“Now, I know you’re going to like this joke,” he said, straightening up in his chair to his best joke-delivering posture, “so don’t get offended right away.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I answered, smiling and wondering if he considered that my medium-boring colored hair was actually blond and actually the target of hilarious comic genius. I guess he liked me, since the blond joke (imagine it yourself- I remember it perfectly but shan’t bother recreating it here) ended with a big women-are-smarter-than-men punchline that was obviously supposed to delight my feminine sensibilities. I suppose he imagined that I, an enlightened and ambitious college gal of the twenty-first century, would clap my hands in delight at this delicious coup in the name of girl power. “Aha!” I’d crow, jumping out of my chair, “That’s it exactly! Stupid men are the root of all our troubles! Look at my hairy legs*!”

Old Bob was on hand to greet us on the runway when we touched down in Atqasuk. His friends call him Doc, but I don’t think our 37 minutes of mostly one-sided conversation have granted me clearance to take that liberty, especially since he took care to mention that all his young friends from the highly civilized state of Alabama address him only as Sir. Besides, we have so many Bobs running around already, what’s one more to add to the list? There was an opening in the 60-65 age range in our catalog of Bobs!

He played the age card within seconds of our meeting, and we’d barely shut the doors to the cab of the pickup when he started in on his childhood of walking uphill both ways in the electricity-free state of Montana. His next card, played just as the key turned in the lock of the Atqasuk house, was Vietnam, where he did four tours of duty as a US Navy Corpsman. “Sure, I stay in the Spider Room**!” he nonchalantly declared. “I was in ‘Nam!”

This Bob belongs to Loon People and Co., though he doesn’t count himself among the list of “-ologists” that he has worked with in the prelude to what is clearly one of his favorite stories. “I’ve seen biologists, vulcanologists, geologists, ecologists, so I don’t care anymore and just call them “-ologists,” he rattled with a dismissive wave of his hand. ” ‘Course, I go to a PSYCHologist every month for my head!” he chuckled. “Not really. A little joke. But I was in ‘Nam.”

Now Doc Bob is a helicopter mechanic, which is why he spent the past week or so in the house in Atqasuk. By himself. By is own admission, the solitude is the reason that Jeremy and I found ourselves in the terrifying position of being beholden to him for cooking us dinner. One dinner of spaghetti (“I hope you don’t mind garlic! You have to make it TASTE like something!”) equals a half hour or so of after-dinner “conversation.”

It may seem callous that we had our laptops open for this part of the socialization, but we did have to email (Professor) Bob (“Ha ha! You don’t need to email me! I’m right here!”) and all (Doc) Bob required was an intermittent question or declaration of astonishment at whatever he said to keep him going for another eight minutes. It didn’t take us long to hear about his Japanese wife of thirty-six years or the baby they were adopting (since the baby’s mom, and Doc Bob’s grown son’s girlfriend, is a crack addict).

Doc Bob doesn’t smoke, drink, gamble, or cheat on his wife (“Don’t know what I live in Vegas for”), but his one vice is Dr. Pepper, in the form of two cans a day. He doesn’t like “-ologists” because they are all “vegetarians or health nuts” (“what, do you want to live forever?”) but admits that ologists are better conversationalists than marines, so all things considered he was happy to see us, with or without Dr. Pepper (we were without). The bonus was that we brought milk, his other vice, though, sigh, it should have been two percent instead of watery one percent.

Jeremy and I, as honorary ologists, were exactly the type to enjoy conversing in all his favorite subjects: milk, communism, bears, fire, helicopters, Las Vegas, trucking, soy sauce, young people, saucy grandmothers, philosophy, vegetarians, food in general, spaghetti in specific, Catholics, Mormons, the Koran, the Bible, Buddhism, criminal justice, humidity, weight loss and gain, Iraq, tourists, ice, fire fights, bayonets, volcanoes, limousines, migraines, babies, Netflix, and being a good husband (with full toilet seat training).

I was surprised that only 37 minutes had passed when he declared that we were free to do our laundry and take showers. He promptly retired to the Spider Room to play his war training video games and listen to Enya. “Music isn’t too loud, is it?” he called to Jeremy and I, who have bedrooms at the other end of the house. “I’m not deaf, I just like loud music!”

*I’m no feminist, but really, what reason would I have for shaving my legs in Alaska? I’m not wearing skirts or going to the beach… unless you count yesterday, when our late-night Fourth of July celebration involved a dip in the ocean. The only participants from GV were Job and I (both sober), though we were accompanied by several (slightly intoxicated) members of other teams.

** The aptly named Spider Room is the closed off room on the west end of the house and is the storage room for various shipments from various locations. Stowaways in the form of spiders have been known to camp out here. Last year a tarantula was discovered and delivered a nasty bite to the previous helicopter mechanic.