Alaskan Summer

2004-06-15T02:13:00.000-05:00

Well, I got fired and I'm back in the lower 48. I'm in Seattle's Theta Delta Chi house and I'm flying to Iowa to see my girlfriend tomorrow. I'll explain more after I get there and I'll finally post some pictures.

Alaska was fun while it lasted,
but I'm glad I'm going back home to my girl.

2004-06-06T23:54:00.000-05:00

Today I used my superior mind control powers to force my self to deep meditation for most of the day only waking up intermediately to check out if there was any spaces for tours. (Read: I slept all day following the Garfield lifestyle). So I was useless all day but at least I'm well rested to start my night shift tonight at 11pm.

Other than that I haven't really done anything all day.

Mount Healy: 2 Tony: 0

2004-06-05T20:17:00.000-05:00

So, I tried to hike Mount Healy for the second time today and he ate me alive. I got munched on by an insane amount of mosquitos and then it rained on me so I walked back. Tomorrow I will try it again before work, this time armed with Mosquito repellent.

I'll make it eventually if I have to fly my ass up there and parachute!

2004-06-05T01:44:00.000-05:00

How's it going? My day went pretty well. I was able to go to the Husky Homestead thing and had a lot of fun playing around with the Puppies and the world champion Alaskan Huskies kennel of Jeff King. Really fun.

After that I stayed around the tent reading and sleeping and then at 8:30 I came to Cabin Nights dinner theater and had all you can eat ribs for free (tourists payed $60 each) Hehehe.

Tomorrow I'll try to get a free Helicopter trip around the mountain, we'll see how it goes. Or if that doesn't work I'll go climb Mount Healy tomorrow.

Ohh and I realized I've never mentioned my name in the blog, so here it goes. My name is Tony.

2 days off!

2004-06-04T14:13:00.000-05:00

After a pretty hard week I finally get two days off!

I think I'll get to go to the Husky Homestead thing and spend a couple of hours photographing and playing with world champion Husky dogs. :0) I'll try to get on the helicopter tomorrow.

So my plan for today is Husky Homestead, then climbing Mount Healy (which I failed last week) and then free all-you-can eat Ribs (while the tourist pay $60). I think it'll be a good day!

Hope to also buy a laptop ASAP, I think a used or refurbished $500-600 would be a good invertment, and then I can install photoshop and start posting pictures.

2004-06-02T03:39:00.000-05:00

I'll tell you about my day. I woke up at 7:30 am fought the 40 degree weather to get out of bed to make it for breakfast. The cook didn't make it for breakfast so we had just desert, no substinance. I spent from 8-11 am reading, and then went glaciar river rafting from 11 am to 1 pm. Lunch at 2 pm and work at 3 pm.

Work was crazy today, just about everything that could go wrong went wrong. Only three out of the five levels of rooms are ready to be rented out and they were full all freaking day and we had tons of people come in wanting rooms. We had heaters not working thoughout the freaking hotel and lots of trouble. A small plane crashed into the nearby lake on it's way to fairbanks and the two people on board, who weren't hurt, came asking for a room, it was a mess to find them a room. Then we have a boyfriend and girlfrined split up and wanted
separate rooms, and a grandma fighting with her son in law and wanting separate rooms. So getting them all rooms while we were filled was a BIG mess. Then we had our Coke delivery guy get drunk in our bar and we had to find him another room, while he was being beligerant in our office and that was also a mess. It was very tiring.

Then I got skipped for a helicopter tour for tomorrow moring for a guy that has worked less than I have, he gets the coolest trip where you get to land in a Glacier and hike around for a while. That made me kind of mad. Also it sucks that I got the lowest paying job in the hotel, everybody makes $7.15 / hour but they also get tips. I've gotten $1.70 total in tips this far. So that sucks, but hey I guess I'm still in Alaska enjoying the place and hopefully will get some time to take good pictures.

But hey, such is life.

2004-06-01T03:16:00.000-05:00

I worked the afternoon shift again but today it was crazy, everything went wrong. It was amazing. Heating wouldn't work in some rooms, we had a propane leake in the bar and had to empty the place, the phone rang off the hook, we had 3 people walk in for a room without having a reservation, the hot tub stopped working and nobody can figure out why, guests were mad at not having the hot tub, one guy wanted a refund because his wife couldn't sleep without a TV and the rooms don't have TV. That's just a quick summary of what happened today. It was nuts.

2004-05-31T03:32:00.000-05:00

Boring day at work. Had the afternoon shift and only got a couple of calls and one check in. Other than that got bored and read. I mean it wasn't bad it just wasn't very interesting.

Hope tomorrow picks up.

Nothing else for now.

2004-05-30T13:37:00.000-05:00

Well, no more days off for me until Thursday. I have the afternoon shift everyday from today. 3-11:30 pm. We'll see how it goes. The hotel is pretty empty today, only 6 rooms are occupied and we're only expecting one check in today. So it'll be cool.

I've been reading a lot and will soon finish my first book, so I only have two more to go, I think I'll be out of shit to read before the end of the summer which sucks ass...

I'm considering getting a laptop I was looking at Dell with the 10% student discount I could get a decent laptop delivered all the way to Alaska for only $1,070. That's only about 3 and a half hours of work.

We'll see how it goes.

2004-05-29T20:47:00.000-05:00

So I finally scored myself some decent internet time and have the time to write a little.

The flights were not bad, although I had a 12 hour wait in Seattle and an 8 hour wait in Anchorage. During the Seattle wait I mostly read and slept in very confortable aiport chairs. In the Anchorage wait I wasn't so lucky, the chairs were pretty bad but I still got some sleep.

Then I took a Cab to the train station and boarded the train for Denali. The trip is 8 hours long but very beautiful and the service is excellent. The train even slows down to allow you to better see the animals. In the train I found 3 other people who are working in the same hotel as me. Angela, a guitar playing hippie from Florida who is working as a server in the restaurant. Elizabeeth, a college student from Madison who is working housekeeping. And Joanna, an ecological conservationist from Seattle who is doing this job as her last little adventure before getting married in November. She planned the wedding and left for the job here.

After arriving we took the shuttle to the hotel and found some of the other people working with some, a few more arrived the next day.

Some of the other interesting people I work with:

RD is one of the housekeepers, he did two years of college and then decided he wanted to be a Nomad and has been working seasonal jobs for two years now. Thinking about going back to college. HE's very nice and very easygoing.

Memory is one of the chefs, she just finished culinary school and is doing this as her graduating internship, she gets her degree when she gets back. Her boyfriend is back in California where she's from and they talk twice a day. She can talk about nothing else but him.

Bernise is the other chef, also just finished culinary school but she's much older. She left her 14, 10 and 8 year old kids at home and came to Alaska for the summer. She's been married for 10 years but her husband had an accident after just two weeks of marriage and has been in bed and drugged since then. She feels lonely and is taking the time in Alaska to decide whether she'll divorce him or not. It's really a sad story.

There's two 30 year olds alcoholics from Alaska who work as servers in the restaurants. They're scary and I haven't figured out their names.

Alla (AKA Alla Princess of Whales) is a city girl from Philly who was expecting a real place to stay in and is having trouble getting use to the tents in which we live. She brought 7 pairs of shoes (4 of them high heels) and 4 make-up bags including one she brings in to the office. She works front desk.

Adrienne is another of the girls she's kind of quiet and works Front Desk.

Jim was in the Navy for 3 years and now works maintenance. He's fun but talks too much crap.

Dan is a nomad who roles around from seasonal job to seasonal job and has been just about everywhere. He's very nice and fun.

Dmitri just came in yesterday. He works housekeeping is Russian and speaks very little English. That's as much as I've been able to communicate with him.

Candi is 57 and nice as can possibly be. She is my boss and manages most of the hotel. She takes 6 weeks off after the summer is done and then works the winter in a hotel in the Virgin Islands. She's great although she gets stressed easily.

All the work in the front desk is done by hand, and is complicated but not too bad. Mostly answering the phone and telling people we have no space for the day they want. Charging stuff on credit cards when we do have space. Pretty easy, sometimes requires a lot of multitasking.

The tents are pretty tiny and luckily my roommate has not showed up yet, hopefully I get to keep the tent just for myself.

The area is very very expensive, a beer will cost you $5 and an hour of internet access $10. It sucks, we get paid too little for how expensive it is.

We get two meals a day and have to make that last till the next day.

We do however get free shit like trips and tours and rafting.

Today I was so sick of not having internet access that I actually applied for other jobs in the area, because every other hotel has internet access except us. In fact we do have it , but only the managers get to use it which sucks!

Yesterday I had the day off and tried to climb Mount Healy. However, I took too much weight in the camera bag and couldn't make it all the way to the top. I came back and thought about trying it again today but my legs are too sore. I'll try again next week with less weight.

On Fridays we get to go to this really cool dinner theater for free, normal customers are paying $60 for it. We ate so much to make up for a week of very little food. I thought I was going to explode. It was good all you can eat stuff. I was happy to get a decent meal for once in this trip. I'll do it every Friday no kidding.

Today I spent the whole day filling applications and that's how I figured out how to get free internet. It took some "Catch me if you can" style good old fashion pretending you're someone else, but it's working. $10 bought me a fake ID and free internet!

I'll see if I can install Photoshop on this computer in order to post some pictures.

I'll try to write daily now that I have internet access!

Bye all. Leave comments, I do read them!

2004-05-27T12:10:00.000-05:00

Wage: $7.15 / hour
Internet: $10 / hour

Will update as soon as I have money!

I'm worth $3 right now.

2004-05-21T01:20:00.000-05:00

Ok, this is it. I'm about to catch my flight to Alaska. I'll make stops in Chicago and Seattle
and I'll get there sometime Saturday. I'll post when I'm there and find a computer.

Till then..

Did get everything packed. Diane was amazing in helping me pack. It was great, I would've never been able to do it alone. I have no idea how I'll pack it back for the return trip.

0 days for Alaska. Wow...

2004-05-20T01:51:00.000-05:00

Finally got around to packing. Fitting my life into two suitcases and a camera bag. A large amount of stuff had to stay. Actually, Diane did all the packing, I just sat there saying "that goes, that doesn't" while she worked her magic.

The meeting of the family went well, we went to a restaurant (to my embarassment that they changed plans and made a big deal out of meeting me) but it worked out great. They're all very nice and they liked me :0) Well, who wouldn't. ;0)

So life's good right now, although tired. Less than 48 hours and I'll be in the first plane.

I'll post more before I leave if there's something new. Otherwise, probably until monday.

2004-05-19T14:17:00.000-05:00

Got one of my pictures printed at Walden Photo at both 8x10 and 11x14 and it came back AWESOME in both sizes. This camera is freaking amazing. If I can get a picture like that just from walking the university's garden here in Iowa, I can only image what I'm gonna get in Alaska. All the gear is working and waiting for me. It's wednesday afternoon, my first plane leaves on Friday at 5:30 am. I still need to pack and take what I'm not taking with me to the attic. And today I get to meet Diane's family, so I'm kind of scared about that. We met only about a week ago and we've had the most wonderful time together, I'm crazy about her like I haven't been for anybody in a long time. It'll be to 4 months before we see each other again after friday, but we've decided to wait for each other. :0)

2004-05-18T16:30:00.000-05:00

Spent all freaking day in the lab editing pictures and trying to
figure out why two of my CompactFlash cards didn't want to play
along with my image bank while the third didn't have a problem and
after they've worked fine for a week.

After calling technical support for both the image bank and the
card and not finding any answers, I was about to strike them with
a hammer... Two days to go before Alaska, not enough time to get
replacements, and only my tiny 16mb card working 100%, it was stressful!

Finally, I figured out that the image bank is an old model and can
only use freaking FAT16 formated cards, and I had formated the cards
on a Windows XP computer in the lab, in FAT32. So, stupid technicality!

Well, I guess it's fixed, so I can't stress about it anymore. But, it sucked
during the 5 hours it took me to figure it out.

2004-05-18T10:24:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm making my pictures available for sale in Photographica.org

So, if you're interested

Buy my pictures from Photographica

Even if you're not interested in a hard copy, keep visiting because I'll be posting a lot of pictures and stories.

2004-05-18T07:44:00.000-05:00

A few more pictures...

So, there we go. I'll go to the lab today to work on the other pictures I didn't
get around to do yesterday.

And for Pipe, here is the link you asked for,
it doesn't mention anything about the jobs, that webpage is down for this season.

2004-05-17T16:47:00.000-05:00

Pictures galore! This post is going to be huge! A bunch of pictures from yesterday. Enjoy, and leave you comments.

My housemate Troy, shaving his head.

Buy this picture from Photographica for as low as $ 6.00

Pink flowers.

More pink flowers.

I really love what this camera can do with flowers. Wow!

Macro rules.

This one's photoshopped to look like a drawing.

Another flower.

Different angle on the previous one, better detail I think.

Wide Open.

Intimate Details.

This is one of my best pictures ever.

A different angle.

Reaching.

Field of Dreams

I'll post more later, this damn lab computer is running out of memory.

2004-05-16T22:43:00.000-05:00

Everything going great. Only 5 days before Alaska. Having a great time.

I went to Reiman Gardens today at late afternoon and took some pictures. I'll go to the media lab tomorrow to work on them and will post some.

If you're here leave a comment so that I know people actually read this.

2004-05-16T11:06:00.000-05:00

Wow, funny how things can change in 3 days...

I met a fantastic girl, we spent a ton of time together and I'm having a great time. I don't know how things will work out when I leave for Alaska in 4 days, but there's a good chance I'll come right back to her in September. :0)

I took the camera for a second spin and here's a couple of the results.

Soft Portrait of a Dandilion

Diane on the Phone

Most of the pictures from last night were too grainy because I took them at ISO 800 because of the lack of light, but I'll try to go through the same route again tomorrow at a better time for more light.

I like how the camera is working until now except for the poor performance at ISO 800, it gets too grainy, it's good enough for pictures at 600 * 450 but nothing more. :0|

Well, life's good right now.

2004-05-13T12:20:00.000-05:00

Finally took the camera for a spin, here's the first one I like, although it was a little windy and cloudy.

I'll be posting more later.

2004-05-12T22:44:00.000-05:00

Didn't do shit today. Again. I was going to take the camera for a ride when it started raining so I didn't. I did get Humpy to drive me to the store to get some food for the rest of the week because I burnt my last pizza. :0( I just came online and found one of my best friends who I haven't seen in months online and we started chatting and then my ex-girlfriend Maria Jose with whom I haven't talked in months since I gave her an ultimatum, logged on and said hi. So shit's gonna hit the fan in this conversation.

..

2004-05-12T01:44:00.000-05:00

Today was a fun day go to try out the camera but haven't taken it outside because it was dark already, will take it around campus tomorrow and post some pictures. After that I just did nothing and watched movies. Hannibal Lecter rocks! Then hung out with some of the people staying for the summer listened to music and just hung out drinking a few hard lemonades. Right now I'm adding the blog to a few blog directories see if we can get some people and some comments.

May 12th, 9 days before Alaska and all I need to do now that the camera is here is pack!

2004-05-11T16:07:00.000-05:00

Well, the digital camera and all the accesories are finally here. I'm waiting for the batteries to charge up and give it a try! IT took a week of calling their customer service twice a day until finally it shipped yesterday with an upgrade to Fedex Next Day air.

So, I'm excited!

I'll be posting pictures once I shoot some.

2004-05-09T10:10:00.000-05:00

Well, yesterday was quite an interesting day. I never did make it to bed to begin with and it took me until the morning to clean the room, by the time I was done people were starting to move in and we had to help them get settled, the house was a mess and people kept moving in until around 7pm.

Afterwards we bought some margarita and tequila (a lot) and got drunk as a house warming party for those that just moved in.

The fuckers in the house (namely Humpy) disconnected the damn computers in the study room so I'm screwed into using the cheap music server which is old and falling apart instead of the nice Dells. All with some cheap excuse, says they'll be fixed in two weeks. Well, I'll be gone by now so what do I care if they'll be fixed.

It's may 9th so I'll be in Alaska in 12 days. Even though I'm moved out of the room and my shit is in random boxes, I haven't packed. None of the digital photography equipment I ordered has been delivered, part of it I'm sure has been shipped but the camera itself I'm not sure if it has been shipped. Kind of worried about that.

I have $290 to make it for the next 12 days. I did a good job of not spending too much during the semester to survive this few days without a meal plan. Saved a lot more than I had expected. Good head start for the summer.

2004-05-08T03:38:00.000-05:00

3:40 am and still not done with the laundry and the room's not even close to ready anyway. I have to pick the girl up in the morning and help her move in and it seems it'll have to do it with no sleep. We had a bunch of people over and at least 2 of my brothers were drunk out of their minds. One of them ended up puking his guts out and I had to stay with him for a couple of hours.

Am I my brother's keeper? Yes I am...

What can you do?

At the begining of the night we had enough women but slowly they left and we ended up with a sausage party. Well, who cares. By tomorrow summer hunting season starts.

Big party fouls for the night were a drink spilled on the pool table, the poker table lost a side, and a big cooler full of ice got dumped in the floor and made it into an ice rink full of drunk people. I guess it was better than yesterday when one of the guys pucked all over himself and rendered all the bathrooms on second floor unusable and plugged. And I ended up making out with an ex-girlfriend who cheated on me last semester (I came back a day early from my trip back home for Christmas and found her with another guy).

It's May 8th so I'm 13 days away from Alaska. And I think I'll spend all 13 days packing :0|.

Got my train ticket in the mail today so all my traveling arrangements are made:

Car ride from here to Des Moines. Spend night at local strip club.
At 3:30 am be dropped of at airport. Fly to Chicago. Fly to Seattle. Wait for 11 hours. Fly to Anchorage, Alaska. Wait for 7 hours. Take a train for 6 hours. Take a van for half an hour. And after that little trip I'll be settling into my confy little tent that will house me with a stranger for the next four months. I hope my roommate, and all the people working there look like this:

Not like this:

But we all know Murphy's law.

2004-05-08T01:12:00.000-05:00

So tonight was the end of the spring's women hunting season, finals are over and people are leaving. The town's going to be dead by tomorrow. However we'll have women living in the house, of the two that I've seen one is out of limits because she's friends with a girl I'm kind of seeing, the other is good looking and as far as I can tell single. So there's the target I guess. We'll see what happens.

I've been doing laundry all night and preparing to move out of my room, the girl I just mentioned is moving into it tomorrow morning, I get to sleep in the racks for the next two weeks.

On a sadder note I got an email from my mom saying my sister (she's only 5) has been crying a lot because I'm not going home for the summer. :0| That makes me feel bad but I can't cancel my life to be in Costa Rica, I'd love to be there seeing her grow up, but it's not my fault we have 16 years of difference in age and we're in such different life stages. I do feel guilty though.

Such is life. huh?

Background Story

2004-05-07T20:32:00.000-05:00

Ok, so here's an introduction to myself and to what's happened until this point. Warning, this post is probably gonna run VERY long.

Well, I'm from Costa Rica and I'm a university student in Iowa. Why Iowa? I have no fucking clue! But I'm serving a four year sentence in a college in Iowa and I have 4 more semesters to go. When I was younger I was pretty athletic, played basketball in High School and fought Karate for about 15 years, I fought for the National Selection of Costa Rica for 3 years. I retired just before turning 18 because of too many injuries and I was getting out of shape. After high school I bowled for a while. Now a days my only sport is sex, as much as possible :0) .

I'm a pretty smart guy, but I've always had average grades, never been much of a student. I'm a very varied guy who is the artist, the party animal, the sweet guy, the romantic, and many other things depending on the moment. I live in a Fraternity house, but I'm the least greeklike person in the world, I live here because I like the house and the pool table and the parties and they have me here because they need people paying rent. However, I've made good friends living here and I'm proud of my house. But most of them think I'm too weird. Which, I've always been and I honestly love it.

My main hobbies are computers, chess, photography, poetry and writing. So yeah, in some senses I am a geek.

I have my tongue pierced, a tattoo of the greek letters of my fraternity on my ankle and used to have long hair. I'm messy as can possibly be and I lack a sense of smell since birth, so I tend to leave Pizza boxes lying around for months until my roommate makes me clean them up. I'm a mess, what can I say?

I don't smoke, never tried weed or any other drugs, although I have nothing against them. I do drink, but I don't drink beer because I just haven't been able to get used to the taste. Most of the time I drink girly drinks like Bacardi 0 or Hard Lemonade. My friends give a lot of shit for it.

I have a love/hate relationship with Costa Rica. I grew up in Costa Rica going to the American High School and thinking myself American. I've spoken English for as long as I've spoken Spanish. Then I came to the States to study and realized I'm too hispanic for the US, I'm too American for Costa Rica and I'm too weird for both places anyway.

I'm a terrible driver. In my first year of driving in Costa Rica I had 7 accidents, all my fault, totaling both my car and my mom's car. Surprisingly she still let's me drive her new car. I've driving in the US for more than 9 months now and have no accidents, and only one ticket for going 35 on a fucking 30.

A few years ago I discovered the magic of photography and have since been into it. I'm still not too good, but I think I'm getting better. Alaska will be amazing for my photography.

I only go back to Costa Rica for 3 weeks out of the year for Christmas time. I went back for Spring Break this year because I needed to get a root canal and it was cheaper to fly down there and get it done by a specialist than to get it done in the US. My grandfather, who is paying for most of my college tuition, wants me to take next semester off and work for him so I can learn how he runs the family companies. However, I don't want to stop school for a semester. I'm trying to convince him. The plan for this summer was going home and working, however working in Costa Rica without a college degree I would probably be making $2.00 an hour, which sucks, plus I hate a lot of things about Costa Rica so I decided to look for a job here.

I applied for the Walt Disney World College Program but they didn't accept me. But that got me thinking, because of my visa restrictions I can only work in jobs on campus or for limited periods of time work outside but only in jobs directly related to my major. I didn't want to work with computers this summer so I took advantage of the fact that I'm still a Pre-Business student to apply for a job in a hotel. I applied to a ton of hotel jobs and chose among the ones I got. My first choice was a hotel in Colorado that is only accessible by helicopter and each rooms goes for a $1,000 a night and the minimun stay is 4 nights (just imagine the tips!) and my second choice was Alaska because of the oportunities for photography.

So I accepted a job in a hotel in Denali National Park and I'm getting ready for it. The funny part is the employee housing is composed of two people permanent tents without electricity or anything, and I've never even gone camping.

I convinced my parents to foot the bill for my ticket to Alaska from Iowa and that I'll pay them back at the end of the summer, so I'm starting the summer $700 in the red.

At the begining of last semester I bought my dream car:

It's a classic 1984 Porsche 944 in incredibly good condition.

I found it online for $2,500 and took a bus for a whole damn day all the way to Indianapolist to pick it up. I knew when I bought it that I needed to get a job or I wouldn't be able to pay all the rent for the semester. I wasn't able to find a job so I had to sell it at the end of the semester, I had nowhere to leave it for the summer so what can you do.

I sold it for $3,500 so I actually got paid $1,000 for driving a Porsche for four months (minus gas and a $30 ticket).

With the money I ordered my first digital camera (I have some nice equipment for 35mm but I have nowhere to develop film in Denali so I want to do it digitally). So I ordered the camera, a ton of memory, a 20gb image bank, some extension lens and some close-up lenses. Plus a nice photo-backpack.

It took my dad 3 weeks to transfer the money so that I could buy the ticket so I'm flying a really long Flight leaving Iowa at 5 am on May 21st, and not getting to Anchorage until 2 am the next day. Then I take a bus ride for five or six hours to Denali.

So, there's the summary. From now on I'll post as stuff happens.

2004-05-07T15:52:00.000-05:00

ok figured out how to make the changes to the links. Promise I'll write later tonight.

Utter confusion

2004-05-07T15:48:00.000-05:00

OK, this is my first blog ever so I've never used blogger. How do I change the links? -->

Also, how can I add the ability for people to leave comments on what I say?

2004-05-07T15:41:00.000-05:00

Ok, I think I got this setup. I'll come back tonight and actually blog about the preparations for the trip.