Wild Man Expedition Journal. 25 July 2010.

Sunday 25 July.  Ketchikan.

Talking with a spry old salt who says he's been fishing the Inside Passage since 1967.   Worn as a weatherbeaten knot.  Later, after meeting a retired sheriff from Ohio who's aiming to ride his Harley-Davidson motorcycle around Alaska further north - one of about 2 dozen people with whom I am sharing space in the solarium - the ship's second mate offered both of us a ride into Ketchikan, where The Columbia is docked for the morning.  This mate is a big wheel in Ketchikan, used to steer one of the big cruise ships, and owns one of the original pilot houses in SE Alaska, a stodgy edifice facing the passage winds against an emerald wall of Sitka spruce and a whisper of a salmon-spawning stream.
Sat down in a coffeeshop with the ex-lawman before he headed off in search of beluga whalebone carvings in town.  I made my way back to the ship and stopped to talk with a fellow passenger, John, an 80 year-old schoolteacher who used to be a public elementary school instructor to Eskimo kids in Kotzebue.  Lots of sad stories about suicidal, heartbroken native kids.  John recently married a woman whom he says is addicted to painkillers. 
Watched a gigantic raven shuffle-hopping about in a Ketchikan parking lot.  I thought, could this creature's cock-sure gait be the strut our knuckle-dragging ancestors aspired to in their hobbling trajectory skyward?

Once the vessel was under-way again, I took a tour of the engine room with one of the apprentice engineers.