This afternoon I drove down to HOOKED ESPRESSO here in Ninilchik, Alaska. Hooked is the coffee shop owned by my teen daughter, Destini.
(Read about that HERE and this story will make a lot more sense.)
I’ve not been down to Hooked in several months though I’ve driven by a thousand times. Destini is closed in the winter while off at college so there has really been no reason for me to venture down. But sometimes the desire for creamy coffee concoctions can lead to desperate measures, including forging snow drifts in search of a flavor.
The first thing I noticed is that the portable coffee shop which sits up on a trailer with wheels, seemed to have shrunk. The front door was shorter, the drive-thru suddenly easy access for children or small animals. I unlocked the door and it didn’t budge. I then looked down at my feet and realized I was standing about a foot higher than the norm. And it wasn’t snow….it was ice. I kicked the door until it flew open, stepped inside and let out a loud, slack jawed, OH MY CRAP.
We’d been flooded. Then frozen…then flooded some more until the entire floor of the shop was submerged in inches of ice as from somewhere behind the building, water emerged from the swamp land to engulf the bottom of our building. The refrigerator door was frozen shut. The broom froze in place where last it swept. Essentially everything that was on the floor had become one giant iceberg. And the rustic wood floor, sawmilled from local trees, a solid floor that has held up for years, three owners, and thousands of footprints…was buckled and ruined. Essentially the entire bottom foot of the building will have been destroyed by the time summer brings a thaw.
The tool with which we teach our children business, both loss and success, has been destroyed by the ravages of an Alaska winter.
Destini’s college fund no longer operable without thousands of dollars in repairs. For a business that might gross $10,000 all summer long…the profit is just not there.
And as we step back and evaluate our options, mourning the potential loss of our daughter’s summer income, we have to think there is a reason for this catastrophe. Something to be learned, growth to be had…perhaps even a positive result will emerge from the ruins. We can only hope.
The front deck is somewhere under this berg…
Railing concreted in ice…
Several inches of ice on more than 3/4 of the floor…
Ice from beneath has pushed up the floor and buckled the wood…
See the solid ice sticking up in the bottom of the doorway? That’s how thick the ice is from the ground up…at least 18 inches from the dirt at this point.
How Hooked appeared in the Fall when we closed…Destini’s college fund…not any more!
