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June 25, 2007
Alaska Ho
In the 36 hours since last we slept in a proper bed, Robbi and I have been in New York, Baltimore, Chestertown, Washington, Seattle, and now Anchorage. It has been a long, long day. Right now we are sitting in the Anchorage airport enduring the second half of a three-hour delay. From here we will travel to King Salmon on a small jet, and from there to the gravel air strip of Coffee Point on a 5-seat prop plane.
Day two of MoCCA was fine indeed. We set up the booth a bit differently, favoring stacks of books instead of just one copy of each on the shelves.
We imagined that the psychology of plenty would induce people to buy books like bandits. Did it work? We sold many more books than on Saturday. But we must admit that this could also be related to the across-the-board price reduction.
The day started slow, and Robbi was glum.
But then the people came, and came in droves.
Here is proof that someone came to our booth.
Our friend Jason Liang showed up.
Robbi and I both knew him in college, though in different ways. Jason helped direct a play I was in freshman year (along with David and Christian among others), and Robbi and Jason were art friends. In addition to being a computer programmer, Jason draws comics. Which is why he was at MoCCA.
Then Rich showed up, which made Robbi so happy.
We sold quite a few books in the afternoon, with Ten Thousand Stories and My Henderson Robot being the top sellers. Understanding Traffic was a surprise favorite, and there was a good deal of interest in both For the Love of God and A Bully Named Chuck. We sold at least one copy of each book, and all-in-all, considered the show a success. In addition to selling books, we wandered around with copies of our smaller books and traded with other self-publishers. As a result, we came home with an enormous pile of comics from every corner of the comic world. We also got a chance to meet and talk to one of our favorite comic artists, Lilli Carre, whose work we love and recommend that you buy, especially Tales of Woodsman Pete, which is her finest work to date. It is a steal at $7.
Six o'clock came and the time came to leave. Here is final shot of friends:
With Rich's help we hauled our stuff down to the curb, threw it in the car, and hit the road.
Robbi drove. The sun was bright. Robbi consented to wearing my sunglasses, the same sunglasses for which I have been mocked many times before. Robbi is a cursed hypocrite when it comes to my sunglasses.
As we left the city, we gloated about the fact that our side of the road, away from the city, was flowing freely while the other side of the street, into the city was not.
We bade New York goodbye.
When hunger hit, we stopped at Roy Rogers and ordered curly fries. We found one curly fry that took its work very seriously.
We headed south over the Delaware Memorial Bridge.
And promptly hit a wall of traffic trickling toward Baltimore and Washington. People returning from the beach. At some point in the future I will go on a proper tirade against the beach. About why it is a terrible idea to go sit in the sun with a bunch of other people, about how the beach is a dark conspiracy meant to bring us into gloom, about how no one actually likes the beach even though many people think that they do. But today is not that day. For today I will say that we left I-95 and headed toward Baltimore on 40, determined not to commingle with the deluded beach people.
Eventually we got to Baltimore, where we picked up Iggy from Christian and Emily. From there we drove to the Baltimore airport to get our rental car.
I in the rental car and Robbi in the station wagon, we drove to Chestertown. We got there around 1:30am. Robbi packed the three coolers of produce, bread, rubber gloves, dog food, pillows, mail, socks, and other assorted miscellany while I packed the rental car, dealt with a few Idiots'Books mailing, and prepared the barn for our departure. At 4:00am we were ready to leave. It was raining torrentially as we pulled out of town.
We arrived at Reagan Airport in DC around 6:00 this morning.
We had given Iggy some good drugs in anticipation of her first plane ride. When the time came to surrender her to the baggage people, Robbi was glum.
Iggy looked glum, but was probably just stoned.
I said my farewell, and we parted ways.
On the plane to Seattle we slept like the dead.
From Seattle, we flew to Anchorage, where we got to visit with Iggy for a while. She seemed well, if still a little stoned.
With any luck, we'll be leaving Anchorage in about an hour for King Salmon, which is a jumping-off point for many of the high-end Alaskan tour packages and also the jumping-off point for everyone headed to Bristol Bay and its environs for fishing or canning. The King Salmon airport is a one-room affair. At this time of year it is teeming with wealthy people in Patagonia fleeces embarking on high-end tours or scruffy-looking people traveling with coolers of produce. The contrast is even more stark on the return trip, when the fishermen and cannery folks are one month scruffier and also unwashed.
If we are able to get to King Salmon in time, we will charter a bush plane to Coffee Point, where the Behrs have their fishing compound. If we are not able to get to King Salmon on time, we will sleep in a huddled pile on the side of the road, hoping that it is not too cold tonight.
We are crossing our fingers that we get there on time. We are also crossing our fingers that when we land at Coffee Point there is a tremendous meal of fresh salmon waiting for us. The unhappy alternative is that we will arrive and immediately be hustled into full rubber suits. If the fishing is under way when we arrive, we will head to the beach and dive in. Such is the way of things in Coffee Point.
This might be the last entry for a while. Although there is some possibility that I will be able to catch a stray internet signal using the "can-tenna" that Maiko's boyfriend Daryl designed, there is no guarantee that it will work this year, and no guarantee that there will be time for any activities as frivolous as blog writing.
I will do my best to send photos from the front, however. What we do up there is strange indeed, but terribly interesting.
Posted by bogenamp at June 25, 2007 09:06 PM