Day Ten of the journal I kept on an Alaskan cruise I took in 2003.
Other Days: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
10:44 AM ADT
Well, it's that time. I'm almost packed up. Once I'm done I'm going to head downstairs, check out, and ask them to call the airport shuttle for me, while I wait in their internet-connected business center. Then it's off to the airport... We'll see where things lead from there.
1:27 PM ADT
Here I am at the airport. It turned out that just as I was checking out of the hotel, there was the shuttle bus there, ready to take people to wherever they needed to go. I checked out, quickly hopped in the bus, then we were off to the Eagen Center to drop off some cruise passengers, then off to the airport. Anchorage amazes me. It's a big city, only on a small scale. Within fifteen minutes of departing the Comfort Inn right down by Ship Creek we were pulling up to the airport, all the way on the other side of town.
After I got to the airport there was a ridiculously long check-in line. It turns out that this line was only for the United Airlines counter, the Northwest line was considerably shorter, although it still took me almost fifteen minutes to check in. One unfortunate problem cropped up, that being that my bag weighed 51.5 pounds. It seems that for bags which weigh over 50 pounds, there is an additional US$25 fee levied. I could have opened my bag and attempted to reduce the weight slightly, but I figured that this would be more difficult than it was worth, so I just sucked up the fee and went on my way.
Next came the adventure with the TSA, Mr. Tom Ridge's Transportation Security Administration. I feel that this search was much more thorough than the previous one, but I still maintain that if I wished to do harm to anyone inside of a secure airport area, I would use a fiberglass (or some composite) weapon neatly concealed on my person. With the advancement of such composites I think that standard metal detectors and such just aren't effective against modern technology, but noone in their right mind would consent to a full body search just to fly. Well, noone should consent to such a thing. Anyway, I ended up having to remove my boots and undo my belt, just to show that I didn't have anything hidden behind my belt buckle. This initially felt a bit disturbing, undoing a piece of clothing in a public place and all, but in actuality a belt isn't much of a concern. It's not like I was asked to remove my pants or shirt or something like that. Perhaps it's good that I don't have any genital piercings. There was a slight issue with the fact that I had a notebook computer and it wasn't removed from my bag prior to entering the security area, but one of the security people, with my permission, removed it from my bag and ran it through again, all on it's own. I find this to be a good thing, because if I personally were to hide explosives of some sort inside an electronic device, I'd make damn sure that the device still functioned, because most types of security checkpoints only want to see that the device functions.
It's good that I'm sitting with my back against a wall, which I just checked for obvious cameras, as I'm sure that any Red Blooded American™ wouldn't be very happy to see things like this being written by someone who is about to fly.
Following the security checkpoint I walked down the 'B' concourse here at ANC, realized that the next six hours or so will be spent reading or typing or watching Metropolis, and grabbed a Cinnabon. This airport is definitely small, which is likely why there is so much expansion-oriented construction happening in the adjacent terminal. In fact, the current capacity of this airport is right about that of the current International Terminal at DTW.
After munching on the Cinnabon, I decided that would do some reading, so I poured through another 50 pages (or so) of The Illuminatus! Trilogy. I hope that I have this book completely read by the end of the flight, as I'd like to also read Reefer Madness, which was acquired from the Anchorage Barnes & Noble last night. We'll see... I think it all depends on how tired I end up being on the flight.
Another interesting point about ANC is the amount of cargo-oriented aircraft which fly in and out of here. Just this morning I've seen numerous FedEx, UPS, China Airlines, and other cargo-specific aircraft taking off or landing. I guess this makes sense, as no quick delivery is available here via road or ship. I think the land route, if it is even used, along with the sea route are generally used for cargo containers containing cars, non-time critical and non-perishable items like dry goods, clothing, etc. It only makes sense.
Well, per Network Stumbler, which I've just had running for the last five minutes or so, there are no accessible wireless networks near where I'm sitting. There is a power outlet, the reason why I selected this particular bench for sitting, which I'll plug into fairly soon in order to top off this battery, and maybe watch a movie. There just so happens to be a Blockbuster here in the terminal, renting out portable DVD players and DVDs, but I still must continue to not support that company. It's not very likely they would have anything that I'd be interesting in seeing, anyway.
This is interesting, a TSA guy, in full uniform, complete with blue gloves just came and sat down about twenty feet from me. It appears as if he's just on a break, having a seat to relax for a little bit, but I find it odd that he's still wearing the gloves that are typically only seen when handling people or luggage. Well, I think I'm going to plug in the laptop and get to reading a bit more.
5:08 PM ADT
Wow. I've spent the entire time since that last entry hand coding HTML. No, I know that it's not a unique thing or anything, but I think it's been at least a year or so since I spent that amount of time just non-stop coding. I'm rather glad that there are only about two hours left until I'm supposed to board the flight to DTW. I hope everything goes nice and safe with the flight. It should, but I'm always at least a little bit nervous.
I have to urinate really, really bad. The problem is, I can't just leave my bag and notebook and stuff here and go, then come back. It doesn't work that way in an airport, and there's noone here who can watch my stuff. Because of that I decided that I would do all the work that I want to get done on the notebook, then put it away until at least once the flight has started. It's been a rather productive approximately 4 hours, or so. In fact, the format that this journal is in was developed completely from scratch, along with all the content being filled in. I wish I had known HTML tables and name= tags better, as that would have kept me from having to do any research while coding, but I'm fine with how things worked. I learned some, and I'm pretty happy with the result.
I think I'll go put all of Day Ten in the journal, then from this point out any more updates I enter will be written in pure HTML. Up to this point I've been using Microsoft Word, because of it's excellent spell checker, real time spell correction, and grammer checker. It's much easier to write documents and papers in Word than it is to do it in a straight text editor. Anyway, after I'm done with Day Ten I think I'll visit the Burger King stand here and grab some dinner. There's likely to be something served on the flight, but I don't like depending on the airline food being of a quality or quantity to sustain me, especially until approximately 6:00 AM EDT.