Last night as I tossed and turned, battling the sun setting at 11:40pm, I heard a loud bang. It could have been a firework. Maybe even a car back-firing…
No, it was a gun shot. Cool.
Then a few minutes later, another shot. Then another. And another.
I began to think several bizarre things.
1)”Stop making noise, I’m exhausted and desperate for sleep.”
2)”You have really bad aim. Or whatever you are shooting is The Terminator and will live forever”
3)”My anxiety level is raising with each shot, and therefore I would be a complete Nancy if I ever had to go to war”.
The rifle-shooting-anxiety-fest went on for almost TWO hours. That means I finally attempted to drift off around 2am… I had to wake up at 5am to get to my spin class at 6am. High-five Monday morning you kicked my butt.
The point of all this is that Alaska has some rather interesting behavior associated with it.
The local brewery embraces their quirky-ness with the slogan “Fairbanks. Where the people are Unusual and the Beer is Unusually Good.”
Case and point: Alaskan’s do things like, leaving several broken down cars in their yard, because where else should they go?
This is a place where you plug your car in during the winter because even your engine is upset with you for leaving the house. A place where Target is ONLY an 8 hour drive, and Chipotle has no meaning. A place where things called bunny boots are more common foot wear than flip flops or tennis shoes.
We say things like “The Lower 48”. We actually know when the solstice is and can reference the number of hours of daylight in every month of the year. They call it a “snow machine” not “snow mobile”. We don’t have spring, we have mud season.
I still have a lot of exploring to do, and I’m sure I am only scratching the surface of what Alaska-isms I will find…. But I thought I’d throw out some of the things that came to mind today, you know after the gun-shooting-heart-attack fright night I had 🙂
Hope you all had a great Monday!
tadwell 