Alaska - Week One

Back to Basics

Basically our living conditions are basic. Very basic. We were told from the start that the housing was basic. And basic it is.

After two nights in the (now fondly remembered) Anchorage Westmark, we were tested for covid, waited for a thumbs up and boarded our bus to Copper Center. It was a five hour trip that included a shopping stop at Fred Meyers and a rest stop to view a massive glacier. The landscape and vistas on this bright and sunny day gifted everything that draws us to Alaska’s geography - stunning in every way imaginable. The mountains are completely covered in deep snow. The ones with higher peaks poke sharply into the sky, their edges silvery gray where the ragged inclines are too steep and extreme for snow to take hold. The more gentle mountains are so deeply covered in snow they can be mistaken for clouds. The shallow ones look like puffy pillows spread across the landscape. They are all giants on the horizon and magnificent, even as seen from many miles away

But back to the basics. Our quarters are one of three rooms sectioned off in a modular steel building the size of a mobile home. A second married couple has the other ensuite arrangement and two ladies from central Florida are sharing the end apartment. It also has a private bathroom, but theirs is located between us and the other couple. In order to avail themselves to the facilities, they have to walk outside and past our door to get where they are headed. We’ve termed the arrangement “private butt detached”.

We are a hundred yards or so from another building structured like a dormitory with shared rooms, laundry and a common area room. I’ve been going over there early every morning to catch up on our business and personal matters. There is no internet in our building. We are cautioned over and over again to be aware of our surroundings as the bears outnumber humans in this area by a ratio of 21 to 1. Even though the dumpsters and trash cans are bear proofed, there are plenty of enticing fumes emitting from these containers and the bears are accustomed to people being around. The big ones, if hungry enough, can rip the door off a car to get to leftover food left on a seat. We don’t take any food back to where we are living. Ever.

It’s been nearly thirty years since I have been exposed to working in a corporate environment and it turned out to be a big lesson in patience. I’m aware that while we are here for fun, we are working for people who are building their resumes and careers. The front line supervisors are all rookies, not one with a whit of experience in managing either people or workflow. That’s caused a struggle for me to keep my trap shut. We’ve endured presenters reading PowerPoint slides word for word - including the footnotes, meandering topics from non-existent lesson plans drifting from one unconnected subject to another, and tasks taken almost to completion, then interrupted by another project, the abbreviated session never to be seen again. The breaks have been randomly timed and coming more often than necessary. I eventually figured out the managers were sending us off so they could figure out what to do next. We’ve toured hotel rooms over and over again as if none of us have ever been in one and had out of date brochures read to us. It reminded me of my fourth grade reading class, except only the teacher got to read. I yearned to hear, “Jimmy, please read the next paragraph.”

I’ve only mouthed off a few times. Once calling out, “I can’t think this slowly”. Susan cringed. In a private session, I told a supervisor that if we all continued to learn at the pace of the least competent person on the team, that’s the level of competence we would all achieve. She failed to get the point. The days of job training were executed without a single lesson plan, agenda or schedule. One morning we were sent on a “team building” scavenger hunt. The clues directing us to each bag containing the piece of a puzzle had been placed inside the bag at the location at which the clue directed us. Yes, you are reading that right. It was an easter egg hunt. More than once, I thought the experience in toto might be more than I was willing to take.

In fairness to the operation, the property has been closed since the Fall of 2019, seemingly abandoned by whoever was there when covid came about. None of the upper or middle managers had ever been assigned to this particular hotel before. The result is everything being learned at the same time by nearly every person and the junior supervisors attempting to teach subjects they had only seen themselves a few days in advance of our arrival.

Susan and I took to walking around the parking lot at every break and have been trekking three miles every day down to the main road and back in an effort to unwind and keep fit. It’s an easy downhill stroll to the Richardson Highway and a long and grueling climb back up the hill. We’ve also taken to wearing bear bells, laughing and talking loudly with our little band of walkers as we go merrily along.

We made an all day trip to Valdez on Sunday. The scenery was far beyond incredible as we crossed the high pass between us and the town. We stopped three times for photos and to enjoy the cold, fresh air. It is exhilarating to be here. We ate at the Fat Mermaid and watched some fishermen come in from twelve hours of angling on the ocean. They had a nice haul of halibut. With our training days behind us, we are expecting to be enjoying the fruits of our endeavor very soon. We’ve been briefed on three tours and the operators have welcomed us to come along any time we are off and they have room to take us. The salmon will start running in a few short weeks. We intend to greet them with hooks and nets.

I was impressed and amazed to see the property come together just hours before opening day. I would not have bet a dollar it would be done. I guess it’s another lesson and new appreciation for those in the hotel and hospitality business. They know what they are doing. Every chair and bench was dust free and freshly polished, the slate floor sealed and buffed, the parking lot cleared of snow and debris and the fireplace fueled up and ready to go. The restaurant was in full operation. We had two test dinings and a buffet meal to help the new servers get the hang of their jobs.

Susan and I left Thursday morning for a four hour shuttle ride back to Anchorage to catch our flight to Santa Ana. We missed opening day and the new friendships that have blossomed. It’s a really good group of young, old and in between people. We’ll be back Sunday night.

It was not easy to feel so confined for so long for either of us, so we bought a car on Facebook Marketplace sight unseen while waiting for our flight. We’ve dubbed the car Wanda. She's a beater with a heater - a 99 GMC Jimmy with purportedly 158,000 miles on the clock. The seller is meeting us at the airport when we get back Sunday and we are driving it out to Copper Center. He promised me the brakes work and that it has headlights and blinkers. That might well be our next adventure. I’m sure you’ll hear about it.

Alaska - Week Minus One

Our Hand is Called

A better explanation escapes me. All I can tell you is that on a cold and rainy afternoon in Ponta Delgada early last November, we decided to stay in, started browsing the internet, got distracted by Alaskan National Park photos, remembered past conversations with people we’d met who’d taken summer jobs there - and poof! We found and completed online applications to work at the smallest and most remote wilderness lodge operated by Princess Cruises.

Three weeks later, back home and the fateful afternoon forgotten, I received an email from Princess acknowledging our applications and requesting phone interviews. Our names had been drawn from the hat. Tara, our interviewer (and presumably our boss) went straight to the benefits and conditions of employment. She indicated the housing was “basic” (I’m imagining modular buildings), the meals “good” (I’m thinking school cafeteria) and wifi provided (I’m guessing slow). She cautioned us that not all couples' rooms have attached baths and that getting one would be by luck of the draw. Tara promised that should we complete the entire season, we would be entitled to a complimentary cruise on any Carnival Corporation line. (Susan fantasized about a Seabourn suite. I imagined a Carnival inside cabin below the water line)

The jobs were described as customer service at the hotel’s front desk with the most likely duties sketched out as helping guests select and schedule excursions and activities, pointing guests in the right direction and resolving problems (smiling through complaints). There was a not so subtle hint that we would be called upon to help with other duties, portrayed as “adding interest to the experience”. The term "team player" was bandied about rather loosely. Tara seemed oddly ready to hire us and my hunch was that her pickings must be slim.

On Pearl Harbor Day, we had Zoom interviews with Tara and went over the adventure again. I think she just wanted to see our faces to confirm our mugs were devoid of facial tattoos. We chatted for perhaps a half hour and concluded the call agreeing that we remained all in for the experience. She indicated that her group of recruits would gather at a company hotel in Anchorage on the 8th of May for a four hour bus ride to Copper Center on the 9th. I checked out the hotel and figured it to be a warm up for the basic accommodations we would be facing at the lodge. Yet, we continued. Our hands had been called. I made plane reservations to Anchorage. We were going.

It was March before we confessed to anyone that we’d signed up for this gig, and started with friends in Mazatlán, about as far away from the scene of the crime as we could imagine. It went fairly well. We started telling others one by one. I dropped the news as an aside in a Facebook post. Some jaws dropped, a few eyes rolled, there was plenty of laughing. We saved family for last, knowing there are those among them with the power to have us committed.

There’s a pool forming (in case you want to get in) on just how long we will last. The predictions I’ve heard range from three to seven weeks. On one hand, I know we are always up for nearly any adventure, get high kicks from doing things we’ve never done and we really do like Alaska. On the other hand, our attention spans are short, we’ve never stayed in one place anything near the four months this could last and there’s a high chance Susan might suffer from serious shopping withdrawals. I’ve also reminded myself it’s been nearly 30 years since I’ve seen a W-2, acknowledged supervision from others or been told when and where to be. It’s very likely those instructions will be coming from a person yet unborn when I saw my last pay stub.

Our plane leaves Saturday. We’ll keep you posted.