Musical Cars and a Trip to Alaska

Not everything on this latest adventure went as planned. The BMW was all packed and ready to go on the morning of May 13, but as I started to pull out of the driveway, the car made a very strange noise, followed by a warning chime and this message on the dash:

Drive train malfunction! Drive moderately!

Sigh.

Almost exactly two years ago, on May 1, 2019, the CV joint/transfer case in the BMW blew up (literally, with a bang), rendering the car undriveable. Fortunately, I was only five miles from home at the time. We had the car towed back here. The husband took it apart and discovered that, due to a design and manufacturing defect, that part had failed spectacularly at only 70,000 miles. Long story short—he ordered the replacement parts, changed them out, and I’ve driven the car for an additional two years and 32,000 miles with no issues.

It appears that the replacement part also may have failed. I said a short prayer of thanks that this happened at the end of my driveway and not somewhere between here and Spokane with no cell phone service. The husband helped me transfer all of my gear to DD#1’s car, which we’ve had here since the wedding. My FIL gifted her his 2001 Acura RSX when she graduated from college. It’s a terrific little car, but not very practical for Alaska. After that short delay, I was on the road to Seattle.

[The Acura has a manual transmission. Driving a stick is like riding a bike. The skill comes back quickly, but that car did take a bit of getting used to. The last manual transmission car I drove was my Jetta station wagon, which had a terrible clutch. Everyone who ever drove that car— including the husband, who can drive anything—stalled it at least once. You had to rev the engine while letting the clutch out very slowly, because it wouldn’t catch until it was almost all the way out. Hills were lots of fun in that car.]

I made it to Seattle without further incident and was on a flight to Ketchikan on Friday morning. The airport is actually on an island, so I had to take a quick ferry ride to get to Ketchikan proper, where DD#1’s smiling face was waiting for me at the top of the gangplank. We drove to their house, which sits on the edge of a small bay. This was the view out of my bedroom window:

A storm was starting to move in, and by the time I got up the next morning, that little bay was churning and angry. At high tide, the water comes about halfway up the rock seawall. At low tide, about 50’ of beach is exposed. Seals make frequent appearances in the bay, and DD#1 told me that they had also seen a whale out there.

This was not my first visit to Ketchikan. I had been there in September of 2009 when JC Briar and I taught on a Craft Cruises Alaskan knitting cruise. The town’s tourism industry has taken a big hit because of the pandemic. Also, the week before I arrived, the entire town went on high alert due to a covid outbreak that was traced to the high school wrestling team, so most everything was closed.

[I understand that cruise ships will start calling there again in July, which sounds like it will be just in the nick of time, although many businesses weren’t able to survive the year-long shutdown and have ceased business permanently.]

Ketchikan reminds me a lot of what Kalispell was like in 1993, but with internet. I don’t require a lot of entertainment, so the kids and I spent most of our time hanging out at the house—that view is better than television—and catching up. I had been hoping to go to church with them, but the service was canceled for Sunday morning, so we went to a hiking area on the north end and walked around.

Ketchikan’s climate is very similar to Seattle’s. They do get snow, but not as much as you might think when you hear “Alaska.”

We went to a small state park called Totem Bight for our picnic lunch on the beach:

And walked around to look at the totem displays:

We finished up the day with a visit to a nearby nursery to get a few flowers and herbs to plant around the house. The kids are renting a place from a friend of DSIL’s family, but it hasn’t been occupied for a while so they’ve been cleaning up the yard.

DD#1 had all the supplies on hand for making S’mores. DSIL built a fire in the fire pit and we sat out there after dinner and enjoyed the sunshine.

DSIL has settled in to his new position as a dentist in Ketchikan, but DD#1 hasn’t yet found a job. She suffers from a double dose of being unable to sit still—she got it from both her father and me—and while she’s had fun setting up housekeeping, I think she’s a bit restless. I bought her a small Cricut machine and she’s been learning to use that. It is a bit of a family joke that she has always loved her Dymo labelmaker. The Cricut is an extension of that and I am pleased that she has a creative outlet.

I would visit my children no matter where in the world they might be living, but they’ve done us the great (unasked-for) favor of locating themselves in the same geographical area. I flew back to Seattle on Wednesday, the 19th, to spend a few days with DD#2. I’ll talk more about that part of the trip in the next blog post, because it also involves malfunctioning vehicles.