I Am Here

I am here. Nine and one-half hours of flying and boy are my arms tired.
All went right on schedule.
The last leg of  the trip was on Alaska Airlines who flew me from Anchorage to Fairbanks. Now, the Anchorage airport is not a very big place. If you have ever been to the Oklahoma City airport, well, Anchorage is a lot like that. But...
We all get on the plane, they do all the welcome aboard, safety talk, etc. The plane is backed out of the gate, the engine starts and we take off. I mean we take off!! I will swear we did not even taxi out to a runway, we just took off. We climb for about ten minutes and the pilot comes on and says "We are now at our cruising altitude. We will start our descent into Fairbanks in about five minutes". Meanwhile we are flying along when over on the left side there is Mount McKinley (Denali as the native Alaskans call it, meaning The Big One). Unfortunately I am in an aisle seat so did not get any pictures.
We continue on and swoop down upon Fairbanks, land and seemingly park at the first empty gate we come to. We were in the air a total of 32 minutes. It is supposed to be a 54 minute flight! I paid for 54 minutes...they owe me 22 minutes of flying around.
It was one of the more unusual flights. The stewies didn't even have time to finish handing out water and juice. They owe me a bottle of juice and some pretzels.
Now I am at the Princess lodge in Fairbanks for two days. Then they are moving me to another hotel where I will be for the rest of the month. Four other people came over from the airport when I did and I think we may be the only guests here.
More later.