denali, end of training, time off!

This past weekend was the training run for all of the new Holland/Princess Rail employees. That meant that we actually got to get moving on the train, after sitting through three days of lectures about company policies, safety training, etc. It was great to get in and actually start doing some hands-on work in the kitchen. I didn't get any pictures of the kitchen that I was working in (hopefully I will later in the season), but I did post some pictures of views from the train. The kitchens aboard the train cars are fully functioning, though one major difference from a normal kitchen is that there are no open flames. It is also set up as a galley kitchen, so there is a lot of turning back and forth to each side of the galley; and there are lots of people, like stewards, on-board managers, and wait staff, walking through your kitchen from car to car.

During our training run, I got to prep for and cook both breakfast and lunch. The work was surprisingly easy, though our kitchen did have more cooks than it will normally have. Nonetheless, our menus are pretty small, so during meal services there is a lot more plating of precooked food and a limited amount of cooking to order.

Obviously one highlight of the trip was all of the extraordinary

views from the train. Because our kitchen was overstaffed, I was able to move about the train and take in some of the views, which I won't always get to do during normal runs. The highlight of the day was getting a chance to see Mt. McKinley, which wasn't hidden by clouds for a bit in the afternoon - apparently we got pretty lucky on the weather. Another cool moment was passing over Hurricane Gulch, which is a spot in the route where the track passes over a trestle bridge high above a river.

We did not go all the way to Fairbanks on Saturday, we normally will; instead we stopped at Denali village, where we stayed at the Denali Lodge, a resort where many of our passengers will stay this summer. While there we attended a dinner show called "Music of Denali," which featured wait staff that doubled as the stars of the show. They put on a great production, but I was happy that I was being paid to sit and watch the performance; I wouldn't normally pay to go to a dinner theater that features audience participation.

In the evening after the dinner theater show, I hiked down to the banks of the Nenana River with another guy who is working on the train. The river was frozen over just a week or two before we visited and it just recently broke. There was still lots of ice on the banks that we could climb around on, and hiking around just for a half an hour or so really made me want to get away from the resort and do some hiking in the wilderness.

On Sunday we returned to Anchorage via motorcoach; then we had two more days of training on Monday and Tuesday. Monday was more classroom type training, but Tuesday we had an in-service training in the railyard during which we ran through a dinner service. Again, our kitchen was overstaffed, so many hands made light work, but the dinner menu was also pretty limited and not terribly difficult.

Getting into the kitchen for just a couple of days really makes me excited to actually get working regularly. However, we also got our schedule for the next couple of weeks, and I found out that I don't work until the 19th, so I've got a whole week off! It's nice to have that time off, but I don't know what I'm going to do with myself for the next 6 days. Unfortunately all the sunny weather we had last week has been replaced with clouds, but I'll still try to get out and do a bit of hiking or biking. I'll also get my housing situation squared away, but otherwise I'll have a lot of time to read and explore Anchorage. If you've got any ideas for things that I should do during my free time, let me know!