A Florida Cracker in the Last Frontier

My Friend by Jimi Hendrix  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpI1on_ixvU When I had found a place for my family to live and I started looking for furniture. Lorrie told me that my oldest son James wanted a bunk bed or loft bed. I looked through Craigslist ads and found a beautiful looking loft bed with a chest of drawers. I sent an e-mail I received an immediate reply. I went over and looked at the bed and furniture and met a very very friendly and talkative guy named Tony. I explained that I would need to rent a truck and he said he could help me with his truck. He invited me to come over to a BBQ. After we moved the bed a week or so later I went to one of Tony's infamous BBQs. Tony does all kinds of BBQ meat: tri-tip steak, fish, shrimp, pork, hamburgers, and all kinds of veggies. I stayed in touch with him and went on a hike with him and his family and some other friends to Archangel Falls near Hatcher Pass. Hiking, especially a difficult hike like this was, is a bo...

Money for Nothing - Dire Straits  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAD6Obi7Cag First let me say picking a song for this topic was hard because there are so many good songs about money from "Money, Money, Money" to "Can't Buy Me Love" to "Take the Money and Run". They are all great songs but the music video for "Money for Nothing" is so memorable and a bit crazy plus that guitar riff is amazing, When I first came to Anchorage I bought almost everything at Fred Meyers but then I had an incident (which is a funny story for another time) where I had to buy more jeans ASAP. I was on my way to American Eagle in South Anchorage. When I close to the mall I saw a sign that read, "50% OFF ALL ITEMS TODAY!". One of the places was a Salvation Army Store and the other was Value Village. At Salvation Army I found my before mentioned $100+ Carhartt  coat for $8 and a plaid shirt for $3. Then I went next door to Value Village and found a Nike ...

Lost in the Supermarket - Ben Folds (covering the Clash)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkHU6U_3XWs In Tampa, Florida when it comes to supermarkets, Publix wins hands down. Pretty much everyone goes to Publix to buy their groceries, or to get a really good sandwich. If there is a special deal, it's close by, or you like their fried chicken... there's Winn Dixie. If you are desperate there is WalMart Neighborhood grocery. Trying to make your money stretch, there's Save A Lot and Aldi's. There are also the grocery stores that are nice for specialty stuff but you don't go that often like Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. In Anchorage, Alaska there is Fred Meyers and it's not so much like Publix as it is like Super Target. It has everything from gardening supplies to grapes to guns and things that don't start with the letter 'g'. Each store is massive and I was told that the one in South Anchorage is the largest Fred Meyers anywhere. Fred Me...

Steal My Sunshine - Len https://youtu.be/E1fzJ_AYajA Everyday this time of year the people of Alaska lose five minutes of sunshine. When I arrived in Anchorage in March the days were pretty typical with sunrise around 7pm and sunset around 7pm (this is not exact, just my memory). During the Summer we had some days where it felt like the sun never actually went down. I put up blackout curtains in my bedroom. I put several layers of foil over the window in Gracen's room. In James room he hand sliding glass doors so I bought foam board insulation that has foil on one side and used that. Lorrie did not feel like the curtains were good enough and so she started taping cardboard to the bedroom windows. Look at the right side of the window That has all passed and now the sun comes up at 7:30am and goes down at 8pm but everyday the sunrise is approximately 2.5 minutes later and the sunset 2.5 minutes earlier. The middle of the night used to be not completely dark because of the...

The Adventure Time Theme   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=113yv-Kdy7I Every weekend I try to plan something fun or different for the family to do and try to experience a little of Alaska. This Sunday we planned on going to Whittier, Alaska. When I was loading the car I heard my wife tell the kids, "Come on get dressed! We're going on an adventure!". We drove south on the Seward Highway and turned left at Portage Glacier Road. Then we came to the tunnel If you didn't know Whittier is located on Prince William Sound and there is only way to get there by road. (It is also possible to arrive by seaplane, boat, or train). There is a tunnel that goes through a mountain and the tunnel has a lot of rules This is not an extensive list: drive 25 MPH or slower, keep 100 feet distance between your vehicle and the vehicle in front of you, and if the emergency strobe lights go off you have to leave your car unlocked and evacuate to the closest "safe house" wi...

Snow (Hey Oh) - Red Hot Chili Peppers  https://youtu.be/yuFI5KSPAt4 This bottle of Funky Buddha - Last Snow rode with me in the car all the way from Tampa to Anchorage. I thought about drinking it a few times when I was by myself renting a room with a bunch of other people (March - May), but I decided to save it for when I passed my probation period. I had a probation period of six months during which I was paid one level below my salary and could be let go for most any reasons. This past week I passed that my probation period and was informed not only would I get my raise but I would be reimbursed for my background check and fingerprints (which I had to pay myself). Speaking of snow, my coworker said this past week she traveled one of the high mountain passes and there was "glitter" which I guess is code for light snow. Sure enough when I drove by some of the bigger mountains they had fresh snow at the tops. That brings me to a bet that my wife and I have about t...

Magic Bus by The Who  https://youtu.be/bl9bvuAV-Ao In the book "Into the Wild" Chris McCandless travels to Fairbanks, Alaska, to try to venture out into the wilderness and be alone. If you've never read the book it is an amazing and tragic book. Chris finds an abandoned bus in the bush outside of Denali National Park and he names it "The Magic Bus". [Spoiler Alert] He dies in that bus after he eats some poisonous plants. In Healy, a small town just north of Denali there is the 49th State Brewery and they have a replica of the bus that was used for the movie which was based on the book. I took a bunch of pictures of myself and the kids at the bus, a very tourist thing to do. One of the benefits of my job is that I get to ride the public transit bus for free. In Tampa the bus is called the HART line (for Hillsborough Area Regional Transit) and in Anchorage it is called People Mover. I ride the bus to work because when we moved we sold my wife's miniva...

My Morning Jacket - Phone Went West   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHkfMpOQfBc In Florida I had one jacket (besides dress clothes aka sport coats). The first jacket I can remember ever having was an orange creamsicle Tampa Bay Buccaneers jacket that was lined with this red faux fur. I wore it when I was like 4 years old. The times we wore jackets / sweaters / windbreakers were memorable because they didn't happen often. When I was in high school I got a letter jacket. I was always excited to go "up North" to Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, or Illinois to get to where what little cold weather clothes I had. Now I have a lot of jackets and they seem to have a specific set of conditions that I wear them for: Carhartt Arctic Snorkle Parka (green and pictured at the beginning)  - Snow and below 20 degrees, I've worn it at -40 so it works really well. North Face Jacket (yellow) - rain, wind, hiking or camping, zip-in liner when it is colder than 45 Leat...

Talking Heads " Once In A Lifetime "  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1wg1DNHbNU And you may find yourself  Living in a shotgun shack And you may find yourself  In another part of the world And you may find yourself  Behind the wheel of a large automobile And you may find yourself in a beautiful house With a beautiful wife And you may ask yourself, well...  How did I get here? When I was in 4th grade they took us to Cracker County as a class field trip at the Florida State Fair. It is a permanent fixture at the Florida State Fairgrounds that shows an ideal version of 1880's Florida. They explained to us school children that a native Floridian was called a Cracker because they cracked a whip at the cattle and other livestock that they used. I thought we were crackers because we were tanned brown and a bit salty. I was born and raised in Tampa, Florida. I have no problem with being called a Florida Cracker (yes I have a permanent tan). On t...