 This is ThinkTech Hawaii. Community Matters here. It's all about global connections. I'm Jay Fiedel. This is ThinkTech Global Connections. And with me is my co-host, essentially, Carol Mon-Lee. Hi, Carol. Hi, Jake. Welcome back from Alaska. Yeah, I managed to get back. It's all about travel, you know. Travel is broadening, and you've got to keep on traveling. Even if you don't really want to, you still have to keep on traveling for so many reasons. And I think people in Hawaii, they need to know that. They need to get out. Otherwise, we, as a community, we are less aware about what goes on. We have to go to Europe. We have to go to mainland, certainly. We have to go to, we have to go to, we have to go everywhere. And one of the places that seems to be du rigor these days, I mean that in every sense of the word, is Alaska. And the funny thing is, when I told you that I was planning to go Alaska, you told me that you were also planning to go Alaska, and like one week apart. Exactly. Same, same idea with the cruise ship, and for that matter, the same cruise line, and for that matter, the same ship. Unbelievable. You're reading my mind again. Right. Same itinerary. But I was in a different suite. I was in 9048. Do you remember your suite number? Your cabin number? Oh, 9048 is terrific. Yeah. Yeah, we were in 4302. Okay. 4203, whatever, 4203. That's right next to the waterline. If the thing sank, we'd be the first ones to go. Oh my goodness, okay. Well, you knew where the life boats were, right? On deck six. On deck six, our station was G. What was your station? M. Okay. Now, she's talking about a muster station. And, you know, pursuant to solace, that's the safety of life at sea convention, which I think is an outcropping of the Titanic way back a hundred years ago with the Coast Guard and trying to save lives at sea. They had this convention. And one of the things the convention requires, as adopted by the U.S., is that you've got to have, and the Coast Guard has regulations on this, is that you've got to have a muster drill. And that's what we did. That's what you did, and that's what I did. And it's actually before the ship sailed. Right. So if the ship sails at nine o'clock, at eight o'clock, pencils down, forks and knives down, if you're having dinner, and you've got to go and do muster. They were pretty serious about it, weren't they? Absolutely. But I think that's comforting, don't you think? Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, you know, deck six, if Carol didn't mention it, is the promenade deck, which is like, you know, the old Titanic promenade deck. It's the one you can walk around the whole ship, you know, 360 degrees. And I think it's 1500 feet all around. And if you walk three times or so, you get to walk a mile. There's a plaque, and I don't know if you notice, there's a plaque that says that. And so after every meal, it was our commitment, my wife and me, that we should walk around, we didn't walk a mile, but we walked at least once in order to, you know, digest and not be sedentary, because it's easy. Am I right? It's easy to be sedentary. Very easy. And actually, that deck, part of the deck was reserved for runners. Did you notice the right side was for runners? Running. And that's the deck where they had the muster drill. And so you remember that because you pass under your letter every time you walk around. Oh, gee, I know, gee, that's what I'm supposed to be. So anyway, you know, cruising, the last time I cruised was 50 years ago. And that was an allurelline, yeah. And I didn't really know what to expect. And, you know, if you asked me, you know, two weeks ago what to expect, I couldn't have answered the question. And I bet it's the same with you. You imagine things, but you don't know how it works. There's so many details. So many things you'll have to know and follow and learn. So many things you have to check every day. You've wrote all your brochures. There's a lot of written material involved. A lot of information. It's not that easy. You have to follow the schedule, the ship schedule. You have to make reservations in the various restaurants and for the entertainment and all that. Right. And not only that, there were a lot of announcements that were made from a loud speaker, but the loud speaker did not project into each cabin. It was only outside. And once in a while I would hear this voice. Quick open the door. But who would want to do that? I was, you know, reading or something. And so I think we missed a lot. Yeah, right. It's true. Yeah. We caught it once in a while when we heard the sound, we quick open the door and hear something. But, you know, it's challenging because if you don't do anything, you could just, you know, get to be a couch potato or an eating potato as a case, maybe you're going to get bored. And I think part of part of this experience is not to get bored. You have to be, you know, you have to acclimate yourself to the life on the ship. Right. Well, the Alaska cruise and everybody has said since I've gone and actually before I went that this is really being able to see Alaska from a ship is really one of the most beautiful cruises in the world. And part of it is because there's so many stops along the way as opposed to along ocean cruise where you don't get to get off the ship and you may have three, four, five days on a ship and not see anything but blue ocean. And then you are really fending for yourself to entertain yourself. At least here we stopped, you know, you and I both our ships stopped in four ports. Yeah. And that's good because they're not all the same and they show you what Alaska is like. And there are certain common denominators that you saw in each port that were a little surprising to me about how Alaska works as a state, as a community. It's, it's not like Hawaii at all. You know, it's, it's a lot of mountains. It's a lot of trees, a lot of trees, green trees all over those mountains, steep mountains. Mountains you could never really walk on. You'd have to, you'd have to climb inch by inch to get up those mountains. And actually the weather, I don't know how it was for you, but for us, oh, you told me it was cold. Well, it was really cold. My wife had a pair of gloves. She was wearing the gloves every day and it was overcast and it was fog and rain, sometimes heavy rain. And so, I mean, it's not, you know, I know there are beautiful views out there, but we didn't see a lot of them because for most of our trip, only day we had sun was the last day pulling into Vancouver. Yes. The last day. But otherwise, you know, you had to live in this sort of imperfect environment where you couldn't see it. And I guess that's okay. That's, that's the way it is. Well, and you know, we both traveled in July and we've been told that July is actually the warmest month to visit Alaska. It was lovely from, you know, just to see the vastness and the beauty of the mountains and the water and the wilderness and, but coming from Hawaii is a shock as to how cold it is every day. Yeah. Yeah. It was cold every day and after a while you get used to it and you tend to spend, you know, if you're outside and you go through those big wooden doors, these big wooden or sometimes sliding doors to get from, say, the promenade deck inside, the temperature variation is like 20 degrees, maybe more. And it's really lovely to come inside from cold. But most of our time, I'm sure the same with you was spent inside, not outside. Right. Absolutely. The ship, of course, had a pool and jacuzzi. See anybody? Well, not until the very last day did we even dare to venture out onto the deck with the pool and the jacuzzi. We didn't even dare because it was so cold and overcast until the last day. And as you say, that last day we're already heading down to our Vancouver where it's warmer and, you know, it's sunnier. So but I understand that particular ship in the winter months goes down to Central or South America. So that would be easier. But there are, you know, a number of jacuzzi's there, a number of pools. And as you say, the last day people were out there, especially the kids, and they had a lot of stuff for kids. It wasn't overwhelming for kids. I didn't feel that, you know, kids are underfoot or anything like that. No, they have a kids camp. They have kids camp and they have kids walking around with counselors and and there's a basketball court and various things like that. So they try to, you know, do it for everybody. I thought the entertainment was pretty good, actually. They had, did you see this? I saw a couple of the shows. Yeah. Yeah. Variety shows. Variety shows, right. There was a comedian, a woman comedian. There was an evening of the staff, the inter, the international staff from the ship itself, dancing and singing. And, you know, it varied in terms of ability, but it was fun to watch. The Variety show, which featured a lead who was actually very modest, she would never admit that she was the lead, but you knew she was. Her name was Shari. Shari. Ooh, you'll come to me. Shari. Shari. I'll think of the last name later, but it was a French name. And she was actually a professional out of Chicago. Singer. Singer and dancer. Variety. And they had about 10 people in the cast. I don't know if you saw this. No, I didn't see that one. It was excellent. So much so that we went back and saw it again. But the comedy, the comedy was interesting. There's one guy by the name of Ziegfeld. I'm not kidding. Ziegfeld was his name. Michael Ziegfeld. Ridiculous. Who was very funny. Funny in the sense that he would engage with the audience. He'd walk right up with his microphone and he'd find something amusing to say with no matter who he talked to. And you've got to be good for that. And then there was a guy the next night, Sam, something. And Sam was gross. Gross. Gross. And we met some of the people on the ship and they were really puritanical people. They were Trumpers and came from the south and all that, just very on the right wing side. And one woman said, I'm not going to go to this entertainment until I'm sure they're not going to use any dirty words. Well, she would have really hated Sam. Even me. I was getting uncomfortable with Sam. So how about the food? Did you like the food? I felt that the food was it was prepared in a central kitchen somewhere. Yes. And it was a lot of similarities between restaurants. It was supposed to be different. Yeah. You know, you had the bean salad in one restaurant and then next time the bean salad in another restaurant, same salad. What's going on here? Well, I thought what surprised me was here we are in Alaska, where fresh fish is everywhere, bountiful. And the four, the stops that we made, the towns that we made, they're noted for their catch, fresh halibut and fresh salmon. But whenever there was salmon on the menu, we would ask, yeah, they said, well, it's frozen. There's no fresh, fresh, fresh meats or fish. And, you know, of course, I guess it makes sense on a ship with 2,000 passengers that can't bring in fresh. Well, you can't. But here we are in Alaska. You have to buy from just anyone. And you have to buy in bulk. Right. And so I thought they were slightly, you know, over-concerned about hygiene. Remember the thing that you walk on the ship or off the ship around the ship and there's a guy with a squeegee bottle and he's giving you hygienic stuff for your hands so you can clean your hands off. And I think they probably have had some bad experiences because if somebody catches something on a ship where everybody's in such proximity like that, wow, the whole ship will be sick in no time at all. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the way the ships work, which I hadn't realized is that there are the main dining rooms, right, that the price of your ticket includes, of course, all your meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner. But no liquor doesn't include an open bar at all. But if you want to have a special meal, there are, I think, four or five special restaurants in Italian, French, steak, Japanese. Brazilian. Oh, yes, right. And those you have to pay a premium for. So you have to sign up in advance. Yeah. So it's like going to a restaurant. Although it was relatively cheap. Well, it was like half the cost of a regular restaurant outside. Except you've already paying for your regular meal, right? Right. So that's why it's cheap. Yeah. So it seems cheap, but actually it's just an add-on to what you've already paid for your regular meal. Well, we did that two or three times, yeah. We did that, yeah. And, you know, it was a cut above in the sense of the dining experience. But restaurants were, you know, they were ubiquitous on the ship. Right. You could stumble into them all day long. Well, I think for families, that's what I think the appeal, great appeal for cruises, because there are so many families. And so where you're bringing maybe grandma and grandkids, then you have a variety. You can have, you know, french fries and hamburgers. And at the same time, grandma can get served a regular meal and, you know, everybody's happy and nobody's afraid of somebody getting lost or anything because they're all on the ship. So I think we met a group of 52 people who were there for a wedding anniversary for one of the family members. 52. 52, yeah. Expensive wedding anniversary. Yeah. And they were all having a great old time. But a lot of groups, people family, traveling in groups, families. It's better to travel in groups, isn't it? Yeah. Well, yeah, for something like that, it makes a lot of sense because you're all together and yet you're not on top of each other. You're not in the same state room or in the same deck. Right. But you can get together pretty easily. We're going to take a short break and when we come back and we're going to talk about, you know, I would like to talk about the diversity on these ships, because diversity is really everywhere on these ships in every capacity. That's Carol Monalie. She's co-host today on Global Connections and we're talking about what the inside passage in Alaska, well, exciting. We'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii, which streams live on ThinkTechHawaii.com, uploads to YouTube, and broadcasts on cable OC16 and Olelo 54. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Aloha. My name is Steven Phillip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and I'm the host of Shrinkwrap Hawaii, where I talk to other shrinks. Did you ever want to get your head shrunk? Well, this is the best place to come to pick one. I've been doing this. We must have 60 shows with a whole bunch of shrinks that you can look at. I'm here on Tuesdays at 3 o'clock every other Tuesday. I hope you are too. Aloha. Okay, we're back. We're on the other side now. We're going to talk about the diversity on the ship before we go to our slideshow. You do want to see our slideshow, trust me. The selected slides. There's not all the slides. So, diversity. A lot of diversity. I noticed that the minute I was on the board. So, are you talking about passengers or staff and crew? All of the foregoing. Mm-hmm. Is that true? Mm-hmm. Great. I mean, every language. Every language in the world. Mm-hmm. A lot of South American, Mexican, a lot of that. A lot of European was there. A lot of Asian was there. From all countries, Chinese was there. Mm-hmm. Okay, and I guess the, what do you call it, Norwegian cruise lines knows that. So, they mirror image their passenger base with their staff. And they recruit everywhere, everywhere. I was so amazed. You get to talk to the staff, how they function, how they work. We talk to some of the staff, and it's interesting, they are on contract. So, they're on contract for eight months. And at eight months, they don't have a day off. They're on, cruise is going up and down, Alaska up and down. And they may get time off during the day, in between their responsibilities. And as each ship lands in a town or a city, they may be able to get off. But in general, they don't really have a full day off where they can go home, because of course they're miles and miles away from home. And then they take off months at a time, and then they renew their contract and come back on. And we talked to people who had been doing that for five, 10 years. So it's an interesting life. Not a bad life. Yeah, it's an interesting life. When you're young without maybe as many obligations to be on a ship and get to travel around the world and meet all sorts of people. Yeah. And they're paid well. I can't say exactly what that means, but they get room and board for free, and then they get money. Some kind of salary or eight-month contract. So that works pretty well, actually, as a style of life. What interested me probably more than anything else was this thing about the entertainers. The entertainers came from everywhere. So we followed two bands, okay? Two bands. Bands. Uh-huh. Did you dance? They played it in a lounge on the, I guess it was the fifth deck or the sixth deck. Oh, okay. And no, we didn't dance, no, no. We left that for the younger people, older people. They were both younger and older. So one of them was an Italian band. Italian. All four of them. There were four in this band. They all played Italian music all day. And they were charming. And there's a market for that. Uh-huh. Another was a Spanish band from Spain. But actually, one of them was from Venezuela, which was Argentina. Sorry, Argentina. And Venezuela has its trolls right now. And they were also charming. And they have a great gig. It was a kind of boyfriend-girlfriend combination, two of them. And it's a great way to spend time. I agree. This is a real benefit. If you're free and you can get away like that. So you have the passengers, tremendous diversity. You have the entertainers, tremendous diversity. And you have the staff in general. True. Although I would say that the plurality of it was Filipino. Yes, it seemed to be. And I mean, but it was everybody else too. Right. And there were a lot of Indians, as you know. A lot of Indians, both in the staff and the passenger base. I'll tell you one thing that surprised me. I don't know if you felt this is that the amount of marketing, for instance, there's a art gallery on the ship and a major push to sell diamonds. Now, I don't recall this at all as a market that would seem to make sense. Then it was pointed out to me, well, when you're on a ship for as many days, seven days and nights, and if you're walking around and nothing else to do between meals, looking at art, I guess, is something that people with suddenly having time would do. And so there's a big promotion to sell art. Personally, I didn't think the art was very high quality, but it's something that I had never thought of. And the other thing was. There's an art auction there. Yeah. So he was actually doing an auction. And he was the manager of art auctions. That was his title, that guy. Yeah, it's a picture of somebody. Peter Max. Peter Max. Oh, those are the posters. Peter Max used to do posters in the 60s and 70s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I believe that that's all intended to try to avoid the boredom, because if you stay inside, it's cold outside, you can't get off the ship for a day or two at a time. You need things to keep you active. And so art auctions and sales, jewelry, diamonds, watches. You see the watches? Yeah. Invict the watches. I don't know if it's that good, but watches. So did you buy? Did you buy anything? Not a thing. No. No, did you? I bought some postcards. No. All the way. Let's see some photographs and try to describe our little slideshow here. There's my wife. You can see she's wearing gloves and she's freezing. She's wearing a hood and a jacket and all buttoned up. We can barely see her chin and that she's on deck six, right? She's right. That's the promenade deck where you can walk or jog around if you like. Hi, Sharon. And that's me at the muster drill. Putting on a yellow life vest with a crewman. The staff was so friendly, they would take a photograph with you anytime. Okay, and this is the staff at one of those restaurants. I can't remember which one it was. Looks like Seven Seas. Seven Seas, yeah. Okay. And they were so friendly. They were really dolls and they were whatever you wanted. Let's see more. There's plenty more here. We are going to see more. I know we're going to see more. More slides. They're coming soon. Rich, here we go. There's the deck with the swimming pool. Nice overcast day. Yeah, a nice regular overcast day. But behind that door over to the left is the restaurant. It's a huge restaurant. It was a garden restaurant. I think it was called? Garden Cafe. Garden Cafe. Yeah, and if you notice everybody, and there's another picture with dozens of people. This is the glacier. This is the glacier and of course everybody's wearing dark jackets and hoods and, you know, long pants. I picked this picture because I wanted to try to demonstrate how high the glacier was. That, you know, you can't really tell. This is at the fan tail of the ship and you can't really tell, A, how close we were. We were very close to the glacier. It almost gave me concern. And B, the glacier was like 400 feet high. This is not a small glacier. And C, I don't have a video of it. But part of the glacier came down. It's called calving. Calving. Calving. It's calving. Is that a verb? Yes, to calve. Yes. And is this the Hubbard Glacier? Yes. This was Hubbard. Yes. This is the first glacier and the ship goes as close to it as it can so we can see it. And it's right in the water. It's just dropping fresh water into the ocean. And, you know, this is a moment in time. Here we are in 2017 seeing this picture of it where 10 years ago it was much bigger, larger, taller, and in another 10 years it was going to be smaller. Yeah. Yes. And you could see the sides of it were all, you know, soil and rocks. You could see that it was shrinking and you could watch it. You could watch it shrink. Okay, we've got more pictures. I know they're coming. They're coming soon. All right. There's Annabelle's, you know. And there's Sharon. And there's Sharon. All bundled up again. This was in, this was in the last stop. Ketchikan? This is in Ketchikan. Aha. The rest can. In Ketchikan is, talk about diamonds. Half of Ketchikan is diamond stores. Exactly. I don't understand. Are diamonds mined in Alaska? No. No. So they come from some other place and tourists are going to come because, of course, these towns, main industry is tourism. These big ships that come in and sometimes four or five ships at a time unloading eight, 10,000 people at a time. And they're selling diamonds. I just found that as opposed to gold. It's hard to imagine. And it's not only in Ketchikan, but it was also in Juno. Yes, in Juno. Big, big diamonds. Store after store after store. And the other place, what was the other place? Well, we stopped in Icy Straits. Yeah, Icy Straits. No diamonds there. There was an Indian island. Skagway had diamonds. Skagway had diamonds. All right. Skagway, Juno and Ketchikan. All with the diamonds. And we're not talking about just one or two on a block. We're talking about everything on a block is diamonds. And Cheerios also, Alaskan Cheerios. But it struck me that this is ridiculous. They're not indigenous to Alaska. Well, it would be like if Hawaii had a diamond market. It just isn't a place that people are going to come to buy diamonds. So my wife asked one of these diamond merchants, you know, do you stay here during the winter? What happens? And the diamond merchant said, no, we close up. We leave the premises. And we go to another place in the world. It could be anywhere. And we open another diamond store on the cruise ship route. We follow the cruise ships. And there are places you can rent over that period, whatever it is, six or eight months, where the cruise ships are coming in and sell you diamonds. And then you move on for the next season. Now I understand more. Right. But for some reason, people are wild about diamonds. I don't know. I think it's kind of, I don't understand it. But let's talk a little bit about the town. So the first stop was called Icy Straight Point. And actually, I guess it's a private town that is only open during the season, which is. It's owned by the Klinkett. Klinkett, Alaskan native. I don't know if they call them, they don't call them tribes. I think they call them communities. It's an Indian tribe. Yes. And it's only open during the season. That means when ships come in to port, which is between. Oh, it's beautiful. Did you notice the incredible improvements they've made? Oh, beautiful town. The steer gangway goes on for hundreds of feet. And the waterfront. And the waterfront and the tourist houses and restaurants. It's really beautiful. Very, very nice. Somebody put a lot of money into this. So I asked Harry. Harry is my buddy there. He's one of the Klinkett guys. He was a security man. I really liked it. We talked to him both coming and going. And Harry said, well, it's a corporation of Indians that owns the town. And he was a stockholder, a shareholder. And there were other shareholders, too. I asked everybody, are you a shareholder? They all were shareholders. Members of the tribes, those things. And he said, well, we got the money from loans, but also from the state of Alaska who gives money or who loans money in order that the tribes can do this kind of thing. Klinkett is one of the big tribes in Alaska. Right. And I don't know about the winter. Maybe they do nothing in the winter. No, they close up and a lot of them come to Hawaii. Yes. That's right. No. Yes, it's true. But I see straight point is definitely a success story because a lot of the tribes, as we know, may open, whether it's gambling casinos or just haven't been able to thrive. But because they use their money invested in this kind of entrepreneurial opportunity to bring in tourists to build the ports so that ships could dock and then unload massive number of tourists like us to spend money. When I was in Ashley Straight Points, I took a cooking class with Kamali Schultz. Right. I learned that well. Alaska cooking class. Salmon dip. And I watched, we grilled halibut and salmon and Sherry Broder and Ned Schultz went on a hike. And then we took a lovely. Beautiful, beautiful. We went on a lovely tram ride around the coast to see where the salmon was caught. I had the best salmon in my life in the last port. Ketchikan. Ketchikan. At Annabelle's, you saw the picture. That was unbelievable. It was too bad the ship didn't have salmon of that quality. It was really, really fabulous. But I wanted to get to a couple of main conclusions on this. Number one, we're talking about the investment that the clinkets made in order to build this Indian center there. Gee whiz, Hawaii doesn't have anything like that. No. For that matter, the ship terminal at Aloha Tower is nothing compared to the ship terminal for the Norwegian cruises. Nothing. It's beautiful. Both at both ends, even in the starting point. Sewer. Sewer. Nothing fishing town, but they got this really nice terminal. And at the Vancouver end, oh, it was beautiful. Right. We don't have that. Why don't we have that? And they have, but I don't know whether it's a Jones Act or what. I guess, see, the Jones Act says you have to have an American ship with an American crew and American, something else. Three things, American ship, American crew, and American flag in order to go between inter-coastal ports. Well, we went to three, four inter-coastal ports. And there was an Norwegian flag. I don't know how they deal with the Jones Act problem. There must be some solution there. But what struck me is that they were over a season and over years, they were delivering virtually millions of tourists to these towns that had really no significant industry aside from that. Oil is a little slow in that part of Alaska. Fishing is a big deal, but relative to tourism, fishing is peanuts. You know, that's what they got. Right. Well, Ice Strait Point used to have a salmon cannery, but it's long since closed. And now tourism is its main industry. So we're talking about millions of tourists coming by. I don't know where we missed the boat, literally missed the boat, but Hawaii could be just like all of those places. Hawaii with stops on all the islands by foreign flag vessels like Norwegian cruises with a foreign crew and all that. I don't know why we haven't done that. I don't know why we haven't improved our facilities. I don't know why we don't have millions of people. You know, as a destination port, it's much better for you not to have to have the hotels and infrastructure. It's all provided on the ship and the tourists come off the ship and they buy diamonds or whatever. They just lay money all over the community. Of course, the type, the geography is so different. And as you know, Juno, the capital of the state, which only has a population of 30,000, which still is kind of mind-boggling when you think of the state capital as only a small population. But the only ways to get to Juno are either by air or by ship, by water, by ship or ferry. You can't drive to the state capital. So the shipping abilities are much more important than for us because we have so many, you know, the ability to travel by plane. That's, you know, most people come. Well, last I heard you couldn't drive between here and Mali. We can't, but, you know, taking a ship from the West Coast to Hawaii takes too many days to make it efficient. So flying is really... It's certainly a different place. It's really the wild, the wilderness. It was beautiful. The last American wilderness. Maybe the last wilderness in the world that's right there. And you can see it eroding as you take the ship. And that's why it's such a precious holiday. Take a look at that and feel the wildness of it and feel the, you know, the beautiful nature, unspoiled nature. So that made it worthwhile all on itself. Absolutely, right. And we were visitors, respectful visitors to that place. What was your favorite port? My, you know, I think... Actually, I liked a little bit about each of them. And in Juno, we visited a museum called the Walter Soboloff Museum, which had some wonderful native art. That was really inspiring. As I mentioned, in Icy Strait's point, getting to grill some fresh salmon and halibut. And as my friend said afterwards, I gave her some. She said, oh, I've never had your cooking. This was my one opportunity to actually make something for her. And Ketchikan, lovely, lovely town. And then, of course, in... I guess it was Ketchikan. We went up to the, no, Skagway, White Pass Yukon Route train, which goes up where the bold minds would say yes. And lovely views and very desolate and, you know. So, no, I think I enjoyed every stop for different reasons. They all had their strong points. Common denominators all around. But the trip would not have been complete with any one of them that you had to see. And we did. We saw all the major points along the road from that fur place again. The first place? The first place. Icy Strait point. Starting, starting. Oh, Seward. Seward, Seward's Folly. South of Anchorage. Uh-huh. So all in all, it was very interesting. It was a getaway of its own sort. And you had a chance to, you know, be removed and remote for a little while. Right. And so a snapshot of Alaska in 2017. Thank you, Carol. Yeah. Well, thank you, Jay. I'm glad you're back, though. We missed you. Nice to be back. Okay. Oh, there's my picture. Oh, nice. Look at that, will you? That's very nice. Off to Fantail, proceeding southeast.