Life and times in Anchorage
Well, yesterday we pulled into Anchorage – Barley. As it turns out, the van was waiting to give us some surprises on one of the last legs of our journey. Going through the mountains to get to Anchorage, the linkage to the transmission decided it was time to relax and get nice and loose. It is now not possible to manually get into 1st or 2nd gear. Finding N or R is also quite a challenge. Everything feels like mush and there are no distinct gear feel notches when manually changing gears. This makes for a real fun time when one parks, and then has to find R to get out of a parking space.
Now we are in Anchorage and the van decides that the transmission linkage just isn’t enough. So what might it do to keep us awake now? Well, it decides that it should spring a leak and start to overheat. Yea, that’s the ticket it said… So now, here we are in a town that we have no idea about, with a trailer, loose transmission linkage, and now it is overheating. Did I mention that we did not pre-book a hotel?
Oh yes, a hotel in anchorage was not needed because we were not supposed to be in Anchorage. You see, we were going to stay in Denali state park and have a night or two there to relax and take in the scenery. As it turns out, summertime in Denali is like prime time at Walt Disney world. In fact, it actually looks similar to Disney. There are enormous hotels lined up and down the road. Some are perched on the side of mountains so high up it would take a rocket to get to them. The do all have one thing in common though (aside from parting you from your money). They all do not take pets. Yes, and of course we have Nick our lovely Schnauzer. After driving 4 hours and finding that nobody takes pets, we thought about leaving him in the car, but even we couldn’t be that cruel. So we press on to find a hotel that is vacant and that takes pets. Every single hotel within 100 miles did either not take pets, or was totally full. We had to drive another 250 miles to get to Anchorage.
We arrived at 9:00pm. It was still light out, but we had no reservations and I had no idea where to stay, or where to go. As it seems, the hotels in anchorage are much like the ones in Denali. They are either totally full, or do not take pets. So after much screaming, yelling, and many threats (to each other….) we pulled into a super 8 that takes pets, has rooms available, and would take our money. We had a place to stay.
We are now waiting on the van to get repaired. It is currently 3:30pm and they have not looked at it yet. That is ok says the manager – they work till 6!!! Oh boy, I sure hope this little leak is simple to fix, and cheap. I have an appointment scheduled for tomorrow at 8am to have the transmission looked at and hopefully repaired. The young lady that I spoke with said that it did indeed sound like loose linkage and that if that was the case, it would not only be fairly cheap, but very easy to repair. Hopefully she is correct. Luckily the transmission is under warrantee and I will be reimbursed for any charges, but it is still inconvenient to have to deal with.
The other order of the day was finding a furnished apartment. It seems that they are kind of hard to find in the summer time and really not that cheap either. Luckily I did manage to locate one that was not charging an arm and a leg. It also included all utilities, has pots and pans, and comes with all the Rolaids you can handle. I figure we can do a 1-2 month lease, and in that time decided where we want to rent an apartment. That should give us plenty of time to look around and get to know the town. This is a much larger place than Fairbanks, and will take much more time to get familiar with.
Dianne and I are both leaning towards the Mat-Su valley area. It is much less crowded than the city and seems to have all the amenities. Hopefully I will be able to find work there and get a good paying, stable job. Like the guy that drove me home today said, “There are jobs out there, but you have to have skills”. Yea, right….
Now we are in Anchorage and the van decides that the transmission linkage just isn’t enough. So what might it do to keep us awake now? Well, it decides that it should spring a leak and start to overheat. Yea, that’s the ticket it said… So now, here we are in a town that we have no idea about, with a trailer, loose transmission linkage, and now it is overheating. Did I mention that we did not pre-book a hotel?
Oh yes, a hotel in anchorage was not needed because we were not supposed to be in Anchorage. You see, we were going to stay in Denali state park and have a night or two there to relax and take in the scenery. As it turns out, summertime in Denali is like prime time at Walt Disney world. In fact, it actually looks similar to Disney. There are enormous hotels lined up and down the road. Some are perched on the side of mountains so high up it would take a rocket to get to them. The do all have one thing in common though (aside from parting you from your money). They all do not take pets. Yes, and of course we have Nick our lovely Schnauzer. After driving 4 hours and finding that nobody takes pets, we thought about leaving him in the car, but even we couldn’t be that cruel. So we press on to find a hotel that is vacant and that takes pets. Every single hotel within 100 miles did either not take pets, or was totally full. We had to drive another 250 miles to get to Anchorage.
We arrived at 9:00pm. It was still light out, but we had no reservations and I had no idea where to stay, or where to go. As it seems, the hotels in anchorage are much like the ones in Denali. They are either totally full, or do not take pets. So after much screaming, yelling, and many threats (to each other….) we pulled into a super 8 that takes pets, has rooms available, and would take our money. We had a place to stay.
We are now waiting on the van to get repaired. It is currently 3:30pm and they have not looked at it yet. That is ok says the manager – they work till 6!!! Oh boy, I sure hope this little leak is simple to fix, and cheap. I have an appointment scheduled for tomorrow at 8am to have the transmission looked at and hopefully repaired. The young lady that I spoke with said that it did indeed sound like loose linkage and that if that was the case, it would not only be fairly cheap, but very easy to repair. Hopefully she is correct. Luckily the transmission is under warrantee and I will be reimbursed for any charges, but it is still inconvenient to have to deal with.
The other order of the day was finding a furnished apartment. It seems that they are kind of hard to find in the summer time and really not that cheap either. Luckily I did manage to locate one that was not charging an arm and a leg. It also included all utilities, has pots and pans, and comes with all the Rolaids you can handle. I figure we can do a 1-2 month lease, and in that time decided where we want to rent an apartment. That should give us plenty of time to look around and get to know the town. This is a much larger place than Fairbanks, and will take much more time to get familiar with.
Dianne and I are both leaning towards the Mat-Su valley area. It is much less crowded than the city and seems to have all the amenities. Hopefully I will be able to find work there and get a good paying, stable job. Like the guy that drove me home today said, “There are jobs out there, but you have to have skills”. Yea, right….
posted by Glenn & Dianne | 4:33 PM
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