Most of the mailboxes are out backCopyright 2007 Lydia Hinshaw
DENALI NATIONAL PARK, AK -- The Denali Park Post Office isn't much to write home about, but if you do write home, your letter will get there in a hurry.
In my second summer in Alaska, I continue to be amazed at what feats of delivery the Postal Service manages to perform from here.
Last Saturday, for example, I got my first paycheck. Direct deposit hasn't kicked in yet, so I needed to mail the check home where it was badly needed by an account in shrink-mode from paying my bills with no "input" from me in six weeks.
I hurried to the Post Office in time to make the 10:30 a.m. Saturday pickup. When the check left here, if it left on time, it was already 2:30 p.m. back in Ormond Beach.
Tuesday evening after work I went online to check my bank balance, and there was my deposit, duly credited, three days after I'd mailed it, and one of those days a Sunday.
A couple of weeks ago, I got a postcard from my aunt, who is one of several cherished relatives and friends who have resisted the move to the e-mail age. She mailed the card from North Carolina on a Saturday. On Tuesday it was in my mailbox here.
When she writes to me in Florida, her cards arrive in the same amount of time.
How can the Postal Service transport a letter 5,000 miles just as fast as it can carry one 500? You got me. Alaska mail must go straight onto a jet, while the shorter-haul stuff lumbers up I-95 on a truck.
This all seems too fast to be true, and so I don't take any chances with important stuff, like the check to renew my homeowners' insurance, which had to arrive somewhere in Atlanta by June 8. I mailed it two weeks in advance.
And I wasn't really prepared when the body-blow to my bank account occurred several days earlier than I had hoped.
In my second summer in Alaska, I continue to be amazed at what feats of delivery the Postal Service manages to perform from here.
Last Saturday, for example, I got my first paycheck. Direct deposit hasn't kicked in yet, so I needed to mail the check home where it was badly needed by an account in shrink-mode from paying my bills with no "input" from me in six weeks.
I hurried to the Post Office in time to make the 10:30 a.m. Saturday pickup. When the check left here, if it left on time, it was already 2:30 p.m. back in Ormond Beach.
Tuesday evening after work I went online to check my bank balance, and there was my deposit, duly credited, three days after I'd mailed it, and one of those days a Sunday.
A couple of weeks ago, I got a postcard from my aunt, who is one of several cherished relatives and friends who have resisted the move to the e-mail age. She mailed the card from North Carolina on a Saturday. On Tuesday it was in my mailbox here.
When she writes to me in Florida, her cards arrive in the same amount of time.
How can the Postal Service transport a letter 5,000 miles just as fast as it can carry one 500? You got me. Alaska mail must go straight onto a jet, while the shorter-haul stuff lumbers up I-95 on a truck.
This all seems too fast to be true, and so I don't take any chances with important stuff, like the check to renew my homeowners' insurance, which had to arrive somewhere in Atlanta by June 8. I mailed it two weeks in advance.
And I wasn't really prepared when the body-blow to my bank account occurred several days earlier than I had hoped.
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