Dan and I were heading west out of Whitehorse last evening when a message popped up on our Kenwood radio that said "Welcome Back!" It was from Eric and Steve miles away in Haines Junction. They had seen APRS* packets from Car 11 showing that we were once again underway....
... it just goes to show that sometimes all of that technology can have its warm and fuzzy side, too. Dan and I were touched. We started sobbing....then weeping....
OK, OK, none of that sobbing and weeping but we *were* touched.
Fantastic drive today up the Alaska Highway with the St. Elias Range on our left and with Denali ultimately looming ahead (I hope weather is good in AM as we pass!). Along the way we got to sample a great halibut burger at Fast Eddie's in Tok Junction (boy, did they crank out a bunch of burgers in quick time) and we got to gander the occasional moose.
Once in Fairbanks I got to meet Doug, a well-known Internet acquaintance ("tanstaafl" from the Empeg BBS) and got a taste of what may be the nicest-sounding car stereo in the world. Later I bumped into chief of scoring Pete Soper in the hallway and he waved a scoresheet at me that suggested that all of Dan's hard-fought AM battles with multiplication and division had been worth the effort. Boy, if we kept after this we could become half decent!.
Internet access has been sketchy for the past few days. What other random bits to say? Sisters, my call to the Captain (Our Father Who Art in Hyannis) was a bit scratchy as it came from Alcan organizer Jerry Hines' Iridium satellite phone. (Apparently the satellites have period bouts of depression related to sub-orbital self-esteem issues and the voice quality drops temporarily.) I just gave him lat and lon so that he's have his "Where's Waldo"-type navigation puzzle of the day. But yes I was standiing in Tuk, yes my right hand was freezing as I tried to keep from dropping the phone and yes (I swear!) there was a guy standing way out on the Beaufort ice with a Russian hat!
Jim
*APRS = Automatic Position Reporting System - a way to use radios (like our ham radio sets) in conjunction with GPS to send and receive position update messages.