DSL working, town, airport

I just got the DSL internet access working in my Talkeetna cabin. The local phone company seems to be another monopoly, as they charge for bandwidth in excess of 10GB per month, something unheard of in Louisville. Their pricing information can be found here.

It's a misnomer to call this place a cabin. Though it looks like a cabin on the outside, it's more like a small house, with 800 square feet of living space on two floors.

There was lots of work getting things moved in, trying to find a place for everything. Tomorrow I have to go back to Anchorage to get the RAV4 serviced (30K already!). After the car is serviced I'm going to have a major grocery and WalMart shopping adventure to get this place stocked.

I don't have a television, and don't plan to get one. I'm one of those people that turns on the tv and then doesn't get much else done, and that's not going to happen here.

The people that lived here before sold their furniture and kitchen goods to the landlords, so I'm very lucky that the place is mostly stocked. The only things that don't seem to be supplied are a coffee maker and a microwave. I think I'll try to do without a microwave.

I started walking at least an hour every day when I got here. On today's trek I found the rivers on the other side of town, walked across the train bridge, and saw a long trail along the train tracks on the other side of the bridge. Tomorrow I'm also going to pick up a mountain bike so I can start riding every day.

The town is incredibly small, but packs plenty of charm. You can walk a circle around the whole town in 20 minutes, tops, at least the downtown area.

Technically I live in "east Talkeetna", an area that's over the railroad tracks to your right as you drive into town. It's about a 10-minute walk from downtown, a 5-minute walk from the cemetary, and just a 2-minute walk from the local airport.

So far I actually love living next to the airport. I like the buzzing sounds of the planes, and I like to walk over there and just watch them take off and land. They're all small prop-driven planes, with the exception of one small jet that I haven't seen take off or land yet. I think Talkeetna is the "airplane gateway to Denali", or something like that, and I look forward to learning more about it.