling was accurate.
I turned around about an hour and a half out of the way and added three hours to the drive. It’s a good thing it doesn’t get dark up here.
When I arrived in Anchorage I felt like a complete badass (and…rightfully so if I do say so myself). I walked into my motel to check in. The area was pretty sketchy. There were homeless people walking everywhere, but I’ve never been afraid of homeless people. They’re probably too weak from hunger to attack me and it’s not like they’d spend the money on a weapon. Plus homelesses definitely won’t leave their shopping cart, which means I can out run them.
We call it the Nike Defense.
(On a side note…it’s amazing how much homeless people look like post apocalyptic survivors up here…full long beards and hair, big jackets and shopping carts)
It was really all the natives that were creepy. I’m sorry. I’m not necessarily a racist, but big groups of any race wearing big hoods and holding 40’s and looking angry and staring at me make me nervous.
Whatever. I just drove across the fucking country. Bring it, eskomos.
I walked in and was greeted with the overpowering smell of Fabreeze. The huge bald dude didn’t even look up when I came in. He was watching something on the television…I think it was Never Back Down.
“Hey, man,” I said and he looked up then stood. It might have been my imagination, but I think he ducked a little bit when he stood despite the 10ft ceiling. His bald head reflected my fear and for the first time since I left I began to feel like maybe I had made a mistake. (I suddenly felt like Kevin McCalster in Home Alone 2 when he’s running away from everything that’s scary and sits down in the cab and the driver turns around and says “Ain’t much better in here, kid.”
“What?” he said.
“I–uh–I made a reservation for the week.”
“Name?
“Edwards, Frisco.”
“Right. Credit card?”
“Sure.”
I handed it over and allowed him to charge me for the week. I suppose in retrospect this was a mistake, but I was terrified. I was the scared kid at summercamp, away from his parents for the first time. I knew that any situation that I got myself into I’d have to get myself out of. I’m not lookin’ for a jackpot here, buddy. There was that realization that I was 4,300 miles away from everything I had ever known and, while that’s why I had left in the first place, it was finally real. I wasn’t driving any more, I wasn’t in transit, I was here, the place I was going to spend at least a year of my life starting in that moment, and I was fucking scared.
He handed me some papers that I signed and then gave me a key.
I walked out to find my room and past a woman in a wheelchair who wouldn’t stop staring at me. There were four dudes standing outside the door to the room next to mine. They stared too, but it wasn’t that ‘I’m old and crazy’ stare it was a ‘if you turn your back on us, we’ll slit your fucking throat and play in your blood, homie.’
I nodded.
They nodded.
I moved to my door and was hardly surprised when my key didn’t open it. A kid that was running around, maybe about six, stopped and told me how to use it. He tried it and it still didn’t work and he told me I should go back down to the desk.
Taking his advice I went back down to see Mr. Clean’s evil twin.
“My–uh–key doesn’t work.” The man stared at me for a minute and then came around the counter and took the card from me and walked back up to the room with me, as though I might be lying just to be a dick.
Turned out the key didn’t work.
So he reprogrammed it and walked back up with me.
This one worked, but when we stepped into my room the bed wasn’t made. There was trash everywhere. Beer bottles. A bottle of Yukon Jack. The room smelled like cigarette, and beneath that there was the piney gin like smell of weed. Under all that, I think I recognized burning hair and vomit.
“God-fucking-damnit,” the man said and I wondered if he ever considered that his customer might be offended by his language. The fact that he had said exactly what I was thinking made me feel slightly better.
“It’s so hard to get good help around here, man.” He said “Let’s get you another room.”
So we did. And this one turned out to be clean…well…if you want to call it that. At least the beds were made.
There was a window in the back, by the small kitchen and it was open. I went to close it…and found that there was no glass. This is when I decided I wouldn’t be spending the night.
I went back down to the front desk.
“Hey, man. I don’t mean any disrespect or anything but…I just don’t feel safe staying here.” He said nothing, so I continued. “I just have my entire life in the back of that truck and…I feel really uncomfortable leaving it out.”
“It’s safe here. I’m here all night.” I didn’t point out to him that he wasn’t exactly the most trustworthy motherfucker I’d ever met.
“Yeah well…it’s just my not style, man.”
“Alright. Your call.”
“Do you think I can get my money back?”
“I can’t do it. But if you come back tomorrow the owner might.”
“Do you think…that would be something he would do?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
I nodded and headed out to my truck.
I had no idea where I was headed. All the roads up here are one way. My gps was a paperweight and the only person I had met probably wanted to kill me.
Things were getting real, really quickly.
I drove around until I found a hotel that looked like it was in a nice area and parked, hoping they had something.
They had one room.
A suit at 270 dollars.
I took it.
Did I mention the only thing I had eaten was that banana nut bread from earlier? The biggest problem with traveling down dirt roads is no one thinks to put up a McDonald’s.
I did have a microwave, so I busted into my supplies and ate some Chef Boyadee.
Then it was about 2 in the morning. I hadn’t heard from my safeway contact at all despite my e-mails, but then again it was the weekend.
It looked like 3 in the afternoon outside. I sat down on my bed and then heard all the sirens. Looking out my window I could see about 7 or 8 police cars (seriously) I couldn’t tell what was happening (although the next day I would learn that someone was stabbed to death outside a bar).
I knew I wasn’t going to get my money back at the hotel. I didn’t have a job or a place to live and I was quickly running out of cash, especially if I kept staying in hotels and eating out. The fun, spontaneous nature of trying to find a job and an apartment, now that it was real, seemed drastically stressful and almost impossible. I was incapacitated with the fear of the situation I had put myself in. My stomach ached. It was a feeling I recognized from Childhood when I used to try to spend the night at a friend’s house. Around midnight or 1 in the morning my stomach would start to ache and, for whatever reason, I would become very uncomfortably. It was always when everyone went to sleep and I had to stay up because I was used to going to bed later (even at age 7). Sometimes I would make up some excuse about having forgotten medication, but a majority of the time I would tough it out. I’d stay up all night, never falling asleep and listen to every little creak in the house. I couldn’t make an excuse and go home. I was here and this was exactly what I wanted. But the tough me that would normally look myself in the mirror and call me a pussy had taken the night off, or maybe he was hiding, holding his own beanie baby.
If nothing else, I had found what I was looking for. This was definitely not complacency. I was uncomfortable.
Still hungry I crawled into bed, not tired at all, and pulled the covers up to my neck. I pulled Mr. Bearson out of my bag and held him up against my chest. I laid there and thought about what I would do tomorrow. Get up, get dressed in a shirt and tie and go find a job, after I found a hotel, of course. I felt a little better, having a plan, but not much. I was still in a foreign and scary place without any sort of plan.
So, as the sun shined outside, leaving my room in a dim blue as it faded through the binds and curtains, I fell asleep to the sounds of the sirens outside.
…to be continued in Day 9.
Tags: Alaska, Anchorage, beer, Buckshot betty's, crappy hotels, Crossing the U.S. Border, Destruction Bay, Driving from Texas to Alaska, Driving through Canada, Driving to Alaska, Fairbanks, Frisco, Frisco Macae, Frisco Mcace Edwards. Frisco Edwards, Highway 1, horrible hotels, Long road trips, Mountains, The Alaskan Border, The Alaskan Highway, the alcan highway, Tok, Welcome to Alaska, Whitehorse, Yukon Territory
