An Education.

“That’s so Skaggy,” the crowd chanted.  OK, one more time I instructed, and like you mean it this time!…“That’s sooo Skaggy!” 

The passengers on the shuttle I drive from 5 to 9 PM around the seven blocks of downtown Skagway seemed amused by this saying.  I told them there are just some things in life that are so ridiculous, there is simply no other way to describe them but by muttering this phrase.  A woman was chuckling as I was giving her examples of proper times to execute this, such as when there is a hand written sign at the only market where all the milk should be…saying, “No Milk.  Cow ran Dry.”  Or personally getting reported in the newspaper’s police blotter for having “An excessively loud dance party outside.  The suspects were reportedly dancing to the Spice Girls.”  True story. 

My temporary friends on the short bus found it all too amusing that there was a lovingly derogatory term for this strange town they had stumbled upon.  To them, it was nothing but an anecdote, something they might relay at dinner that night on the ship for a laugh, and then forget.   However to me, their instructor and resident expert, it is so much more.  You could say it is the thesis statement to my four-year education in Skagology. 

Yes, I said Skagology.  With the assistance of inevitable hindsight, I realize my twenties have veered from the popular path that is commonly recommended and referred to upon entering one’s second decade.  I am alluding to an education.  There it is…out in the open…I ain’t done been educated…traditionally, that is. 

This brings us back to Skagology, for which I do consider myself a proud bachelor degree toting graduate.  Hear me out on this one. I realize there is much to be garnered within the walls of an accredited educational institution.  However, I hold the belief life has much to teach you everywhere you roam, if you’re willing to listen, learn, and laugh of course.  I have dedicated four years to very few activities in my willing adult life, so upon recently choosing to continue my education in Skagology at the Masters degree level (year five, here I am)…I find myself reflective on the years sacrificed to my precious undergrad.

                                                                   2004: Freshman
                                                             Emphasis:  Shell Shock.

Despite the amazement of most people in my life, up to and including myself, I acquired a couple new letters on my driver’s license which allowed me to drive a 40 foot motor coach…with people…INSIDE.  Based on my prior risk taking experience, this in itself should have rendered me into a state of fear based paralysis.  But there was more.  I was giving tours in this bus I was driving.

Excuse me? How did I get here?  Where am I?  The answers to those questions were simple.  My still precious friend, Holly Hallet convinced me and some other eventual Skagologists that there is a relative fortune to be made in a small Alaskan tourist town called Skagway.  They don’t pay you just to come, I found out quickly.  You have to talk, and drive, and herd large amounts of humans, and discipline them, and fake laughter, and pretend to know stuff…and that’s just a start. 

This year was so naive and sweet, upon recollection.  We studied history.  We traded failed and successful jokes into the wee hours.  We exchanged tip lines.  We developed altered personalities for our tours. 

Upon returning for my graduate degree, I look around at the many young ones just starting out and realize that practice at dealing with cruise passengers really does make perfect.  Unfortunately, learning how to deal with fistfights between passengers or a broken down bus 3 hours away from the ship which is leaving in 2 hours, always comes the hard way.  Like I said, year one was pure shell shock.

                                                                  2005: Sophomore.
                                                            Emphasis:  Camaraderie.

 After the dust settled and the learning curve straightened, I started to look around at the more than stellar group of co-workers and soon to be life-mates that surrounded me.  The job had begun to run on autopilot for the most part.  The tour spewed out my mouth effortlessly.  I was secretly making grocery lists and plotting how to get my laundry done after work while somehow poetically reciting the entire 1898 gold rush saga with ease.  I needed a new focus.  This year, friendship was on the forefront.

To this day, I know not how a group of such premium people gathered together in this tiny town in 2005.  Everyone I was surrounded with by happenstance of employment pushed me to laugh louder, think harder, play prouder. 

I’m brought back to soccer games, where we ran feverishly down the field clenching PBR cans in our fists, and those who had no interest in playing didn’t just stay home.  They came out to the sidelines, banging pots and pans with sticks they picked up…hollering and pounding praises. 

I also recall a “No house mom’s “ party thrown for and by all 20 of our housemates when the house matriarchs happened to be away for the evening.  Moving all our mattresses to the downstairs, prank calling people who obviously knew it was us, and videotaping “sledding” down the stairs on our twin mattresses as everyone cheered as they slammed into the wall. 

We would routinely stay up till 3 in the morning, trying to create animal associations for everyone.  At times it was difficult trying to convince them that just because they look most like a huge South American rodent, that’s not necessarily a bad thing…(Kara?).  Many, many Google images eventually proved our theories.

No matter our differences in faith, hometowns or animal associations ( Ex: I’m a wildebeest, Shandra is a Hamster…) our humor found a way to bring us as close to a Utopian work environment as I can fathom.  I hesitate to claim favorites in life, because I tend to shy away from anything anyone can hold me to at a later date…. But I can confidently proclaim that this year will go down in history as my favorite.  We didn’t need smoky bars to ease our weary souls after a long day of selling them, we merely needed to go home and say hello.  That is never something to take for granted.

                                                                       2006: Junior.
                                                        Emphasis:  Isolation and Gilbeys.

 If I could compare this year to the last, I would say 2005 was the innocent high of entering middle school, new faces and genuine fascination with everyone and everything.  2006 was more akin to deciding to go to alternative school in the 11th grade.  A lot of the faces had changed, the overall moral morphing with it.  No longer did I feel so closely connected to all 25 of my co-workers, but more focused on a fantastic few…

Obviously, this was inevitable and I was by no means left lonely.  My group of cohorts narrowed and hardened.  We turned our interests slightly toward the darker side.  The side every well intentioned elder had warned me about upon me telling them about my blossoming Alaskan endeavors.  This side could be summed up simply as “The Bottle.”

Oops.   It was bound to happen, really.  As we became more than a bit less enthusiastic about the Skagway scam in general, we burrowed in toward finding that much needed comfort in a specified group of people…and the plastic Gilbey’s Vodka bottle in your purse.  We actually had to make a pact mid-summer that we could no longer purchase alcohol packaged in a plastic bottle.  It just isn’t good.  Ever.

Lindsay Schuette and I may have been technically dating.  I’m not sure, but the facts adds up.  Obsession was and still is the word.  We stalked a handful of people daily…hoping they could join in our mild shenanigans.  We enacted a forum for friendship at our favorite bar, Moes, creatively dubbed “Monday Night Moes.”  This is where my love affair with Makers Mark Whiskey began.  At MNM we would mostly stare at each other because we could practically read each other’s thoughts, due to sheer overexposure.  When someone spoke, it was about what should be on the Jukebox, or how premiere our bartender Abby was.  When Friday nights would roll around, we would dance to Wild Bill Simon’s inappropriate lyrics without abandon.

Classic Junior year syndrome:  Too cool for school.  Upperclassmen aren’t looking as good anymore, and escapism does not feel overrated.

                                                                      2007: Senior.
                                                               Emphasis:  Burn out.

 The motto exchanged between Lindsay and I in 2007 was, “2008, not on our watch.”  With sincerity and in all seriousness, we were done…or so I thought.  The job was strumming on our last nerves.  The tourists were no longer laughable.  Life became a battle not to “accidentally” leave them in the Yukon.  Their jokes were indiscernible and often racist.  They asked the same questions everyday, at least 3 times a day.  No matter how we tried, we were often no more than a 9 hour shuttle driver to them, and that’s how they tipped us. 

Two words:  Burn Out.

The front line of the tourism industry is not for the faint of patience.  You will be tried by the most unassuming of elderly.  They will flog your bus with their canes because they think you are a shuttle, they men will continuously doubt your ability to be a woman and drive a 40-foot motor coach, and the women are mostly from New York or New Jersey named Marilyn will speculate about the potential of squirrels having peed in the ginger cookies you provide them.  The consistency of these characters are astounding.  It becomes hard to muster perspective day to day, that these are new faces, and not in fact the same entitled and neurotic passengers you encountered the day before.  They start to look the same.  All of them, with the same confused look on their faces, shouting the same questions...it's like you're stuck in a horrible Groundhog Day Twilight Zone episode.


Keep in mind, none of this is rational.  A lot of these people are very nice, and simply trying to maneuver around a town for the first time.  But this does not cross the mind of someone who is burnt out.  It is hard to focus on the good, and easy to fester in the bad.  I was gripping the steering  wheel of my bus a little to hard, and I was allowing my self to get a little too close to those clueless visitors who refused to get out of the middle of the street when driving down it.

It was simply time to go.  No questions asked.  Conveniently and not coincidentally, my beloved company had reached a similar state...and then the pact was made: 2008, not on our watch...and we stuck to it...gladly.

                                                         2010: Graduate Studies
                                                     Emphasis: New found appreciation


Claiming this was the end of a beautiful run, I proudly stayed continentally stateside for 2008 and 2009.  Somewhere around February of '09 the memories of my beloved Alaskan home started to sneak into my somewhat mundane days.  I secretly fostered these thoughts, guarding them from Lindsay with whom I made the pact.  I started to think, "That pact didn't say, 2010...not on our watch."  It clearly stated 2008 alone was off limits, and to that promise I had made good.

My soon to be husband at the time was not reluctant to this plotting, as he had once known this place as well.  I became elated.  As retrospect often does, only the positive flooded back to me.  I recalled the slow, deliberate pace of life, the crisp air whipping off the ocean and echoing through the valley, and mostly I recalled a place that still held so much of me in it.  We had to go back.

As students who pursue a higher level of understanding after mastering the basics of their undergrad, I too feel I am returning to Skagway with the intention of grasping more deeply something about this lifestyle that calls to me.  The innocence of my first four years have faded, and I am here with what feels to be a more adult perspective on a place that embodies youthful freedom to me.  To those I placate on my shuttle by introducing them to the concept of "Skaggyness" this is just an odd spectacle on their cruise, but to this student of life...being "So Skaggy" is a well earned education, and I'm glad to be back in the classroom.