On Thursday, March 30th, I skipped my last class of the day and headed to the Dallas Ft. Worth airport with Bubbles. We were off to Alaska to see Igloo get married! What made it even more fun was that Igloo didn’t know we were coming. We met Abu, Aduma, Randy, Igloo’s family, Susanna’s friend Kara, and a very surprised Igloo at the airport in Anchorage. Then, we went to Igloo’s house where we stayed up way too late talking. It was great to be back together with that group of 41ers.
The next day we went out hiking around the area where Igloo used to live. Antares, one of Igloo’s friends from Anchorage came with us. At one area we found a particularly steep hill with deep snow, and Igloo and Antares decided to teach us about “Dive Rolls.” Dive Rolls were something they invented because they were too poor to go skiing. You basically throw yourself forward onto the slope in a sort of front flip/somersault and then as soon as your feet hit the ground you spring them back out again. This results in an incredibly stupid looking flopping movement down the hill. It looked so dumb that the rest of us almost didn’t do it. But, after some discussion, we decided to anyway. It was incredibly fun!
After that, we picked up Sean (another one of Igloo’s Alaskan friends), traveled to a remote location, tromped through some snow around a creek bed, and shot guns. Before this, I’d only shot a .22 a few times, so it was something of an experience. I started with a .22 lever action, but also got to try out a 12-gauge shotgun and a .44 magnum revolver (which had some serious kick to it). We would have stayed longer, but it we were already going to be late for the wedding rehearsal.
The wedding was beautiful. I still can’t believe that Igloo is really married; just a year ago, I was rooming with him! Many congratulations to both him and Danae!
Abu and Randy were groomsmen, and Aduma, Bubbles an I played the part of fire-wielding ushers. Danae wanted each family that came in to have a lit candle to place on the steps to the stage, signifying their involvement in the wedding. I lit the candles, and Aduma and Bubbles showed people where to place them.
We did our best to decorate their getaway car. There were several enormous balloons (36 inch diameter!) that nobody seemed to know what to do with, so we stuffed them in the car. We also put smaller balloons, ribbons, and flower petals inside, and did some work with dry-erase markers.
Before long, the happy couple was off to go to their honeymoon, which Igloo said was going to be Quebec to hunt alligators and elephants. The pastor said he knew where they were really going, but wasn’t allowed to tell.
While we were driving back to the house with Igloo’s dad, he stopped alongside a mountain to let us look around, briefly. Of course, we couldn’t leave it at that, and climbed all the way up to where an avalanche had come through. Great view.
He also drove us part of the way up Mt. Baldy and said we had a few minutes to look around there as well. Just like before, we took a lot longer than we were supposed to, but it was well worth it. We followed a trail up to a radio tower with an impressive view. Instead of following the trail back down, we noticed there was a rather steep incline that lead almost straight back down to the car. Why walk when you can slide?
Sunday was our last day there, and we were really hoping to be able to climb a mountain. But, after we’d been to church and eaten an amazing meal at the house of one of Igloo’s relatives, there just wasn’t enough time to fit it in. But, we still wanted to climb something, so Antares and Peter took us to a butte close to where we we had eaten. They started to lead us up the trail, but it was really flat and easy, so Bubbles had the great idea of just going straight up to the top instead of following any trail. That made the journey significantly more interesting. There were a number of reasonably dangerous places where slipping could have had bad consequences. Climbing up slippery snow, or trying to hold onto rocks with moss on them while your fingers are numb is difficult. I’m definitely glad we went that way though; it was great!
After the obligatory summit photos, we started back down. We didn’t go the way we came, but we didn’t follow the trail on the way down either. Instead we ended up in someone’s pasture for a while, climbed through barbed-wire fences, went through some woods, and then got back on the trail.
Awesome day.
Awesome trip.
Hi there. My name is Curtis Hawthorne, but most of my friends call me Fjord.