Up in Alaska

It’s now July 9th, 2024, and I find myself at the North Pole, near Fairbanks, Alaska. It really does exist! The Clausy street names and candy cane light poles were corny (even the McDonald’s sign pole bore the kitschy red and white stripes). Imagine going a call to St. Nicholas Dr. and Santa Claus Lane (note: it’s to the NE of North Pole High School). I felt a bit nauseated at all this tripe, so I drove on.

 

I meet with State Trooper Zack CHICOINE (formerly with the New Hampshire Police Department) for an

afternoon shift ride-along. Unfortunately, their police academy was not in session, so patrolling we did and use-of-force we talked. Riding with patrol officers allows me to pick up tidbits of information that help me shape my understanding of how force is used in various parts of the world. It stirs up a million memories of my own extensive street time. I am actively seeking knowledge outside of our backyard to see if what is being taught back home is effective and worthwhile.

The following morning, I meet the affable Lieutenant Jess CARSON, who lines me up with a couple of eager, hardworking young Troopers who make up their Crime Suppression Unit. Trevor NORRIS and Scott McAFEE (both martial artists) graciously let me tag along as they hunt and peck, looking for thieves and miscreants of all ilk. We search a huge and mucky wrecked car lot for stolen cars and tow one away. We chat a bit about various control tactics and techniques.

 

After two days of car camping in the State Police parking lot, I hit the road towards Anchorage, where Jess’s twin brother Jack, despite being out of the country on annual leave, has made arrangements for taking a look at their training facilities and getting me a ride-along in this municipality. I meet Sgt. Ty WITTE and tour of their downtown station where I am introduced the Chief Sean CASE. They have decent classroom and gym space here, as well as at their police academy, where classes of 12-20 are trained for a force of around 400 officers. At home, we are  relatively blessed with great mats, thanks to my ex-partner’s Ret. Sgt. HINTON’s drive to install sprung floors in our Police Judo, Justice Institute (Police Academy), and VPD Tactical Training facilities. I note that they are using the LEPAT machine in their physical testing (an obvious variation of Doug FARENHOLTZ’s original POPAT set-up for which I was a test subject in the mid-80s). Like many other agencies, they are understaffed (by about 50 members) and are draining the recruiting puddle dry.

 

 

 

Sat. July 13, 2024: I go to the Anchorage afternoon shift parade (24 members), where I meet up with a junior Patrol Officer, James CAMPIONE (and his “partner” in a separate car, Cole SMITH). There is a buzz going around about TRUMP nearly being assassinated and BIDEN being shown the door. There’s a fair amount of gunplay in these parts, along with the seemingly ever-present domestic violence, drugs, and mental illness cases also seen in Australia and New Zealand. We wrap up the shift with the nabbing of a bank robber using unspecified high-tech equipment (see, I did read the waiver 😉 ).

Rain continues to dog me while BC and Alberta burn (they say I dragged this lousy weather with me). Meanwhile back in Tok, my old pal Joe and his crew are bored to death with nothing for his fire crew to do. The next day, I briefly met with Sgt. Derek COTTLE at his HQ; the following day, I went to see Andrew HOUSER at the Alaska Department of Corrections in nearby Palmer. We had a great chat and exchanged a few handcuffing techniques in their training gym using a probation officer, Molly, as a training dummy (yes, they too get trained in use-of-force matters!). They are also still using JIMMERFIELD’s training methodologies (One-on-One Control Tactics), but are looking for alternative training techniques to employ. I found Andrew very quick to grasp the nuances of meaningful control and arrest tactics and strategies and greatly enjoyed the friendship he extended to me.

It is now July 17, and there appears to be a small break in the rainy weather, so I hit the road (Highway 1) back towards Tok. The road is absolutely gorgeous! The view of Matamuska Glacier is quite a sight. It does rain a bit, but at dusk, that sets up one of the most thick and brilliant (double) rainbows I have ever seen!  I pull into Tok, Alaska at 2000 hours with lots of daylight to spare and await Joe to get off work so we can drink a bit, swap techniques and share tales of the martial arts. I retire at 0040 hrs into the dusky confines of my car (I refused to camp on their floor because I didn’t want them tiptoeing around me when they got up to work).

I sleep well, then spend the following few days setting up visits down the road and re-jigging my home on wheels. Joe and Tess quietly listen to my story entitled “My Uncle Frank”, which lays bare a bit of my family history. Joe was shocked about my father’s abusive nature. He said he didn’t know about it…and I never felt like bragging about it, nor crying in my soup. In fact, my original reason for getting into the martial arts in the first place was to defend myself and members of my family (by hopefully beating the crap out of my old man). After sweating buckets and getting into deeper touch with my own anger issues, I fell in love with Karate during the Kung Fu craze of the early 70s. I soon realized that I could just as well hit my father over the head with a metal pipe, with far less personal physical sacrifice.

I learned that forgiveness lies on the road to happiness, so I had a very difficult tete-a-tete with my father, and we both hugged it out and started anew. Forgiving someone does not mean one should forget about family violence (or whatever wrong has been dished out to you), nor does it absolve the violating person of blame. Forgiveness lightens your own personal emotional burden. We can all learn from these experiences and move on from them.

On July 20, I roll into Joe’s workplace to say goodbye, and we both tear up a bit, he tells me that he loves me and that he is a better man for having known me. Wow! He felt gifted that I had entrusted him to say something nice at my projected memorial service. It was like we would never meet again. I told him that I loved him too and that he made himself the man he is today—I just cheered him along. He is, and will always be, my martial arts brother.

I steer my wheels north up the poorly maintained Highway 5 (Taylor Highway – “Top of the World Highway”).  I get through OK and chat pleasantly with the CBSA officer manning the gate from Alaska into Canada. I show her my embarrassingly small canister of Sabre dog spray, and off I go into the Yukon. I like how the first few kilometres of the road are in a perfect state of repair, only to have it turn to crap shortly thereafter. The dirt road is almost entirely without traffic, but I do see a grizzly bear and two foxes (one with a mouse in its mouth).

Highway 9 abruptly ends at the swollen and swift-moving Liard River, and I take the very short, free ferry to Dawson City on the other side. It’s late in the day, and there is a slight drizzle, but I am rewarded with yet another complete and dazzling double rainbow. I stay put to saviour the moment while parking my car at the entrance to an old logging road. This must be my resting place for the night—my “pot of gold” spot. . The mosquitoes are out in full force forcing me, one again, to dive quickly into the back of my SUV, lest I drag the bloodthirsty swarm in with me. I eat some leftover yogurt and granola with sliced banana, and I am asleep by 0130 hours, just 50 km short of Stewart Crossing.

The adventurous part of me rued that I had not ventured up the Dempster Highway yesterday, but I was really unprepared (with regards to water, extra fuel, and a proper spare tire) for a thousand kilometers of a dusty, bumpy road. I did not want to get stone damage to my vehicle’s exterior. I was unsure if my lease agreement would handle such a tortuous trip, so I steered clear of it, promising myself to return when I was better prepared. I still wistfully remember looking at that first little inviting stretch of perfectly paved road heading north, but that was not the way it would be all the way up to Tuktoyuktuk. I guess I am maturing mentally, after all. Another trip it will be!

I drive through many minor smoulderings of recent fires in the sparse forest that seemed to make the multitudes of mosquitoes more voracious. Ah good, smoked meat, BBQ blood! I stay in the parking lot at the Canadian Superstore in Whitehorse and fall asleep to the sound of a light drizzle pitter pattering on my currently, inappropriately named, sunroof.

The next day, July 22, I called my friend Bill CASHER. He wanted to meet up with me later in the day, so I took four hours of time to install the newly purchased six plastic, stackable Sterilite bins in the back of my vehicle for storage, making finding things way easier. The right 1/3 side of my rear sleeping area was now solely a storage zone, with the remaining 2/3 of the car width reserved for sleeping. Delux! Bill led me to the Information Centre to pick up a few house guests from Australia, so I followed them back to his beautiful and spacious rural house, about 40 km from Whitehorse, to have a great dinner courtesy of his wife, Fiona. I have a hard time falling asleep, but Nature still felt I needed a wake-up call at 0500 hrs in the form of an extremely loud clap of thunder that actually rocked my vehicle! How close was that lightning strike?! Bill checked his property and found no fried trees, so it must have burst above my Faraday cage…

So, I dodged fires and a lightning strike; what’s next? A mudslide? Yup. That very same day, I left Whitehorse and decided to cut over to the West Coast to see the deep port at Skagway, Alaska. With all the continuing rainfall, I noted a chest-sized rock on the curving highway skirting around a cliff of mud and stone. It was likely glacial debris left there during the last glacial event, some 12,000 years ago, when the valley was under a mile-thick sheet of ice. The rock was trying to reduce its potential energy by seeking out seal level (and then some) using gravity’s silent, gentle and invisible hand, lubed up with much rainwater. I managed to wrestle this heavy piece of rock to the ditch by rocking it back and forth and pivoting it on a pointy bit, thereby duckwalking off the road. I mentioned the slope instability to nearby Highway workers who had witnessed my rock wrestling.

After a quick look at the massive cruise ships in dock (three of a possible 4 berths were occupied) and noting the large number of jewelry shops and tourists milling about, I go back out of the Skagway Valley. I find an even larger boulder at the same spot and note the improper placement of cones just around the bend, so I scoop them up to reset them. I note rocks the sizes of baseballs and footballs sliding off the slope every 10 seconds. This was no ball game. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck—this slope was going to cut loose, so I wisely beat it, not even hanging around a bit to video the event on my phone. I drove a short distance to Carcross where those Highway workers told me that there was a massive mudslide, 20 meters deep, that just cut loose, exactly where I had been standing. I saw the aerial photo of the slide and realized that even the slide fan was wide enough to have wiped me out and buried me under tons of debris. I caught news of the slide and consequent road closure for days (I was on the right side of that near hit!) and about Jasper burning. No Jasper-Banff trip for me. I go to the Liard River Hotsprings to bask in the hot pools to reflect on my good luck. What the heck? What’s next? Dengue Fever like my friend Blair has in Thailand?

Highway 97 through Muncha Lake Provincial Park was a real treat for the eyes as the nearby mountains wore fluvial fans like long dresses, small creeks sprang off steep cliffs and flew into wispy waterfalls, tiny glaciers bedecked the jutting peaks with its finger-like extensions clinging to cold barren rock, and clumps of snow adorned sun-shadowed crevasses. Magnificent! On the following day, I passed through the massive Peace River Valley and whizzed by my old workplaces in Beaverlodge and Grande Prairie. In early ’72, I hitchhiked to Edmonton to find a job in these places serving as a groundman for the linesmen who either strung interprovincial lines for high-voltage lines on “wishbone” structures, or who ran power lines to the pumpjacks (“donkey heads”) that sucked oil out of the ground using petroleum fuel products until we brought the electrical lines in. Sometimes I did both forms of work, but I mostly did the work of a groundman. Passing through this area brought a flood of memories from the 19-year-old part of my brain. I bought my first motorcycle, a 1969 650cc Triumph Bonnyville, which I almost drove off the road when speeding from Grande Prairie to Beaverlodge to pick up a part before the motorcycle shop closed. The guy who sold me the bike showed me how to switch gears in a parking lot. That was my sole training.

Anyhow, I overnighted at the rural and isolated Grande Cache Cemetery. I felt like flipping the bird at the Grim Reaper by sleeping at its front gates. I must say that it was deadly quiet, so I slept deeply, knowing that my visitation requests were starting to line up in Alberta, while death continued to stalk me.

[Note: Technical problems with pics continue to plague me…I will add pics later.]