Backtracking a bit. On my way to Wasilla, even on the bike, I ran into construction. Rode 7 miles in the pilot car with Amanda. She was a hoot juggling 4 radios and 3 coffee cups. “No, move that one – now wait, let me see…..yeah, get rid of that one, there’s dirt in it,” she said. These construction jobs are lucrative. “Made $90,000 one year, but you work yourself to death for five months.” Sometimes Amanda didn’t even go home. “NO, we don’t want them hiring more people, because that would cut into our overtime!”
She dropped me within 5 miles outside of Wasilla.
Amanda, my pilot-car construction escort.
Raspy voice and raw sense of humor. She could chat it up with those construction guys – even make some of them cross their legs! She talked a LOT about the high bear population in the area. “There’s a grizzly out here big as a Volkswagen.”
When I left the vehicle, she told me not to be “bearanoid.”