Day 3 - Juneau

Because they changed the clocks I got 6 hours of sleep before the bright sunlight through the heavy curtains woke me up. Yes, it is a beautiful day in Juneau! We’re excited to fly in a helicopter again. First it was stretch and abs class. I got there early and it was still already too crowded to get perfect mat placement, but I did at least get time to do some gentle warmups before we started the static stretching. I enjoy the class but they’re all stretches I would think of on my own. I’m looking for some that make me go hmmm. Abs class was harder than yesterday, I actually got to the point of thinking “I am ready for this to be over”, but not to the point of aaaaagggghhh, so we’ll see. I am very sore in my erector spinae; not sure what that’s about. During the end of abs class all the spa people started coming in and wishing Byron a happy birthday, so at the end of class we sang Happy Birthday to him. He is 24.

I wonder about guys like him, and about the young folks in the spa, and the performers. I know my cousin Nate was able to do one tour and call it enough, but some of these folks seem really addicted. Mark, my fitness instructor from the Hawai’I cruise, would be back on a ship already if it wasn’t for all the pressure to sell, sell, sell. So if you’re 24 and used to seeing the world and being with different people all the time, how do you go back to having a regular job where you have to build up your own client base and you see the same people in the same place with their same problems all the time? In some ways it seems like it would be like being a famous child actor or a high school football star – how do you keep going from here?

We had a nice breakfast with Gail, a music teacher from Eugene, and two retired couples from the Palm Springs area. I remembered my prunes. The whole time the sun was shining in the window behind me and gorgeous scenery was sliding by outside. Byron said this is the best weather he’s seen in Juneau this whole season.

After breakfast we really didn’t have anything to do until dancing with the stars at 11, which was a first. So we went back to the room and hung out on the verandah, watching things go by and relaxing. We’d completely forgotten that they were having a sale out on deck and that the moose that we’d seen boarding in Seattle was supposed to be roaming the deck, or we would have gone and gotten a picture with him. Ah well, a lost opportunity. At a little before 11 we headed to the Queen’s lounge, and it was packed! It was hard to find a place to even be able to stand and see the video. Also the dancers weren’t very good teachers, and the dance floor was very crowded, so we missed learning the foundational step, and never really caught up. It was super frustrating, because this was the dance move I really wanted to learn. But I’m not sure DWTS is really going to teach me what I want anyway – I don’t want to learn a routine, I want to learn the step and how to dance it to music.

Although it did lead to some questions about memory. We’ve been hanging out in the piano bar, and my knowledge of song lyrics is really amazing (if I do say so myself). In fact later on in the day I’ll be hanging out in the piano bar singing 50’s tunes, and knowing most of the lyrics effortlessly. But I can’t remember a sequence of steps, either here or at Nia. And I can’t remember why I went into a room. I think my brain is full, and it’s a little discouraging. We know as the brain ages it gets worse at storing new data and better at making connections between data – is it that when I’m trying to learn something new my brain is too busy trying to figure out what previously stored data to link it to? Well, I wish it would knock it off.

Warning: the next section contains a great deal of detail about clothing and gear. It’s in case we do this tour again. Feel free to skim.

Once we’d finished dancing it was almost time for lunch, which seemed to take longer than usual. Maybe because we were excited to get on to the next thing, our helicopter glacier adventure! We did the same shore excursion last year and I had a kind of mixed time – the helicopter was amazing, being on the glacier was amazing, the scenery was amazing, but I felt awkward, nervous, and incompetent much of the time. I’d decided to do it again, mostly because I wanted to be with Tim when he did it. So I was feeling pretty nervous about it. Also there was the question of what to wear – last year I wore too much, and also it was very warm in Juneau (73!) so we weren’t sure how cold it would be on the glacier. I finally settled on a light cotton turtleneck sweater under a light cotton sweater, with tights under khakis on the bottom. Dave wore jeans, a long sleeved shirt and a fleece vest; Tim wore jeans, a short sleeved shirt, and his heavy flannel shirt. We got off the ship and the first thing we noticed was that we had way, way too many clothes on. Also I had forgotten my free tanzanite earrings card, which was a total bummer! But we had a little time and we went to the tanzanite store anyway and when I explained how I’d forgotten my card they were very understanding and gave me the earrings anyway, and we only had to look at one case of earrings. Which were nice, but not nice enough to spend money on. They did not give out magnifying glasses with the earrings, but if you get your face very close to my ears you can see that there is something there.

Eventually we got in the van with a family of 4 and 2 Finnish dermatologists who were not married but had been sent to a conference on the ship. When we got to the helicopter place we put on the waterproof/windproof (but not insulated) pants & jackets, the boots, the gaitors, the harnesses, and the fanny packs, and then we were even hotter and more uncomfortable. We sat outside for the safety briefing (and used some of their sunscreen on our faces), and then we were even hotter. Finally we got on the helicopter (Tim got to be in front with the pilot), strapped in, put on our headsets, and finally took off. It was all magic from there.

I love helicopters; they move like segways in the air. I’m a very nervous flyer in airplanes – every bump or turbulence makes me try to put my fingers through the armrests. I’m completely relaxed in helicopters, even if they seem to be being blown about, or bounce around, or slide sideways along a cliff face. I can’t explain it, but there it is. It also was terrific to have Tim sitting up front wearing a huge grin. We flew around for a while, looking at glaciers and searching for fauna (we didn’t see any), then came over a rise and there was the glacier, looking just like a picture of a glacier only huge and real.

The helicopter landed, we got out, and they gave us our ice axes and put on our crampons. I was surprised to find myself completely comfortable walking around the glacier – none of the fear or awkwardness of the last time. These guides were more cautious, but I felt both confident and competent. In fact as we moved up the glacier, I was often in the lead, right behind the guide, with Dave and Tim close behind. The others on the tour were struggling to keep up, actually J. The glacier looked completely different from last year, because we’re near the end of a warm, dry summer rather than at the beginning. It was chilly on the glacier because there was a fierce wind, caused by the warm air being cooled by the glacier and then flowing down it, to be replaced by more cooling air. Sometimes you would get a gust coming from the side of the valley, off the bare rocks, and it would feel hot. We saw lots of “glacier flour” – silt – and not very many rocks at all. There were many fabulous waterfalls and pools of standing water. At one point there was a waterfall that had cut itself a cylindrical opening in an ice wall, and they were taking photos of people standing in the opening. To get there, you had to hop across a very small water channel. I couldn’t bring myself to do it – it just scared me too badly. And I remember that last year they had us doing a lot of stream hopping, so it makes sense that I didn’t like it. We walked around some more, and eventually one of the guides put an ice screw in, and we took turns clipping on to a rope attached to it and going to look over the edge of a crevasse. Which was way deeper than the little stream I was afraid to hop over, and which bothered me not at all. I would have been perfectly happy to rappel over the edge. It made me wonder how I would have felt if I’d had a rope to hang onto to hop over the stream.

As it got later, the sun got lower, and the sparkle of the crunchy ice on the glacier looked more and more like diamonds. The top layer of ice is loose and melting and kind of dirty, but just below it’s the most amazingly clear ice you’ve ever seen. And it makes the beautiful blue pools and glows blue. You should remember to take off your sunglasses a little even if it’s very bright, because they hide some of the amazing blue.

So eventually it was time to head back on the helicopters (did I mention how much I like flying in helicopters? I think I need one). Dave and I both picked up some pieces of granite, which later got silt all over everything. Also at the gift shop you need to get T-shirts. Also there is a guest book, and Ben our guide told us we had to write “Ben was awesome, and Dylan smelled funny” in the guest book, so I did. We got back to the ship exactly when the excursion book said we would, which meant we had 15 minutes to get up to our rooms, get changed, and get up to deck 9 for the Canneletto restaurant, the little Italian place in the corner of the Lido restaurant where the Filipino staff wear Venetian gondolier shirts and say “Buono sera” with great gusto. The food is overall slightly better than in the regular dining room. It used to be free and come with fresh made cotton candy; now there is a small surcharge and no cotton candy but 3 different kinds of tiramisu for dessert, which makes up for many things.

After dinner it was already almost 9. Tim and Dave were going to take the funicular but it was closed and they probably didn’t have time anyway. I went to the piano bar to hang out (that’s when I discovered just home many 50s songs I know the lyrics to) while Dave stayed on deck to watch us pull out of port. It was kind of strange in the piano bar, which is usually packed but was mostly empty. Also I showed up alone, and Barry (who loves Dave very much, and was one of the DWTS judges who picked Dave to participate in the finale) didn’t ask where he was. I think he thought we’d have a fight. At 10:15 I met Dave in the Vista lounge for the Filipino crew show, which featured many singers who couldn’t sing and dancers without rhythm and as usual was absolutely delightful in its sincerity and joy.

Then it was 11:30 and we were completely exhausted.

Tonight’s towel animal: same as the first night, which we’re pretty sure now was a crab. Hmmm.