Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Alaska Vocab Lesson: Outside and Lower 48

Outside means anywhere not in Alaska, while Lower 48 means anywhere in the contiguous United States.  I didn't think that people would actually say it and was just something that they liked to stick into glossaries, but everytime someone mentions anywhere that isn't Alaska one of those terms is usually used.

Examples:

"I won't be at work tomorrow, I'm leaving on the morning jet."
-"Where are you going?"
"Oh I'll be traveling Outside to go to a wedding in Costa Rica."

or

"He's in the Lower 48 right now".

It seems almost French on how unspecific both terms are, but I think a factor could be that when Alaskans leave the state they either travel to a bunch of different places on purpose, or they have a lot of connecting flights and layovers.  So after talking to a lot of people, traveling in the "Lower 48" to me means sleeping in airports, missing connections in LAX because the morning jet didn't leave and driving to your destination, going to visit your family and your spouse's family, and trying to get to a lot of different tourist destinations.

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