First Day In Juneau

I arrived in Juneau this morning to rain, fog, temperatures 20 degrees warmer than in TN, and beautiful snow-capped mountains. After making a joke with a fellow passenger that our checked luggage was probably someplace in Mexico by now, he promptly found his bag and I quickly realized that my luggage was indeed missing. After checking with baggage claims it turns out that my trunk did not make it onto the plane, but was due to arrive on the next incoming flight two hours later.

The day has been a blur of moving loaned beds and couches into the condo I am sharing with a colleague, buying yak-traks at the outdoor store so we can hike tomorrow on the trails and in the ice without taking a serious nose-dive, seeing the Mendenhall Glacier, picking up my checked luggage, eating a good but overpriced breakfast, buying good but overpriced groceries at Costco, visiting with another colleague and his wife, and getting settled into the condo. Right now it is only 5:15pm and I feel like it is about 11pm. It's been a long couple of days.

I have spoken with my significant other who is still down in TN probably 10 times in the last 24 hours - my lifeline to a semblance of normalcy. My lifeline to everything that is familiar to me. I miss him. I miss my dog. I miss my boy. Tomorrow I will go hiking in the woods. And Monday I will start work. And hopefully life will start to make sense in this most beautiful of places.

I haven't had the time or energy to try and figure out how to label individual pictures, so you can know what you are looking at. Hopefully I'll figure out it out soon. But these are a combination of pictures - a couple of my SO at Nashville International Airport before my going through security, a couple taken outside on the balcony of the condo I am staying at (including the one of the eagle on the pole - he spent almost 30 minutes sitting on that pole and yes, he was beautiful), and Mendenhall Glacier.

I went to the glacier when I was up in early November, and the entire place looks very different now. It is a quieter place, the glacier is bluer and more dramatic than it was a few months ago, the fog is denser, and the ice on the sidewalks made walking a dangerous challenge.

I feel lost. Sleeping in a strange bed, in a strange condo, in a strange town. I haven't been out on trails for what seems like years (since I blew out my knee during an adventure race in early September). I had knee surgery in early December and the knee is untested in the woods. I'll go easy and test it out tomorrow to see how it holds up. Yes......going into the woods may help.