Join the Club

Current temperature in Fairbanks: -35 F

"The sea's only gifts are harsh blows, and occasionally the chance to feel strong. Now I don't know much about the sea, but I do know that that's the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong. To measure yourself at least once. To find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions. Facing the blind death stone alone, with nothigh to help you but your hands and your own head." ~Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

          It’s been a little while since I have posted and I have a lot to catch you guys up on! I have started classes and they are going great! I dropped my graduate level class for psychology, I decided I wanted to spend less time on school work and more time exploring. My organic chemistry class and immunology class seem like they will be challenging but manageable. My immunology teacher is a very interesting individual. He is a tall, lanky and rather quirky Italian with a thick accent and a slight lisp. The back of his head looks like someone hit it with a frying pan and he always comes in dressed like your stereotypical European; Italian dress shoes, and vibrant ties that somehow match the rest of his flamboyant attire. My native art studio class is the class I am most excited for. Starting this week we are going to be carving ladles using hand tools, the same way the people of the native northwest would make them.

            Something that both surprises me and repulses me about here is the fact that EVERYONE smokes. It is really rather gross, especially since the cold traps all the cigarette smoke and car exhaust close to the ground resulting in a persistent air quality alert. I would think the idea of having to expose your hands to -40 F weather would be enough to deter one from stepping outside for a butt and may even be a sort of motivation to quit, but apparently not. I was outside taking pictures for 20 minutes in such weather and ended up looking like this:

Speaking of cold weather in this sub-arctic climate, there are some pretty neat and unusual things that come along with it. For starters, whenever a car is parked, it is plugged into an outlet set up at every four parking spots. This is done to help keep the battery and other vitals from freezing. 

It is funny to see people driving around campus with three prong cords sticking out of the hoods of their car, almost skipping along the ground as if even the cars are sticking out their tongues in protest of the cold. Even the trees have resorted to wearing sweaters!

            Back home when people see fog, they associate it with warm, humid weather. Here, it is associated with frigid, dry conditions. It isn't just called fog here, it is called ice fog or by a name that doesn’t sound quite so menacing, pogonip. It happens because the water in the atmosphere is freezing. This usually only happens when it gets to be about -40 F which is the coldest atmospheric water can get before freezing. I also learned that it gets so cold and dry here that if you blow bubbles when it is below -20 F, they freeze and you can actually put your finger in them without popping them. I also learned that you can also throw a cup of coffee, or any hot water based substance in the air and it will evaporate before hitting the ground. Yes, evaporate, not freeze. I plan to try both and will post pictures and videos, so don’t worry!

            I had my first moment of truly feeling like a foreigner the other day, of course besides occasionally being called out for saying “wicked”. I was sitting in the dining hall with my gentle giant friend Matt who was enjoying a grapefruit, the same way I would eat an orange. I asked him why he didn’t use a grapefruit spoon. He just looked at like me like I had sprouted another head. Of course a grapefruit spoon was mentioned right after our discussion about how New Englanders have a tendency to be rather rude and fast-paced, almost snooty. I then began asking anyone I could find in the dining hall if they had ever heard of a grapefruit spoon. No one. But I did get an “I don’t know, but I think I saw one the other day,” making it sound like some unusual ancient artifact. Apparently grapefruit spoons are an east coast thing, who knew?

            The other night I went to the College Coffeehouse with my roommate Katia, for some coffee and bluegrass music performed by a local band. It was quite cute! Definitely a place I will go back to for another band or open mic night.

            Last night was by far my most successful Alaskan experience so far. It started out seeming like it would be a pretty bland evening, I was about to get ready for bed when I checked the weather and realized it was -40 F. Time to join the 40 below club! I texted Katia and a few other people who were planning to join the club that night too, but everyone started to chicken out. I found my friend Matt who wanted to do it still, and we proceeded to try and find a sober driver to take us down to the school sign. We went to Matt’s room to ask his roommate and found a gathering of rather intoxicated individuals. A nice enough native girl came up to me with the intention of a normal introduction, but ended up falling on me and slobbering on the side of my face a bit as she spoke directly into my ear, my hand clenched in hers. Her boyfriend had a car, and decided we could use it so we could all join the 40 below club. We packed his car like a clown car and drove down to the school sign for a picture. -38 F. Damn! We drove around campus a bit waiting for it to cool down when I looked up at the sky out the passenger window. “The northern lights!” I shouted. Someone asked me what color they were. Knowing I had never seen them before, they were testing me. They were green, the most common color of aurora borealis. I almost started crying I was so happy to see them. I announced to everyone that it was my first time seeing them and that I had just checked something off my bucket list. Everyone always says how beautiful the northern lights are, but nothing compares to seeing them in person. It is like a green wave slithering across the night sky. It is amazing to watch them change right before your eyes, almost disappearing at times, ebbing and flowing like a cosmic ocean.

I was told it usually isn’t possible to get pictures of the northern lights, but I managed. I will try to get better ones on a night they are more intense and it isn't so foggy. Depending on weather conditions, they can actually be seen as often as a few times a week! For those of you interested, aurora borealis is caused by the collision of gaseous molecules in the atmosphere with charged particles released from the sun, these particles then get sucked into the Earth's magnetic field and are then channeled toward the poles. This is why it can only be seen near the poles of the planet. The colors seen in the lights are dependent of the atmospheric molecules involved. The green is produced by oxygen molecules about 60 miles above earth, nitrogen produces blue or purple auroras, and rarely red auroras can be seen caused by high altitude oxygen, at heights of up to 200 miles.

Not only did I get to see the northern lights for the first time last night, I also joined the 40 below club. After unloading the car and being given the keys by the owner of the car who neither Matt nor I knew, we decided to drive around town while waiting to join the club. This is a tradition here at UAF where students go down to the sign at the main entrance to campus that tells the temperature outside and take pictures in their bathing suits or underwear. It sounds crazy, perhaps even stupid, and it really kind of is. I don’t really know how to describe it, but -40 F really isn’t as cold as it sounds. I am not saying it is warm, I certainly wouldn’t break out the sunscreen and beach towel, but for about 2 minutes in a bathing suit it isn’t all that painful. The cold is really only bad when you try to breathe. It feels like your lungs are freezing like the wooly mammoth in The Day After Tomorrow that was found frozen with food still in its mouth. It is definitely essential to cover your mouth when it gets that cold. This is by far the coldest it has been since I have arrived, though it does get much, much colder. There is also a 50 below club and a 60 below club, but it hasn’t gotten that cold. Yet...

Good Morning Fairbanks!

Current temperature in Fairbanks: -13 F

Greetings from Fairbanks!

Current temperature in Fairbanks: 1 F

"Greetings from Fairbanks! Arrived here 2 days ago. It was very difficult to catch rides in the Yukon Territory. But I finally got here. It might be a very long time before I return South. I now walk into the wild." ~Chris McCandless

            The time spent in Anchorage airport went by pretty fast. You know you are in Alaska when there are large stuffed polar bears on display in the terminal.

Above the polar bears was a collection of beautiful artwork from the different native peoples of Alaska. I walked around looking at artwork, weaving my way through the large number of bodies cocooned in sleeping bags sprawled on the floor among display cases and on benches. It was odd to see so many people sleeping wherever they could; I have never spent the night in an airport. Seeing as I seemed to have found the sleeping headquarters I decided to conch out here for a few hours, though every half hour the voice of a charming automated woman would wake me with the local time.

When waiting to board my plane to Fairbanks, I caught someone staring at me. It was a familiar face, my friend Alex Terry from Concord, New Hampshire was on the same flight! What are the chances of that?! I also met two other students at UAF who were on my flight as well. One was from Pennsylvania, the other Arizona (boy she must be cold!). She said she had never seen snow until she came to Fairbanks, and she was looking at schools in either Alaska or New Hampshire because of gun laws. The girl, Courtney actually had a seat next to me on the flight so we talked about the school. When we landed, the three of us took a cab to campus. One the way, the cab driver warned me to cover my mouth with a scarf when it gets really cold because you can get frost bite on your lungs! Holy crap! My new friend then helped me to carry my luggage to my dorm, showed me where to get my student ID and some of the more important places on campus. It’s funny, instead of bowls of candy on the desks in administrative offices, there are bowls of free ice scrapers. Haha. My dorm is quite cute, nothing special, just your typical dorm.

            The campus is actually much different than I was expecting. No tunnels connecting the buildings, and unlike my dreams, students do not live in log cabins and ski to their classes, although there is a very large hill which is home to the sport of UAF intoxicated sledding I am told. I don’t think this is an official school sport. The campus buildings and the buildings in downtown Fairbanks are all very industrial. Most of them are just large concrete blocks with windows. The ones that aren’t concrete are made to look like cabins. It is definitely unusual, not what I would expect the last frontier to look like, but no less beautiful than I would have imagined. On some days from the upper end of campus I am sure you can just make out the larger mountains farther south on the horizon, though it may just be me wishing I could. There is a museum on campus which I explored in my wanderings on the first day. It is made to look like an igloo on the outside, at least that is my impression. It is full of native art and stuffed animals and fossils of animals native to Alaska. There is even the skull of a wooly mammoth!

            The amount of sunlight is certainly something to get used to. It most definitely is no longer reliable for telling time. The sun never gets higher than it would at mid-morning back home. I didn’t think it would be that hard to deal with, but motivating myself to get out of my cozy bed and step outside into the freezing dark for an 8am class at the top of the hill will definitely be a challenge.

            I met the other National Student Exchange students here this semester. There are five of us all together though I only met three of them so far. One is from Keene State College, how ironic, a fellow New Hampshirite! Another is from Boston, and the other, Florida. I can’t imagine what she must be going through; she said it was 90 F when she left home! I was also invited to go skiing at Alyeska in Anchorage next weekend with my roommate and her boyfriend. I can’t wait! It looks beautiful, and it will certainly be a test for my first day back on the slopes this season! I must say one of my favorite things about campus so far is that not every single girl is dressed in Ugg boots, yoga pants and North Faces. Such a nice change of pace. I have already met a lot of wonderful people here; everyone has been very friendly and helpful. I can’t wait to meet more!

The Adventure Begins

Current temperature in Fairbanks: 29 F

"Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return, 'cause "the West is the best." And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual pilgrimage. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the Great White North. No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild." ~Alexander Supertramp May, 1992.

Well, I am in the right state now at least! I will be sitting here in the Anchorage airport for the next 7 hours (which is longer than it would take me to drive to my final destination I might add) where already I feel like I am in a completely different world. Almost every city listed on the departures board is a place I have never heard of, and I feel like I would butcher most of the names if I tried to pronounce them. Walking around the terminal there is definitely no shortage of mad bomber hats and camouflage available for purchase, and you can’t go wrong with some 80’s rock, I will certainly be getting plenty of REO Speedwagon and Whitesnake over the next 7 hours no doubt.

The flight into Anchorage was not nearly as turbulent as I was expecting (Mom, I think even you would have been okay, even without being doped up so as to avoid a heart attack and white knuckles on the arm rest). Although I must say, I swear this is the darkest place I have ever seen. Flying in even with a city of lights below, the darkness seemed to swallow up any light emanating from it. There was no light grey from the reflection of lights on the clouds, not even any stars, and I couldn’t have pointed out the horizon to you if you had paid me. I had been telling myself living in the darkness wouldn’t be that bad, but seeing how thick it is here, it is already making me wonder how people don’t go insane. Well, I guess some of them probably do.

I have been eager to reach my destination ever since I have been sitting in Logan airport waiting for my first flight. That already feels like days ago. There was a brief moment of sadness when it really hit me that I will be gone for much longer than I have ever been away from New England. Sitting on the runway, waiting for takeoff I looked out the window at the Boston skyline. There amongst the buildings I saw the prominent structure of the Zakim Bridge heading out of Boston. I don’t know why of all things, this is the thing that did it; maybe it was because it was right before my journey truly began, or maybe because I knew that bridge would have taken me in the direction of home.

I also learned today (yesterday?) that the reason traveling makes you so tired is due to the lower oxygen levels present in the pressurized cabin than we are normally accustomed to breathing. Who knew? This tidbit of information was courtesy of the United Airlines video about the new planes they have added to their fleet. I actually got to fly in one to Anchorage and I must say it was quite the improvement! I think I might have had to punch someone if I had to sit through a third flight in a seat that would have made a closet crammed full of dirty wet mops feel cozy. Well, I think it is about time to eat again, I’m not even sure what meal I should be eating at this point… Only a few more hours to go until I reach my final destination!