This will be the most unique Day One of any job I’ve had.
To start, I’m the only person, and I mean the only person except for Claire to my right, not wearing a hoodie. 26 people are wearing hoodies out of 28.
The colors have gradually, and finally, bled into the picture that is this outrageously unimaginable life.
I learned loads and loads about the company, the people and this town: they fall under two umbrellas (which people don’t use here):
1- Ketchikaners are Small Town Folks, and Island Folks:
- Everyone can identify your house “it’s the blue one on Brown Deer Road”
- They know the chemicals in the public water
- They yell at bears to make them go away
- They remember the days when it used to snow here (nowadays, sadly, it just rains)
- Don’t even try to compare Ketchikan to Seattle. “We get double the rainfall here.”
2- This is a GOOD company who cares about its guests and its people
The majority of the day we sat semi-catatonically flipping through a detailed training binder with our names printed on the front. Snacks, local coffee (Raven’s Brew) breakfast and chocolates were provided so my Maslow Hierarchy of Needs was sufficiently assuaged.
Training is 7 days straight, no day off. Each morning starts at 8am, which translates to arriving at 7:45am, “swiping in” with your kronos card (punch the clock), getting your coffee and sit down on the boat at 8am. 
We were led by our distinguished leaders: Jess, Ed, Jesse, and Ed (Jess being the only woman). I don’t know how this pattern came to be.
The second Ed (who goes by Ski) talked about his role, and introduced all the vessels. Just as I was starting to think that everyone at this company speaks in inexorable streams of consciousness, I was horribly distracted by the gap between his t-shirt and his jeans. His deep and wide gut was introducing itself to us, too. This is the Operations Manager of the company. He’s wearing jeans, a faded black shirt that bares his midriff topped off by a baseball cap. I’m not in Corporate America anymore, Toto, I’m on the yellow brick road of carhartts.
When we went around the room to introduce ourselves, my fun fact was “I love karaoke. I think I’m Beyonce.” Both are true. Several are calling me Beyonce now, #iaintmad
Sadly, no cute boys my age. Instead, the team consists of retired coast guard men in their 40s, 50s and 60s who are not intriguing speakers (and that’s putting it gently). There are 4 naturalists: Ashley, Colleen, John and I can’t remember the other. The thing is, John is annoyingly rote in how long he’s been doing this. He is passionate about his work and he will make it clear in one way or another that he knows more than you. I would not want to be on his crew. Thankfully, I’m not on anyone’s crew, I’m a dock rep who delivers the passengers to the boats and hangs back to listen to the radio and help re-stock, sort tickets, confirm forms, etc.
There will be a conservative Christian tour with no mention or serving of alcohol. There is an LGBTQ cruise ship tour that will come through. One person asked “Can we be warned if there will be creationists on our tour?” and Colleen snorted “Yeah and if so, can you tell them to bring their own naturalists (tourguides)?” Everyone laughed. She responded “It’s true! I’m not prepared to give that kind of tour!” Colleen’s the coolest. I told her. I told her she is the classic cool, magnetic person of the group and why couldn’t it be me? I said it in jest. We bond over Beyoncé so of course all is well.
Incidentally, I sat next to my two future roommates (we eventually realized) who are named Claire and Jazmin. Jazmin speaks Spanish (get outta here! Hello help for Peace Corps!). They are both super cool, and I don’t say that in the sort of way where I mean “they seem nice but I won’t be hanging with them.” For me to be giddy over two cool roommates (one from Phoenix, one from Alaska) is something that happens every 7 years when my body has made all new cells since the last excellent rooming situation.
When we took our tour around the facility as our penultimate task, we descended to the dock and stood by the St. Nona and St. John.
Little jellyfish the size of a silver dollar sashayed in an unending collection just below the surface. These suckers were inches from my feet and hardly noticeable until you looked and thought “Gee gads, is that an army of jelly fish?” I couldn’t believe my eyes because A) it’s cold in there and B) am I in Florida? Ashley, with the distractingly large boobs given the distractingly tight dolphin t-shirt, said she would look them up in her book tonight and report on the species tomorrow. Ashley spent three years studying turtles in school. She spent another year at a zoo working with another animal I can’t remember. Whales? Bears?
Aha! Moon jellyfish. Small fish circled beneath the jellyfish. It was clear that the jellies wanted to be at the top and the fish were not allowed to hover with them. Jellyfish don’t have brains, I was reminded, so I’m assuming this is an unspoken agreement in aquatica.
“I’m Not Taking The Tour”- Suzanne, my boss, is in her 70s and has the sass of a New-England retiree who wears fishnets in the annual Summer play. I’m told she will ask me to be a hooker in the production. She speaks with the pace of a slow train that never speeds up, but you hang on and expect some sort of acceleration that never, well, does.
Conversation Over Lunch at The Crab Cracker:
“Yeah, when I tell people I live in the butterfly house, they know which one I’m talking about. There aren’t even butterflies on it anymore. They still know.”
“The water here is not safe to drink because they stopped treating it with chlorine and started treating it with chloramine, which is a mix of chlorine and ammonia.” This is, apparently, so that the water would comply with the proper chemical levels, in sort of a sly way. There was a parasite Cryptosporidium (this, I found online). Apparently, the brita water filter I’m using is not enough to make the water safe to drink, either.
Ask me about the water levels in Georgia. I got nothing.
I asked Gwenn, the only female captain (who appears to be gay, later confirmed when I met her partner Stephanie at the neighboring bar Fat Stan) how it is that she knows so much about the water and Shy Cynthia’s eyes widened as she said “Small town life- we know everything!” And Gwenn said “This is Island town for you! Also I’m a homeowner and I get all the updates.”
“I asked a Seattleite how much water they got in a year and they said 70 inches. I said, ‘yeah we get 160 inches a year!’ “
Ketchikan is a legitimate RAINFOREST. HOW DID I END UP IN A RAINFOREST IN ALASKA. ONLY ME.
I’ve never heard of chloramine. I don’t know the annual rainfall where I live. I know it’s more than Seattle, Seattle just mists and drizzles for the most part except for November when it really comes down. I should know, I lived there- but it seems Ketchikan has a strongly informed opinion about Seattle because they get compared so frequently and it’s the biggest American city we’re closest to (Anchorage is a city, but it’s not like Seattle by any means). We rely on Seattle for sports camaraderie (the Seahawks were mentioned with great fanaticism).
“Nothing is waterproof.” Cynthia said in her mousy, high-pitched timbre. “Everyone thinks their product is waterproof, nothing is. Not in Ketchikan.”
“Everyone knows everyone” Lindsey said at the bar we went to after training. Molly was there too, the first girl I met from Alabama who wore crocs and Sasquatchi-themed leggings to work.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE.
The amazing thing, and it somehow makes sense despite my surprise, is that Ketchikaners are impassioned about their state, informed, quirky in their own ways but all very warm and open to new people. They’re used to people coming from all over to work here. They’re used to the influx of tourists from May to September. They know that things are dead in Winter, they know when people die, when people are born, annual rainfall, how to yell at bears so they go away and how good the crab is here.
I know I don’t fit in here, but I don’t know that I don’t fit in, either. Sure, I don’t actually own a hoodie and it’s all anyone wears here, ever, but I can buy one. The more places I go in this life, the more I see how other people do it: bear the burden, live their life, dream their dream and make their way through and find the best burger in town (which is Burger Queen, they deliver).
I told Kristi, my fellow dock rep who told me that there is no tetanus in Ketchikan because the ground is too damp so you get vaccinated when you turn 18, that I was staying on Hawkins Ave to see if she knew the street. She did. She’s the one whose dad lives in the butterfly house that doesn’t have butterflies on it anymore.
What do you imagine when you hear “Alaska”? Look on the map at Ketchikan. It’s all green because it’s all rain. I wrongly assumed that it would be like Seattle, and that rain wouldn’t really happen in the Summer. No- it’s more like Scotland here, it rains whenever it pleases, which is most of the time, and tourism be damned.
They call Catamarans “Cats.” You can understand how perplexed and possibly thrilled I am to hear about a Cat that is 39 feet.
On Alaskan Men:
“The odds are good, but the goods are odd.” This is the general consensus on men provided by Lindsey, a local gal who found a diamond in the rough and they are getting married on August 20th.
Her diamond drug himself into the bar with a dark layer of grime on every inch of skin I could see. He resembled a burnt marshmallow, Jan Val Jean in the labor camp of captivity. The only pale space on this guy was his teeth and the whites of his eyeballs. Another yellow brick road moment: I was nearly rendered speechless by this norm, a dirty ass man welcomed into a bar for a beer and I stared on as if he was Prince reincarnated, too flabbergasted for language.
He was up all night and working all day the day before, as well as today, laying new asphalt in the town streets.
The bartender, Jordan, was an absolute peach from Seattle (female bartenders are a bunch of BITCHES in Seattle, in my experience. I have found the exception in Jordan. Happy to be otherwise corrected but I’m not holding my breath, Emerald City).
I had two Portland brews- called HUB- and conversed mostly with Guest Services Molly with interjections from new friend, non-coworker Lindsey.
Back to the men, Lindsey with the upstanding burnt marshmallow says they are weird. Molly says they are accustomed to summer flings from the influx of tourists and seasonal workers. They aren’t looking for anything serious and they are usually looking to drink a ton, work a ton and chase girls. Duly noted.
Maybe I will be guarded from my worst fear (one of two) of falling love with an Alaskan before I leave for Central America.
Tomorrow, I will take my first tour to Misty Fjords on the St. Nona. To make sure it’s St. Nona and not the St. John, I have to detect which one has the generator on.
Wish me luck.