Hopefully I'll See Them Again Soon

It's been a while since I've last posted. I've surprisingly been busy with the driving gig. There's been a lot going on lately but it's all good. Talk about being thrown into the thick of things tho. My first trip it snowed like crazy the night before, our first real snow of the winter. The roads were HORRIBLE the morning I left. Talk about stressed!! It took twice the amount of time to get to Nenana then it usually does. Very slow going. I was on bad roads for almost 200 miles then all of a sudden, they cleared up and they were fine the rest of the way to Anchorage. I was stressed that night thinking about the drive back the next day. When we got to the point that I was expecting the roads to get bad, they were much better than I expected. After only 50 miles they roads were perfectly clear and it was smooth sailing coming in. Nice!

My second trip I took a group of kids to Kenia, about 550 miles south of Fairbanks. It snowed a bit the night before we left but nothing like the week before. The roads were good and didn't really slow us down at all. It still took about 11 hrs to go the 550 miles. Luckily we were there two nights so I was able to rest up before heading back. I did get to see a huge grizzly bear and two moose on the way. The bear was awesome, very close to the road. Unfortunately it was in a place where we couldn't stop.

The day before we left Kenai to come back, it snowed all day, abut 4 inches. Then the snow turned to rain and when I woke up the snow was gone but it was raining pretty good. I drove through a pretty bad rain storm, there was a landslide which put a tree in my lane at one point. After the rain I went through a pretty bad snow storm, almost whiteout conditions at one point. That didn't last too long thankfully. By the time I got to Anchorage it was just windy, so windy that they were diverting flights from Anchorage to Fairbanks! Just over 100 miles north of Anchorage it was back into the snow for over 100 miles. It was beautiful falling but wreaked havoc with the roads. They were pretty slick to say the least. After 100 miles they cleared up and we flew the rest of the way to Fairbanks.

My next thing was just a local day here, driving a group around town and then 60 miles out to Chena Hot Springs and back. It had rained the day before so the snow was gone but it cooled off a lot and the roads were solid ice. Fun fun fun!

Welcome to winter driving in Alaska. This is what I signed up for. I do have another trip this week taking a wresting team to Anchorage. I'll be there three nights with some downtime in Anchorage so that won't be too bad. This should be the last trip south. I'm ready for it. I'm ready for a break. I'm ready to be home, in my own bed for a while again. It's all good, just wearing me out a bit.

I've had some very strange feelings driving lately. Being a charter driver, just driving groups from point A to point B is very different from being a tour driver. Being a tour driver, you have more credibility with people. They know you are educated to be talking about the sights, history and such. When you are a charter driver, people look at you differently. It's like they assume that you aren't that educated, that you are doing this because it's all you can do. Maybe I'm just making that all up in my mind but those are the feelings I've been grappling with lately. I feel like I need to give my resume to people so they know I'm not just some yahoo. I've made a point of telling people I have an MBA. I want them to know that I'm choosing to do this instead of having to do this. But why does it even matter? What does it matter what people think of me? I generally don't care what people think of me, how they think of me but for some reason I've been struggling with this. And I don't like this struggle. It doesn't matter. I just need to get more comfortable with that.

Anyway.....ugh, sorry.

I'm loving living at the cabin. The snow we've recently gotten is so beautiful. It is so beautiful at the cabin. Peaceful, tranquil. The pics are of my cabin and the road to the cabin. The snowshoe hare that lives by me has turned almost all while. He's awesome to see. Yesterday I was driving to town to have dinner at a friend's place and I saw two foxes. They were so cool! I love foxes. They are cool creatures to watch. They are so graceful looking, humble. I'm bummed because I didn't have my camera withe me. I turned around and went home and got it but by the time I got back to where I had seen them they were gone. Hopefully I'll see them again.

I suppose that's it for today. Nothing much else to tell.