David Again

Anchorage—in bullet form:
Pros
-Beautiful views
-Good coffee
-Extremely nice people
-Very nice weather
-Lots of light
-Decent bus system

Cons

-Expensive
-Difficult to get around without a car
-Lots of light
-Very Expensive
-Did I mention that food is seriously expensive?

I can’t stress enough how expensive Anchorage is. People told me to expect New York prices, but these prices blow New York out of the water and make Whole Foods look like Sam’s Club. The cheapest loaf of bread I could find was $4.39. So even a diet consisting of peanut butter and bread isn’t all that cheap. I only hope that as oil prices rise over the summer the prices don’t skyrocket even more (yeah, right). Hopefully after I’ve been here a few weeks I’ll know where to purchase some cheap food, other then semi-cheap, extremely delicious falafels. Coffee isn't too badly priced. Kaladi Brothers Coffee is the local purveyor of the life sustaining liquid, and a 16 oz cup costs a reasonable $1.75 and is delicious. Still, I better start home brewing soon or I'll be broke extraordinarily quickly.

That said what I have eaten has been good. Alli and I went to a restaurant called Humpys two nights ago (I use the word "night" very loosely), and I was happy to find out that a Humpy is a pink salmon. However they do not serve pink salmon, because they are sacred fish, so you can not get a humpy at Humpys. However they do serve red salmon, so I got a salmon burger (12 dollars), while Allie ordered a salmon Caesar salad. Both of us were pleased with our meals, though frightened of the prospect of eating out too often. We may, though, go back Monday (tomorrow) because they have an open mic night, which should be amusing at least.

Also I got a bike yesterday. It’s a nice mountain bike that is owned by someone on the board of directors of REAP (free bike!!!). It’s a little small for me, and I still miss my bike, but I’m happy to be riding again. Anchorage is actually a flat city, so getting around on bike shouldn’t be too hard—no Williamsburg Bridge to go over twice a day. The only problem is the very large area that Anchorage takes up. There are great trails throughout the city which are completely separated from the street system to ride on, though, which is great because the roads here are not conducive to bike travel. In fact most people ride their bikes on the sidewalks instead of the road. This doesn't seem all that safe to me, since the sidewalks are fairly narrow, hopefully it won't get too crazy once the tourist season really picks up.

Anyway, tomorrow is my first real day as a REAPer, so I'm pretty excited to get a more concrete idea of what my summer responsibilities will be!