Observation No. 18: It's raining in Anchorage

The New Girl must keep the posts short this week as she battles the lions of work and a Graduate School Final Paper (threatening music, play here.) Why do professors (oh, Jeremy, are you reading this?) always weight the final papers so heavily? What happened between, say kindergarten, and now that things have changed? Anyways.

It's raining in Anchorage.

I'm okay with rain--but this has been a lot. Not a lot by Anchorage standards. But a lot for a former Colorado resident. I was warned that no one should leave Alaska in the summer because you run the real risk that you'll miss the really, really nice weather for the whole year. I didn't believe it because it's been a great spring and early summer in Anchorage with temperatures hovering in the low to mid 70s and sunny skies abounding.

I had heard some bad talk, though, about last year's dreadful summer... Last summer, apparently, was the stuff of legend in Alaska--something that you'd tell your grand kids when they complain that they have to take the garbage out. You'd tell them all about the summer in Alaska when it rained every single day, a summer without flip flops, without tank tops, without cool beers on the outside deck. Here's an ADN story. It follows the writers adventure on a soggy rafting trip.

We heard about it all winter as people hoped, tentatively, that this summer would be better. And this May, their hopes came to fruition. The sun fell brightly on our shoulders--it was beautiful!

That is, until we broke the sacred rule of "Thou Shalt Not Vacation Outside Alaska During the Summer." It's rained every day since we've been back and the temperature has not even flirted with 70 degrees.

The New Girl in AK has learned her lesson--but she still may be tempted...

Observation No. 17: Artificial Sun

Since moving up from the Lower 48, the New Girl in Alaska has discovered a true joy that she never knew before—that is, the joy of the tanning salon.

I know this is ridiculous. But the power of the sun, or anything that resembles the sun, beating down on you when there’s about 5 hours of light outside in January cannot be understated. There’s plenty of reasons to tan, right? It helped me get through my first winter in this crazy climate. Vitamin D is totally necessary. A little color prevents a bad sunburn. Even Sarah Palin has a tanning bed in her house, for goodness sakes.

But you can get addicted—I knew this was happening to me when the teenage girls working at the salon started complimenting me on how brown as was getting. These girls are typically the color of toasted nuts, the color you have when you return from an 8-week jaunt in the Caribbean. Not the color of a long winter in Alaska.

So I gave up the salon for a few months and returned to my normal milk-colored self—or as a reporter I know once described her untouched skin—the color of uncooked halibut. I’ve remained that way for much of the spring and early summer.

But I wanted to get a good base tan going before vacation so I hit the tanning booth again for the last several weeks. To brown up again. Like any addict, I just can’t go once. Vacation has come and gone now but I’m still tempted to return to the tanning salon—I keep thinking that I could get a little browner. Vitamin D is good for me right?

More on bears...

Okay, I know I'm getting a little bear obsessed. This from someone who's only seen a couple animals since arriving in the state nine months ago. But I found this interesting safety video from Glacier National Park about hiking in bear country. It's good for us novices. Check it out.



By the way, the ranger in this video was not the one that rousted us from our tents at 7 a.m.! But the video did give me more guilt pangs for endangering bears who they've managed to insulate from human behavior for this long.

Observation No. 16: The Problem with Bears

The sound of the park ranger’s irate voice rang out in early morning, last week in the Glacier National Park. From inside our tent, which was soaked by the previous evening’s heavy rainstorm, we could hear the women walking through the camp that we’d hastily abandoned when the drops began to fall the night before. With the storm coming down, we’d quickly tossed everything into our truck in an attempt to honor the campground’s strict rules dedicated to reducing bear-human interactions and protecting the park’s bears.

Evidently in our haste, we’d missed a few things. “What’s this red cooler?” she asked, finding the cooler with a couple of floating bottles of soda, beer and water we’d forgotten. “Bears can get in here and eat the glass —you’ll be fine but it will kill a bear.” My husband called out from the tent that we must have missed the cooler as he wiggled out of his sleeping bag and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “You missed a RED cooler!” the ranger admonished, scathingly. “And what about this bottle of sodapop in the back of the pick-up?” Duly chastened, we set about cleaning up camp—and were thankful we didn’t get the $50 ticket the ranger had waiting.

Bears in Glacier National Park are serious business and the officials are diligent in protecting the bears that inhabit the 1.4 million acre park. A federal study found in 2008 that endangered grizzly populations have rebounded slightly in recent years, with an estimated 765 grizzly bears living in northwest Montana, in places like Glacier National Park. To protect this endangered population, the park rangers have the power to hand out a hefty $50 fine for doing things like leaving out grills and coolers, keeping toothpaste in your tent, burning trash or food waste and other bear-attracting activities. The park website talks extensively about how to be prepared for recreating in bear country without endangering the bruin inhabitants. The method has worked—since 1995, there has been only one human-caused grizzly mortality in Glacier National Park, which hosts 1.7 to 1.9 million visitors every year.

All this came to mind as I read this morning’s ADN story about a man who shot four bears in his front yard (three cubs and a sow) on July 6 and then denounced the misdemeanor charges brought up against him by Alaska Division of Wildlife as “frivolous.” He shot the sow through window, then two cubs as they attempted to enter his cabin. The fourth cub was shot as it stood over the sow. The man said he felt in danger for his life.

I obviously don’t know the circumstances of this incident. It could be that he left out a cooler accidentally like we did and paid the price of four bears attempting to break into his home—a truly frightening experience.

But it also leads me to something about Alaska that I truly don’t get—on one hand, we venerate these animals. You’d be hard-pressed to find an example of Alaskana without the grizzly bear featured prominently on it. These animals are the symbol of the state where untamed wilderness is what appeals to so many of its residents. On the other hand, many Alaskans treat animals like bears as disposable if they’re inconvenienced—like getting rid of trash that would attract a bear or putting away the cooler. There’s a weird refusal by residents to recognize the lessons learned everywhere else in the world—that animal populations can be made extinct by the actions of hum an beings.

The lesson wasn’t learned in Montana and now there is careful stewardship to maintain their bear populations in places Glacier National Park. Will Alaska bring its own bear population to the brink of extinction before federal officials mandate that we pay attention?

I hope we’re smarter than that.

Gone Fishing: Part 3

We found warm (100 plus degree!) weather in Eastern Washington and have the burnt noses to prove it. Back in Alaska on Sunday and we can't believe how quick the week has gone by.

Here are some more "postcards" from our travels.

Wish you were here!

The New Girl

Gone Fishing: Part 2

We're in Beautiful Montana today where 60 degree and rainy weather has shocked everyone. I could have gone to Sitka for this! But we're having a good time with friends who we haven't seen since we moved from Colorado.

Yesterday, we've visited Whitefish, which I've heard is the new Crested Butte, Colorado--the New Girl's most recent hometown. To me, it seems more like Telluride or Aspen-lots of condos, high end retail and happy real estate agents (or they have been happy up until recently.)

Today, we've found a nice cabin to dry our stuff out and we'll take a hike this afternoon. Thanks for your patience and we'll be back to our regular programming next week.

Observation No. 15: Gone Fishing

The New Girl in Alaska is...not in Alaska this week!

We've made the sojourn south for a week of relaxing in Washington and Montana with friends and family.

Of course, visiting another wild and wacky places is the perfect way to understand the wild and wacky place that you currently call home. Since arriving, we've had dozens of conversations about Sarah Palin, land development, permafrost, global warming, guns, fishing and village life. I'll fill my dear readers in later this week.

Observation No. 14: The Birthright

I’ve had more conversations about fishing than I can count on two hands in the few weeks. I am not a fisherperson. I have never caught a fish although I do have a vague memory of going to a fish farm when I was about five and catching something but I could have made that up.

Fishing season in Alaska is like the Super Bowl in the rest of the world. It’s something that everyone does, everyone talks about and everyone has opinions on. There’s different types of fishing here that aren’t allowed anywhere else in the country and have totally peculiar names like snagging and fish wheels. You can set net, dip net or purse and beach seine or… I don’t know what else. It’s a lot. Most people fish for halibut and salmon, although it seems you can get herring, pollock, cod, crab and clams too.

Then there’s the terrifying possibility of “combat” fishing, where fishermen and women stand shoulder to shoulder on popular rivers at certain times of June, casting their rods and hoping for a catch. Now, from what I hear this is a bit of a trick because salmon heading upstream to spawn and die aren’t necessarily very hungry. You literally have to bonk them on their nose with the bait to get them to bite—or so someone told me at a party the other night. My cousin’s wife is a life-time lesson and a bit of an expert. She recently challenged my uncle and cousin as to whether they were going to stay at the preschool or get in with the “big boys” while fishing on the Russian last week. She caught the fish that we ate for dinner (my cousin notes that he cleaned it). Her secret to success? Eye protection and lots of rubber.

In Alaska, fishing is big business and a building block for the state’s economy. So far this season, the state’s fishermen have caught 30,379,000 salmon. On average, the value of Alaskan seafood sold at first wholesale easily tops $2 billion, according to the State Division of Commercial Fisheries. The division reports that the economic impact of the seafood industry is estimated at $4.6 billion five years ago—not counting personal and subsistence fishing.

But fishing in Alaska isn’t just about business—it almost seems to be a birthright. Indeed, the New Girl has pictures of her own parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles in Bristol Bay grinning in front of skiffs full of fish.

I don’t have a fishing license so I’m relegated to sitting on the sidelines for this summer. But a friend did let me practice casting his reel on a blank stretch of river, and I easily cast it out. I’ll be ready to claim my portion of Alaska’s catch next year.

Observation No 13: The country's favorite governor

It is intriguing how the actions of one state’s governor can totally captivate the attention of the American public, and even the world. One week, there’s South Carolina governor Mark Sanford jetting off to Argentina to hook up with a lover http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE56652M20090707.
The next week, my own governor up and quits.

She back to running this state this week, albeit from a variety of locations around the state. Like the ADN and , I follow Governor Palin on Twitter.

Here are a few of the Tweets from the last day or so:
AKGovSarahPalin: The 9th Circuit had to dissolve injunction; barrier to Kensington Mine project is gone- good jobs on the way; stand by 4 press announcement

AKGovSarahPalin: Today,try this: "Act in accordance to your conscience -risk- by pursuing larger vision in opposition to popular, powerful pressure"-unknown (about 14 hours ago from TwitterBerry)

AKGovSarahPalin: Grateful Todd left fishing grnds to join me this wkend; but now he's back slaying salmon & working the kids @ the site; anxious to join 'em! (07/05/2009 3:01:53 PM from TwitterBerry)

AKGovSarahPalin: Refreshing to be in Kotzebue to honor VPSOs; Native dancers, whaling captains, lots of beautiful kids loving the annual Trade Fair- perfect! (07/07/2009 5:01:28 PM from TwitterBerry)

Sigh.

Now, I’d like to tell you that Alaska is not as transfixed as the rest of the country when it comes to our governor. But that would be a lie. By strange coincidence, I pulled into Wasilla during the governor’s press conference on Friday, as she was delivering her “I’m quitting but not quitting speech.” It was immediately the talk of the town, with the grocery store clerks swapping the latest with people as they stocked up on hotdogs and chips for the holiday weekend. Another friend who was on a remote island for the holiday weekend reported seeing herds of people flocking to the island’s tip—the only place where cell phones get coverage—to get the latest news.

I think the state is just as flummoxed as to why she’s quitting as the rest of the country. The best analysis I read of this was a story from Time magazine that suggests reasons why she might have quit. The story features quotes from policy expert and former journalist Larry Persily, who I sat in on a meeting with a couple weeks ago. Persily is smart with the dry sense of humor only developed in a newsroom.

This Time article also discusses what made Palin appealing to so many when they elected her in 2006. Here’s a shock—it wasn’t because she was a gun-toting, hardline conservative. Contrary to popular belief (and the New Girl’s own expectations), Alaska has some blue voters, including in Anchorage, where Senator Mark Begich served as mayor before his successful bid against Sen. Ted Stevens. Many of the rural communities continue to elect Democrats to office.

An source close to Palin suggested to the Wall Street Journal that the mainstream media, including MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow (Here’s the story picked up by the Alaska Standard) has missed the point and Governor Palin was paralyzed by a barrage of Freedom of Information Act requests that prohibited her from governing effectively.

From the New Girl's perch, Alaska will benefit from seating a governor ready and able to work on state issues. We need more cooperation and bi-partisanship and not less. Whatever Governor Palin's story is, Alaska will no doubt wait with baited breath to see what happens next.

Observation 12: Fourth of July, AK style

It was Fourth of July Alaskan style for the New Girl in AK this weekend. I drove up to Petersville area to join my husband at a remote cabin where he’s been working for the last 10 days.

I’ll be honest. Up to now, I didn’t get what the big attraction was to the cabin lifestyle that is a matter of pride for so many Alaskans. This winter, people would earnestly describe the 11 years they spent living in a 10-by-20 foot cabin out of Fairbanks with no inside plumbing and sporadic electricity and all I could think was “Why?” What’s more the accoutrement of this lifestyle didn’t seem appealing either—namely ATVS, diesel, and guns.

Here’s the lesson learned kids—don’t knock it until you try it.

Our hosts, a life-time Alaskan and her husband, were expert guides on a backcountry Alaskan weekend, immediately setting me up with my own pair of the omnipresent rubber boots that every Alaskan woman needs to navigate the marshy tundra.

Everyone agrees they are remarkably dry this year. In Alaska, remarkably dry means you don’t need full waders—just boots will do.

It took a couple of hours in a convoy of ATVs to shuttle me and some construction materials into the cabin after one of the ATVs pulling a trailer was bogged in deep hole that was hidden by grass. After a good deal of conversation, a stop at a neighbor's, one beer for me and some mechanical intervention, the trailer was freed and we were on our way.

The “cabin” turned out to be several times larger than my Anchorage home and was once run as a bed and breakfast before our friends purchased it for private use. There were two smaller cabins on site, one of which was home for me, my husband, and roughly two dozen mosquitoes at any given moment. It looked out on a gigantic meadow that was filled with alders and wild cotton.

After we settled in, we spent a large part of the weekend “visiting” with nearby residents—just stopping other cabins by for a few minutes to share some gossip on the latest with Sarah Palin, borrow coolant for the four-wheeler and check out the newest touches that someone has put on their abode. [Alaska writer Nick Jans had a fun article about his own experiences ‘visiting’ in the Alaska Magazine’s May edition.] While out and about, one neighbor let me drive his ATV, while another stopped to point out the footprint of what he guessed was a 7-foot-tall bear. We didn’t see the bear but I was given a lesson on where the guns were kept in case we did. (See my previous post about guns versus bear spray—our hosts had both on hand.)

When we weren’t visiting other folks, we had our own company that we attempted to ply with all the food we’d hauled in—but of course, they wanted us to come back to their cabin to eat their supplies.

On day two, I shot a rifle for the first time in my life and hit the target on my sixth bullet—I didn’t have to reload! We celebrated the Fourth of July with plenty of food and neighbors but no fireworks. The sun isn’t setting until close to midnight and full darkness doesn’t come for hours after that. We agreed to save the fireworks for New Year’s when night comes early and it only takes a few minutes to reach the cabin on a fast snow machine.

Of course, as I was standing in my rubber boots, with a rifle in hand and an ATV standing by, I thought of Sarah Palin, our soon-to-be former governor. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen photos of Sarah with a similar look. What can I say? She might not know politics, but she definitely knows how to have fun AK-style.

Will I head back to Petersville area this winter if I get the chance? You betcha.

Observation 11: The Bucket List

A friend my husband and I have made since arriving in Alaska announced this recently that he and his wife are moving down south to Ohio after many years here.

I talked to him on the phone this week and he sounded a little wistful, with just a few days in town left. “There are so many things we haven’t done yet,” he said, adding that he’s coming back in August to get their home ready for sale and hopes he can eek out a few more Alaskana experiences before leaving the state for good.

I felt just this way when we were leaving Colorado. There were places that we just didn’t get to during our 10 years there, experiences that we didn’t have that are now much more difficult to achieve then a simple weekend trip. Floating the Yampa River comes to mind, rock climbing at the Colorado Monument, hiking more of the Colorado Trail, seeing more blues shows in Telluride.

This came into further focus tonight with the arrival of my aunt and uncle from the Seattle area. They’ve spent the last week in Alaska, cruising, fishing, rafting and staying in a big cabin in Cooper’s Landing. They were bursting with news and we ate their fresh red salmon for dinner.
Why is it that people come thousands of miles to experience what’s in your backyard but it seems impossible to get a couple days off to see the same when you actually live there? And if we do get those days, we’re more likely to fly off to someone else’s backyard and experience it. It’s one of those real-life mysteries like what’s in Spam.

Anyways, I’m starting to cook up my Alaskan bucket list so if and when I leave Alaska, I’ll have ticked off some of those things. Here comes the brave part: I’m putting it out there for all you readers to appreciate and hold me accountable. And I’m willing to hear some ideas too.

Here's the start of my list:
-Walk on the beach in Pilot Point, Alaska. This is the village where my mom was born.
-Earn my turns at Hatcher Pass.

-Take a flying lesson.
-Splash around in an ocean kayak at Kayakers Cove.
-Catch a King Salmon. Learn how to smoke fish.
-Hike out to Lowell Point near Seward.
-Climb a peak in the Chugach Mountains.
-Do a big river trip, anywhere.
-See the Porcupine Caribou Herd.

I'm anxious to hear what's on other people's lists. Post them here or Tweet me.

Observation No. 10: Town Square

If you want to find Anchorage of a Tuesday afternoon, look no further than the mid-town Wal-Mart. I read an interview with Billie Letts who wrote the book Where the Heart Is (which later became the movie) and she said that she chose Wal-Mart as the setting because she was looking for the modern day of equivalent of a town square in United States. In the book, the main character finds herself homeless and living at Wal-Mart until the birth of her daughter. Letts was looking for a place in America where people still meet and mingle and live their lives.

I remembered this today as I stopped by Wal-Mart after work to pick up face soap and grass fertilizer. The place was packed with tiny vignettes of color.

There were the three girls in the clothing department exclaiming over the cuteness of impossibly tiny, shorts the color of candy that were labeled $4.99. In the face cream aisle, a twenty-something women complained to her mother about her blackheads as her the older woman advised her to see a dermatologist. There was the boy who was working in the garden department who was surprised when I held the door open so he could angle a heavy cart through. There was the patience as 20 people waited for three tellers to slowly check us out, edging forward under the florescent lights. The man in front of me offered to let me move in front of him in soft, hesitant English. I told him to go ahead but he stepped beyond me anyways.

We all watched as a little girl with curly hair, wearing white leather sandals a size too small, begged her older brother for a sucker from a Ziploc bag that he carried and her teenaged siblings urged her to be quiet. We waited as an older couplecarefully counted out exact change for their purchases. We watched as a teller frantically tried to fix his register and then flicked his sign to flashing, alerting the manager.

Letts might have seen aspects of town square at Wal-Mart and I see some of that. But I also see the bus station--dreary, dodgy with some long lines. It’s a place where you come because you need to be there—a place with thousands of lives rushing through, on their way to somewhere else.

Observation 9: Coffee shop jungle

Is it just me, or as we get older do we become less self aware? For me, this has led to two tragic developments—I’m becoming a worse driver and an illogical dresser. Case in point, my ability to walk into the coffee shop where I’m sitting at this moment with the tags from my new jeans still blatantly attached, similar to the way boys wore tags on their hats when I was in high school. But I think they did that on purpose.

I’d like to tell you that this is the only time it’s happened. In fact, I’m constantly turning up places with hems unraveling, sweaters inside out, the stitching that you’re supposed to take out of skirt slits still in place. And I think, "It wasn’t always this way. I think I used to show up places looking relatively polished. I would lay outfits out; I would iron."

Here’s an even more disturbing trend—I can’t figure out if things match anymore. This is girldom at its most basic, something you learn along with tying your shoes—what colors, textures, styles, and shoes go with what. Some mornings I’m dashing through the kitchen to grab coffee when my husband gives me a funny look that says, “ummm, there’s something wrong there.”

Up until now, I’ve been one to ungenerously look at an older woman in line at the grocery store or at a town meeting, and wonder what she could have been thinking when she pulled on fuchsia stirrup pants and a disheveled polka dot sweater. Now, I realize that there was no thought process at all. All she was thinking was that the internet is down, she’s supposed to have weeded the front garden today, there’s nothing for dinner and she’ll just pop out for 20 minutes to post something to the web before she zips home. She arrives at her internet cafe and a nice guy with several studs in his face whispers out the side of his mouth rather purposefully, “Look at your left leg. The tag, the tag!”

It's not so much that I'm a fashion victim, rather the New Girl can see fashion leaving her behind, like a bus slowly pulling away from the stop. Really, people should just be thankful that we show up with clothes on and with four wheels on the ground. What more do they want?

New Girl Observation No. 8: Lions, Tigers and Bears?

Around noon today, my husband stood in the middle of our living room with the slightly doomed look he gets when he has to pack. Around him were scattered items a person needs for a week in the Alaskan wilderness—or what we think he needs because we don’t actually know anything about it. We both have this vague picture of a lot of marshland, populated by moose, the occasional grizzly and a lot of mosquitoes.

Rubber boots? Check.
Bug spray? Check.
Bear spray? Got it.

Before I moved to Alaska, I contacted a Facebook friend of a friend who is living here in Anchorage. Judging from his photos, he was a hiker so I shot him a quick email for some summer hiking ideas. He replied with a few suggestions on Alaskan hiking safety—chief amongst them a hand-gun to purchase for backcountry protection.

Now let me just say that I’m not totally against guns, if it’s truly a matter of personal protection. I don’t want to get my head torn off by a raging animal the size of a Volkswagen. And I’d really prefer it if my golden retriever doesn’t get eaten either.

So we consulted with a few friends here in Anchorage about bear safety—principally another Colorado couple that moved a few years ago and have now settled into Alaskan life. I judge this solely by the fact that they have a great house within walking distance to downtown bars and they know how to go clamming (dig fast, they really move!) Anyways, these friends said we could get by with the bear spray for now and we’d inevitably get the gun later.

So Cam and I tromped down to the Sportsmen’s Warehouse a couple weeks ago. There we are amidst fly-rods, riles, ammunition and giant coolers and we sheepishly ask a guy to lead us to the bear spray. The salesman looks at us like we have two heads-they don’t have any bear spray. He suggests we try Wal-mart. So we drive over and another man behind a counter sells us what turns out to be an industrial sized can of what you would spray at a mugger if you could get it out of your purse in time. Apparently, hikers run into this same situation in the woods because you can buy a separate holster for quick access, like some people tragically wear cell phones. You can also write into the company (which is in Anchorage) and they’ll send you an empty can to practice with before you're staring into the face of a charging sow. I’m trying to imagine your thought process as you unleash a giant can of pepper-spray and hope for the best. I need that practice can.

I’m also trying to imagine a circumstance where a bear might get really angry. I saw three grizzlies last week in Talkeetna, lolling on the train tracks and soaking up afternoon rays. They didn't seem interested in the 50 tourists spilling out of busses and vans to photograph them.

Maybe it’s just hunger pangs that get them going—I talked to a state wildlife manager last week that told me about a demonstration at bear sanctuary in Sitka where two rescued bear cubs tore into a tent to find a hidden hot dog in about a minute flat. I’ve been warned.

As an aside, it appears that science is on my husband's side. Here's an article that shows that bear spray is more effective as a deterrent than a firearm in almost all cases.

New Girl Observation No. 7: What earthquake?

I’ll tell you this much—life does not stop in Anchorage for a mere 5.4 earthquake , as was felt this morning at 11:30 a.m.

In fact, it barely ranks top-of-the-fold news on the front of the Anchorage Daily News, as evidenced by its placement under three stories describing a dad’s ordeal adrift in the Pacific Ocean for 52 hours, swine flu in Alaska and the closure of a popular creek to protect a King salmon run.

The New Girl was at a staff meeting at work where discussions continued while the building swayed gently and the ground rumbled like a freight train was rolling by. “This building is on rollers,” a work friend whispered, as the gyrations continued and someone else commented that they felt a bit seasick. The quaking kept going for few minutes and was quickly forgotten as we got back into our talks. By the time my mom left a message on my voicemail a couple hours later, I had already forgotten about the earthquake.

This casual attitude about the earth shifting beneath our feet isn’t surprising in Alaska, which experienced one of the largest earthquakes in modern times on March 27, 1964. Here’s a quick video about the 110 died in the tsunamis—the largest of which was recorded in Valdez Inlet with a height of 67 meters. Many Alaskan coastal communities like Seward and Valdez were devastated by the tsunamis and have not forgotten it. I recently visited the Seward Library, which just secured grant funding to produce an updated movie about the impact of big earthquake on that seaside town.

Since coming to Alaska, I’ve meet many people who remember March 27, 1964 in great detail, just as they remember the day President Kennedy was killed and where they were on September 11. In Alaska, the earthquake left its mark on a generation and they vividly tell stories of cleaning up debris and rebuilding entire communities for months and years afterward.

Thankfully, there is no debris to clean up today in Anchorage. At the New Girl’s house, not a single vase was knocked over. But it’s a healthy reminder of what’s happened before and what can happen again in my new hometown.

New Girl Observation No. 6: The new 'hood

Riding a townie makes me feel like I live somewhere. That’s what I decided today as I biked around my new neighborhood in central Anchorage. Just south of downtown, Spenard appears at first to be collection of low-rent and middle income homes and busy four lane streets lined with omni-present strip malls.

Spenard got its slightly seedy start early in life. In the early 1900s, Spenard was a lumber camp outside Anchorage that eventually became a destination for rail workers hoping for a good evening on the town. The workers would follow a 3-mile wagon road out of town (now Spenard Road) and end up at Joe Spenard’s night club on the shores of Lake Spenard. Pretty soon, Spenard got the reputation that lingers today. It officially became part of Anchorage in 1975 during oil boom days when its proximity to the Anchorage International Airport and a clean-up effort downtown caused a proliferation of bars and brothels to sprout up. Ever since, Anchorage has been trying to “clean up” Spenard . (Here’s a column by Julia O’Malley about the latest attempts to fix Spenard Road.)

I haven’t lived here long enough to figure out if Spenard deserves it’s reputation. I met a nice cop the other day who sucked air through his teeth when I told him where I was living. “Yeah, we get a fair number of calls in there,” he said. “But mostly just petty stuff.” He was pretty delighted when I said Cam and I had used the Anchorage crime map before deciding we were willing to move on in. The map confirmed what he said--lots of thefts and vehicle break-ins but no violent crime. Now that I'm hardened against purse thefts, I've got tons of confidence. Another friend advised that we keep the house locked but said we'd be okay. My neighbor across the street has an American flag waving in front of his picket fence and flower baskets rotating in the breeze by the front door. It doesn’t feel too sleazy in Spenard today.

I did a big cruise around the neighborhood on my bike today and found much of the same. A big group of teens liked my bike and said so as I passed. I thought about telling the youngest one that he shouldn’t smoke cigarettes but let it go. A couple of guys outside the pull-tab joint and mini-mart liked my bike too and an older guy helped me get the chain guard rearranged when it started making a racket.

I biked over to a work friend’s house and we’re all excited for the Indian food restaurant to open two blocks from my house. They’re going to come over and we’ll push the baby stroller down to enjoy a curry when they open up.

From my seat, Spenard today is sprinkled with the old and new—yoga studios and cigarette stores and they seem to happily co-exist in a way that I haven't seen in other towns. There’s new restaurants and ancient bars, bike stores and motels. I think there’s a music festival in Spenard today that we might go check out. I’ll let you know how it goes.

New Girl Observation No. 5: In Talkeetna

I'd heard it before but I didn't get a true feel for it until I sat for an hour today at the Mile High Pizza Pie restaurant for about an hour.

It's true; Talkeenta, Alaska and Crested Butte, Colorado--the new girl's most recent hometown--have much in common.

The pizza place bore a strange resemblence to the Brick Oven in Crested Butte--a great outdoor deck, local patrons flitting in and out and bemoaning the traffic on main street because of all the tourists. There was the mandatory group of pretty, twenty-something waitresses delivering slow but well-meaning service. A group of bearded twenty-something men in the kitchen, slinging out pie and yelling for waitresses to do the pick up.

It, of course, brought to mind my own waitressing days at the Brick when a slow summer afternoon would make you slow your steps and pretty soon you were chatting with the cooks about the weather. And that was okay.

Talkeetna and Crested Butte also share a tourism-based economy and, according to word from the pizza place, tourism is down a bit this year, perhaps 10 to 15 percent. Despite the traffic on main street, there are fewer foreign visitors, particularly from Japan, according to one local pizza eater.

One RV Park owner near Talkeenta reported to the AK Journal of Commerce that his pre-bookings were down 75 percent in the first three months of 2009, compared with the previous year. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that tourism companies in Alaska where battling a 30 percent drop in reservations with steep discounts.

Just like Crested Butte, this local said it didn't matter too much that bookings were slightly down. He liked a little bit of a slower pace.

New Girl Observation No. 4: How far apart can we be?

The traffic was slow and got slower yesterday afternoon as I approached the Loussac Library on 36th Street in Anchorage. Cars were diving out of the parking lot, which serves the city’s main library and largest post office, and onto the busy street.

Just as I was wondering if it was always this busy on a Tuesday , the protestors came into view. Close to the street, dozens of people stood by as the traffic marched past, waving signs in support of gay and lesbian rights. Further down, teens in red t-shirts from the large Baptist Temple waved yet more signs, these ones quoting bible verses and Christian beliefs.

As someone said to me today, Alaska is ten years behind when it comes to social issues. On a day when President Obama decided to offer some benefits to same sex partners, Anchorage is in the midst of a battle over basic protections for gay and lesbians. (Battle Lines Drawn was the large font headline on the front page of the Anchorage Daily News today.)

The battle that’s currently waging is an equal rights measure before the Anchorage City Council. Acting Mayor Matt Claman is sponsoring a measure on behalf of an equal rights group that would add sexual orientation to the list of characteristics including race and religion for protection from discrimination for public activities—buying and selling property, getting a hotel room, going to college, applying for a city job.

This feels pretty ordinary for most American cities. We're not talking major reforms--we're talking about not being able to be turned down for an apartment because you're gay.

However, the debate has stirred an uproar in Anchorage with hundreds of people providing public comment on the issue.

The television advertisements and information that is simply not true, according to the city’s attorney. There have been claims that the equal rights amendment would allow men to access women's restrooms and male teachers to come to school dressed as women.

Of course, I think the news coverage makes the issue seem more stringent than it is- the protests that I saw seemed relatively congenial with people laughing, hulahooping and dancing. I also liked a bit of news coverage that described the groups taking turns marching past the library's front doors, where the city council convenes. How far apart can we be when we're still willing to take turns?

What's interesting is the number of young people that are out there on the street, carrying the signs and chanting the slogans. I'm curious what the youth leaders are telling kids to inspire their participation in this debate. At that age, much of my decision making was guided by emotion and what my friends were doing. I hope they don't make decisions now that they're regret down the road.

New Girl Observation No. 3: The search for good Thai

My friend Chris and I are on a search for great Thai food in Anchorage. We have that dream restaurant in mind--the one where every single dish on the menu is perfection-sweet, dangerously spicy with just enough crunch. So I ask almost everyone I meet in town.

I asked the Thai lady who did my manicure—she told me her house has an excellent reputation and I could come over some time. I love that but it also seems problematic for the 10 p.m. Friday night craving for a mean, spicy Pa Gra Pow.

So for that those times, I'm still looking for a good haunt.

Anchorage residents LOVE Thai Kitchen, located on Tudor Ave. They’ve got quick express lunch that reminds us of the fast food Asian you can get in New York City and Washington DC. (It’s also got the same cafeteria-type décor.) They change it the offerings a little each week. Off the menu, the green curry with chicken and eggplant is excellent.

Chiang Mai Thai Restaurant at Old Seward and 36th is another favorite. They’ve got this amazing fried tofu dish that defies reason. Here’s another

New Girl Observation No. 2: Rent

Why is it so hard to move to a new town and find any information on the Internet about where to live, where to eat and what neighborhood feels like a neighborhood? All we get on the Google Search is a mishmash of bad websites, which feature one or two sentences about what’s up. Back in Colorado, I spent a fair amount of time trying to divine with the Internet gods over this information. I found sites like this one

My thoughts on neighborhoods will come later.

We did okay and ended up house-sitting for the winter. We engaged in the full-blown house hunt for a decent rental in the last three months and here are the results.

The cost of renting a house is Anchorage is no joke. There’s plenty of information out there about how the cost of living in Anchorage is only slightly higher than the national norm. (About 18 percent, according to the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation) The cost of housing is 127 percent higher than the average American city. What this means is that it’s difficult to rent a single-family house in Anchorage without promising your first born and $2,000 a month.

Like in every other city in America when you're house hunting, www.craigslist.com is your new best friend. And, as always you’ve got to be quick. I discovered a couple apps that allow you to specify certain search terms (Airport Heights, Government Hill, Downtown) and it, in theory, sends you an email when ads appear with this term. Here's one. I’m only slightly convinced that every ad came my way. If anyone has a better site, I'm still using Craigslist to find some furniture for the new abode. Keyword "vanity".

Also, check out http://www.weloveak.com/ The person that invented this was a genius. It’s another Craigslist-related program that maps out rentals listed on Craigslist. One problem is that it doesn’t update that quickly so you end up calling on the perfect one bedroom downtown and it’s been rented for two weeks and the guy is so sick of getting phone calls that he hangs up on before you can say ‘thanks, do you know of anything else in the neighbo…” click. Talk fast, friends.

New Girl Observation No. 1:

I’d intended to start this blog sometime ago… We’ll blame the 18 hours of darkness a day in December, that weird Chinook (a mid-winter warming spell, ‘o southern readers), and a newfound love of box wine for the slow start.

Here’s the back story. I arrived in Anchorage, Alaska with husband and dog six months ago and spent my time trying to figure out how to get off and on the Seward Highway without killing myself and finding a grocery store with fresh vegetables in winter (Help, anyone?)

Happily, the New Girl has emerged from winter slumber, moved closer to downtown and is now ready to sally forth to discover her new village.

But first, a brief recap of winter’s highlights:

I was mugged! Everyone I have told here in Anchorage believes that I am the first and only person to be the victim of a purse snatcher in downtown Anchorage. This is a city of barely 300,000 where you run into the lady that sold you a dresser the next day at the grocery store! I believe the perpetrator saw the large neon sign over my head which read something like, “This person just moved here from a Colorado town of 1,500 and does not have firm hold of her purse.” I chased him through a back alley with a friend tottering behind in high heels and yelling for help. Alas, he got away with the precious iPhone and a lot of old receipts. I still haven’t seen him at the grocery store but the cops did spy him twiddling with said iPhone while attempting to make withdraws on the New Girl’s accounts at the Hilton.

I saw the winter sunset in Barrow, Alaska!

Great skiing! A friend asked me to join the volunteer team for Anchorage Nordic Ski Club’s Ski Train to Curry, Alaska. All I can say is that you haven’t done the Chicken Dance while speeding down a track at 70 MPH with 100 people crammed into a tiny, tiny space, you have not lived. And that’s all I’ll say on the subject.

I’ve met many people who didn’t vote for Sarah Palin! All I’ve found is Dems, Dems, Dems in this supposedly red, red state. Maybe it's because I'm hanging out at the yoga studio and REI. My summer goal will be to reach out the other side of the virtual aisle and see if we can find some red-blooded Republicans.

That’s all for now kids…I’ll be posting frequently for the next 2 months.