After a late flight from Fairbanks I barely made my connection, but all is well and I have arrived in King Salmon (see map) where I will be spending a couple of days observing delivery of an Introduction to Mining course that happens to be the same course we are developing for distance delivery at CDE.

I am staying at SAVEC, the training center where the class will be held. SAVEC’s Director gave me a ride from the airport and showed me around a bit. So far it looks like just me and a few restless students alternating their time between watching old Star Trek episodes and going outside to smoke. The instructor was supposed to be on my flight in but didn’t make it in time so I guess he’ll be on the morning flight…

Speaking of which, I’ve never flown in a plane with less room to sit. I’ve flown in a lot of small planes– the smallest having just two seats behind the pilot’s own– but never have I actually had to pull my legs up so that my knees are near my chin! There were 15 seats altogether (I strapped my messenger bag with computer into one), none of them designed to seat people over 5-9″ or so. I’m used to my Buddha Belly taking up too much space, but I’ve never had the privilege of feeling like a tall person at my “lofty” 6-foot zero!

Spent the last week in Palmer and Wasilla attending the Alaska State Cup Soccer tournament with the kids. A few years ago I enjoyed the camping so much (the kids stay with their grandparents in Wasilla) that I decided to do so again… would have been a lot more fun if it hadn’t rained pretty much the entire time I was there. And note to self: when camping in a tent in high-wind areas, tent stakes are incredibly useful items… your own mass may be enough to keep the tent from blowing away, but it usually means that you won’t be able to leave the tent until the wind dies down (no matter how much nature might be calling).

Palmer and Wasilla aren’t much to speak of, though the scenery is nice. A few pleasant discoveries though:

• Vagabond Blues Coffee and Cafe in Palmer has good coffee, wi-fi, a pleasant atmosphere for sitting and enjoying a book, and various baked goodies. It was the only one of dozens of coffee shops that had all these necessary features.
• Books, Inc. is a happy, cluttered used bookstore in Wasilla that has some incredible deals on vintage paperbacks, genre fiction (especially sci-fi), history and a little of everything else.
• Mat Valley Meats has a wide variety of home-made sausages… the jalapeno brats and the Lanjaeger dried sausage are almost worth the 650 mile round-trip drive.
• Last, but certainly not least, The Pasty Factory (discovered wholly by accident) is the only maker of traditional English pasties I’ve seen in Alaska, and they are great for pretty much any meal.

Yes, that’s our long-term Senator proposing a “compromise” on net-neutrality that removes that whole, pesky neutrality thing. Alaska is already well behind the curve in network services– Uncle Ted seems content to drive us back to the stone age (as long as his pockets and those of his cronies are lined properly, why should he care?).

The precedent would certainly make a lot of legislation easier. Imagine how much easier it would be to legislate gun control if the control aspects were removed and immigration if we don’t deal with immigrants?