Sitka or Bust: Commute The World

How I feel at the end of the workday.

The second day, we kept the phone lines, but we blew our connection to the website that we work from. Hold please… Sorry for the wait, our computers are malfunctioning… Just a little longer… Please be patient…You know what, just give me your phone number and I’ll call you back when I can process your application. Kthxbai.

As much as I thought I would hate this gig, I mean HATE. It’s actually pretty chill. For some reason I get a morbid sense of satisfaction from casually arguing with people over our policies. Sure, I’m all friendly and nice, but lady you need to chill and listen to what I’m saying. We have a script. We must read the script. Trust me, I weeded out the information that you don’t need to know or the repetitious data. I know you don’t want to hear me blather on, so just  pretend to listen to me reading it and we can all end the call with a smile on our faces.

Advice to the customer:

1. As much as I love hearing your stories, please refrain from sharing for too long.
2. Speaker phone is not your friend. Don’t get mad because I have you repeat spellings when all I can hear is weird static blips and pops from the speakerphone.
3. Kindly, do not put me on hold. It always happens when my supe is wandering around and it makes me look bad just sitting there twiddling my thumbs.
4. We will have you write down something at some point. Please keep a writing implement handy.
5. Hang up the phone properly. It is quite amusing to hear what I’m not supposed to, but seriously, we aren’t supposed to be the ones to end the calls.

Since that first week, we’ve had a few more website issues and a fire drill, shutting us down for about two hours and allowing me the wonderful opportunity to delve back into crafting paper frogs. I have taken to keeping a jar of orange slices in my desk drawer for the hurried, between-this-customer-and-the-next, attempt at wetting my whistle. The cough drop industry also has a good customer in me for my stock pile of throat lozenges. Sure, I try to follow the directions on the packaging, but one drop every two hours is so hard to stick with.

Plus side though, I now can talk almost as fast as an auctioneer. Perhaps a future profession to excel at?

A straight line does not properly depict the territory I crossed today, nor does it make me feel quite so accomplished as when you factor in the ups and downs or staggered paths of wilderness snowshoeing. I am tired, and my face feels like it’s sunburnt from the constant assault of wind burn, but I feel like a badass. The map says we snowshoed about four miles, but that does not account for the vertical distance we covered ascending and descending to follow the natural curve of the mountain. Nor does it include the walk home without snowshoes.

I don’t get outside as often as I should. In fact, I very rarely get outside unless I have an outdoors buddy; someone who makes me participate in activities  that I want to do, but won’t when alone. The outdoors are much more interesting when shared, don’t you think? Anyways, it was my last day of the weekend, because as a grownup I work for a company that does not receive Presidents Day as a vacation day. That’s fine, more work for me. I, surprisingly enough, enjoy my job chatting with people all day. It also happened to be a day that a sudden snow storm hit my hometown, making the road conditions ridiculously dangerous. Within the first few minutes of driving we had already seen seven cars off the highway in ditches and snowbanks. One poor soul had even flipped his car completely over in the ditch near the breakdown lane. I was happy not to be driving.

The bitter chill of 15 degree weather is not all that bad to be out in as long as you make an effort to keep your blood moving and not sit for too long in a snow bank. But when you add in gale force winds that smack you in the face with icy pellets and makes the treetops threaten your safety, you’ve got a potentially dangerous weather situation. Potentially dangerous weather situations make for the best hiking/snowshoeing outings.

Now, due to some miscalculations with the distances between landmarks, ahem Papa Bear, we ended up wandering around for a while not necessarily lost, but definitely not headed to the planned destination. That’s fine. I’m pretty fluid… and maybe just a teensy bit hopeless with wilderness navigation. If I got lost I would’ve just turned around followed my own tracks home, but looking for a landmark I probably wouldn’t have recognized in the summer let alone the winter is difficult.

At one point, we are walking on the top of a river bed and my father says, “I wouldn’t suggest doing this if you don’t know where you are,” and mentions something or another about being careful. Almost simultaneously, we both plunge a leg through the ice shelf and into the river. It was shallow, and I had the forethought to wear plastic bags inside my boots, so I didn’t get to feel the icy fingers of cold water seep into my socks. Papa Bear has a nicer pair of boots, so no plastic baggies for him. We moved on, my right snowshoe crusting over in a layer of ice and snow almost instantly in the frigid air.

It was pretty chilly. I measured the time by the layer of ice freezing inside my water bottle. The first drink was cold enough to make my lips catch on the rim and signal the image of a tongue on a metal flagpole. The second, I drank through a narrowed opening in the neck and the cap twisted off with the sound of grating sand. The third resulted in an opening 50% narrower than it should have been and there were miniature icebergs clogging the gap.

We did roughly eight miles trudging through heavy snow and crawling up steep inclines using rooted saplings. I was chilled when I returned to the cabin and there’s nothing better than a nice toasty wood stove to thaw you out painfully, but quickly.