About 2 a.m. at the News-Miner, I was fiddling with the new Web site (which is up and running today: http://www.newsminer.com/), when the long-silent walkie talkie on the desk crackled to life, startling me.
Welcome to Interior Alaska.
As I said in my last post, there were some possibilities this past weekend, with my first patch of days off in a few weeks.
I didn't make it out to the hot springs or Birch Hill, but there was still fun to be had. I saw two flicks at Lacey Street Theatre, which just reopened as a moviehouse after spending the last few years as strictly an ice sculpture museum. They show classics for four bucks a ticket.
The theater is surrounded by high balconies where ice carvings are displayed in the summer (there's no point in keeping them inside at this time of year). Huge exhaust fans take up most of the ceiling and seriously disrupt the acoustic quality of the place, but it's worth the experience nonetheless.
The first movie I caught was "Breakfast at Tiffany's" with my friend Christi, a features writer at the News-Miner. We followed that with a mixed martial arts card at the Gold Rush Saloon.
Yeah, odd night. It was like flipping from Nicktoons to the Playboy Channel.
I enjoyed the MMA fights. The combatants weren't very polished, so the fights couldn't be classified as suspenseful and intriguing, but tense and instantly gratifying. Only one lasted the full three rounds, but all had at least 30 seconds of blow-for-blow brawling.
The combination of amateur fighting, booze and scantily clad ring girls literally made the air thick with male pheremones. "Did that place smell weird to you?" Christi asked me as we grabbed a bite afterward. "I think it was all the testosterone. I saw another girl look like she smelled something odd, too." I told her it was just the musk of any male locker room, but I honestly didn't even notice.
The next day, Adam and I tried to get our pictures taken by a -40 degree Farenheit sign in board shorts, but winter didn't comply. This was the best we could do:
With a pre-warmed car and a fully dressed cameraman (Rich), it was amazingly tolerable. I was apprehensive that day, but when -40 comes aound I'll be downright excited. I hear it takes five minutes for frostbite to set in at that temperature, which is plenty of time.
We followed that with "E.T." at Lacey Street, which was really the beginning of the Rich Larson Farewell Tour. He left Wednesday morning to see family in Minnesota before starting the Appalachian Trail in mid-February. He's following that with the Continental Divide Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail and a trail in New Zealand that had a few play-it-by-ear pathes in it.
So what did we do to send him out with a bang? Beer and Euchre for three nights with a sprinkling of NBA games and a pich of "Adult Swim." It needn't be more complicated than that.
I'll link to Rich's trail blog when I know the address.
Good luck, dude.
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