“The people are immensely likable— cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted, and unfailingly obliging. Their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water. They have a society that is prosperous, well ordered, and instinctively egalitarian. The food is excellent. The beer is cold. The sun nearly always shines. There is coffee on every corner. Life doesn’t get much better than this.”― Bill Bryson, from In A Sunburned Country
It was a beautiful, blue, cloudy, winter day. I couldn’t help but stop on my way to the post office and the market at 2:30 and take a few pictures for you. It was so cold we cut the beach walk short. It was the skin of our faces that hurt, even with scarves up to our glasses. The forecast calls for colder. Single digits, clear skies, high winds. Just in time for us to leave for Australia, that wonderful sunburned country.
I have done all I can to insure we make the Saturday morning Alaska Airlines flight in Juneau that will take us to Seattle, connect to LA, and then onto Sydney where we rest up for a day before the cross country flight to Perth and the motorcoach ride to Margaret River.
We will try to fly from Haines Thursday, so we have a day with the kids in Juneau. If the plane can’t fly, there is a ferry Friday that arrives after dinner, not ideal, but it will work. It’s one of the new ones. The Hubbard. (Named after a glacier, all the Alaska ferries are, not Old Mother.) The trouble is, the Hubbard doesn’t sail in rough seas. It’s too small. There is not enough time in my life to explain why recent Republican Alaskan Governors have spent millions on boats that don’t work here. It makes zero sense.
I make lists, because I am a nervous traveler. It helps. Today’s:
Book review (Check!)
Obituary (Check!)
Thank You notes. (Check)
Christmas Decorations (Check)
Pay health insurance premium (Still to do.)
Clean for the housesitter (Still to do.)
Pack (Still to do.)
Presents ( Still to do)
File for Permanent Fund (Still to do.)
Check mail for clothes (Check!)
A pair of shorts, 2 T-shirts, a sleeveless linen dress, white canvas cropped pants and a long sleeve cotton shirt arrived. My Land’s End order won’t be here on time. At the post office, I learned they always use surface mail. “You mean it’s on a truck from Wisconsin to Seattle?”
“Yes, and then they put it on the barge. Surface means it won’t fly.”
Good to know.
I am a local shopper. I rarely order anything. But summer clothes, well, there are not a lot of shorts in Haines this time of year, or ever really, except for playing basketball in. Tomorrow I will pick up local T-shirts for everyone and a couple of pairs of Carhart work pants for my son. (His request. You can’t get them there.)
They all FaceTimed as I was taking the last ornaments off the tree and Chip watched the Huskies play. It is our grandaughter Lila Chip’s birthday there. (It is tomorrow here.) She is four and has red hair and an Australian accent. Christian said she is sounding a lot like her brown-eyed Juneau cousin Emilia (who is almost four ), in tone anyway. They are funny together. They FaceTime often.
A lot of my travel anxiety vanished when I saw Lila, and her brothers, and her new roller skates and the cake Christian baked ( her mom decorated it. Ella said hi, too.)
Well, part of it could have been the wine. It was after six our time and tomorrow morning their time. Don’t ask me what happens to the day I lose getting there or the one I gain on the way home. I can’t explain that, either.
They are off to the beach and a family birthday lunch with Lila’s Aussie grandparents and cousins soon. I will be glad when there is not a screen freezing when we talk. When we are in the actual same room. It’s been a year. Then my son said, “It’s hot, but there’s a breeze. You won’t need much so pack light. A pair of shorts, a couple of T-shirts. Walking shoes and beach shoes. A hat. But you can get one here.”
“I can’t wait to be there,” I said. And meant it.
