Fairbanks
Tonight I’m in Fairbanks staying at a local hostel. So far everything is great. It turns out the buses don’t run after 6 or so (duh - what did I expect from a town of 30,000?) so I caught a taxi to the hostel. Once I arrived I met a nice traveller named Jenny who immediately loaned me her bike to get some groceries from the store! That’s terrific trust. Dinner from Taco Bell (desperate times call for desperate measures) and then later a few of us went out looking for beers. We found a small liquor store owned by Safeway that sells some of the local Alaska beer, took them back to a church lot and drank them under the midnight sun. It’s really disorienting.
On the walk back to the hostel we saw a car strangely screech to a stop in the road ahead, get out, and then tear off down the road past us. Upon further inspection it looked like they probably hit an animal, threw it in the bed of their pickup and took off. A meal? Something to stuff and mount? Who knows. While we were investigating, a second car came by and threw a pack of firecrackers at us. Nice. Then a *third* car came by and a bunch of probably drunken nuts leaned out the window yelling at us for no reason. I think the sun makes Alaskans a little loopy.
Tomorrow I’m going to try to figure out how to register for this 16 mile run on Sunday I learned about and got my coach’s approval to do - I’m super excited!