It\u2019s December here in Alaska.\u00a0 For you 48\u2019ers, that means snow and ice, bitter wind chills and extremely short dark days.\u00a0 Unless you\u2019re training for the Iditarod, you bolt shut the cabin doors, reach for the whisky bottle and settle in for the Yukon equivalent of hibernation:TV.
\nI\u2019ve been here now, what seems an eternity, but is only four days.\u00a0 I left with the flu my aging mother warned me 50 times to inoculate myself against and I\u2019m only now beginning to eat once again.\u00a0 Attempts at sightseeing or aimless hiking were usually shortcircuited with gastro-intenstinal rumblings that would have scared anything in the vicinity but moose.\u00a0 Moose walk the streets here, grazing in cemeteries.\u00a0 In my delirium, I never questioned it.\u00a0 More cities should encourage moose.<\/p>\n
Mostly, though, I missed travelogue Alaska.\u00a0 What I did get a dose of was cable TV.\u00a0 Maybe you have cable or Dish already.\u00a0 I have an antenna on the roof, an upgrade from the old rabbit ear one we used for decades.\u00a0 I see cable ads for, oh, $30 a month or so, which, I assumed, brought the viewer nearly unlimited viewing options.\u00a0 After a couple of evenings with my hotel\u2019s cable, I don\u2019t understand why folks fork out anything, unless they (A) don\u2019t have an antenna at all or (B) don\u2019t have a roof to attach one to.<\/p>\n
I had 40 channels of television freedom.\u00a0 40!\u00a0 By Hour Two I\u2019d pretty much narrowed the 40 down to, oh, let\u2019s be fair:\u00a0 the comedy channel, two movie channels (that repeated the same films every day I watched), PBS-CNN-Fox-MSNBC just for my \u2018news\u2019 addiction (which it cured completely now that I will avoid all video news for the forseeable future or until I\u2019m bedridden once again with something like terminal cancer).\u00a0 The rest, well\u2026..\u00a0 maybe Extreme Pawn appeals to someone.\u00a0 Or Chopper Sr. vs Jr perks up the Harley crowd.\u00a0 Or Lick\u2019s Towing, some backwash redneck clan of hillbilly repo men forever towing pickup trucks back from poor white trash meth cookers and their sorry ilk.\u00a0 I could go on \u2026. 30 more times.<\/p>\n
But I\u2019m at the airport now.\u00a0 Frozen tarmac, snow bellying down from the Wrangell range.\u00a0 It looks like a wasteland as far as the eye can see.\u00a0 But \u2026 far far better than my last few nights in front of that hotel TV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s December here in Alaska.\u00a0 For you 48\u2019ers, that means snow and ice, bitter wind chills and extremely short dark days.\u00a0 Unless you\u2019re training for the Iditarod, you bolt shut the cabin doors, reach for the whisky bottle and settle in for the Yukon equivalent of hibernation:TV. I\u2019ve been here now, what seems an eternity, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1291"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11688,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1291\/revisions\/11688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}