"I don't care what happens to your tourist season! Someone needs to tell these people that they might need a jacket!" - Al, The Weird Al Show

The Boy took this picture, and I think his stylistic charm in including his finger over the lens really makes the picture, don't you? And, to think, someday I'll burn all this . . .

The mosquitoes and tourists arrive in Fairbanks about the same time. That’s to be expected. Nature has her cycles, and so do the tour companies. I really can’t imagine thousands of tourists descending upon Fairbanks when it’s -55ºF (-273.15ºC) out, but if they did, there would be a whole bunch of interesting stories to tell down Texas way of when Mabel and Horace discovered that the unitards old folks tend to wear aren’t really all that good at that temperature. Plus, it would be a hoot seeing them attempting to start their diesel pickup that they bought for pulling the fifth wheel. (For those of you not in the know, diesel fuel is as thick as Paris Hilton at those temperatures.)

But, it’s June, so Fairbanks is chock full of tourists. We start huge forest fires (100,000+ acres) under the theory that tourists are a lot like bees and are repulsed by smoke, to no avail. The smoke has been off and on for the past few weeks, but the tourists keep coming. My favorite part is that the tourists seem to come in flocks, like ducks. First the Pittsburgh flock comes, sporting their “Super Bowl® XL Champion” shirts, then come the groups from other regions, finally ending with Arizona. My guess is that it’s an NFL thing, and the city that wins the Super Bowl™ gets to come here first. Arizona and Detroit always have to come here last, because they’re, well, Arizona and Detroit. I apologize to the Cardinal© and Lions® fans, but, you bring this on yourselves.

The roads tend to fill up with slow moving, whale-like RV’s at this time of year, filled with exotic license plates sporting names like “Iowa” and “Alabama.” You can tell the tourists, because they’re the ones wearing coats in the local stores, because 70ºF (253ºC) is so darn cold.

Anyhow, we were at the supermarket on Friday. You can tell the tourists a mile away, even if they’re not wearing coats. One of them (a young male) was driving an electric shopping cart (the ones made for folks who have trouble walking) around the supermarket. He looked more than able to get through the store without electric motors (he was about eighteen, perhaps), but yet he was using this cart. Folks from Fairbanks don’t tend to be serious jerks in public unless there’s alcohol involved, and he seemed just stupid, not drunk. When you get this yahoo back, North Carolina, well, beat some sense into him.

I was somewhat aghast yesterday when The Mrs., The Boy, The New Boy and I were mistaken by a clerk for tourists. Yikes! I’m not sure what it was, but she figured that we were “just visiting,” and attempted to explain things that anyone here more than three hours would already know. That killed me. I stopped her “Did you know . . .” speech quickly with a hand, and a “No, we live here.” What about our pasty-white complexions did she not recognize?

As far as pasty-white goes, I’ve found that it’s nearly impossible to sunburn up here. The Sun’s mighty electromagnetic radiation is far too weak to burn me at this latitude, and I’m the kind of guy who turns bright blistery red down in the lower 48 just getting the Sunday paper.

The family and I were finally coming home from getting sweet, tasty meat at Safeway, and I pulled up behind a car. I like bumper stickers, and this one was a doozy, “Tourists, go home. But leave your daughters here.”

I pulled up beside the car to see the driver. Trust me, you don’t want to leave your daughters with this guy. Just looking at him, I bet he smelled like cheese. And not in the good way.