A year and a half or so ago, my mother-in-law announced that she’d always wanted to visit Finnish Lapland, but that she didn’t know anyone who’d want to go with her. It’s too cold there, everyone around her in Milwaukee kept saying, and anyway, why Finland?
Good news, we told her. We want to go to Finnish Lapland. Continue reading “Puhun vähän”
I’m in Finland this week, so I wrote this post last week, when I should have been packing for this trip. Look for an update once I’m back. I’ll probably write it instead of unpacking. Continue reading “List: Packing for Finland is different than packing for Hawaii”
I never much cared for biking. It wasn’t that I disliked it, specifically; more that I didn’t care about it.
When my folks got married, they each had separate interests and hobbies, so they picked one to do together. I guess it worked, because thirty-four years later, they still ride their road bikes all summer. They have never ridden a tandem, another factor I believe has contributed to the success of their marriage. Continue reading “I want to ride my bicycle”
When I was 21 and thinking about moving to Alaska, I paid my bills by waiting tables at a local sports bar. I had a very wise manager with whom I occasionally butted heads, due in no small part, I’m sure, to my stubbornness. I spent months waffling endlessly on whether I should apply for this teaching job or pack everything up and make for Anchorage, and one night, as I begged him to please cut me from the floor so I could go home and study, he dropped this major bombshell on me:
“When you don’t know where you’re going,” he told me, “Any road will take you there.” Continue reading “When you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. (Turns out this is still true.)”
my alaskan odyssey 