Features > The Great Bright North?
(From left) The author, Jerry, Flint, and Randy
The Great Bright North?- Part 2 of 3
by Chris Bilder, Generals Staff Writer
Eugene, OR- I woke up the next morning with a smile one my face. I had applied one of my first lessons learned in Alaska. I had swallowed my pride, accepted a fact, and made a conscious decision to live the Alaskan way. I don’t know if I was simply growing as a person or if I was just delirious from the constant sunlight, but putting the blinds down the night before was the first step to discovering how these people, who call themselves Alaskans, live their way of life. At that moment I conceded three things. First, this is a land of constant sunlight. They could still be bluffing on the constant darkness during the winter, but during the summer they were spot on. Second, people actually drove automobiles. This was the summer, however, and I’m sure that during the winter dogsleds would be abundant. Last, but not least, Alaskans lived in houses. Once again, though, it was the summer, and when the snow covered even the highest rooftop people would have to resort to igloos. I was still holding tight to my one last hope. I had yet to find out if there truly was a hockey rink in every tiny town in Alaska.
That day was an easy day for us. We were going to discover the subtleties of Alaska’s largest city…Anchorage. Driving around there were no signs of the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake that shook all of Southcentral Alaska. And a quick history lesson for everybody that isn’t from Alaska, and for all you Alaskans who don’t know your heritage. I would also like to take this time to personally thank Wikipeidea, The Free Encyclopedia. The 9.2 quake was the most powerful earthquake in North American history, and still remains the third most powerful earthquake measured in modern times anywhere in the world. The quake, which resulted in 131 deaths, was centered in Prince William Sound off the cost of South Central Alaska. The earthquake actually caused some parts of Alaska to be liquefied, which I found to be particularly unbelievable. But enough with the history. This trip was about exploration.
As we were driving down the undestroyed downtown Anchorage we came to a stoplight. On the next block there was a skywalk, but this was no ordinary skywalk. This skywalk epitomized the Alaskans love of hockey, and their love of the Aces. As I looked up at the skywalk my jaw dropped. I had never seen this show of support for any hockey team, let alone a semi-pro team. There were banners lining the entire lining the entire span of the skywalk with the names and numbers of each member of the Alaska Aces. Below the individual player banners was one giant banner that read, “OUR TEAM ONE GOAL,” with the Aces logo in between team and one. To my amazement there weren’t masses of people taking pictures or gazing with pride at the site. Nobody that walked by or underneath the skywalk even bothered to look up. It was as if this wasn’t out of the ordinary. That every city went out of their way to make their feelings known about “their team” and “their boys.” But that obviously isn’t the case. Eugene has its fair share of billboards for the Ducks football team, but nowhere in town is there a giant tribute to the Ducks not in the form of formal advertising. I know Eugene is an exception, with the football team being known more for fashion models and marketing agents than football, but it just doesn’t have that same feeling. Look at it this way, Eugene has a population of roughly 145,000 and Anchorage has a population of roughly 275,000, but in terms of small town sports atmosphere Anchorage has Eugene beat hands down.
When the stoplight finally changed we found a parking space that was semi-close to where we needed to be. Flint, Bobby, and I were meeting Justin and Kevin Kern at the Visitors Center on Spenard. We were looking for some things to see around town, and just get the flavor of Anchorage. I thought I had finally found the flavor of Anchorage, and this time it wasn’t a spoof. The flavor of Alaska was, get ready for this people, snow globes, key chains that looked like Alaska license plates with peoples names on them, and screen printed Alaska t-shirts.
As Justin, Kevin, Flint, Bobby, and I walked out of the Visitors Center my chin was just a little bit higher than everybody else’s. There was a little feeling of accomplishment that washed over me. Kevin had a couple of places he wanted to show us that were close by. He was going to show us a creek where people fish, and to The Ulu Factory.
With the new found confidence, and the time to take a little break from discovery, I decided talk to Justin about how his summer was going. He said it was going fine. That he had been dong landscaping with Trevor Johnson (former Generals forward), and giving him the rookie treatment, even though he Trevor had started working three days after Justin. He did have one complaint, however. Justin explained that the last few weeks had been, in his words, brutal. The work wasn’t that bad, but the weather was unbearable. He said that he had been sweating non-stop for three weeks. I was curious. How hot did it have to be in Alaska for the Alaskans to qualify it as “unbearable”? This curiosity prompted me to ask. Justin, in all seriousness, said that there had been a heat wave, and it had been “like 85 degrees every day.” I just laughed to myself. Well, I don’t want to lie; I laughed at him some too.
We walked by the creek, and saw a few guys trying for the big catch, but I was notified that the run hadn’t started yet. Kevin gave me a quick run-down of how fishing works at the creek. He described how you could see thousands of fish making their way upstream to breed, and there would be hundreds of people fighting for their chance to end the dreams of those fish. He also made it clear that fighting wasn’t a metaphor. People would be bunched up less than a foot a part trying desperately to gain the best ground. All of this is taking place in the mud by the way. He told me of instances where people have actually gotten into fistfights over infractions that occur while fishing. Those infractions include, but are not limited to, 1) cutting someone’s line while a fish is on, 2) sealing a fish that has already been caught by someone else, and 3) cutting everybody else’s line when you have a fish on to ensure your fish is caught. I know these may seen like minor instances, but in the Anchorage fisherman’s code these are big no-no’s. Just a block away from the creek; we came to The Ulu Factory. We were greeted kindly by a girl who looked like she was a Native Alaskan. I’m not being a racist, or making any presumptions about this particular girl, but I can put two and two together. This girl gave us a quick rundown about the history of the ulu, and gave us a brief demonstration of how the ulu worked. She then gave us a tour of the small factory. I had been keeping a running tab in my head, and decided to add a few more things to flavor of Alaska list. I already had constant sun, cars, houses, hockey, snow globes, key chains that looked like license plates, and screen printed Alaska t-shirts. I could now add two more. Fishing and ulus.
The next day Bobby, Flint, and I decided we wanted to experience first hand one of the flavors of Alaska. We pondered whether it should be shaking snow globes, making our own personalized Alaska license plate key chains, trying on screen printed Alaska t-shirts, or halibut fishing. We all had our hopes set on shaking snow globes for the entire day, but Randy MacMillan offered to take us halibut fishing out of Homer. As we were driving to Homer, Randy wanted to show us something. Little did I know that the stop would give me a little more insight to one of my original questions. Randy pulled his truck over in the parking lot of a gorgeous ice rink in a tiny town called Soldotna. I’d heard of it because Ben Tikka and Matt Vasilie, my two billet sons, were from Soldotna. What I didn’t know is that two neighboring towns, Soldotna and Kenai, with a combined population of 3,000 people could produce a rink that looked like it should belong in a population of a couple hundred thousand. This was one more piece of knowledge that further cemented that there truly is a rink in every tiny town in Alaska. Little did I know that it wouldn’t be the only confirmation I would get that day. The rink was down for maintenance when we stepped in, but we did get to look around a little bit. We all stepped onto what should have been ice and looked up at some of the banners along the wall. On these Squirt and Pee-Wee banners we saw a couple of familiar names. Names like Cristiano and Bossert. At that moment everything kind of hit me. This was the rink where some of our players first stepped onto the ice. This was the rink where they honed the skills that eventually landed them in Eugene. This was a rink with history. After that brief revelation Randy let us know that we better hit the road, so we did.
One moose spotting and a couple of near death experiences later we found ourselves driving down the spit in Homer. Homer seemed like a quaint fishing town that was engulfed in mountains, and on the edge of the water. To our left I spotted a fairly large building. I happened to read the sign in front, and to my amazement it was a rink. I couldn’t believe there was a hockey rink on a spit. This blew my mind, but I was just going with the flow now. We pulled up to the docks, and met our captain for the day. He went on to inform us that we were the first people he would be captaining, and that this was the first time he had taken Jedi (the name of his boat, which Flint, our token geek on the trip got a huge kick out of) out on the water since he left the blowers on and sunk it in the docks. Needless to say, we were feeling pretty safe out on the water.
An hour later, we all had our lines in the water. We hadn’t gotten any bites yet, but we weren’t drowning. It seemed like a pretty good day so far. Being the competitive ex-hockey players that we all are, we started kicking around the idea of a bet. Everybody throws in ten bucks and the first person to catch a fish takes the pot. I, as a poor college student/Generals employee, jokingly asked why we don’t make it fifty or a hundred. All the guys took their turns giving me the sarcastic baby whine, but as they did something spectacular happened. My line began to bounce. As it did, the manliness in started to come out. I reeled as hard as I could. I reeled and reeled and reeled. The manliness started to fade. I kindly asked the captain how freaking far down my line was, and he replied a hundred feet. The manliness was gone. I started to turn the fierce reeling into calm methodical reeling. I finally was able to get the fish to the surface in what seemed like an hour. As I did, I started to regret talking about the bet jokingly. I should have stepped up and been confident. I guess it was my loss.
A few hours later, with arms like Jell-O, and about 12 fish between us, we decided to call it a day. I had the first fish of the day, but we hadn’t heard the end of Flint’s catch-o-the-day. This monster was unparalleled. A halibut without compare. A fish that was so great it grows every time the story is told. Even though it was about 600 lbs. lighter than the record, I’m not sure if we’ll ever hear the end of it. After a few more near death experiences and some highway horror stories we found ourselves back in Anchorage, and I found myself pondering the journey. I felt like I had experienced the true Alaska. I had gotten two steps closer to my hypothesis that there is a rink in every tiny town, and I was exhausted. The next couple of days would be no walk in the park either. Tryout Camp started tomorrow.