The story of moving south from Alaska did not end well. But it has ended. And now, so has this blog.

As of July 6, 2010 I start a new job back in Anchorage and I’m thankful for it. I’m returning to warm friendships and a city and state I know well, not to mention the opportunity to do a mix of interesting technology work with nonprofits and for-profits alike.

Thanks for following along.

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Just reload the page for the latest image or click it for a bare JPEG photo.

The quality isn’t great, but it works and it’s LIVE, which is pretty cool. I’ll be messing around with preferred mounting location and so on in the coming days.

It certainly was the safe thing to do.

I expected my alone time to be space for creating, reading and reflecting. Not for a moment did I expect it to be so overwhelming. Having lost my mother just prior to John’s departure adds a sense of loss that I will grieve over time. But I try to keep perspective on the fact that John and I will be together again.

In the meantime, I’m developing some coping skills:

I set up a small shrine.

Each morning I kneel before the shrine and recite bad poetry. That’s what this situation inspires after all… bad poetry. The sort that starts LOVE IS…

Yes, I am judgmental when it comes to poetry.

So I kneel before the shrine and spew ugliness in pentameter to my love who is thousands of miles away. His back hurts and I cannot comfort him. My brain hurts and he cannot comfort me but my brain usually hurts just not in this way.

Medication might help but I came up with a viable substitute: Kelli & Rebecca. I couldn’t ask for better friends during this time of loss. They understand when to be present and accept that I need to be alone too.

Week two without John has proven to be especially difficult. I’m tired from trying to keep up appearances and put on a happy face. But I don’t want everyone asking what is wrong. The other day I was particularly annoyed with myself when I expressed delight as someone told me a rather long and pointless fishing story. I thought, “I don’t sound the least bit sincere.”

Kelli & Rebecca make me laugh with abandon. There are moments when that seems to make the sadness more poignant but it feels therapeutic and they have yet to send me a bill so I’ll stick with them.

Besides laughing, we spent Friday evening crafting. I taught my friends how to dry emboss. That’s the extent of our accomplishments that evening. I suppose Craft Night was more about coping than it was about crafting. And about seeing what my friends would do when I asked them to include John’s picture in the conversation.

The truth is that my two strongest coping skills in this situation are humor and furniture moving. I’m trying not to over-exercise my humor though as it becomes a caustic way to pretend everything is fine.

Now, where should I put this table?

I’m not.

I expect to run this car to 250,000 miles or more. And that’s just standard practice for Honda cars that get regular care. Here’s my trusty 12-year-old steed just outside the Tlingit village of Teslin in the Yukon just a few days ago:

I bought this car brand new in the Detroit metro area in February 1998 — it was one of the first ’98 models manufactured (the 1997 CR-V was the first year of the series). Before this I drove a used Honda Accord. Before that, a used 1983 Honda Civic that my father had literally rolled in an accident (it was repaired, he was fine), and regularly got 45 miles per gallon back in the late 1980′s. (For a brief time I drove a Pontiac Grand Am in the early 1990s — what a piece of shit that was!)

In 2001 this amazing Honda CR-V moved me, my wife, our dog and cat to Alaska from Louisville, Kentucky as we drove the 4,000+ miles north in late February. Then it spent 2.5 years doing a 90-mile roundtrip weekday commute between Girdwood and Anchorage. In 2003 it moved with us to Anchorage and has been on several trips around Alaska, including the 60-mile gravel road from Chitina to McCarthy.

After some maintenance work in Anchorage, this beast was packed to the gills and drove 4,200 miles south to St. Louis. Not a single problem.

As a reward, I’ll buy her…

• a new windshield (we still have the original glass, complete with classic Alaska cracks and pits)
• new tires (the ones on there are specialty winter tires that will melt in the St. Louis heat)
• a new passenger side-view mirror (I cracked the original my mistake)
• a good, long car wash

I almost bought a new car in 2009. I’m glad I didn’t. This one’s awesome.

Oh, and by the way… My wife used to drive a really horrible Ford Explorer. But we dumped that clunker and bought her a CR-V of her own back in mid-2002. Hers is also going strong. My sister drives a new CR-V, too. I’m not sure we’ll drive any other car brand, given the experience.

Friends Kelsie and Rachel (above center) hosted and when I wasn’t sure if I would go, Kelsie (drink photo below, left) convinced me that I should give it a try. I’m glad I took her advice in spite of the fact that Rebecca (above left) got all gushy and I started crying. It was long overdue.

Tears are not generally part of our girl parties but it’s okay if they are. Regular elements include

FOOD!

DRINK!

PURTY DRINK!

And personal, fabulous, fun STORIES!

This is why I cried when Rebecca started talking about how she would miss me and her faith that St. Louis would be fabulous. I looked around. What I have now is fabulous. For the first time in my life I feel rooted. Finally I don’t have to constantly compete. I don’t need to try to fit in. I just am. Right now I am silly and sad, at ease and overwhelmed, and when I’m with these women, I am fabulous.

Even though I know Rebecca is right and I will carry all of this with me, the sense of grief right now is nearly unbearable. The car is always a good place to sob and as I drove home, the tears rose up from my soul.

I know you folks in the lower 48 are thinking, “Uneventful?” This is our idea of normal.

At work I regained my focus and got a lot done. A friend also introduced me to Yerba Mate which provided nice comfort for the afternoon. Then the FexEx truck arrived with my package. Do you know what was in the box? Train tracks! I would definitely be well-occupied for the evening.

But first my exercise program. It took me just over an hour to thoroughly clear the driveway down to the layer of glacial ice. I found myself smiling and cheered by this endeavor and am quite certain that is a sign of deep insanity. I don’t know how my sanity got packed into the car but I hope John will mail it back to me. [Please spring for Gold Streak when shipping that, dear?]

After a few other chores I unpacked the tracks. What I have set up so far is an accurate historical representation of a mess. But it has provided hours of enjoyment this evening. As I grow tired and think about sleep, the involuntary pity party begins. I shall spare you that which I wish I could spare myself.

Yes, John (@jmproffitt) and Chris (@junkdrawer67) hit the road at 9:00am sharp today. I made my teary farewells and waved them off. Back in the suddenly large and very empty house, the kids started fighting immediately. By the time I got home from work they had gone into pouting mode and didn’t even greet me at the door. Angus seems to have a clear sense of John’s absence. Ophelia is naive. I managed to remember to turn on her laser toy a couple of times – something John usually does. And since I feed her, what else is there for a cat to care about.

The work day was a challenge for me but my friends maintained a balance of comforting me and distracting me. I might have even gotten some work done in there somewhere. My arrival home was a shocking experience. I walked in the door and immediately felt the emptiness. It’s not as if I haven’t stayed alone in this house alone before. This time, though, I won’t be picking John up at the airport on Monday.

This is just a little clip of video we shot when taking our little Angus (then just about 1 year old) out into the deep snow. He loves snow.

I’m wondering what I’ll find at Destruction Bay tomorrow…

The trip will take roughly 6 days. And those will be tough driving days, running anywhere from 10 to 16 hours of straight driving. Total trip should be around 4,200 miles. The map looks like this:

Lucky for me, I’ve got an old college friend flying up the day before the trip. He and I will share the drive down, making those longer days more manageable. And lucky for him, he’s never been to Alaska, to say nothing of driving the Alaska Highway through the Yukon and remote British Columbia in the midst of winter. Plus we haven’t seen each other in person for years — now we have plenty of time to catch up.

Some folks opt for 24-hour driving, but not me. I need some time off the road each night, plus a shower and change of clothes. Add to that the fact that it’s harder to make the drive in winter, as many of the services along the Alaska Highway are closed or are open only limited hours.

Preparations

Making a trip like this takes some work. To get ready, I’ve…

• spent roughly $2,500 on my 1998 Honda CR-V, getting maintenance and repairs (many of which were needed anyway) plus a renewed Alaska DMV registration (it was expired)
• picked up a recent copy of The Milepost and studied it
• nailed down a driving pattern that will keep the car fueled without getting too close to the 250-mile limit the gas tank imposes
• planned out where to stop each night along the trip
• calculated the driving hours day by day, ensuring we can get my friend to his flight home on March 1
• bought a new GPS navigation device for the car, for calculating trip speeds and distances between stops and for directions for getting around in St. Louis
• researched post-9/11 border crossing requirements to ensure I have what I need (a valid Passport)
• installed a new car stereo with iPod/iPhone attachment for entertainment over 70+ hours of driving, without fumbling with CDs or listening to bad commercial radio
• researched the cost of voice calls and text messaging through Canada (free incoming texts, $0.50 per outgoing text, $0.59/min voice)

In addition to all that there’s the sorting and packing of belongings to ensure I have what I need to get started down south. I’ll move into a small apartment as I wait several months before @AgentIceCream moves down to join me.

What You Leave Behind

Amidst all the preparations my mind wanders a bit, thinking of the things I’ll be leaving in Alaska as I go. Good friends, clearly. Nine years of an interesting subarctic life unlike anywhere else in the country. My wife and our dog and cat, all in a comfortable home.

I pretty much knew we’d leave Alaska. When we first moved up in 2001 we told ourselves, “Just a couple years, and then we’ll move south, perhaps to the desert southwest.” Yet every year was, “another couple years and we’ll go.” By 2005 we gave up the charade. We had no idea how long we’d stay.

But with my parents aging into their 70′s and Stephanie’s parents now both passed on, plus other family east of the Mississippi, it’s increasingly become time to move south again. Nevertheless, this isn’t an easy move. It’s not a slam dunk.