Greetings from Anchorage!

After a short sweet Seattle waterfront run yesterday I headed to the airport and caught a nonstop flight north at nine p.m. The hours passed and the sky grew disorientingly lighter, until after eleven when my little window was full of bright white dawnlike sky over a snowtopped dark craggy mountainscape.

I landed to find one message on my mobile phone. It was my dad, frantically urging me to check the status of my expiring student health insurance. Quite the vote of confidence.

And here I am in my first Anchorage morning, pleasantly cool and cloudy. My classmate Nikki – who hatched this whole idea with me back in January, but has been living & training in Portland ever since – is due in at one. According to the Anchorage Daily News’s Alaska Weather page, which is found just after the articles “Rascally bears evict Denali campers” and “Bears? Wait till you see Kodiak bumblebees,” predicts a Saturday in the sixties, with intervals of clouds and sunshine. Hoo Rah. Two days to go.