Life on the Road

Sorry to have gone missing. This season has proven wonderfully busy and full of new adventures. However, that has limited not only my time but access to the internet. As an example, I am currently in Dawson City, at the end of a 70 hour week watching it rain from my room that does not have internet access. To use the internet I have to go to the lobby of the hotel, far too accessible to my guests. I am on my fifth tour of the season with a total of 7 days off so far and following this tour I will pick up my next one before I even deliver my current tour members to the cruise ship

While this tour is wonderful, my last one was definitely a challenge. I picked the tour up at the ship in Skagway and in 7 days we traveled all the way to Anchorage. The group was all Taiwanese, most didn’t speak English so they had their own interpreter/tour guide. In theory this should have been very easy for me, I didn’t have to talk much, just convey the logistical information to the interpreter. The big challenge came when, as a group, they flew to Barrow on the Arctic Ocean for the day. Their flight hoe was canceled and at first there weren’t any rooms for the group for the night. With rooms worked out eventually, we found out that they wouldn’t be flying out until 5pm, arriving back in Fairbanks at about 8:30. The plan was then to ride on a coach down to Denali to spend the night and then take the train onto Anchorage then next day. Well that flight out of Barrow was delayed, so they missed the connection back to Fairbanks and didn’t arrive until 1 am. Yes, we still took the coach down to Denali, arriving at 3:45 am. The stress on the interpreter was huge and unfortunately she took it out on me. However, by the end, she apologized and we fondly said good bye to each other. Quite the adventure.

Things are moving fast. As usual my non work thoughts are focused on my winter vacation plans. I will be off to Zurich to visit the W’s for a month or so. While there the plan is to visit various other spots, the first draft list has Paris, Strasbourg, Mallorca and Prague on it. Stay tuned for more details.

Thanks for reading.