Day 82
   
   7/18/01
   Off the coast of British Columbia, Canada
   
   This morning the ferry docked at Ketchican for over 4 hours, so I rode
   the bike off and went into town.  It was even more tourist-based than
   Juneau.  Throngs of people poured off the cruise ships and crowded the
   streets.  I laughed as I saw them being herded like cattle by crossing
   guards and sidewalk monitors.  One man stepped over the rope along the
   sidewalk...and whistles blew.  A uniformed monitor barked at him and
   ushered him back to the sidewalk as if he was some kind of wayward
   sheep.  The whole scene, when looked at from a distance, was a hilarious
   example of an industry outdoing itself.
   
   Well, I could see how the scenario came to evolve - there was nothing
   misguided about it really, just farcical.  When large pulses of people
   came pouring off the ships, into relatively narrow streets, and
   probably not paying too much attention at that, measures had to be taken to
   prevent pedestrian-auto accidents.  Se la vie.
   
   I flipped through the local newspaper and saw that it contained a
   schedule for the local merchants as to the times each cruise ship
   would be in port for the week, and the number of people on each ship.
   Creative!  It was a long list, and most ships had about 2000 aboard.
   
   As usual, I exited the town center as soon as possible and biked to
   the outskirts.  There is a "village" of totem poles several miles to the
   south, most of which are about 100 or so years old.  I found it best
   to get in with one of the interpretive tours; white boys like me have no
   understanding of the symbology involved, and otherwise it looks like
   just a big carving.  Craftsman work in the nearby wood shop creating new
   totems for sale.  You can commission your own, for about $2000 per
   foot of height.  They only do traditional faces or animals, so don't expect 
   to get a totem where the first head is Darth Vader, the second R2D2, etc.
   That motif *is* available in Russian Nested Dolls, as I saw in the
   window of a shop downtown.  Due to its placement next to a large
   collection of staid traditional works, a serious collector would have 
   found it a horrifying discontinuity - though it perhaps would not have 
   seemed out of place in a toy store.
   
   There's a fish hatchery up the hill from downtown, where salmon fry
   are released.  The town is laid out like most all of the isolated coastal
   towns along the panhandle, long and thin, constrained by the mountains
   not far from the shore.  There really is a lot to see and do in this
   town, and I was fortunate enough to be there on a fine weather day,
   sunny and warm, of which I was told there are approximately six per year.
   Some people rub a rabbit's foot for good luck; I've taken to carrying
   a lucky barometer.
   
   Time came to get a few groceries and reboard the ship.  Cyclists roll
   on the ferry just like cars do, and usually ride the massive elevator
   platform that descends down to the car deck (this elevator carries 4
   or more cars at a time).  This port was constructed so as not to require
   the use of the elevator, however, so it was a glib ride-in-and-park
   for me.  The horn soon blew, and we headed to sea again.  Anchors away!

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