ASRA Day 1–Travel

Okay, I am now at ASRA. I will try to keep up my blog, but when I have no internet I won’t be able to keep everything up-to-date in real time.

My day started off fairly well. I got up at 5, finished packing, then rushed off to the airport. I said goodbye to everyone, then got on the plane. The other four people on my flight didn’t show up, so I was the only one. I sat up front with the pilot and got good views of the glaciers.

I checked in at the Juneau Airport and checked my bags. I was bringing a ridiculous amount of stuff, with a large duffle plus my backpacking pack, plus my computer bag. My excuse was that I brought camera gear and camping gear and three pairs of shoes, on request from my instructors.

It was now 10, and since my flight left at 12:30, I headed up to security. But security was closed. So I sat around and waited for them to open it. The monitor said my plane was 30 minutes late. Finally at 12, 5 minutes after my plane was originally supposed to load, they opened security.

Inside security I found a seat and waited. Now my plane had been delayed until 1:50, and I was almost going to miss my connection. At 1:30, they announced that it was delayed till 3, then till four.

The desk changed my connection, to a later flight. Then the plane was delayed until five, which would get me there 5 minutes after the flight left. But since most of Southeast Alaska’s ASRA kids were on that plane, they were going to try to hold it. Finally, after seven hours of waiting, they let us get on the plane. In Anchorage they let us run over to the plane and we were able to get on.

In the left hand picture, it almost appears we are flying over a glacier, if you look closely at the lower left-hand corner. Click to expand.

We got to the ASRA campus and had dinner and got checked into our rooms. Since I was in a remote module, I was in a different dorm building. Our dorm was fancier, with a keypad entry to our rooms and even bedside tables. After playing some games, we all went to bed at around 11.