Flying to Alaska

7 Mar 2012

Greetings friends and supporters,

            My name is MIDN 1/C Kyle Crowder. I am an Oceanography student at the Naval Academy and I have been working with the IceGoat1 team as part of my independent research project. Things got off to a great start on Wednesday. It was a beautiful sunny day in Annapolis with the temperature at a comfortable 70 ⁰F. CDR Hager generously drove LCDR John Woods, 1/C Ben Aspholm, and I to BWI to catch a 2:50 pm flight. We checked nine bags total including two 100lb crates and a few other 70lb bags. The lady with Delta Airlines thought we were crazy but she was very helpful checking our luggage.

We started by flying in a tiny regional jet to Minneapolis. The plane was so small that LCDR Woods described it as the "Alice in Wonderland Plane." The flight went well and after a short layover we were on a six hour flight heading for Anchorage.

We were told by multiple sources that when we were in Anchorage we had to go to a pizzeria called "The Moose's Tooth," so after we dropped off our bags we got a taxi to take us there. Our cab drivers name was Kirin. He was born in Afghanistan but had lived in Alaska for the last 33 years. He took us to the pizzeria where we stuffed ourselves with delicious pizza. An hour later Kirin took us back to the hotel and we got to sleep around midnight.