Today I woke up to a call from Joiner, who is living it up in DC this summer, working for The Man. Ah, I remember working for The Man, fresh out of college and living in my very first apartment with One-Armed Maggie. She was very patient with me, and I tried to be patient with her. Oh, the salad days then, that are wilted and sad now!

I was stressed today because Roommate and I were trying to make our way to the mountains to the east in Chugach National Forest and the closest bus route was still five miles away from the trailhead we wanted to go to. We would have had to have taken a bus and then called a cab, so we decided to leave that for another day and stick closer to Anchorage. We settled on going to Far North Bicentennial Park, but the bus to that park only comes once an hour, and we missed it because I got up late, and I was on IM with Friend while we were looking at trail maps online, and my folks called and I had to talk to them and they were being annoying and I was feeling stressed and irritated because why would you schedule your visit when you know I have another visitor here for half the time you're planning to come here? (They wanted to come from July 2-9, when they know that Double M is going to be here over 4th of July weekend.) How exactly do you expect me to see you when I have another guest in town? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. I was annoyed. But they are going to change their trip dates. To the day after Double M leaves. AAAGGGHHH.

Anyway, Roommate and I missed the bus, and so called a cab, and it cost $19 to get to the trailhead, which is about half of what a car would have cost to rent. Sigh.

On the trail, I saw a guy who looked like my supervisor from work, but I wasn't sure, so I shouted out his name and waved when he turned around, but he looked right through me. But I was pretty sure it was him, so I walked over and then he was very apologetic and kept saying he thought I was a tourist who wanted him to take a picture and so on and so forth and yes, well, I am a tourist, and I don't care. He introduced me to his 3 kids, who were collecting little black caterpillars, and said Viewpoint trail was a nice one, and that I shouldn't be scared of bears and moose since they didn't come out much during the day, and that the bugs weren't too bad if you kept on moving.

The trail was all right -- it was pretty flat, and through miles and miles of forest, and while I prefer mountain trails, it was a nice walk in the woods. Nice, that is, except for the bugs. Sweet holy jesus. I still feel itchy. The little bloodsuckers created a halo around each of us, like the cloud of dust around Pigpen from Charlie Brown comics.

We'd bought some of that Skin-So-Soft from the Avon lady at the Saturday Market yesterday, and she assured us that she'd never had a return on the product, but that has got to be CROCK, because we must have sprayed ourselves a dozen times over, and the mini-vampires got us over and over. Right after I sprayed my clothes, they would avoid the clothes for a while, but then they'd be back at it. I was sitting down at one point and four or five mosquitoes were trying their best to stick their proboscises into my jeans, hoping to tap into a blood source. I watched one as it tried to drill into the denim. It would try a couple times in one spot, hard enough to bend the slender proboscis (doesn't that word alone just give you chills?), give up, walk a few steps over, and try again. The thought of that narrow proboscis sinking in my flesh makes me feel ill. But watching the buggers try and fail on my jeans was kind of funny. And disgusting.

I was lucky in that I was wearing a hat, but the bugs were all over Roommate's hair. She got bitten on the face, on the neck, on her arms -- through her shirt, mind you -- and all over her hands. This may not seem that bad to you, but Roommate and I -- curiously -- share the same allergic reaction to mosquito bites. The area around the bite puffs up white a few minutes after we get bitten. Then it turns red and swells up to twice the original area. The swelling gets hot with fever, and is tender to the touch. The fever sticks around for a day or two. After a few days, it fades to something that looks like a bruise. The marks don't completely fade for months.

So when Roommate got bitten on her forehead, she looked like she'd been knocked on the head with a bottle. Similarly, my right hand is swollen unnaturally in a couple areas, as is the tip of my left index finger and my right elbow.

To sum up: Mosquitoes = minions of Satan. Us = meat. Avon = useless. DEET = buying it tomorrow.

It rained while we were on the trail, as it does every day. The buggers left us alone a little while while it was raining, but they came back full force after the thundershower ended. As the rain tapered off, though, we met a cowboy on the trail. Honest to daisy. He rode a chestnut stallion and he wore a cowboy hat. His stirrups were large gourd-like affairs, and he had a salt-and-pepper beard. He saw us coming along the trail and moved his horse over to the side. When we passed, he smiled and nodded and said, "Did you get wet from the rain? I did too. But there are worse things!" And then he disappeared.

Is Alaska where cowboys come to die? We thought he might have been a ghost, except that as we left the park, we saw him training his chestnut mount. I waved, and he waved back. Roommate took pictures. But I wouldn't be surprised if no one is in them.

The cab driver had driven us to the trailhead, which was at least a mile and probably more like two miles from the main road, where we'd arranged for a cab company to pick us up at 6:30. The road was very, very long. We were very, very tired. At the end, we stopped at the Alaska Botanical Gardens, where we gratefully sat down on a bench across from two teenage boys, one of whom disappeared for a long time and came back with a pipe and some weed, which they promptly lit up. They didn't offer us a hit (chuh!) but they did ask, "Want some bug dope?" after watching us ineffectually swat away mosquitoes for 10 minutes. Hah.

On the way back from the happy weed garden, a guy on a bike swooshed past me without a sound, and I was so startled, I let out a scream, which scared Roommate and caused biker guy to ride right into a moose that stepped out of the woods. The moose then became enraged and kicked the shit out of said guy and you realize I'm totally lying, right? There was no moose. Just a biker guy that made me scream, which scared Roommate, who said, "Damn, you are really on edge, hk." Well, maybe she didn't say "damn," because she is a nice girl. But I guess I was on edge.

On the main road, we watched empty bus after empty bus go by, until our cab showed up. At least, we though it was our cab, until our cab driver set us straight. I got to talking with the guy, because I wanted to know how we could obtain a car for the summer, and one thing led to another, and next thing you know he's telling us about growing up in South Central LA and getting mixed up in stupid things with stupid people, how getting drafted saved his life, about how he lost fortunes twice in Alaska and in Hawaii, how he came to Alaska after living in many places and thought, "yup, this is it," how he planned to go to Iraq to work as a contractor and make half a million dollars to live on for the rest of his life, how half a million dollars goes a long way in Thailand, where "a nice Thai lady with a kid is probably thinking right now how it would be great to be with an American," and how he's "always been attracted to Oriental ladies" and thinks them "beautiful." Then he turned around and smiled at us.

It was all so good before the Oriental ladies came into it. Damn Oriental ladies!

And in summary: cowboys = dreamy, teen boys = stoned, hk = on edge, and men who like "Oriental ladies" = ew.