August 12-18: A Trip to Sydney, Australia
	January-June: A Diary Note
	Return to Index for 1978

As a salesman for CULPRIT, I am responsible for the sales seminars that are held west of the Mississippi; Jim Blake handles the ones in the east. So when one was schedule for Anchorage, Alaska, on Tuesday-Wednesday, June 13th and 14th, in conjunction with a banker's meeting being held there, I got the assignment.

Three Days in San Francisco

For reasons that I'll talk about in a minute, I traveled to Anchorage by way of San Francisco, and I left Chicago five days before the seminar so I could spend some time in San Francisco.

On the afternoon of June 8th, I headed out to O'Hare airport for my flight out to San Francisco. It was a very pleasant flight, and I landed in the city about 6PM. Greg had invited me to stay with him once again, so I took a cab over to his apartment.

You may remember from earlier album pages that I have stayed with Greg numerous times here in San Francisco; I actually lived with him for almost three months while we were working together over at Wells Fargo Bank on the development of EEO-REPORTER. 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 basically spent two days just visiting with Greg over the weekend; Greg has lots of friends and we went out a couple of times to meet up with them. On one afternoon, we went down to the cruise ship dock as one of his friends, Naomi, was leaving on a cruise. We were able to go on board before the ship sailed for a bon voyage party.

I got very familiar with the Bay Area when I lived out here with Greg, and I have also made numerous trips out here to do classes for Cullinane. I don't know all the places to go in the city itself, but I have walked around a great deal of it at one time or another. I, either by myself or with Greg have, over the years, been down the peninsula and over to the East Bay to Oakland and Scaramento. Greg and I have also made a trip out to Yosemite. Early on, he also took me over the Golden Gate Bridge to Marin County, where there is a great deal of parkland and great views of the Bay and the ocean.

Greg had to head back east on Sunday to do a class for a new company he is working for, and so I was on my own. I didn't have to fly to Anchorage until Monday morning, so on Sunday I borrowed Greg's car to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge and take advantage of a beautiful day to do some driving around Marin. The general route I took is marked on the map above, left, and a couple of pictures that I took are below:

The Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco Bay This picture was taken from a viewing area that is reached via a road just on the north side of the bridge that winds up the hill to some old World War II emplacements.

The Hills of Marin County This view, taken from the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais, looks south across the Golden Gate National Recreation Area to the city of San Francisco.

My Business Trip to Anchorage

On Monday morning, I took a taxi from Greg's apartment out to San Francisco International and my flight to Anchorage via Seattle. This 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 overcast, and the land below the plane green (as it almost always is in the Pacific Northwest. Here are a couple of pictures taken southeast of Seattle as the plane was coming in for its landing:

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:

Dormant Volcanoes These ancient peaks are snow-capped year round. While it does not appear so, the mountain is very high, as evidenced by the fact that the cloud cover is kept down on the lower slopes near the ocean.

Even further North, there are some glaciers.

Here is a beautiful panoramic view of the land we are flying over. The land in this part of the continent is only partially explored, and appears very forbidding.

This panoramic view didn't turn out so well, but I took it because I recall that the pilot pointed out this glacier as being the largest one along our route. I think he named it, but I don't quite remember:

This was the first time I'd flown this particular route, and I was happy that the pilot was pretty talkative, as I was unfamiliar with what I was looking at. Contrast that with the the talkative pilots I've had on the transcontinental routes I've flown a zillion times who point out the Rocky Mountains for the umpteenth time.

The pilot brought us closer to this same glacier which is, of course, a very slow-moving river of snow and ice. I can't imagine being stranded in conditions like these. The nearest civilization, if you can reach it, is hundreds of miles away.

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.

Sadly, my one picture of Anchorage from the air didn't turn out well, but here it is anyway.

As you can see, the weather is overcast. There is still snow on the mountain peaks that surround the city. This was the first time I'd visited Anchorage in the summer. The other two times I was here were both in January.

This time, the weather was cool to just mild. Being right on the ocean does much to keep the weather in Anchorage moderate, both in summer and winter, although in Fairbanks, about 100 miles inland, summer temperatures can reach 100, while winter lows can reach 100 below zero.

I didn't do much touristy stuff this time; the weather was actually a bit rainy. So I spent most of my time talking with auditors at the two-day conference, and conducted two sales seminars during the meeting. I seem to recall that Cullinane got at least one new client out of the trip. On the 15th, I had the second side of my triangle down to Hawaii.

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. The flight down after the seminar (on June 15th) was pleasant. I recall that I was about 14 seconds of the actual flight time in the pool run by the Captain.

I never tire of Hawaii. When we landed in Honolulu after our 7-hour flight from the cold North, it was warm and the sun was shining brightly. As we taxiied to the gate, I took this picture looking southeast along the coast of Oahu towards Waikiki and Diamondhead.

I suppose this is my fifth or sixth 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 at least twice for Cullinane, and I guess that I have come here two or three times on vacations as well.

When Tony and I came out here, we were 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.

So on this trip, I again stayed in the Annex. I really didn't do a lot on this trip, falling quickly into something of a routine. I laid out by the pool and walked along the beach at Waikiki every day. Also every day, I did my usual jogging along Kalakaua Avenue to Ala Moana Park. 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. All in all, it was a very relaxing six days before I headed back to the mainland on June 21st.

I hadn't taken any pictures while on the Island; why, I don't know. I suppose that it was because I just stayed in the Waikiki area, and also because I'd been here so many times before. But as my plane climbed out for its trip back to San Francisco, I did take a couple of pictures.

Honolulu and Waikiki This is a very nice view of Oahu. The Punchbowl is off to the left, as is the entrance to Pearl Harbor. Coming right is the Ala Moana Center, then the Yacht harbor and the Illikai, then Fort DeRussy, Waikiki and, off to the right, Diamondhead.

Diamondhead As we climb out, you can see Waikiki, Ala Moana Park and the extinct volcano, Diamond Head. You can also see down the Southern Coast of the island.

The flight back to the mainland was very, very nice, and we landed in San Francisco early in the morning on the 22nd. I connected through San Francisco to a flight on back to Chicago, getting back to my condo downtown in late afternoon. I was exhausted, but it was a great trip.

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

	August 12-18: A Trip to Sydney, Australia
	January-June: A Diary Note
	Return to Index for 1978