Right now I am sitting in the Resurrect Café in Seward, Alaska, and writing in my medium-sized blue, spiral journal that I bought at Target for $1.19.

Outside is a noisy downpour and inside, a cozy, living room-like atmosphere. The Café is bustling with the hum of travelers, locals, and adventurers with their voices rising and simmering above and around my table.

My kind of writing day.

I am in Seward and not Denali because there was a change of plan. Honey Bucket's tour duties changed at the last minute and they sent her on a Seward run. Her mission is to drive busloads of tourists back and forth from Seward all day. It is the end of the season; probably only a week of it left, but there are still some stragglers and they need to be accommodated.

(The following is a public service announcement for potential Alaska travelers).

September is an excellent month to be in Alaska:

1) The tourist offerings: Tours and busses and campsites are still available, but the tourists themselves are scarce.

2) The seasonal employees: In a week's time, the tourist agents will be done working the season. Then they usually leave Alaska. But before they do, they party for a week or so. Seasonal employees are ragers! Anyone who is attracted to working and living in Alaska for six months or more has a place in his or her soul for the extreme life. I met a ton of these beautiful freaks and we partied heartily.

3) Summer Rains End:
The June and July summer rains are a deal-killer. Half Assand Honey Bucket told me that it rained for forty days straight. And they were living in a tent. Both of them agree, that was when it was the hardest and they wondered if they had made the right decision moving to Alaska.

4) Winter Lurks But Doesn't Strike: September is not a winter month, though it is fast coming. Oh sure, September is cold. But that severe, be-careful-or-you-might-die-out-there, kind of cold hasn't arrived yet. By mid-October, the place becomes iceworld and then it's a whole new badminton game

5) Mosquito Raids End: Mosquitoes in this part of Alaska are a scourge. It is the unofficial Alaskan state bird. (the Willow ptarmigan is the official).
The horrible tales I heard of clouds of mosquitoes swarming around their tent -- waiting for the blood-couple to come out, driven crazy by the scent of
hemoglobin - made me outstandingly pleased that I didn't visit when I had originally planned. And when they did step out of the tent -- on warm summer days, dressed in three sweaters, two pants, and a mosquito screen on their head -- they felt the agony of an air raid.

The mudflats of the Arm, the Arm itself, and the snow capped mountains on the other side of it, present themselves on the right. On the left, are
cottonwoods with golden leaves and white bark that illuminate the mountains from the bottom to half way up the top, like yellow and white footlights. Patches of the dead, preserved, saline trees -- as well as a few half buried, crumbled houses and automobiles -- remind you of the massive earthquake that struck this area 36 years ago.

About a 1/4 of the distance to Seward, we took a side trip to the Portage Glacier, hiked to the banks of the river, smoked a joint in a pitch of glacial silt, and watched as an iceberg that had calved from Old Portage, slowly drift by in the turquoise water.
Alaska is overflowing with thousands and thousands of glaciers. Simply put, a glacier is an enormous river of flowing, ancient ice. The rivers created by
glacial runoff have a stunning flat, blue hue. From a mountaintop, it looks
like God had run a blue magic marker through the glacialvalleys. They are a visual reminder of our place in this universe, or maybe a reminder that we don't know our place in the universe.
When we arrived in Seward, we set up camp, had a beer, went for a small walk, climbed a tree (H.A., of course, traversed higher than I did) and went to bed.

The next morning , I was thinking two things when awakened by a crowing rooster:
1) The rooster was a messenger saying: "This is the beginning of the adventure.
2) A rooster does not really say: "Cock-a-doodle-do." A rooster says "A-a-aii-aieee-a-a-aieeee."

After a breakfast of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a hard-boiled egg, I had an odd, existential moment by a small river that ran past our camp.

The last of the spawning salmon were still trying to swim upstream. For salmon, just like the tourists, it was the end of the season. And this group was as battered as the Bad News Bears before they signed Tatum O'Neal.

The stream was a salmon graveyard. The smell of dead fish was potent and sickly and for every living fish, there were at least three dead and rotting ones caught on rocks and branches, or laying on the bank, bloated and in various stages of decay.

Even worse were the live ones swimming upstream. Most of their scales were flaking and moldy. Their orange hue nearly gone -- as if washed off by the powerful current, against which they desperately threw themselves against for just one last night of coital bliss.

Most were losing the battle and going backwards. The ones in the best condition stood their ground (stood their water?). The river would get feisty and force the fish back. The fish would bide its time, groping for a burst of strength, and shove forward to where it had just been, pointlessly, feverishly, flagellating its tale fins against the raging currents and getting absolutely nowhere until another surge forced it back.

How utterly depressing.

Indeed, salmon are another reminder of our place in the universe.

Another thought occurred then too: "If the salmon are inedible, will bears be hungrier?"

Some Facts About Seward

Seward, Alaska is named after William H. Seward who arranged for the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867.

Seward is mile "0" of the Iditarod Dogsled race. The Iditarod trail was created to carry supplies into the Alaska interior.

The flag of Alaska was designed here by a thirteen year-old orphan.

John Ballaine, who chose the Bay as the ocean terminus for the Alaska Central Railway to the interior, founded the township in 1903

Slater and the Showcase Lounge

Anglers cast their lines along the shoreline of Resurrection Bay. In the
background is the huge Princess sealiner. The sealiner, which is headed for
Australia, is where Honey Bucket and her fellow bus drivers were bringing the Anchorage tourists. When the day is done, all the Princess tour drivers were going to party that night, here in Seward.

On main street, where we had parked the truck, Half -Ass andI decide to go for a drive. I'm just about to slide into the driver's seat when I notice a man (he seems drunk) staring - better still, glaring - at the artwork H.A. had painted on the truck. He is wearing a blue ski cap, a black flight jacket, and black jeans. His index finger is gnarled and curled inward, his black fingernails are like ravens perched on telephone poles. He has a compulsion to roll his fingers as though he is nervously embarking on a bank robbery. His beard is brown-black and bushy, with flecks of yolk, or dry snot, or
worse, clinging to the strands of hair.

I think he is a street urchin until I notice a five dollar bill sticking from his trouser pocket, about ready to fall out. I figure a hobo would take better care of a five dollar bill.

"Did you paint this?" he asks me with a slight Bukowskian snarl..

"No," I reply, "he did," pointing at H.A.

"You got it all wrong," he says to H.A., pointing at the hood of the truck where the image of the tiger is superimposed over a Chinese star. "The star is all wrong."

"I did it from memory," says Half-Ass. "I wasn't trying to perfectly recreate it."

The man introduces himself as Slater and tells us he was a pilot in Vietnam. Alaska is loaded with ex-war pilots because Alaska is loaded with planes. Slater's claim to fame is that he loaded the very last bomb dropped on
Vietnam. He starts asking H.A. (largely ignoring me) all these obscure war plane trivia questions. H.A., astounds me by knowing the answers to over half of them, whereas I don't know one answer. Not even the answer to his query, "Why do they call it horsepower?"

Slater is pleased. He likes the artwork (even though it isn't 100 percent accurate) and he really likes Half-Ass, figuring correctly that he had more than a passing fancy for war planes and warriors.

So Slater invites us to the Showcase Lounge, a dive bar across the street,and buys our drinks.

Not surprisingly, they know Slater inside. And not surprisingly, they treat him with a casual disdain. Slater, as it is quickly turning out, is a nasty, old drunk. And though he adores H.A., he loathes me. All his trivia questions are related to something he learned in the war, as if his learning stopped there. When Half-Ass tells him I'm a journalist, he starts asking me questions about obscure war journalists and I can't answer a one.

Then he insults me by saying I look like John Ritter.

As the drinks flow, he becomes more irritating. He directs his trivia questions to the two 60ish women sitting directly to my right, to H.A. on his left, and to the bartender. And when someone doesn't know the answer (which is often) he scowls and insults. Every time I don't know an answer he says , "And you call yourself a journalist?"

I hate trivia snobs and I'll tell you why. Trivia snobs think they are smarter than you. What a trivia snob stupidly forgets is that it's easy to ask trivia questions to which only he knows the answer.

Trivia Questions I know Slater, or my mother, or even you Can't Answer

1) Who wrote this poem: "Fuck Me Like Fried Potatoes on the Most Beautifully Hungry Morning of my God-damn Life?"

2) What three things does Alaska have more (per capita) of than any other?

3) What is my favorite hot sauce?

4) What is the last song on side one of the Sniff and the Tears debut album?"

5) What is the average number of grooves on one side of a vinyl record? (Answers below).

Any attempt to ask him a trivia question is met with a cold, blank stare, as if you offend him by asking; which is his way of getting out of answering it at all. He is an ornery, hypocritical arse.But the drinks are flowing and Slater's buying (I assume this is the only way he can keep company for very long) and a person I loathe is every bit as interesting as someone I like - so we stay.

I ask him what the scars are on his left arm and he whips around and says "From backhanding assholes like you." I take that as a warning, but don't care. I ask another question which he ignores, instead, makes his hand into the shape of a gun, (index finger extended like the barrel). "When you want to shoot somebody," he says with a drunken, scary, distant, glazed gaze in his eye "Don't shoot them in the face; shoot them here." Then shoves the "barrel" into the back of my head.

Then, matter-of-factly, as if he hasn't just threatened me, he asks the bartender a trivia question about glaciers. The bartender doesn't know the answer. Slater scowls loudly.

"Ah Jesus," says the bartender. "You ain't so fucking smart. "What's in a Bloody Mary?" he asks.

Slater doesn't know

"See, you asshole, you don't know what's in a Bloody Mary because it's just not in the scope of your knowledge."

Leave it to a bartender to bring logic to the table.

"Let's see the Exit Glacier," I say to H.A., tired of Slater and his now irreconcilable slur.

"Pfft," says Slater, clearly afraid of losing his captive audience.

"Wanna see a baby glacier?" asks the bartender.

"Sure," I say.

He walks to his well, grabs a cube of ice and throws it at me.

Not hard of course, he is kidding, and it is kind of funny. But I have enough and we say our good-byes and leave. I shake Slater's hand and Slater does not extend his in return. I shrug my shoulders and think, "Sure, Slater's a prick, but he fought a war for me so, in my book, he pretty much gets to do as he pleases.

Answers to trivia questions:

1) Richard Brautigan
2) Bars, churches, ice cream
3) California Hot Sauce
4) Rock and Roll Music Sniff 'n the Tears biggest hit was "Driver's Seat"
5) Just one