Monday, May 6, 2019

We only ship to the continental United States

The jug
This is 2019 and in the past couple of weeks I have run across two large companies that still won't ship to Alaska. For the record #Igloo and #RTIC, both makers of outdoor equipment. For crying out loud #RTIC even has a form of the word "arctic" in its logo along with an image of a polar bear and still won't ship to the only Arctic region of the United States.
     Years ago this was not an unusual occurrence. Many vendors excluded Alaska and Hawaii using the excuse they only shipped to the Untied States or only to the continental United States.
     When we pointed out that a) we're indeed in the same country, and b) we are on the same continent, at times some of them relented and it hasn't happened to me in some time now. At least until this week.
      What you really hate is going through the whole ordering process including credit information only to see a red warning pop up when you "place your order" that tells you the company doesn't ship to Alaska and Hawaii.
        There did come a time when I won one of those battles. A few years ago Scholastic, the firm that sells books in schools, had a contest for students to write a short essay on how a Harry Potter book affected them. I was teaching a creative writing program in my son's elementary school class and thought it might be a cool writing exercise for the kids. They were excited and many made the attempt. When I went to write instructions for them to submit their essays, I learned Scholastic excluded Alaska and Hawaii. I wrote complaining they were happy enough to sell their books to us, then drew a line at including Alaskans in their contests. A few other people wrote also. Scholastic relented, extended the contest two extra weeks and encouraged our kids to enter. A girl from Fairbanks won one of the prizes. Later for my complaint, Scholastic sent me a boxed set of the first three Harry Potter books. I donated them to the school.
Since then I don't recall running into the problem, at least not frequently. Alaskans also have another problem. Many of us live in areas without regular postal delivery and so use Post Office boxes. Several vendors refuse to ship to a PO box. Our own Post Office has a work-around. We can have things shipped to the Post Office's street address and put our box numbers in the "apartment" box on the order form delivery instructions. Companies like UPS and Fed-Ex will deliver our packages to the Post Office and we can pick them up there. This is also helpful in preventing thefts of packages left on doorsteps. Two problems solved.
But nothing solves the problem of retailers who refuse to ship to Alaska and Hawaii. In some ways many of us are quite happy much of the world thinks of Alaska as inaccessible, but then it's irritating when they won't send us stuff we want.
So you end up in a situation where you really want a product, but you never want to deal with this company now or ever again. Sometimes you can find what you want from another seller like Amazon, but in the case of the jug, not. My niece has offered to let them send it to her and she will mail it to me.
  I haven't been able to find anything else like a container that holds a gallon of milk and can take a beating on a rough trail, not leak or break and pours without spilling all over the place. #RTIC has a stainless steel one that looks good and it's on sale for half price, but not for #Alaskans.
When I think of all the milk spilled along the trail. The frozen gallon-sized chunks of milk that split a plastic container open or the cooler-material type that leaks all over the trail tote on the trail and all over the counter when it pours, I really, really want this stainless steel beauty that looks like it can take a beating and not leak. So it goes, swallow my outrage and buy it.
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Memorable quotations

The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent

"If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us." — Mick Jagger

"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend

A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader

“My children will likely turn my picture to the wall but what the hell, you only get old once." — Joe May

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.― Kurt Vonnegut

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”―Stephen King

The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?

My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"

“The rivers of Alaska are strewn with the bones of men who made but one mistake” - Fred McGarry, a Nushagak Trapper

Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”

Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

Exceed your bandwidth—sign on the wall of the maintenance shop at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center

One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends

It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes

Everything is okay when it’s 50-below as long as everything is okay. – an Alaskan in Tom Walker’s “The Seventymile Kid”

You can have your own opinion but you can’t have your own science.—commenter arguing on a story about polar bears and global warming

He looks at three ex wives as a good start—TV police drama

Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker

“You’re either into the wall or into the show”—Marco Andretti on giving it all to qualify last at the 2011 Indy 500

Makeup is not for the faint of heart—the makeup guerrilla

“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti

“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places

As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again

Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

Each day do something that won’t compute – anon

I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration

Life should be a little nuts or else it’s just a bunch of Thursdays strung together—Kevin Costner as Beau Burroughs in “Rumor has it”

You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer

Being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are—Michelle Obama

Sports malaprops

Commenting on an athlete with hearing impairment he said the player didn’t show any “uncomfortability.” “He's not doing things he can't do."

"… there's a fearlessment about him …"

"He's got to have the lead if he's going to win this race." "

"Kansas has always had the ability to score with the basketball."

"NFL to put computer chips in balls." Oh, that's gotta hurt.

"Now that you're in the finals you have to run the race that's going to get you on the podium."

"It's very important for both sides that they stay on their feet."

This is why you get to hate sportscasters. Kansas beats Texas for the first time since 1938. So the pundits open their segment with the question "let's talk about what went wrong." Wrong? Kansas WON a football game! That's what went RIGHT!

"I brought out the thermostat to show you how cold it is here." Points to a thermometer reading zero in Minneapolis.

"It's tough to win on the road when you turn the ball over." Oh, really? Like you can do all right if you turn the ball over playing at home?

Cliches so embedded in sportscasters' minds they can't help themselves: "Minnesota fell from the ranks of the undefeated today." What ranks? They were the only undefeated team left.

A good one: A 5'10" player went up and caught a pass off a defensive back over six feet tall. The quote? "He's got some hops."

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"First you have to get two strikes on the hitter before you get the strikeout."

"The game ended in the final seconds." You have to wonder when the others ended or are they still going on?

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"If they score runs they will win."

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"Somebody is going to be the quarterback or we're going to see a new quarterback."

"That was a playmaker making a play.”