Day by Day Drama

It's been suggested that living up here in Alaska is like living in a reality show. It would be pretty entertaining to have a camera crew filming all the crap that goes down here, but since I have no access to that, I will narrate as best I can. I will try to write down all the craziness that goes on here in the isolated town of Skagway in the Discover Alaska Tours company.

To start, Thursday (yesterday) wasn't nearly as bad as some days. I did an Experience the Yukon & Suspension Bridge tour. It's interesting how if I feel my group is low energy I'm low energy. Like Wednesday, my group was awesome! I cracked tons of jokes and they LOVED me. My group this time though was low-key and I was a little out of it for reasons I won't share here, but it turned out to be an ok day. Because I was a little spaced out I didn't give as good of a tour as usual, and thankfully that didn't really affect my tips at all. Drama-wise though...lets see... I had an Austrian lady on board who felt that the whole tour revolved around her and her comfort level. We hadn't even left Skagway yet, when she comes up to me and tells me it's too cold. So I turned the A/C down. Later she kept asking all these stupid questions including the all famous "What's the elevation here?". Then while driving home she comes up and says that the open roof hatch (opened to cool off the bus) is too windy and how would she go about closing it? The only thing that made up for it was that she did tip me (I never expect much from the Europeans because it's not in their culture to tip), so that was nice.

Oh and I almost got in an accident too. We were getting close to Skagway, it had been a beautiful day by Skaggers' standards, but that afternoon the White Pass had become extremely foggy to the point where I could barely see 10 feet in front of me. So I'm going along the road and right where the Canadian-US border is I see some faint tail lights so I slow down but almost not soon enough. This car in front of me slams on their brakes right where it says "Welcome to the US" and I slammed on my brakes! Luckily, I was able to stop but with barely 5 feet between our bumpers!! I was actually shaking afterwards! Not to brag, but my pax are always impressed by my driving skills. That same day I had impressed a few by my being able to make tight U-turns and some of them were even applauding me! I'm not gonna lie, it does feel good.

On a lighter note, we did get to see a bear!! We had just passed the Yukon sign and came around a bend where we saw the bear and then two cubs tumbled out of the brush as well!! Unfortunately I didn't get to photograph them, but it was awesome because it's been forever since I've seen wildlife WITH passengers!! I did almost hit a bear the other day. I was deadheading (means driving with no pax) to Carcross for a Bennett Adventure and we'd already seen one bear. I just passed Lake Tutshi, my friend Bethany was driving in front of me and this black bear decides to cross the highway between us. I saw him come onto the road and I hit the brakes. Fortunately he crossed pretty fast and I was still about 20 feet away when he got to the other side of the road, but it was still scary. Although I have thought that if I ever killed something cool (like a bear, moose, lynx, fox or coyote) I would take it to Caribou Crossing and have them skin it for me so I could have the pelt to use on my tour. Morbid I know.

So that's what went down yesterday. I have the day off today so no drama, but tomorrow's another day.

Still in AK

Yes I'm still up here in the middle of nowhere!! Life is good as far as it all goes. I'm working about 65-70 hours a week, hanging out with friends and getting to know my new camera!! Yes I finally got my DSLR and I couldn't be happier. I loved having just a small point-and-shoot but now that I have the capabilities of a SLR again it's really awesome!! I've only had the thing for about a week and a half and I've already taken about 500 photos!!

Other than that excitement, work is fine too. I'm having a lot of fun still taking people around on tours. I had been doing highway runs, but I decided that I really liked staying in Skaggers on the city tours we do here so now that's what I do. My manager will probably put me back on highway for a couple more runs since there are a lot of drivers leaving for school at the end of August. I figured since I'm not going back to school this semester I would stay the whole season. So I'll be up here until end of September. I'll miss being here in Alaska but I'll admit I'm ready for civilization. I can't imagine actually living here year-round. I don't have cabin fever, but I like being in fast pace society for part of the year. Plus it gets as cold as balls up here in the winter so..... Like I said the job is tiring sometimes with the LONG hours and dealing with stupid people sometimes. I've had passengers swear at me (only once, complaining about something stupid as usual) to people saying they basically love me. And it's interesting to see how when people go on vacation they pretty much lose like 50 I.Q. points. Now, I drive a 40 foot motorcoach and every day people just saunter in front of me on the docks, they'll walk across the street when I'm about 10 feet from them or they just stop in the middle of the street to take some stupid picture. Plus they ask all sorts of stupid questions, for example "How many caves are in Alaska?", "Is the Yukon owned by the US?" and of course the one I get almost every tour "What's the elevation right in this spot?". Like seriously? Who gives a crap about what elevation you're at, right this second? Is that really going to change anything? I usually just make something up on that one.

So yea, life is good and I will miss it, but I still have two whole months until I go home and then it'll probably be major culture shock...like big time.