On Wednesday, the Carnival Spirit was in Whittier again. I went into work at 5:30am. When I arrived at work, I found a nice, large brownie in my box. Merry had come in at 4:00am, to head to Whittier, and had left that for me. I was so excited for that. Normally everyone at the shop at 5:30am looks like they just got out of bed, and they don't look very approachable. I felt a little funny, because I had been so excited for that brownie, and walked around the shop with a big goofy smile after that. I'm sure several people thought the smile was strange at that early hour! Once I had inspected my coach, I headed out to Whittier. I ate the brownie while I waited for the tunnel into Whittier to open. I made the comment to another driver who was also waiting that I had found a brownie in my box, and I guess for the rest of the day, Merry had nearly all the drivers asking her where the brownies were! Word gets around in a hurry!
In Whittier, I picked up a group that was headed to the airport, and we drove back to Anchorage. The trip back was a pretty typical ride along Turnagain Arm, and into town. I dropped people off at the airport. There, they needed someone to take people downtown to the Egan Center. Since I already had a few people going there, I volunteered to do that. I picked up a small crowd there and made the trip downtown. I then called dispatch, and they told me I would be doing a trip from the airport back to the ship, a few hours later.
I left the airport at my scheduled time, and headed down to Whittier. I left the airport with enough time to make the tunnel, but not with any time to spare. Things started out pretty normal. I had a good group of passengers, who were engaged in my narration, and had plenty of questions. As we headed down the Seward Highway, things began to get interesting. Only a few miles out of Anchorage, a pickup truck was off the road, against a cliff face, and appeared to have rolled several times before it got to that cliff. That caused a minor delay, as everyone slowed down to look at the damage and drive around the police cars out there. Once we passed the scene of that wreck, traffic picked up speed again, and we were on our way. That was the first accident I had seen on that road, despite it being one of the country's more dangerous ones. Things were going great again as we got farther from that accident. We got past Indian and Gordwood, and then traffic began to slow down again. As we came around a curve, we found a motorhome on it side on the left side of the road. Only one lane was open though there, so traffic came to a crawl. It took a few minutes to get through there, but things went well again as we got underway. There were a lot of emergency vehicles on the scene of that wreck. By this point, I was looking at my watch, and figured we would still make the 2:30pm tunnel opening, but just before it closed for the hour. That was no problem, as long as we made it!
When we got to the tunnel , we had made up a little time, so it was just a couple minutes after the tunnel had opened. I pulled up to the toll booth and handed the attendant my prepaid tunnel card, as usual. That was when things got interesting again. It would not scan. That morning, it had worked fine, but this time, it had no more trips left on it. I checked the reciept from my earlier trip, and it said I still had three more trips. We could not get it to work at all. I radioed to the coach behind me, and asked if he could run his tunnel card up, and I would go through on that. He cam up with his, but he had the same problem. That was strange. There was one other coach behind him, but that driver did not answer the radio when I called to them a few times, so we were not able to use that card. This all took quite a bit of time, and a bit of a line began to form behind us, because anything bigger than a car without a trailer is supposed to use the lane we were in. Another lady came out from the main office building there to see what was going on. She asked if I had received my new tunnel card. I told her I had no idea what she was talking about, and explained that the one I had was working just fine that morning! She said that all the coaches were supposed to have new cards. Well, mine had the same card it always had. She ran back to the office and got a card, and scanned that to pay my way through the tunnel. Luckily I did not have to pass the hat to go through! It was really frustrating.
We went through the tunnel without any further delay, and made it into Whittier. As we were driving from the tunnel to the ship, which is maybe a mile, there were three guys standing on a large rock next to the road. They had their backs to us and were looking out at Passage Canal. I thought they were going to go swimming. As we drove by, they mooned the coach! That really got everyone on board laughing! I made a joke about how they just got to see the Alaska wildlife, and then we arrived at the terminal in Whittier, where everyone got off.
When I arrived at the terminal, everything went just as it normally does, and everyone made it to the ship. I was informed that a vehicle which had been behind me in the tunnel had broken down, in the tunnel. That effectively closed it temporarily. I was supposed to head back to Anchorage through the 3:00pm tunnel. I got there at 3:15pm, and it still had not opened, because they were trying to get the stalled vehicle out. It finally opened a half hour late, at 3:30pm. Somehow, I got stuck behind a motorhome whose top speed in the tunnel was 15mph. I timed the trip through, and with that motorhome moving as slow as it was, it took 17 minutes to get through the tunnel. Normally it is six or seven minutes. After that long, you are pretty sick of the tunnel, and I was happy when that guy pulled over at the end, because I didn't want to go that slow the whole way back! The rest of the return trip was uneventful. The two wrecked vehicles were still there, but the emergency workers were gone, and the vehicles just needed to be towed. I did a few airport shuttles when I got back into town, and that was it for me. It was about a 13 hour day.
Yesterday I did a morning rail transfer from the Hilton, at the top of the hill, to the train station, at the bottom of the hill. That was fun actually. We had to wait a while, so I entertained the passengers and did very well on tips for a rail transfer! There was one kid, who was probably five or six, who was hilarious. He loved attention, and he loved joking around. His commentary was so funny. He wanted me to sing to everyone, so I offered him the microphone. He changed his mind about singing then. It was awesome. After a short breakfast break, I did the morning Portage tour. We first went on the M/V Ptarmigan for the Portage Glacier Lake Cruise. That was very nice. The sun was out and it was very warm, and the glacier calved spectacularly for us. I had seven passengers on that trip, and I got talking to them on the cruise. We had a lot of fun together. Two of them were flight attendants. One of the flight attendants had flown her daughter up here for the day so she could do this tour. I couldn't believe it. If I had just a day in Alaska, I think I would feel quite overwhelmed! There is so much to see and do here that many people say two weeks is too short! And she was here for a day!
When we left the lake cruise, we went to the Visitors' Center and the day lodge for lunch. I had a voucher for everyone on the trip to get into the Visitors' Center, which was really nice. Then we had lunch, which was also good, and several passengers bought fudge. That fudge is so good! After a little over an hour there, we went over to the Alyeska resort. As usual, I parked the coach, and took the tram up myself. Rather than just look at the view, I decided to hike around a bit. That was a lot of fun, but I am definately not used to high altitude anymore. At 2,700 feet above sea level, I was dying. I felt like there is no air up there! This is sad, because I lived for three years at 4,500 feet! It was still a lot of fun to hike around up there though. From the resort, we headed back into town, and dropped everyone off at their hotels again. It was a fun day.
I was then asked, spur of the moment, to do a few airport shuttles, since the coach on that assgnment was running over 40 minutes behind schedule. The shuttles run every hour. I ran one out to the airport, which was enough to get the hotel to airport shuttle back on track. At the airport, they asked me to run one to the hotels. After that, I returned to the yard, and put the coach away for the night. I got a "Star of the Moment" award for being willing to help out with that.
Busy, busy day!
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