1st day BC (Bob's Couch)

Sorry it’s been so long, guys, but life’s pretty busy right now. Until today, that is. Long story short: late night, late rise, comfy seating, “Top Chef” marathon. So yeah, I was on hangover cruise control and in the perfect situation to reflect on the past two weeks.

But enough about now, let’s start where I left off: my first morning in Fairbanks.

I woke to the whistling of the 7:30 to Anchorage passing about six blocks to the north. I hoped this was a rarity, but if it runs this early on Labor Day, I doubted tomorrow it would be any different.

The coffee table was littered with Sports Illustrateds and Rolling Stones. I picked up an early-August Stone and leafed through it for a few hours. The only bathroom in the house was connected to a bedroom that Bob was renting out to another copy editor, so I didn’t want to rouse him too early. I was halfway through an article about “To Catch a Predator,” when a shirtless Bob ambled into the bathroom, and I was secure that it wouldn’t be rude to use it next.

Refreshed and eager to spend a day away from the highway, I walked to Cushman Street (the main downtown road) to grab a coffee and some wireless Internet to begin my house search. Bob assured me I could stay as long as I want, but I didn’t want to stay long. Along with the Alaskan Railroad wake-up calls, I was 2 inches taller than the couch I was sleeping on and my luggage was still mostly in my Kia. I also had six boxes waiting in the News-Miner’s darkroom that I was eager to unpack.

I found a place called McCafferty’s (the “Caffe” was in a different color) on Cushman next to City Hall. No wireless Internet, but there were pretty girls behind the counter so I stayed for a cup of apple cider.

I asked the girls if they knew of good places to live. One still lived with her parents. The other was a University of Alaska-Fairbanks student from Anchorage, a good background for my query, but she suggested renting someone’s basement or a dry cabin (I.e., no running water). She then masterfully mixed two packets of apple cider flavoring into hot water. Oh well, they were still pretty.

With no leads, I grabbed the classifieds from a News-Miner floating around the coffeehouse and decided my first course of action should be to walk the town and survey what constitutes the “wrong side of the tracks.” I’m looking for a cheap place, but it’s not cheap if TV gets stolen once a month.

One of the first things I noticed about Fairbanks is how ugly some of the homes and apartments are. Chipped paint, filthy windows, rusty gutters. It’s not that they’re bad places, though. So much money goes into insulation, pipes that can stand the cold and comprehensive heating systems that painting and outside aesthetics are usually the last item on a landlord’s budget. Besides, no matter how you decorate your house, it won’t stand up to -50 degrees for long, so you have to redecorate almost every summer, when it will then have to withstand 20 hours of sunlight for a month. Plus, most apartments are former military barracks or miner’s camps stacked upon each other, made for efficiency and warmth instead of looks.

By the way, the weather was very pleasant. I left with a sweatshirt on in the morning, but once the sun shone through, I was walking around town in just a tee shirt and jeans.

After reaching my limits on foot, I returned to Bob’s and met Rich, the copy editor who lives there. He’s a semi-earthy guy, an odd balance of granola-crunching hiker and beer-chugging sports fanatic. At 35, he’s hiked the Appalachian Trail and two other major American trails but his biggest accomplishment is yet to come. He’s leaving in January to hike through the New Zealand mountains and rehike the three American ones in record pace. He has no problem living without modern technology for months at a time.

But that’s hard to tell when you meet him in an urban setting. He scarfs down instant dinners and is constantly zoned into the TV. He’s a Minnesotan, so his “outs” are “oots.” And despite his 6-foot-5, 220-pound build, he has a mousey voice that takes a few conversations to get attuned to.

Still unsure of when I was starting my job, Rich took me to human resources. We agreed on a tentative starting date of Wednesday (two days from then). The office was sparsely populated, since the paper tries to work as few people as possible on Labor Day, but I met the metro editor, Rod Boyce, and Gary, a copy editor from Houston whom I quizzed on the phone before taking the job.

I walked back to the house and jumped in the Kia to explore more of the town. I’ve always figured the best way to learn a place is to get lost in it, and that’s exactly what I did. I curled around the north end of town on College Road to UAF, which sits on a hill on the northwest side, overlooking downtown Fairbanks on one end and the mountains on the other.

I found the local grocery chain, Safeway, and grabbed some Banquet meals and laundry detergent. Navigating my way out of the parking lot was a chore, and I accidentally exited into an apartment complex parking lot. It was Executive Apartments, a place I had scoped out in Bradenton, so I stopped and knocked on the door. The place was overpriced and the stairwell smelled of urine, likely a nighttime shelter for a bum getting out of the cold. I was worried that this was the norm.

After finding my way back to Bob’s, I lit up a cigar, cracked open a Hamm’s and combed the classifieds.