Day 4: Q: Where is _____? A: South of here.

A relatively short entry for a relatively uneventful day. I will fill in the gaps by ranting about supermarkets, Wal-Mart, and municipal bus systems. In fact, it’s probably best if you don’t read today’s entry at all.

This morning I woke up to the sound of a reslife worker pounding on my door, demanding that they be returned the bed linen kit they had erroneously given me (along with every other person in the building as it would seem). I complied, and decided that 8:30 was as good of a time as any to wake up --- I don’t think I’m going to get used to this whole sunlight thing…

I tidied up the room a bit, showered, and caught the first bus out to the supermarket. Like Williamsburg, Fairbanks has a disproportionately large number of chain supermarkets compared to the population. We’ve got a Wal-Mart, a bunch of Safeways, and a Fred Meyer’s, and probably a bunch more.

Based upon the advice of a few people I’d met, I chose Fred Meyer, and wow… it pretty much satisfies the Wal-Mart ideal of selling everything under the sun, but does so in a much more humane way (Wal-Mart is more or less my least favorite place to shop on the planet for any number of reasons). It’s of like a Target, but nicer, and with more stuff (which is kind of hard to believe).

Food here’s fairly expensive, as are most things. The one saving grace is the absolute and profound lack of a sales tax on anything. It’s great – I can buy an item priced at $1.99, give the cashier 2 $1 bills, and get a penny back. I guess sales tax is something I’ve always taken for granted, but not having to pay it is pretty darn nice as well.

I took the bus back to the campus, and got settled back into my room and (finally) finished unpacking. The shelves on the wall are great, and I’ve got to say that I’m digging the layout of this room a lot more than the W&M arrangement (plus the fact that I’m living alone in a room built for two). The bus system here is pretty similar to the one in Williamsburg, with the important exceptions that you have to pay for it ($1.50 per ride), and that it has two buses running each circuit, in opposite directions of each other, which is a heck of a lot better than having to ride the whole loop just to get to get groceries. Like the Williamsburg bus, it runs on a completely erratic schedule (though it does appear to stick to it fairly well); it only runs til around 7pm on weekdays, 6 on Saturdays, and not at all on Sundays. It also takes a few random 1-hour breaks during the day. I suppose that’s why everybody owns a car around here.


After loafing around the room for a few hours, I decided to take a walk to downtown Fairbanks to see what it was all about, and grab dinner. I knew it’d be a few miles away, but had plenty of time to kill. I set out walking. And walking. And walking. In fact, I walked straight through Downtown without even realizing it, and kept going for 6 or so miles. In short, “downtown” is simply an area where the streets are placed a bit more closely together. A very large portion of the buildings looked abandoned – eck. I walked back along Airport Way (which, thankfully, unlike its similarly-named Anchorage counterpart goes to the Airport, and not through it).

In what is becoming a familiar trend, I didn’t find anyplace to eat. I passed one Italian place that looked like it might be decent a bit before where downtown should have been, but didn’t feel like backtracking my steps to find it again. After about four hours, I stumbled upon a Wendy’s, and ate there. So much for regional cuisine.

I should also add that the dining halls here are closed for the summer. Even though dining hall food is more often than not disgusting, it’s something. I wasn’t expecting to have to prepare my own food or dine out each night. Now I just need to find some recipes that don’t require ingredients that don’t need refrigeration.