Drink, Drugs or Breed

All had gone well with the flushing of the toilet until this night. At 3:30 AM Phyllis used the bathroom and made the mistake of flushing. After our prior experience with the cascading waterfall, we are now keenly aware of the sounds the falls make, especially in the dead of the night.


P- Oh shit!

G- (rudely awakened) What's wrong?

P- The toilet will not stop running and is threatening to overflow again. I've been flushing it each time it almost overflows and it goes down, but it keeps refilling. I've flushed about 10 times and it won't stop.

G-Damn it! Why'd you flush it in the first place?

P- Excuse me for having to pee! Call someone!!!!!

I called the desk and told the woman, in an unhappy, groggy tone, that the toilet was overflowing AGAIN!!!! She sent someone who looked as though he had been asleep, and although he smiled and acted "cruise happy", was clearly none to pleased with the situation. Just as before, but without the wave cresting against the bathroom wall, the toilet had stopped filling after the 28th flush. I had the strong suspicion that this dude did not believe me when he showed up and I told him the problem had stopped, but the plumber better address it in the morning.

GGGRRRRRRRR!!!!! New rule!! There will be no nighttime flushing!!!

We had decided to eat breakfast on the Lido deck, so the steward's knock signified the arrival of only coffee. We were none too happy this morning after last night's interrupted sleep, but hey, we were in Alaska, so we got over it. Specifically, we were in Juneau. Our plan was as it had been yesterday, go into town and see what we wanted to do. We had not scheduled any excursions through the cruise line because we didn't want to sell off organs or limbs to pay for them. We found the excursions to be outrageously expensive and because we now estimate the value of things based on the number of days/weeks that money would afford us in Asia, we elected not to spend the extra money on excursions.

On shore we found a tour bus that would take us to the Mendenhall Glacier for a nominal fee. Perfect! The bus was an old school bus and the driver was a native American (Tlingit) woman in her mid to late 30's. At first it seems that she bubbled with personality as she began the tour with some good bus driver humor about the area. Unfortunately, half way through the ride, the humor became somewhat bizarre.

Bus driver - Here in Alaska, the winters are long and dark and people do 1 of 3 things to get them through the winters: drink, drugs or breed. Now I have 5 kids ranging in age from 9 - 17, so I guess you can tell I chose breeding!

P- (looks at G and raises eyebrow) I'm ready for her to shut the hell up. She stopped being funny 10 minutes ago. (We had only been on the bus 10 minutes.)

G- Isn't it possible to simply have sex throughout the winter without actually breeding? It should be possible to purchase contraception in Juneau. And who says breed when they are referring to themselves?

Bus driver - On our left you can see the new Wal-Mart. It employs about 300 people, but Wal-mart had to change its rules in order to hire employees here in Alaska. It seems that when they were first hiring, only 10% of the applicants could pass the drug test. So, the local management had to go to the Wal-mart headquarters and get them to change the rules so they could hire people even if they could not pass the drug test. So now this Wal-mart has different drug testing procedures than all the others.

P- Ok, this bitch is crazy.

G- She sounds proud. I'm skeptical of the validity of this claim and why would this be something to be proud of?

Bus driver - Here we are at the glacier. The final bus returns to the cruise ship terminal at 6:00 pm, so don't miss that bus; and I have a tip jar up front if you liked the bus tour. You know each bus driver writes her own material.

G- Shocking!

I'm not sure if I previously mentioned this, but Phyllis seems to be constantly worrying, and talking about being eaten, or mauled, by a bear. I continually mock her for this, but it seems the more we travel in the Pacific Northwest, the more my admonitions of her ridiculousness is losing credibility. Apparently, there have been numerous bear mauling/attacks this season and scientists are trying to determine why the bears are so aggressive.

P-(on the bus) You think we'll be safe wandering around the glacier or if we need to be worried about bears?

G- Really, considering the fact that bus loads of tourists are dropped off at the visitor's center every 15 minutes and hundreds of people are walking all over the place, it seems unlikely that you will see a bear. Or more importantly, that a bear will see you and decide that you, out of everyone, look ripe for a mauling. I think you'll be fine.

P- Easy for you to say, you can run faster than me.

Unfortunately, Laura Engals (the bus driver) told us stories of bears tearing up her garbage every night, and as we were exiting the bus, told us to watch out for bears. Thanks Laura, you bitch! On the path through the trees on the way to the glacier, we did see several piles of, what appeared to be, fresh bear scat. If we were to see a bear, I'd never hear the end of it.

Fortunately, the day ended without a bear sighting. The glacier was incredibly beautiful and the blue ice still amazes us. We took a mile hike to the waterfall just beside the glacier and just breathed in the cool, clean air. We made it back to the bus without  being attacked by a bear and were happy to get a new bus driver.