About a week and a half ago, Steph and I had the day off
together again. The day before, the Jons were able to get ahold of Sourdough
Rentals for us, so we could rent a car to go to Whitehorse!
While we were in the rental office, waiting for Steve to
hear back by phone from the owner about what our rental options were, an older
man walked into the office. Eighty if he was a day, long white beard, crooked
cane, big bone earrings, hat covered in little medals. He proceeded to chat
with Steve and us, and it seemed at first that he knew Steve, although it
eventually became clear that Steve didn’t actually know him, but that he had
just been by earlier that day as well. Weird! The guy was from New Zealand and
was here to surprise a friend in Anchorage whom he hasn’t seen in 24 years –
the friend doesn’t know he’s coming!
Anyway, when Steve got the owner on the phone, the old man
overheard that Steph and I were planning to go to Whitehorse on Thursday and asked
if he could get a ride. He “doesn’t need to go back, only to Whitehorse, not
back,” and could “chip in for petrol” and “could really use a ride.” Steph and
I were pretty uncomfortable with that, and made up an excuse about having a
full car. But this guy was very persistent! We could “stop by his hotel room in
the morning” to pick him up! In fact, even as we were leaving and telling him
that he would probably have to find another ride, he was still saying, “see you
in the morning”! Weird.
Well, Steph and I got the car (a minivan, which was all they
had left) Thursday morning without incident and headed out to Whitehorse,
without the old guy. The minivan’s speedometer didn’t work, so I never knew how
fast I was driving, but, you know, feelin’ out the road and all that. Made it
across the border, made it to Carcross (about two hours from Skagway and an
hour from Whitehorse), switched drivers, and got back on the road… only to blow
a tire a few minutes later! Actually, what happened was that without either of
us hearing the tire bust or driving over anything unusual, suddenly Steph lost
control of the wheel. Hilarious panic!Sho shouts, “what are you doing?!?” and hilarious panic!Steph temporarily
genuinely thinks she’s swerving the car around herself and shouts, “I don’t know!!” but we have the
wherewithal to pull over and get out and check the tires, and sure enough one
is flat.
Keep in mind that we are in Canada, in the mountains and the
desert, and have no phone service – and even if we did, you can’t call AAA from
Canada. So we went around to the back of the car and found the spare tire…
…but no jack, and no wrench.
Of course.
We thought were weren’t too far out of Carcross, so we
proceeded to walk back along the highway towards town. We walked for about an
hour – it turned out we were about three miles past the town, and finally,
footsore and hungry, we turned into a gas station on the edge of town. We
explained our situation to the two men behind the counter…
…who, rather than trying to help us, proceeded to laugh at
us for not having a jack and for how much our situation sucked.
Thanks, jerks.
Steph finally said, “well, can you please direct us to
someone who can help us?!?” and one
guy said in a totally rude tone of voice, “there’s a police station around the
corner. That’s their job.”
So we found the police station, walked in, and explained our
situation to the lady behind the counter. Who was lovely. She was sympathetic, kind, and helpful above and beyond the
call of duty! She got us coffee, and even called Sourdough Rentals for us to
ask where we should get the tire changed once we got to Whitehorse and to tell
them that they better give us a deal when we got back! She also called in the
police officer on duty, Dan, to help us with the tire situation. Dan was also
very sweet (and, uh, hot :p), and not only drove us back to the car, with the
proper tools, but changed the tire for us, much faster than either of us could
have!
We have a thank-you note in the mail to the RCMP Carcross
Deployment J
Well, we got back on the road – me driving, because Steph
was a bit freaked out still – and made it to Whitehorse with no further
incidents. We were famished, so we stopped for sushi first thing, then walked
over to a tattoo/piercing/music shop so Steph could get her cartilage pierced.
The piercing went smoothly, although Steph was a bit faint
after. But as she was sitting in the chair recovering, and I was holding her
hand, guess who walks in???
Yep.
White-beard old guy.
There are four people in this room, and Steph and I are two
of them. We are just frozen in shock. But he walks past us with, hilariously, zero
sign of recognition, and sits down to get a tattoo!
Anyway, that was my favorite part of this story.
We left the shop, drove to the tire place to get the tire
changed, and did a little Walmart-ing to kill the time. Actually, the tire
change took longer than expected, since it turned out that the van had four
different tires in four different sizes, so it was a bit of a struggle for them
to match the new one! Oh, Skagway.
Once that was taken care of, we headed out of Whitehorse.
However, about 20 miles out of Whitehorse there’s a right turn onto the
Klondike Highway, to get back to Skagway. But Steph had never driven it before,
and I wasn’t really paying attention or remembering that there was a turn, and
it was hard to see and poorly signed. So we missed the turn without even
knowing we missed it. Ten or fifteen minutes later, we found ourselves crossing
a beautiful lake on a cute bridge, and we both commented on how lovely it was –
only to look at each other in alarm as we realized that we had never seen it
before!
We were pretty perplexed as to how we had taken a wrong turn
when we had been going straight the entire time! We decided to turn around,
which was the right choice, but it also was a relief that Steph’s phone had one
bar of service, so I turned on her data roaming and looked up where we were to
be sure. Sure enough, we were on the Alaska Highway, which would have taken us
all the way down through B.C.
We made the turn on the way back and made it back to Skagway
uneventfully. But really, getting briefly lost was the final ingredient to make
the day just ridiculous! Good thing we like each other, and had a good time all
day anyway J
Oh, Alaska.
Next up: Camping! In the rain!
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