Of Juneau and other Purgatories

I'm on my third day in Juneau. Unlike the snows of yesterday, today it is a driving rain. The wind is howling, the trees swaying on the sides of glacier highway. The man at the front desk cheerfully informs me I have no chance to make my flight and I've missed the only ferry till Friday. I'm getting used to being cheerfully informed I'm in peril. The Filipino man who I sat next to on the flight in to this place told me in a similar tone that were I to commit a crime, I could only swim or clamber into the mountains. "Either way", he said smiling, "you're going to die."

I bolstered my spirits after my flight fell through yesterday by hiking to a nearby Mexican Restaurant and wolfing down the Burrito Loco, a dish which left me rudderless and unable to do anything except lay in bed. So no great Juneau adventurer I, except gastronomically. Instead I have lived a strange continuum in room 115. I have clocks and timers set for 3 different time zones, Edinburgh, DC, and Juneau. It's like I live all times at once, and inside the pleasantly horrible interior of a Best Western Motel, the windows hardly let in the light and the color of dull salmon pervades everything. Past present and future lose all meaning. There is simply the rain and the television with Alaska Public Broadcasting showing meadows with unstereoed classical music. I'm not likely to leave today either. I'll likely just remain here, bleeding funds and unable to go forward or backward. Stuck inside of Juneau with the purgatory blues again.