Kodiak town
03 July 2019 | Kodiak Island
The last three days have been busy. On Monday Mike hopped aboard the Tustumena on his first leg back to Australia - we still have to think twice about pulling out 3 cups for tea in the morning.
Next we had the generator checked and ordered a new automatic voltage regulator at horrendous cost but what are you going to do? It is working again now. Turns out that the reason it stopped producing AC current was the AVR (Automatic Voltage Regulator) had failed. Apparently, this was a known problem with Northern Lights 6kva generators. So much so that they kept changing that part regularly for years. We were told by our mechanic that he felt they finally have the right designed AVR as he has not had to replace any of the new model AVR he has installed over the last few years.
Tuesday was laundry and internet/phone day. Paul spent the best part of 2 hours with GCI whose sims have been unreliable and their service nonexistent - even phone calls are dodgy. It would be nice to keep using an Alaskan grown company but AT&T is definitely better and it seems a lot of locals in these parts think so too. Having said that, AT&T didn't work at all until Kodiak, but here it is excellent. I spent 3 hours in the laundry which is large with good machines and not overly expensive ie $6 for one of the large load machines and 25c for 7 mins of drying. We had considered handing the washing over but in the end we had 50 lbs which would have cost over $120. Instead, it cost $25.
Our main difficulty is that the laundry and only grocery outlets are 2-3 miles out of town which doesn't work if you are loaded down. A rental car costs over $120 per day if you can find one. Taxis are the best alternative at $12-15 one way to Safeway and Walmart. We have done a few runs now and are getting to know the driver who is Philippino but has lived here for 30 years.
One of our favourite things to do is have dinner and go to a movie and so as a reward we had dinner at the Aquarium which is near the harbour and pseudo Greek - the food was good and plentiful as always - and went to the local movie theatre which was showing Rocketman. The theatre shows two movies a day - one at 6pm which is usually family oriented and then one at 9.15pm. We were lucky with Rocketman because for the next few weeks it looks like most of the films are from the horror genre. We preferred the edginess of Bohemian Rhapsody but enjoyed the trip down memory lane.