Political Quotes

“My colleagues have been to the floor here for the past little bit talking about various road trips in their State and destinations, including their favorite destinations. When you think about where your favorite place is, it is like saying which son is your favorite son. We all have our favorite places all around our State. I got to thinking about road trips. I thought, well, road trips in Alaska perhaps take a little bit of a different meaning than in other States. We all know the State I come from because we talk about it a lot. Senator Sullivan and I come from a big State. We have over 663,000 square miles, but within those 663,000 square miles, we don't have a lot of roads. Over 82 percent of the communities in the State of Alaska are not connected by roads. We are not part of the road system. So traveling in Alaska can be a little bit of an adventure. Flexibility is always key. More often than not, when you are in a big State, you move around from town to town, and you rely on the commercial carriers. You rely on Alaska Airlines. You rely on Ravn. You rely on some of the others. We pretty much move around by air. But sometimes it is impossible to get around by air all the time. Sometimes we have what I call ``forest road trips.'' It is not that I don't want to be on our roads, but once you get on the roads, you are on them for a fairly long time. Sometimes the jets don't fly. Sometimes the jets don't fly because you have bad weather.…”