How I Became Louis Theroux and Wished I Hadn't (Part II)

They're not wrong. Immediately following the Socorro trip (read this first if you haven't already), I went directly to Anchorage, de facto captial of the great state of Alaska, or at least tried to. What actually happened was that I got stuck circling Dallas before the plane was finally diverted to Austin, owing to a storm. It then sat there for about an hour before flying back to Dallas, by which point, again, all of the flights to my next destination were not running.

Quick ! Someone call Bill Murray !

Here it gets slightly worse than before, because this time I was sent to Seattle to await an early morning flight. The flight arrived at 2am with the next one leaving at 5:30, so I had to hang around in the airport drinking strong, revolting coffee. And, since for no good reason I'd gotten very little sleep the night before, I reckon I spent about 48 hours awake.

DAMN YOU SENTIENCE. 

DAMN YOU.

Eventually I stumbled off the plane having no more than a few brief, mild flirtations with unconsciousness and miraculously arrived at my hotel. Of course, my luggage didn't. So after about 5 hours of glorious unawareness, I made a sojourn of Anchorage wearing only the shorts and T-shirt I arrived in. At 14 C, the weather was a tad brisk for shorts, especially considering the 20 degree difference with Socorro. Mercifully my luggage arrived intact and unharmed a few hours later.

I then proceeded to find a random bar to drink in, whereupon I at once resumed my unwilling role of imitating Louis Theroux. This time the guy was neither particularly crazy nor gay (but don't worry, dear readers, much more of them to come). He just decided for no particular reason to recommend me the best strip clubs in town. Which I think I could be bloomin' well forgiven for visiting given the previous week's escapades, but I didn't.

You may think the above an unremarkable tale. Just you wait.

The next day I explored Anchorage properly attired. Personally, I really like the place. Anywhere where you can see snow-covered mountains in June is a good place in my book. And compared to Arecibo it's a cultural mecca. You can walk to places. You can catch a bus. Heck, you can buy a life-sized model of a bear, although if you do you'd better really like bears, 'cos they cost $5,000.

There being a full two days before the AAS started, I booked some tours and visited the museum. It's pretty good, but Alaskan history is somewhat... uncomplicated by European standards. From what I learned, it was a two-stage process :
1) The Russians found it
2) The Americans bought it off them
You can see why there's not a lot of material for a museum to work with. As for the native tribes, as far as I can tell all they've done is quietly mind their own business for ten thousand years, which is wonderful but not exactly material for a Hollywood blockbuster.

Actually, I do have one idea for exhibits. Republicans. The state is full of them. You could put them in a display case with a button that offers them a beer if they'll say something right-wing. I met a bona fide, died-in-the-wool Republican in a bar that night, the kind that says things like, "I'm not a birther, but I don't think Obama was born in this country." Riiiight. He wasn't a racist as far as I could tell, just reeeeally anti-socialist. As in, the kind who feels the need to state entirely randomly : "Obama's a COMMUNIST !" (yes, he literally did that). Perhaps more surprisingly, he was also firmly against W's war's in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I actually saw this stuck to the back of a car.

Having nothing better do that evening, I threw myself into the role and pointed out that America is only 200 years old, so why does it matter where Obama was born ? His defence was the Constitution, though no-one trusts medical textbooks from 200 years ago so I'm not sure why old political documents are held in such high esteem. So I asked him if someone who has become an American citizen later in life has any more claim to be American than one by birth, to which he didn't really have an answer.

That brings me to the tours. Surprisingly, this is firmly in-keeping with the mad Republican theme. The first tour was a day cruise to see 26 glaciers, which was spectacular but I suspect readers will care far more about the second day. This involved a tram ride up Mt Alyeska, a short boat trip where we smashed through ice to try to reach Portage glacier, and a trip to a wildlife refuge. Our tour guide for the day was Sarah Palin's older sister.

No, it wasn't a different Sarah Palin. Yes, it really was her older sister, I looked her up on the internet afterwards. Regardless of whether Sarah Palin is truly as insane as the creature portrayed in media myth, her older sister is outright lovely, and a damn fine tour guide too. I'd recommend her, but I'm sure she'd rather get on with her job and doesn't want to be defined by being someone else's relative. I only found out about this rather remarkable genealogy as the discussion came around to the fact that you really can see parts of Russia from parts of Alaska :

ME : "So, Sarah Palin wasn't lying then ?"
GUIDE : "No she wasn't, and she's my younger sister. But she never actually said that..."

I then kept very quiet indeed for the next 30 minutes.

She then proceeded to complain about the famous Tina Fey impersonation and the whole media coverage of Sarah Palin, which is perfectly understandable given that it's her sister. To her huge credit, this small incident didn't affect the rest of the day at all. Wonderful lady.

Thence we arrive at the conference, which as conferences go was not all that great. However, the now established process of meeting weirdos in bars was about to reach its zenith, veering from the politically insane to the downright baffling with a man now known forever as Fractal Metaphors Guy.

Sadly, this man was not related in any way to Benoit B. Mandelbrot.

We had chosen to eat in a bar called Humpy's, which should have sounded alarm bells by itself. Alas, it didn't. This random guy approaches us and makes evident his lifelong desire to talk to astronomers, having also an ability to smell them out. I have only blurred memories of the evening, although a few choice phrases are burned indelibly into my brain :

"I don't believe in statistics. I mean, if something's already happened, then the chance it would happen must have been One Hundred Per Cent, right ?"
Yes, actually, he did pronounce the capital letters, somehow. And I pointed out that you can't predict the probability of something having already happened if you already know full well that it did, but this didn't seem to perturb him in any way.

".... fractal metaphors."
I deeply regret not remembering the context of this phrase. Their followed a discussion wherein we tried to understand what the hell it meant. Sadly, all we came up with is : ' a self-similar comparison that doesn't use 'like' or 'as'. '

"One day, you're gonna be soliloquising your wife's clitoris."
This was addressed directly at me while slapping me heartily on the back, a grim portent of the following evening. I guess he had apparently mistaken me for Al Swearengen, which is not an easy mistake to make. He knew an awful lot of long words, but didn't have much of a clue as to what most of them meant.

The next evening, annoyingly, the timeloop in which I had become entombed continued unabated. At every AAS there's a big unofficial party to which everyone (including the upper echelons, such as the AAS President) attends. For some reason, they're usually held in gay bars. Ah. One can see why this might cause me problems, though at the time I put down the previous week's incident to being no more than a surreal fluke.

Not so. Apparently, I'm an irresistible gay magnet. Not long after entering, despite talking to a girl at the time, two men in their 40's approach and use the old classic chat-up line of, "You are so HOT !". One of them  proceeds to try the other classic approach of the arm-around-the-shoulder technique, which proceeds for a few deeply disturbing moments into something approaching a back rub.

"How many drinks have you had ? TWO ?!? Ah, no wonder you're still straight."

With this declaration they left me alone with said girl, which, of course, resulted in a nothing, Which was still infinitely preferable to the alternative.

Two days later I went hiking on a 15,000 year old glacier, which was just about one of the best things I've ever done. And then I returned to Puerto Rico, via another 3 flights spread over 20 hours which I fear has permanently damaged me. Though not quite as much as the back rub. 

So, that's it. I lived for a week on top of a magma plume, hiked 7 miles up a mountain, saw bald eagles and humpback whales and Sarah Palin's sister, conversed with alien conspiracy theorists and ultra-Republicans, discovered I have worryingly strong gay sex appeal, and walked on a glacier. Oh, and I learned something about science too. Probably.