.chena hot springs and jesus camp.

what?

so, chena was pretty much the best weekend road trip during the winter in alaska you can have, i've decided. 7-hour drive through beautiful alaska: snowy mountains, ipod mixes, bickering about nonsense, views of mt. mckinley, breathtaking sunsets.

we stayed at the roadhouse in talkeetna on friday night. it's off-peak season in this town of 8 hundo. 75% of the businesses in this mini-town were closed. the roadhouse was only occupied by the four of us. the man that was running it left around 10 o'clock, leaving us to do whatever we wanted. picture the epitome of alaskan lodgding that offers "free" coffee and hot teas for you to warm your bones by the fire, with a guitar and piano "should you wish to play music" said the host, a game or two of set, sipping on white wine, walking across the street for delicious, huge calzones at mountain high pizza. pretty fantastic.

saturday heading north to chena with angst and anticipation was soothed by valleys, frozen lakes, and ginormous mountains. after denali to fairbanks, which was rather blah, our angst was heightened. by the way, fairbanks is very blah. so glad i don't live there.

funny exchange at a gas station:
me: "it doesn't seem that cold."
matt: "yeah, it really doesn't."
gas attendant: "oh, the last i heard it was -16."
me: "oh. i guess it is cold."

chena was pretty much everything i expected times pi raised to the hollah. imagine a 4 ft. clear lake with itty bitty massaging gravel on the bottom, boulders and rocks all around (capped with snow and icicles, of course), and continual steam coming off the surface. from our lodge, you could see the steam just smoldering off of the lake.

not knowing what to behold really, we saw that it was maybe 40-50 paces to the water from the building, so we were like, "let's just go in our bathing suits." yeah. by the way, the wind chill usually lessens the temp. considerably, but at the springs it was around -30. i'm thinking it was -40 to -50 with the gusts. we run, feet literally freezing to the walkway becoming numb with each painful step only to walk into the springs on a manmade ramp of concrete into 110-degree water. who would have thought that a 160-degree temperature difference would be a shock to the system? i had this sense of torn i've never had: scald my body or freeze my appendages? it's a tough choice. i opted to scald.

after adjusting, i pretty much didn't leave the springs except to eat dinner (w/an appletini). i smuggled in red wine into my water bottle back into the springs, leaving a pruned, froken-haired asian around midnight, only to wake the next morning to a hearty breakfast and a return to the springs for a few more hours.

because it's such a long drive, we couldn't stay for a very long time...we left around 1:30PM on sunday, leaving behind the hot bliss of the heated lake. the smell of sulfur will remain in my memory forever.

the drive home was quite long, as we went straight through. my co-worker/friend jenny and i bickered like children, stopping only for gas and subway. :)

my recommend for anyone wanting to do chena: go when it's -30. i can't imagine a more alaskan winter experience.

i love alaska. i just love it.

...

oh. right. jesus camp.

watched a documentary on evangelical christian camps called jesus camp. i really don't know what to say, but the fact that evangelists and fundamentalists admittedly use and target children because they're impressionable is abuse. i almost cried when i thought about how they are being brainwashed to be god's soldiers denouncing our government, abortion, and speaking in tongues at the ripe ole age of 7. 12. 5. one girl who loved heavy metal christian music (at ten) was scared to dance because she "dances for the flesh" apparently. what parent allows his or her child to become so instilled with fear that they are scared to move their body to music because of the "fleshly desires" it creates?

i could go on for a long time about the manipulation and misuse of a higher power for the sake of misunderstood callings. my thoughts in a nutshell: to learn about god as a punisher and as an entity to fear is sad. for those of this reading that do believe in a higher power, i hope that you don't fear god. the beauty of god is all the beauty he/she/it has created and has for everyone and everything. to minimize god as someone who will punish you and send you to hell if you fraternize with sinners, read harry potter, have fleshly thoughts, believe in global warming or evolution minimizes the beauty of your ability and the potential of your being and soul. we have free will. to take that from children is antithetical to what i believe god's ultimate message is to us. and if you have a problem with my beliefs then stop reading my blog. chances are if you even remotely side with these evangelists i would prefer to keep a safe distance from you and would prefer that you kept safe distances away from others. all the time.

a note about topics in the movie: did you know that global warming really doesn't exist? after all, the raise of a few degrees isn't an issue.

they had a huge section with ted haggard, the ex-pastor of the megachurch in colorado springs. for those of you that might remember, there was a recent "scandal" where he was discovered having sex with a male prostitute, where the prostitute spilled the beans. in the documentary, he was preaching on the wrongness of homosexuality. oh, but i heard he went to a "straight camp" and he's now cured and re-born and assumably with his wife and kids, never thinking about the penis that he paid to have inserted in his ass.

well. i've done it. i've gotten riled up. i hate when that happens. the thing that really pissed me off is he told a devout child follower that liked to preach that he probably wasn't that good at preaching...that people listened to him because he was young and cute. he totally insulted one of his "soldiers" and he was cavalier and arrogant about it. bastard.

OH. there was all this stuff about how evangelists say they aren't political, yet they had cardboard cutouts of bush to pray over at this camp, denounced all liberals, and said that there's enough evangelists in the nation to sway the votes in every election if they were all to vote. hmmmmmm.

i leave you with a poll, who's the bigger limp dick: fred phelps or ted haggard?

and on another note, did you hear/see the ann coulter comment on c-span about john edwards?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx9Bi3C4rs8
go ahead an add ann coulter in that poll as well.