Day One in Fairbanks

You know it's a different climate when the airport shuttle driver refers to temperatures of 30 below as normal. He went as far to say that he doesn't consider it cold until the mercury drops 40 below.

The day started with a 6:00 a.m. EST wake up in Ann Arbor. Now, it is 8:30 p.m. AST, and I am sitting on the bed in my hotel room in Fairbanks (no, not Fairbanks, Indiana or Louisiana).

Overall, it was an uneventful travel day. The lone negative was my seating location, but even that wasn't horrible. I had a middle seat for eight hours of flight time.

At the Charles Lindbergh Terminal, I was forced to compromise on one of my meal-eating tenets. I tried to order a tuna sub at the airport's Quizno's (their subs are good because their are toasty, they also have a pepper bar), but the woman at the counter said that they didn't serve tuna. Given my location in line, the selection the restaurant offered, and the amount off time I had before my connecting flight, I ordered a veggie sub (gasp). What kind of sub shop doesn't offer tuna?

I slept on my first flight (Detroit to Minneapolis). On the second flight, I sat in between a guy who just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq and 27-year old Minnesotan, who is returning to Alaska after spending the last two months with her ill mother. We were a pretty chatty group. We probably talked (or shmoozed) for the first hour and a half of the flight before I decided that I needed to get some work done on my computer. Popular topics of conversation:

• Fishing
• Alaska
• Minnesota
• Michigan
• Arkansas
• Drinking
• Cars

Awkward moment from the flight:

While sleeping on the second flight, I suddenly noticed that my chair was falling from behind me. I awoke to realize that the people sitting around me reclined my chair and provided me with a pillow. It turns out that I was leaning back and forth while sleeping (shuckling), and they did it so that I wouldn't have a stiff neck in the morning. Nonetheless, it was a little awkward.

We got off the plane in Fairbanks and hopped on the hotel shuttle that was conveniently waiting for us. Instead of salting the roads to remove the ice, they put gravel on the roads. I don't know the exact reason, but I can speculate that it has to do with the temperature, the environmental impact of salting roads, and the cost.

For dinner, Nate and I went to the restaurant that was named the region's best Italian and Mediterranean restaurant. It was pretty good. One of the items on the menu was called the "mother of all lasagnas." Unfortunately for my taste buds, this iteam contained sausage that prevented me from eating it. I settled for an eggplant parmasean, which ended up being a massive portion.

After eating, we explored a little bit of downtown Fairbanks, but neither of us were dressed to go on any intense adventures in town. We weren't wearing long underwear, and I didn't have my boots on.

We came across this eskimo statue in the center of town. Little did we know, but this photo was taken by a member of one of Fairbanks most prominent families, or at least a member whose name is on a plaque in this park in the middle of town.

Across the street from the park is the regional court house. Although there are just 70 Jewish families in Fairbanks, we know that they are making an impact on life in the city.

If you can't read this, it says "Rabinowitz Courthouse."

After our tour of the town, we returned to the hotel. A couple of hours later, Amber, another member of the hockey beat, arrived.