[Leica] Film and Digial and Alaska: Complete

[msmall at aya.yale.edu (Marc James Small)]

I am back a few hours ago from a trip to south-central Alaska.  (I reognize
that those in the Land of the Nearly Midnight Sun refer to Anchorage as
'South-East Alaska' but this is persiflage:  South-East Alaska is Skagway,
Juneau, Sitka, and points South-East of there.)

I took a full Leica battery, minus my Viso gear.  Upon opening my pack, I
was astonished to find that I was lacking both my Official LUG Abrahamson
Soft Release and the rubber cap for the flash contact for my M6;  upon
reflection, I suspect that my wife's granddaughter is the cause of this but
to locate these now will require a comprehensive scouring of my "tree
house" home office, and so be it.  I have a spare Soft Release, thanks to
Tom, and I will find a replacement cap for the flash connection somewhere
and sometime:  I gather that this is not the season to approach Leica USA
about minor items such as this.

I shot three slide rolls, one K64 at the Independence Mine at Hatcher Pass
and another Ektachrome one at Seward and a third at Denali and at the
sea-sides of Anchorage.  Interspersed among these were pictures taken on my
Rollei d41 and my wife's Fuji digital cameras.

The Leica shots were made on lenses ranging from a 4.5/21 Carl Zeiss Biogon
adapted to Leica M to a 3.4/135 APO-ASPH Televid.  We will see how these
shots came out once the slides are returned from the lab.

I am both fiscally challenged and cheap.  My wife's daughter works for
ComAir, so we flew on her permit.  Getting up there wa not a problem but
returning was a nightmare:  my wife flew on a Family Pass, which gave her a
priority on the standby list but I, as a step-dad stand-in, only rated a
"Buddy Pass" which put me at the very bottom of the standby sorts.  In the
end, we flew back through Salt Lake City (a grand airport, with LOTS of
smoking areas!), NW Arkansas (and we spent a very short night as the first
guests in a new hotel, an odd experience), and Atlanta (an airport for the
chemically pure:  akin to Dulles, it has entire concourses without smoking
accomodations).  

Yes, I insisted that my wife go on and leave me to my own devices but,
then, she knows me and realizes that I am not a fit person to leave
unaccompanied in a universe where the bureaocrat buffoons have managed to
force us to sit through lectures on how to use a lap belt.  (I kid you not:
 these morons are now presuming that you are dumber than they may be, and
God save the Mark!   Is there anyone so stupid or so ill-advised as not to
know how to work a seat-belt?  We endured lecture after lecture on this
very subject.)

Otherwise, it was a grand, though exhausting, exercize.

Marc



msmall@aya.yale.edu 
Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!

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