Flexibility

First, apologies for such a long stretch without any posts.  The last week has been a whirlwind!!

Living in Alaska has and probably always require flexibility, especially when dealing with life in the bush.  I suppose Alaska was afraid we had forgotten that detail and wanted to remind us before we got too comfortable.  We originally planned to barge everything over last Saturday, but got nervous that would leave us no wiggle room for the long drive up so we rescheduled for Monday before we ever left home.  That turned out to be a very wise move.  While we didn’t have any real delays in our trip, we did spend every second of those extra days in Soldotna getting ready and ended up more exhausted at the end of each day than any of our long days driving.

We drove down to Homer on Sunday ready to launch the next morning, or so we thought.  Our first problem ended up being weather.  While it was beautiful outside, the waves in Nanwalek were forecast to be too high to make for a safe boat landing on the beach so we delayed until Tuesday.  Getting a hotel room in Alaska last minute is highly unlikely, but things worked out perfectly and the cabin we were staying in happened to be vacant that night.  (Our neighbors did get a little confused as to which cabin they were staying in that night around 11:30, but the cabin was ours).  I was scheduled to fly over while Mike rode the barge so that I could bring over the more water sensitivite items, so we had even more moving parts to contend with.  Fortunately, the airport was very flexible and rescheduling was no problem.  We then packed up and were ready to go at 5:30 in the morning for the early start our captain wanted to make on Tuesday.  But, when we got to the dock, it was still going to be too rough and, despite the assurances we had there would be plenty of room for all of our stuff, we would have to make two trips whenever the weather did get better.  Grrr!

Despite that frustration, We got to see the helpfulness of others though the process.  The airport was super and kept my flight clear so that we could load as much of our stuff as possible and and even made an extra trip to get more stuff for us.  The maintenance guys in Nanwalek and one of the teachers were also great and helped me get everything in the apartment while Mike was coming over on the barge.  We got the first barge trip unloaded and into the apartment with no difficulty, but the seagulls were very confused.  There were people on the beach carrying totes and no fish scraps were left behind. They are beginning to have some doubts as to the helpfulness of people.  We, however, are most definitely not.  The next morning, the barge brought the rest of our stuff over and made outstanding time.  So much that when we headed down to wait for the boat, it was almost completely unloaded already.  A couple guys from the community had seen the barge and brought their truck down to help out.  So despite the many snags and delays, the process still went very well.  Now, to find a place for everything . . .