Janingalina

Day 1 Anchorage:

Coffee at Kaladi Brothers, lunch at Snow City Cafe - Reindeer sausage reuben, mmm.

Next, a visit to the Oomingmak musk-ox collective. Bought myself a nifty little neck warmer, knitted by Edith on Nunivak (first place musk-ox were reintroduced), and a skein so I could knit myself a hat. I was _absurdly_ geeked about this. I'd only read about quiviut in knitting mags and thought of it as one of the most exotic fibers, something i'd never get my hands on. But here I am! *eee*

Picked up the kegs, took a nap, and had a St. Pat's Party. Noone got naked, but it was still fun.

Saturday:
Visited the Native Peoples' Heritage museum just outside of Anchorage. Wandered through the exhibits and learned a lot about the varied cultures of AK. It was Yupik/Cupik day, so there was a lot of story-telling, native crafts, and some traditional dance to be taken in.

Then more napping, and a visit to midtown Anchorage. Dinner and live bluegrass at the Organic Oasis, Soul Man playing at the Blues Spot, and finally on to Chilkoot Charlie's - many rooms of varied decor and musical styles. The live rock band (don't know their name) was playing covers, and doing pretty well. The Swing room had some good techno, and the hip hop room was hopping. I got my picture taken in the Bird House room, where the decor is primarily undergarments. I'm such a tourist! And a drunken Filipina was looking to fight later in the evening. I had to decline, and we left without much fanfare.

Sunday: drove to Girdwood.
Lunch at the Chair 5 restaurant, where I had a musk-ox cheeseburger and fries. Couldn't find any lodging cheaper than the Prince Hotel (the only 4 diamond in AK), so we're here at the resort. Free wifi, we got a pizza and a movie with our 2 day stay. Night skiing is ended, so we went snowshoeing, ordered our pizza, had a coupla beers and turned in.

Monday: Riding Alyeska
We broke fast, rented, and headed up the mountain in a gondola packed like sardines. At the top, on new equipment in a new (to me) kind of snow, I fell a bunch and ended up touring a double black diamond slope, instead of the blues I thought I was headed for. Oops! It was at least manageable because the 3' powder didn't hurt to fall into, and gave me something to work with on the hill.

I was about halfway down, and could see the blue runs I wanted to hit. All I could think was, "those trees look very far away!" So it took me a while to get down the mountain, but after that it was smooth sailing. ...in braille. It was snowing so hard all day I couldn't really see much in front of or behind me... Either way, I got to ride a LOT of powder, and I am now in love. :) Next year I'll have to join a ski club, or at least get myself to somewhere they have honest to god mountains. This was fun!

That's what I've got for now. Pix will follow at some point. Probably when I'm back in MI. I haven't found free wifi with enough upstream bandwidth to make posting pix less than an 8hour task.