A Day in the Life

I'm sure you are all just a-flutter with wonder at what it is Caitlyn and I do all day, everyday. Well, climb aboard and I'll give you the inside tour.

This morning our start time in 6:30, which means we take the 6:00 shuttle into work - which is a rockin' 14 passenger van.

Once we clock in we begin with...PAPERWORK!

That's our 7 day log book, our graphing log (because we're working over 12.25 hours today), our DVIR (that's daily vehicle inspection report), and our insurance and fuel log binder.

Next come the vehicle inspection, 50+ points need to be checked as"OK" before we leave the yard.

Today we're driving 1207 which is a NICE bus! A/C works, great turning radius, air pressure builds quickly, and the PA system is clear. 

The driver area is looking great.

Thats 53 seats for those of you counting at home. 

Now that our coach is ready we head to the docks. Our first tour is off of CT (cruise-ship terminal), which is the worst dock. There's hardly any space and they're all pull through lanes, which means the coach in front of you has to leave before you can. This means we stage (bus term for waiting) in the Tram parking lot until the stars align and we can get a lane in CT.

That's CT in the mirror.

We wait.

We wait a little longer.

We finally get called over to the dock!

Now we pick up our passengers. Today we're doing a Grand Tour, and each tour is different, well, the tour isn't different, but the passengers are all different, which makes the tour feel different. Today our passengers are nice, but quite. They're not asking questions, but they laugh at the appropriate times and we can't ask for much more then that. 

We take them to the Mendenhall Glacier, here they have 70 minutes to hike and go to the visitor center. Meanwhile, we stage in the parking lot! 

This is when we hang out with the other drivers, eat, listen to music, call mom, or read. 

Once we pick our guests back up (hopefully they're all there, but it's not that uncommon to have to leave guests at the glacier), and head to Glacier Gardens. We love going here. We get a free drink, it's calming, and the guests always leave happy. In fact, we enjoyed it so much we didn't take any pictures!

Next we head to the Salmon Hatchery.
Here guests learn how salmon are spawned and because the salmon run started in July all those salmon are swimming upstream to return to the hatchery.

Yep, those are hundreds of salmon. They look disgusting because once they move from salt water to fresh water they begin to rot while they're still alive. Yum! 

Here we do a little more waiting. 

Then we load up and take our guests back to their ship! But our day's not done yet. We head back to the yard where we post-trip 1207 and pre-trip 7701, because we're doing half a day of Era Dogs. Era is a helicopter tour company, so we drive people back and forth for their tours. 

7701 is an RE (don't know what that stands for), and they look like hookey space buses. 

So many toggles. 

Era isn't very exciting for us because we spend so much time waiting for passengers, but we have no time to connect with them. And that's one of the most entertaining parts of the job, joking around with the guest who you've gotten to know after your 4.5 hours together. 

Another one of those dam Holland America ships (this is funny because all the HA ships end in -dam, so we call them our dam passengers, on our dam tours, at the dam dock, and everyone laughs).

Well, I hope you had fun on our tour today. If you have any questions feel free to ask me outside the bus and I'll do my best to answer. If you enjoyed it, my name is Amanda; and, if you didn't enjoy it, my name is Amy. 

Mendenhall Glacier

"Well folks, we are about to turn right onto Mendenhall Loop Road. Mendenhall Loop Road will take us to the Mendenhall Glacier which calves into the Mendenhall Lake, which flows into the Mendenhall River, which runs right by Mendenhall Elementary School all within the Mendenhall Valley. Any guesses of who Mr. Mendenhall is?

Mr. Thomas Mendenhall never stepped foot in Alaska. Turns out Mr. Mendenhall was a scientist who had a friend kind enough to name a beautiful glacier after him. Subsequently, we named everything around here after him. He also was a huge proponent of switching Americans to the metric system."

Being a bus driver with a different captive audience every day, I rarely have to switch up my material - another blessing of my current life.

Photo credit: Russ Garner

The glacier is really cool though, honestly. It's about 12 miles long, and is one of 140 glaciers in the Juneau Ice field. Alaska is home to more than half of the world's glaciers. 1 foot of glacier ice (30.48 cm if Mr. Mendenhall had had his way) is made from about 100 feet of snowfall. Its density is why the blue light rays cannot be absorbed, and we see a blueish tint. It is receding at about 150 feet a year though, so get here soon.

The glaciers in Alaska are very accessible. On Friday I was able to walk TO the glacier, walk ON the glacier, walk UNDER the glacier, walk IN the glacier. Here are some photos of the glacier, now that we're here at the visitor's center.

First time stepping ON a glacier. We don't usually hold hands.

Mendenhall Glacier Ice Caves

Glaciers are slippery, and we are graceful dames.

View from the visitors center

First Tour - Done!

Yesterday I gave my first tour. I had 38 passengers who needed to get to a harbor 20 miles away, and needed to know many ridiculous things about Juneau. Turns out I'm just the boy for the job. They were lovely people, laughed at the jokes I fumbled my way through, and enjoyed their whale-watching adventure (who wouldn't?). I took them back to their ship, and no one was killed on my watch- SUCCESS! Amandass is giving her first tour as we speak, and she will do great. I made my coworker who was parked with me take this picture at the marina. Thanks Mr. Pasterino.

We have had beautiful weather this week, and I even got a sunburn! It's been a slower week as far as cruise ships go, so I've been able to do marvelous things. Many hikes, walks, and wanders, and today I went canoeing in Tea Bay, ate lunch on a small island, saw a few whales breech in the same inlet we were in, and had a seal swim at us. I can hardly believe people dare live anywhere else, until September at least. 

A City Built On History

Hello all! This is Amandass checking in.

Juneau is painfully beautiful. I don't know how Alaskans get anything done, because all I want to do is stand in awe and marvel at the scenery. I could throw a rock from my current location at the public transit stop and hit Mt. Juneau. (If I knew how to throw a rock, that is, but we all know I'm too pretty for that.)
The downtown city of Juneau is built on top of old mine pilings, which were massed at the base of the mountains. Access to most of the houses are by steep stairways leading through the brush.

~ Caitlyn on the walkways in Downtown ~  

~ Historic Downtown Juneau ~ 

ATTN: I was just mistaken for a local! I never knew how much I wanted this feeling until just now. It must have been the xtratufs.

Caitlyn, Jillian, Suzette (a new and charming addition to our little family), and I have all settled into our room at Frontier Suites. Caitlyn and I share a bed - Yes, I'm sleeping with my High School Prom Queen *fist bump* - The lesbian jokes will never get old. 

We're all slowly learning the ins-and-outs of our tour destinations. Glacier Gardens: Excellent muffins. Statter Harbor: Watch out, those fishermen are mean sons-of-bitches. Shuttle Duty: The Worst. 

We are anxious for the coming days, when we will be given full control of our buses and passengers. I would say it will be a trial by fire, but storm clouds are much more likely, instead we will have a trial by downpour. 

I'll leave you with two of my favorite quotes from the week:

"Alaska has long been a magnet for dreamers and misfits, people who think the unsullied enormity of the Last Frontier will patch all the holes in their lives." - Jon Karkauer

and

"There are only three ways into Juneau: ferry, plane, or birth canal." - Erik Roeser (Returning Driver Guide, Bearded Viking, Bread Maker, Heart Breaker.)

A Temperate Rainforest

We live in a rainforest. Turns out it rains here, and all the cool kids wear waterproof everything. I thought the fashion was a little different than that of the "Lower 48" (a phrase I have now heard 432 times), but it turns out people just don't care about fashion here, just being warm and dry. Perfect for me. It is impossible to overestimate the percentage of Alaskans who own and wear "Xtratufs", the stylish boots pictured below. I will purchase mine as soon as I can find my way to Alaska's version of IFA.

I think the lack of vowels in the name really authenticates the boots.

So, like I was saying, it's a rainforest. Downtown Juneau butts up right next to two amazingly steep and beautiful mountains, which trap the clouds until they release all their moisture onto our heads, streets and xtratufs. Yearly precipitation is over 90 inches. However, if you take a stroll up to the Mendenhall Valley, only 8 miles away, precipitation is about 50 inches. Now we understand why the Tlingit natives in Mendenhall valley were so willing to let our white miners settle the area. 

The greater Juneau area houses about 31,000 people. Only 3,000 live in Downtown Juneau, another 3,000 live across the Gastineau Channel on Douglas Island, and the rest live in Mendenhall valley. I will join them in  the valley tomorrow, when I move into my real hotel. Yes. Someone changes my linens twice a week. My life is SOOOO hard.

Today I went on a waltz around Juneau. I insta-ed this picture whilst wandering. 

Yes, those are icicles hanging from the moss covered rocks.

Clearly Juneau is beautiful. You should come sometime. I'll give you a ride in my motorcoach. 

Today we were issued this beautiful uniforms. When I suggested to Amandass we should try them on and take a picture, she acted like she had just been waiting for someone to ask her to do that very thing, and jumped to action.

Well, after an amazing layover and adventure in Seattle, we flew into Juneau. We are currently staying at a hotel in "downtown Juneau" but it is not the hotel we will land in. Downtown is wonderful, and we shall certainly tell you more about that soon. When we arrived, we found all the high school students in our lobby- turns out our home was the site of the local PROM. Yes, we've already been to Prom. We are the coolest kids in town. We looked fantastic with all our our luggage and definite signs of a full day of traveling.

We met our dear roommate Jillian, who will certainly be a regular cast member of the blog, as we solidified today that she will be our roommate at the long term hotel in "the valley." Sunday we went to stake conference, then joined Jillian and her friend Eric, who gave us a great walking tour of the city and introduced us to many of our coworkers who are grand.

Today was our orientation day with the tour bus company, and a fanastic Family Home Evening with the local singles branch. Sidenote- we went with some coworkers, and literally tripled the number of attendees. The ward seems so welcoming and fun, and we played some pretty awesome volleyball (they have polynesains, so it was good). I'm now exhausted and going to bed, but hopefully more updates will come soon!