One Man's Alaska

Here's a 90-second video of a paraglider doing his thing in Hatcher Pass:

Unfortunately I only had my phone with me, and quickly ran out of storage space.

The paragliders took turns running/jumping off the mountain area to my left, which is right next to Summit Lake. They landed in the brown and red area down by the road, were picked up by a truck, and kept doing that for a while, taking turns.

Sorry folks, if you're interested in learning about Alaska, this is one of those "one off" posts where instead of sharing something about Alaska, I write about some technical thing I've done in Alaska. In this case I've created a software application I've named the "Cato CRUD Generator", and I thought I'd share an announcement here.

As I'm seriously thinking about moving back to the Lower-48 at the end of this year, I thought I'd make a list of things I'll miss about Alaska if I do leave:

Over the last few weeks I've been helping a friend and former neighbor get her new website launched. She owns a dog "pooper scooper" business in Wasilla, and was having some problems with her previous hosting company and website tools. We got her set up on Wordpress with a new hosting company, and the result is her new Valley Poop Patrol website.

Here are two photos I took during my "joy ride" on the Glenn Highway yesterday afternoon. As I may have mentioned yesterday, I took the afternoon off, hopped in my car here in Palmer, Alaska, and drove north along the Glenn Highway. This drive is probably my third-favorite drive in Alaska at this time, and here's why.

First, here's a view from a cliff on the side of the Glenn Highway. I'm not sure exactly where this was, but it was probably between mile markers 60 and 90:

I hate to even think about it, but with July 1st approaching tomorrow, there's a chance I could be entering my last ninety days as a resident of Alaska.

For those who don't live in Alaska, as you might guess, almost everything is more expensive here than in the Lower-48. A two-liter bottle of Coke is usually more than $2. I've seen a half-gallon of ice cream at $8. Cable internet access is $80 a month, and that's with a bandwidth cap, and without cable tv. Gasoline in Denali was over $5 a gallon when I was there last year, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's about $6 this year.

I'm sorry I haven't taken any time to write here in the last few weeks, but I've been very busy trying to get my Valley Programming business off the ground, and haven't taken the time to write at night.

I have, however, created a few "one minute videos", and shared them on YouTube, so I thought I'd take a few moments to share them here as well. First, here's a one-minute video from the Old Glenn Highway, just north of Palmer, Alaska:

I was going to create a dedicated web page for Palmer, Alaska hotels and lodging, like I've done for other towns in Alaska (see my Talkeetna lodging and Seward lodging pages), but since there are only two places I'd be willing to let family members stay at, I thought I'd just post them in a blog post here.

Today is the first day of the "Friday Flings" here in Palmer, Alaska. I road by the downtown Palmer area earlier today on my bicycle, and I have to say, the kettle corn smelled wonderful. It's 4:35pm as I write this, and I'll be walking back down there shortly to try some of the kettle corn and other food shortly.

In the meantime, here's a photo of the Palmer Friday Flings setup: