Day One

After my acrobatics at the airport, which are common right now because they had a short melt followed by cold again creating a lot of ice (this is the story i'm sticking to), the cabbie whisked me away to my hotel, the Westmark in downtown fairbanks. A nice place. I had a semi suite. I took a hot shower and crawled into bed. I of course woke promptly at 8am South Carolina time, 4am Alaska time. I tried to sleep but it was fitful. I decided to get up at six since trying to get real sleep was proving fruitless. The continental breakfast was great. They had huge sourdough bread that wouldn't fit in the toaster. I had to rotate it to get it toasted up nicely. I made a giant PB and J for breakfast and ate a big fat ripe banana along with a couple hard boiled eggs. Just enough to get me going in the morning. My ride showed about 11, just as the sun was coming up, and we headed out to lunch since the HR office would be closed until 1230 for my in-process. We hit up a sushi joint that had killer spicy chicken teriyaki and pretty decent tamago (sweet omelet sushi).
At high noon the sun was probably twenty feet off the ground or at least it seemed. Daylight for the day never really seemed to get much above twilight down in SC. It definitely had an eerie feeling.
We headed to HR after lunch and I finished up as much paperwork as I could. Afterwards, I made my sponsor go on a bit of a wild goose chase looking for whole earth grocery, which no longer exists. Instead we ended up at Fred Meyer. Fred Meyer in Fairbanks is an interesting hodge podge of stores, clothing, electronics, liquor, food. It's sort of an upscale Super Walmart. It had an organic and natural section of about 10 rows and had most everything I wanted at that moment. Everyone was wearing heavy clothes, butg boots and furry headgear. I grabbed a tube of Toms of Maine Cinnamint toothpaste, some PB and J fixings and salami and cheese and we headed south on the interstate.
The drive to Greely was uneventful. As it was right at sunset at 4ish, the light was fading fast but the snow on the tall pines with the full Alaska range behind made for some nice scenery. There were three accidents, one fatal, the day prior, so we looked for the tire marks. (remember the ice from above!) Where we thought the moose had been hit, we saw a large moose calf milling around. My first moose in Alaska.
For a bathroom break halfway down to Greely we stopped at this small road side store. The first thing I saw when I walked in was Virgils rootbeer in a small drink cooler near the front, and I thought to myself, "This might be pretty darn good." I love Virgils.
Richard, my chaufer for the day, suggested we grab a pizza from Pizza Bella in Delta Junction, the town outside Greely. We called in an order and went and picked up his car and his darling daughter and headed back. He went in to get our half hawaiian half pepperoni and olive. He returned empty handed. He explained that several MWR folks were inside enjoying dinner and we decided to eat there. The Pizza was good. I met several of the ladies and Matt, my lodging contact for Greely.
After dinner, Richard dropped me off at my new digs for the next month or two. Lodging on Greely. My room consists of 2 old dorm style rooms that share a restroom. One has been converted to a living room with flatscreen tv and HBO and wifi. The other was the bedroom. Both have steam radiator, which keeps the rooms a balmy 75. No complaints so far. I showered and called Hollie. I was pretty zapped by 8pm alaskan but fought it off until 9. Not a bad first day, at least I didn't freeze to death.