Road Trip? Nup, just a flight along Alaska's Northern Arctic Coast.

Top of the morning gents,

I just bought my ticket to Barrow.

Instead of taking the jet I thought I'd save a few
bucks and take our friendly neighborhood bush plane
service instead.

Alaska Airlines routes their jet service from Kotzebue
South to Anchorage, then heads North to Fairbanks,
Prudhoe Bay then Barrow.

Sounds like a lot of time full of airport malarkey and
barley corn Tom-foolery don't it?

Don't get me wrong, I'm a natural born bar fly in some
of the world's finest airports, but Anchorage and
Fairbanks aren't even in the same category.

Now if I could spend a few hours with the Sgt, Squish
or Lt. Columbo, or Timo, Dwayne and Paul Quinn at the
Amsterdam, Frankfurt or Helsinki airport bars, I'd be
one happy camper.

Alas, these gatherings occur only in my imagination.
My barts, buds and oomahs only cheer "Pohee man koutu"
(Finnish for 'drink to your health') in the smoking
section of this cat box I staked off inside your
minds.

Nice thought though, despite apparent nonsensical
assertions from yer author on drugs.

My brother Tim flew all the way from Tokyo twice just
to visit his very own eldest brother. Once to drive
all over hell and back: up the Parks Highway through
Denali to Fairbanks. Another visit with a whole slew
of wealthy Japanese and Korean businessmen.

I was proud as a peacock to show him our Willow
safe-house, the Susitna River Landing and the trails
all around our 5-acre spread at the end of Lucky Shot
Trail Road: a mile long dead end dirt road.

His reciprocative invitation to join him in Anchorage
with all his distinguished colleagues for drinks,
dinner, drinks and more drinks surely exercised my
abdomen and finely tuned Viking liver with much too
much laughter.

I learn a lot every time I visit with strangers from
strange lands, even if I fly all over Europe and
Scandinavia or the most remote villages along the
Alaska's Northernmost Arctic Coast.

The further and longer we stay far from the soil our
mothers hatched us on, the more alien a human evolves.
This is what's called the "Ex-Patriot Syndrome": the
oddly far removed sense of homelessness a lad achieves
the longer we're away.

A British pal of mine mentioned previously, Paul Quinn
called me a wandering Jew and an American 'fuck off
cunt' with only the most positive implications in
mind.

He believes Roger Water's phrase, "Picking around on a
piece of ground in your hometown, waiting for someone
or something to show you the way" best describes the
lost 'fanny farts' he grew up with.

"To reach yer full fucking quid, ye gotta cast
refection in every fucking country on the fucking
planet!"

Amen to that.

Since I've already pissed and shit all over Anchoragua
and Shitbanks, I'm gonna go the long ways 'round and
pop in on all the coast villages whilst ferried on the
milk run flight path with Frontier Flying Service.

Whence I arrive in Barrow, I'll be stacked with chores
re-renting out apartment A in our duplex and partaking
in the Inuit Circumpolar Conference: a worldwide
gathering of all the InuTribes every 10 years. '86 was
here in Kotzebue, '96 was in Greenland with '06 in
Barrow. Is that kewl or twat?

I'll try to punch out a few essays foul and articles
upsetting over the weekend.

Karluk.