All done! Ok, college's been done for a few weeks already...ok try more than a month. But for two weeks thereafter, I was kidnapped by the crappy schedule of an Alaskan trucker, complete with beerbelly, and didn't get home til the beginning of July. Kat got home from Japan before I did. How sad is that?

After hanging out with my family in Tacoma for 5 days after I got out of college, I got a call from Trucker Mike - his expected load down in Seattle hadn't materialized and the only thing his broker was able to procure was down in...Stockton, CA! Hmm, wrong direction, but I hadn't been through Oregon before and didn't want to be a burden on my Grandma for food, since she doesn't have loads of money, so I said "sure, let's go!" and started my trip home by heading south.

En route to Alaska I found out that Oregon is really beautiful in some places, even on I-5, and California has rice paddies. Who knew? Oh, and they also have these huge stretches of sand colored nothing, and then a random compound of stamped out houses will pop up behind a sound-barrier wall a few hundred yards off the interstate, and then it goes back to nothing. Where are the trees? But cali has Mount Shasta on its side (right by Oregon/the state of Jefferson) so I can't be too disappointed. It's a beautiful mountain.

We made it down to Stockton in two days, I think, so Trucker Mike could get a load of plants/trees to take back up to WA, and that's damn quick. Mmm this is a great sandwich. We killed some time down there, watched The Italian Job and Matrix 2 back to back (mind numbing), ran away from the heat back to WA, and then wasted time (for 5 days...) til he got a load of....boxes...to take to Alaska. So two weeks after escaping from Seattle, I was back in Ballard, finally getting to go home.

Once we got on the road it was beautiful and we made really good time. It really only takes 3 days to drive through Canadia and down through Alaska to where the people are, since most of the road is paved and we didn't really care about the speed limit. I randomly checked on my grades from a cafe in the middle-of-nowhere Yukon and figured out I need to study for my physics class next quarter if I want to survive it and organic chem at the same time, so there's my summer for you. :-/

Right after the cafe we went through Canadian exiting customs (didn't have to stop) and 20 mi later had to go through Alaskan customs. Why are they so far apart? Don't ask me, but I'm claiming the land in between as my own. Since I'm not 19 and didn't have a note from my daddy saying I could go to Canadia, getting into the damn country required me having to go through immigration, which was fun, but getting back into Alaska was easier.

I was so happy once we got on the Alaskan side (though it's no different than the Canadian side...) because I was that much closer to home and my own bed. Whenever we were on the road Mike and I were sleeping head-to-toe in the sleeper compartment behind the cab...in sleeping bags...and I wanted my own bed. Sadly, all my built-up excitement once we reached Glennallen that I was getting close (read: only a few hundred miles) to home was crushed when we turned south to Valdez to deliver the stupid load of...boxes.

For non-Alaskans: Valdez, while nice, pungent, and technically closer to home than Glennallen, offers only three ways to get to Wasilla; boat, plane, or back up through Glennallen and down a different road.

So at 7pm on June 30 I was sitting in the office of a fish processing plant (that needed boxes, evidently) talking to the parenthood on the phone, realizing that a) I wasn't going to get home until 1 or 2am, as it's at least 6 hours from Valdez to Wasilla, and b) that it really would be July before I got home.

But Mike doesn't deserve all the crap I've said about trucks since the trip ended, because he was awesome as far as truckers go (i'm guessing, since I don't know any others). He put up with me for the whole time, and let me play my music in lieu of country part of the time. He also offered to take me down in the fall if I have too much crap to take on the plane. And he paid for most of my meals on the road, refusing to let me cover even my part. Pretty nice. I just don't understand how they can just sit and drive for so long. Anyway, I got home on July 1 at 2:30am (because they're blowing up part of the mountainside at Caribou Creek) and the rest is for another day.