April 10-11, 1976: Around the San Francisco Bay Area
	January 26-30, 1976: A Business Trip to Montreal
	Return to Index for 1976

In early February, I went back to San Francisco to continue work on some software at Wells Fargo, and later that month I went back to Alaska to do a follow-up at the National Bank of Alaska in Anchorage. Because I was already in San Francisco, I was able to take advantage of a triangle fare offered by Northwest Orient Airlines. For persons going to either Hawaii or Alaska, you can fly to the other point on the way out or back for only an extra $25.

Working in San Francisco

Greg and I are working on a new software system based on Culprit, and designed for large organizations to comply with Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines, and I have been out here quite a bit for that project.

When Greg and I pitched the project to John Cullinane, we promised we'd try to keep expenses down, and so when I am here I usually stay with Greg. Greg lives on Nob Hill, certainly a storied location, at the corner of Taylor and Clay streets. Also on Nob hill are the legendary Fairmont Hotel and also Grace Cathedral- the city's largest church.

Greg has been in his apartment for a good many years, beginning when he was an auditor at Wells Fargo Bank before he joined Cullinane in 1974. At right, you can see an aerial view of his intersection, and I've marked his building and his second-floor front, two-bedroom apartment. I also marked the corner grocery across the street. How come? Well, have a look at the clip below taken from 1968's hit movie Bullitt starring Steve McQueen:

(Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

When the movie begins, McQueen is in the grocery store I marked. When he comes out, and walks across Taylor Street, you can see Greg's building, and his apartment on the second floor (the floor above sidewalk level with bay windows)- it's the light green building behind McQueen (its been painted since then). Greg was actually living in the building at the time, although he tells me he was at work when they were filming.

I spent a week working at Wells Fargo before my trip to Anchorage.

My Business Trip to Anchorage

Since I needed to be in Anchorage for the workweek, Greg took me to the airport on Sunday morning so I could catch just about the only flight that would get me to Anchorage by that evening. It was a flight via Seattle and would be the beginning of my "triangle fare" trip.

There may still be airline fares that fit the definition of a "triangle fare", but there were quite a few of them back in the 1970s and 1980s. My supposition is that airline deregulation obviated the need for them.

Before airline deregulation, airlines had to apply for routes, and the FAA made sure that every route was spoken for by at least two airlines, and that no routes were overfilled by lots of them. The Honolulu-San Francisco route was a popular one, and coveted by five or six airlines (and those five or six airlines were given permission to fly it). The San Francisco-Anchorage route was considerably less popular, and only a few airlines applied for that route. As it turned out, there were two or three airlines that flew all three routes, with the Anchorage-Honolulu route being by far the least traveled.

So the airlines found that the could attract customers for their Alaska-California legs if they offered a triangle fare. Northwest Orient airlines was one of these, and it was the airline I flew from San Francisco to Anchorage. To attract customers for that trip, and since they also flew the other two routes, they offered customers the chance to, instead of flying SFO-ANC and back, fly SFO-ANC-HNL-SFO for only an additional $25. The same offer was made for anyone flying SFO-HNL and back; they could add Anchorage for another $25. This attracted customers, helped fill their planes flying the HNL-ANC route, and also helped tourism in both Hawaii and Alaska (and I am sure the airline got a piece of tourist pie for persons on the triangle fare.

So that's what I'm doing this time- business in Anchorage followed by pleasure in Honolulu. The first leg of the trip was up to Seattle, a two-hour ride. Coming into SeaTac Airport, the weather was very cloudy.

The flight to Seattle was pleasant, and on the way into the area I got a great picture of Mt. Rainier.

As it turned out, I didn't have to change planes. This is the old Seattle-Tacoma airport, and Mt. Rainier in the distance.

From Seattle, the route of flight parallels the Canadian and Alaskan coasts to Anchorage. In this area, the coast is made up of numerous islands, most of which are not inhabited. As one goes North, snow becomes more and more in evidence, first at the higher elevations and then progressively lower. The scenery as we continued north was pretty amazing, and it was neat that for once I had a talkative pilot, as I was unfamiliar with the terrain below.

The flight from Seattle to Anchorage is about four hours, and by the time we were getting close to Anchorage itself it was getting late in the day (which happens pretty early at this latitude).

It was pretty dark when we came in for a landing; in the winter here at this latitude it doesn't really get light at all until eleven in the morning, and what sun there is has usually gone back below the horizon three or four hours later. So it seemed like the middle of the night when we landed about 8PM.

With no landing pictures to show you, I've instead put an aerial view at left of Anchorage and the surrounding area (taken, I would suspect, in the summertime, since only the mountaintops are snow-covered. But it will give you an idea of the lay of the land around Anchorage.

This being February, the weather was brutally cold (although, I should point out, warmer than in Chicago, as Anchorage is located on the water, which is kept warmer than you might think by the Pacific current). Chicago, being inland, gets more temperature extremes than does Anchorage. This was my second time here, and on my first trip it was warmer here than at home as well. I did bring the heaviest coat I had, and I was glad for that.

I didn't have time to do much touristy stuff this time; I spent all my time with the auditors at the bank, although we did go out to eat and stuff like that. I did take one picture from my hotel on a day when the Auditors brought me back downtown from the suburban data center at lunchtime. The picture at right, of the frozen river and bay, was taken just after noontime; you can see that it looks much more like late afternoon. In the winter, this is as bright as it gets.

Anchorage has a couple hundred thousand people, and is Alaska's most populous city with more than 40 percent of the state's total population; among the 50 states, only New York has a higher percentage of residents who live in its most populous city. At 1,706 square miles of land area, the city is the fourth largest city by land area in the United States (and larger than the smallest state). The top three cities on the list, you may be curious to know, are Sitka, Juneau, and Wrangell- all also in Alaska. This takes some explaining. In Alaska, these four cities have officially extended to the boundaries of their boroughs (counties), even though only a small fraction of the borough is actually what you'd think of as urban.

For you trivia buffs, the largest American city outside of Alaska is in a state at the opposite end of the weather extreme- Jacksonville, Florida. But that city, too, actually takes up its whole county, even though most of the county is open land. If you are curious, you have to get down to the eighth city on the list to find the largest American city that is NOT coterminus with its county- Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (606 square miles).

Anchorage is at the end of the Cook Inlet, on a two-armed peninsula, and has won the All-America City Award twice- in 1956 and 1965. The city can trace its settlement to the 19th century, when Alaska was owned by Imperial Russia. In 1867, U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward brokered a deal to purchase Alaska $7.2 million, or about two cents an acre. In 1888, gold was discovered near Anchorage, and Alaska a United States territory in 1912. But without significant a significant fishing industry, and no mineral resources to speak of, Anchorage stayed a sleepy hamlet.

The Anchorage Westward

In 1914, Anchorage became the railroad-construction port for the Alaska Engineering Commission, and a tent city quickly sprang up. Townsites were mapped out and more substantial buildings constructed. Anchorage was incorporated in 1920. Construction of the Alaska Railroad continued until its completion in 1923. The city's economy in the 1920s and 1930s centered on the railroad, which for years dominated life in Alaska. Between the 1930s and the 1950s, the city experienced massive growth as air transportation and the military became increasingly important. Anchorage International Airport opened in 1951. Elmendorf Air Force Base and Fort Richardson were constructed in the 1940s, and served as the city's primary economic engine.

On March 27, 1964, the magnitude 9.2 Good Friday earthquake hit Anchorage, killing 115 people and causing $250 million in damages. The earth-shaking event lasted nearly five minutes; most structures that failed remained intact for the first few minutes then failed with repeated flexing. It was the world's second-largest earthquake in recorded history, and rebuilding dominated the remainder of the 1960s. There are still areas where the damage has not been cleared away. In 1968, ARCO discovered oil in Prudhoe Bay on the Alaska North Slope, and the resulting oil boom spurred further growth here.

The Chugach Mountains

As I did on my first trip here, I stayed at the Anchorage Westward Hotel. At the time, it was the tallest building in Anchorage, and I had a room with a nice view. I didn't take a picture of the hotel (and obviously, if I had done so, it wouldn't have been the one at left), so the photo at left is a stock picture from 1968. The hotel has changed hands a couple of times since my trip this time, and has also been completely rebuilt.

The temperature was actually surprisingly moderate, only about zero or so most nights, about the same as in Chicago. Even so, it was cold enough that once I returned to the hotel in the evening, I didn't do much save go out for dinner on those nights I wasn't with the audit group.

Most of our work was done out at the bank's data center a mile or so outside downtown; that's where we did the short class I conducted and we worked on some audit reports. That's also where I went outside early one afternoon to photograph the Chugach Mountains off in the distance. Most of the personnel had changed from my last visit. The Auditor last time was a middle-aged guy from a bank in Minnesota who had a bunch of us out to his house for moose stew and spaghetti with moosemeat sauce. The new Auditor is a relatively young Anchorage native about my own age who races huskies as a hobby.

It was an inteesting week, but after the cold weather I was looking forward to some tropical breezes!

My Pleasure Trip to Hawaii

Of course, the attraction of the triangle fare is that you can return to San Francisco through Honolulu for only a modest fee. I stayed in Anchorage on Friday night, and then on Saturday took a Northwest Orient Airlines 747 down to Honolulu.

The flight down to Honolulu was really pleasant, particularly since I got invited by a flight steward to come up to First Class which, as it turned out, was almost entirely empty. Still, it was catered full, and all the flight attendants and I got first class meals and snacks during the six-hour flight. (At the time I had no idea why I was singled out from the three-quarters-full coach cabin to get an upgrade, although years later when I happened to think about it again, I did.)

I never tire of Hawaii. When I landed in Honolulu it was past three in the afternoon, but the sun was shining brightly and it was, of course, quite warm. As we taxiied to the gate, I was looking forward to spending four relaxing days in Waikiki.

I suppose this is my fourth or fifth trip to the Islands over the years. The very first was a stopover on my return from South Korea in 1970. Tony and I have come out here once or twice for Cullinane, and I guess that I have come here two or three times on vacations as well.

When I have been here before, I've been in the habit of staying at the Sheraton Waikiki, in what was called The Garden Annex- a low building right beside the hotel tower. (It was torn down in the 1980s to make room for an expansion of the tower itself.) The hotel didn't charge nearly as much for the rooms, as they weren't high up and didn't have great views, but when you are here on business, that really doesn't matter.

This time, though, I stayed at a different place. I had used a travel agent friend of Greg's to book this trip, and I thought that I would let him find some good accommodations. Dick put me up at the Waikiki Village hotel, not the snazziest in the city, but exactly what I asked for- a hotel in Waikiki with reasonable prices and nice rooms- and one where I could get fairly high up for a change.

I would like to be able to show you an aerial view of the Waikiki Village hotel, but things have changed on Lewers Street between 1976 and today (2019).

As it turns out, the Waikiki Village and some other, smaller hotels on this street were all redeveloped into the Embassy Suites Waikiki Beach Walk in the late 1990s. That whole Lewers Street area was redone and reopened in 2007. I've marked that development on the aerial view at left.

Also, if you try to associate a couple of my pictures with that aerial view, you'll realize that a new high-rise has been built that pretty much blocks the former view from the Waikiki Village of Fort DeRussy.

I took four different pictures from the balcony of my room at the Waikiki Village, and there were very good views. Here they are:

Contrast this view of Honolulu from the Waikiki Village with my view of Anchorage from the Anchorage Westward. This is the view from my balcony looking inland.

This view looks towards the business district of Honolulu, across Fort DeRussy, where I had stayed on my way back from Korea. (I walked by the Fort, and found that military accommodations were no longer available.)

The next two photos are interesting, I think. They were both taken from my balcony and look in the same direction (you can match up the trees in both photos; even though they aren't an exact match):

Looking Out to Sea (Daytime)

Looking Out to Sea (Sunset)

So on this trip, I stayed in a different hotel, but my routine was pretty much the same as the last few times I've been here. Of course, being in Hawaii is all about the beach or the pool, and, not having a car this time, I spent a lot of time walking along the one and laying out at the other.

Kalakaua Boulevard

The main street of the Waikiki Area is Kalakaua Boulevard, and so any tourist will walk along it frequently. From a point southeast of my hotel, I took this picture looking back towards it; the International Marketplace has been here as long as I can remember and is a shopping, dining, and entertainment complex.

I've made the point before about how much things have changed (here in Honolulu and everyplace else as well) between 1976 and 2019, so it's unusual to find a situation where they haven't. You can compare the buildings you see in my picture at left with the aerial view of that same stretch of Kalakaua as it appears today at right, and you'll see that aside from some modifications having been made to the building right next to the International Marketplace, that side of the street hasn't changed much in 40 years.

So my routine for these five days was to lay out by the hotel pool a while each day, and also walk along the beach every day. Also, I did my daily jog along Kalakaua Avenue to Ala Moana Park and then along the jogging trail that they have there. Near the park, there is a pavilion where locals sit and play chess, checkers, bridge, and backgammon, and almost every day I went down there to get into a game (bridge and backgammon only; I was out of the league of the chess and checker players, as I discovered quite quickly). I went out to eat in the evening, usually at a buffet that I favored near the hotel.

Here are the other two pictures that I took during my relaxing stay on Waikiki:

This view looks out to sea from Waikiki Beach.

Here is a view looking east along Waikiki Beach to Diamond Head.

It doesn't take a lot for me to be quite happy in Honolulu; my daily routine is very enjoyable and I am never bored. I had two very nice days this time and two days that were overcast and a bit rainy, but, all in all, it was a very relaxing five days before I had to head back to San Francisco and the reality of the workaday world.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	April 10-11, 1976: Around the San Francisco Bay Area
	January 26-30, 1976: A Business Trip to Montreal
	Return to Index for 1976