He tried, but failed. Pounding on my door four times between the hours of 9 and 10 didn't do it. I finally woke up at 11 a.m., and headed out to see what was up. I met Josh and got an update of what was up at the checkpoint. The verdict was absolutely nothing. My bottle of wine left over from Circle was calling to us. Josh said he was going to see if he could grab a six pack, and then head down to the Yukon River.
I will continue from that morning. I did want to wait for Josh, but he got as far as the night before and has left me in suspense for just too long.
So Josh headed to the general store, the only store in Eagle actually. We had been there the day before, when I begged the clerk for the use of their phone to call Whitehorse to get in contact with my newsroom so Jason knew where the hell we were, and where we planned to be later that day. They were very nice, and let me dial internationally, so I paid them back by purchasing a packet of beef jerky and other snacks, all of which I had enjoyed in the library the night before.
What Josh didn't know, is that Eagle is a dry town, in addition to being a fly-in only town in the winter (Now just what the fuck do people in Eagle do? We wondered?). We knew what we wanted to do on a work-less morning, and that was drink. So Josh approaches the counter and asks if he can get a six pack. He received a deeply offended look of horror from the clerk, who informed him of the lack of liquor flowing through the town. Josh was equally shocked, and he went back to look for me rather downtrodden until he discovered I had my wine.
Because it was a dry town, we decided we needed to disguise it, so we poured it into a Gatorade bottle and my juice jug and headed off with my coat pockets filled with snacks. We left a trail of pizza flavoured Doritos in our path to the Yukon River.
We reached the river after our little trek and settled down in the powdery snow, the snacks propped in the snow, and the wine cooling buried in it.
It was here that Josh and I finally got to really know each other. We found out about each other's families, talked about our hometowns. I got a little sense of what Alaska living was all about. I found out why the hell Sarah Palin ever got elected in the first place, and what possessed Josh to drive 5,000-miles from Bradenton, Florida to Fairbanks. The first answer to that was just insanity, but the other was the same reason I ended up in Whitehorse. We had that in common, among other things. I also appreciated that on his trek he carried a pirate flag. The person I had been working with for so many days started to become a very good friend as we relieved the stress of following the Yukon Quest. It turns out later that both of us realized at that moment on the Yukon River we liked each other.
We got a pretty good buzz going, before noon, and we decided it was high time to head back into town and search for Sam, who had been out on a snowmobile searching for a photo of the mushers going over one of the passes on the other side of Eagle. We went to Josh's room and waited for Sam. Our theory was that he would find us there, because his stuff was there. We were wrong. As the minutes passed, we realized the time of our flight was creeping closer, so we headed to the checkpoint. Apparently in the time it took us to go to the checkpoint, Sam had arrived at the room in search of us. At the checkpoint, we discovered Sam had been frantically seaqrching for us, so I hopped on the back of a snowmobile and ripped back to the hotel, where Sam was loading our stuff into a van. Josh ran back.
A few frantic minutes later, I was sitting on top of my stuff with Josh, in the carbon monoxide-filled van's back on our way to the air strip.
This time our plane was a little four seater red one. Our pilot's name was Gert. I remember when we finally got packed in with our stuff packed properly, according to the plane's weight restrictions, Gert called air traffic control asking for clerance. He said "Fox Risky" something something. I made sure I remembered it, but it's been well over a month now and I forgot. The weight restrictions required Josh and I to pack ourselves into the back with my backpack stacked on top. Our parkas had to be on and there was stuff piled in the tail of the aircraft. It was a tight squeeze. I could barely see out my window, and with a wine buzz and Josh nudging me, it was quite the ride. I wasn't as scared this time. We each had head sets on, and Gert entertained us with dirty jokes the entire way. We pointed out mushers and enjoyed the view. I cheered as we crossed over the thick line in the forest that indicates the U.S./Canada border.
We landed in Dawson safe and sound, and little did we know, the real adventure hadn't even started yet.
Love,
Annalee.
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