freeryan.com

Bill said "move to Alaska and play music with me". I said "no way, I've got a great job working in downtown Seattle at a kickass web-dev firm". Next day I spent two hours stuck in traffic, my exit in sight, a truck jack-knifed 200 yards ahead, thinking to myself: WTF am I doing. Next day I started selling my stuff.

I *almost* fit everything I owned in the '83 Honda Accord. I had to put one computer monitor in Nate's van. This was a big deal to me because for some reason I really wanted to be able to put everything I owned in that car. Oh well.

Then bam, before I knew it I was on the Mighty Matanuska heading up the inside passage. The trip was a blur. I pitched my tent on the back deck with a few others. I remember unzipping at port in Ketchikan. It was raining very hard. Anyone who knows Ketchikan in March knows I'm understating. OK I'll be explicit. My tent was as wide as my body, the wind had it squashed up against the railings. The rain was so violent I couldn't even hear myself think.

We landed in Juneau, Bill picked us up, and we all piled into a one bedroom apartment. It was me, Sarah, Nate, Jill, and Doug all living there. At one point the landlord complained about how many of us were in there and we told him Jill was escaping from an abusive relationship and needed the place to stay. Ha! (that landlord, btw, didn't refund our damage deposit -- jerk!).