Her Style is New but the Face is the Same

The chill is back, I was out framing the arctic entry and the next thing I knew it was -18F and my hands weren't working.  Usually I figure that out about the time I regain consciousness and the ladder is laying beside me but there was no harm done this time.  I put the tools away and called it a day, so 4 lonely rafters currently overlook the front door.   Tomorrow morning Angela and I are off to Talkeetna and hopefully it's nice and warm and sunny and snowy down there.  We'll see.  Right now Palin is giving her State of the State address and I'm about to vomit, Bush is gone but she's Palin in comparison.  God save the Queen, my train of thought just derailed.

All in all, it's just another brick in the wall

Well Angela is officially climbing the walls around here.  During a long, cold Fairbanks winter these things happen and in this case there is actually a membership involved.

She's like 8 stories up in this picture.

We both went down to the SRC last week and got safety certified to climb their walls which are actually pretty nice.  The best part about the safety meeting was the instructor saying, "If you get hurt, grab a basketball and crawl out onto the court so risk management doesn't shut us down.  They hate this wall and are looking for the first excuse to kill it."  So we make sure there is a basketball nearby when we rope up.  

After 15 minutes I couldn't feel my arms and all the skin was gone from the tips of my fingers so I'm pretty much done with that for the semester.  

In other news it snowed an inch of oatmeal today and we are gearing up for a 3-day weekend in Talkeetna and that is going to rock me Amadeus.  I can't wait.

You Hustle, You Deal, You Steal from us All

Today had some ups and downs, but that's the way nature rolls the dice.  There's balance, but in a swinging pendulum kind of way.  A good thing happened: I got Angela to work without wrapping the truck around a power pole (the roads are craptacular with all the thawing), but then a bad thing: I had to go to AT&T to sort out a dead cell phone battery.  Goddamn but I hate cell phone companies.  There is a special spot in hell for their maggoty, soulless corpses and it would be worth going to hell just to see them burn.  Long story short, I didn't get a new battery but I got the runaround and if I didn't love my Toyota truck as much as I do it would be unkindly parked in the middle of the Teddy Bear Plaza AT&T office.  But then good thing happens: I get a call from the Eskimo lady who was making me a beaver hat and mitts and they're done and they're exactly what I wanted and hoped and dreamed about all my life (I'm a simple man).  But then bad thing: I come home and the hoar frost that accumulated during the -50F melted in the 40F and is dripping into the living room.  Nothing a few pots can't handle, and the day ended on a good note anyways: the new deck got insulated and sheeted and is now ready for walls which I can always build in the garage if, I mean when, the temperature drops again...

The Heat is On

Today was a Fairbanks scorcher, 33F at the cabin and I heard Eielson reported 50F, they were reporting -50F last week.  Crazy.  So I was out happily pounding nails as the trees dripped and the birds sang and there was even a slightly woodsy smell like you get when the life isn't frozen out of everything.  I got the floor framed for the Arctic Entry and will insulate and deck it tomorrow.  Next week I hope to get the walls up before a long weekend in Talkeetna, have to see how it goes, for now the hot weather feels mighty fine.

Oh well uh, you might think I'm crazy

Finally, I get to use the shiny little "+" button on my laptop.  It's +2F!!  The birds are out in force, I just finished the last stretch of kitchen countertop and now it's on to the Arctic entry, at least the deck needs to go on, glue down and make ready for some walls.  So far I have put in a hot tub, wood stove, greenhouse and water slide in my plans for the entry but I fear it will only have coats in the end due to time and budget constraints.  Onward and upward...

The bottom drawer is big enough to sleep in, I got a little carried away.

Moving up and so alive, it's good, so good

The little bi-metal spring in my thermometer outside is alive and well and expanding.  This morning's official driveway temperature was -22F which feels downright balmy after 15 days of -40F or lower.  Fairbanks is well on its way to a mini winter heat wave which may even see above zero temperatures.  If that happens the arctic entry construction will begin in earnest and we will add 80 square feet to the cabin and break the 500 square foot mark which is much more conducive to happy cabin life.  Soon the insulating blinds will go up, ice will melt from the windows and we'll all practice squinting once again.  We have over 4 hours of sunlight now and gaining over 5 minutes a day.  Welcome back cancerous orb!  (I'm talking about the sun, not Governor Sara Palin)

Here's Angela enjoying the last few minutes of sunlight and -41F.

How Can We Dance When the World is Turning?

This is eerie, the graph above is nearly identical to my "daily temperature" graph.  Although this graph is making the interior cabin temperature much more affordable.  Yeah!

And I can't see at all, And even if I could it'd all be gray

Day 10 of winter cold snap...can't feel my legs...I'm so cold, so cold.  I see a bright light, is it the sun?  Can't be, there's no heat....so cold, so cold.  Air is thick, too thick to breathe...so sleepy...

It's fog, which is pretty, but it's ICE fog, the deadly cousin...

The Eye of Sauron - oh yeah, it's real my precious.

This is what my cabin would look like if we put in enough wood stoves to keep Angela as warm as she wants to be.

Why do people go out in these temperatures?  Seriously.

I like smoke and lightning, heavy metal thunder

I've been a tad too frozen to post lately but that's no excuse.  I haven't been too frozen to shoot some pics though so here's life from my eyeballs in -50F Fairbanks ice fog and frozen snotcicles.

Dense ice fog in the spruce trees along Geist Road at high noon.

The intersection of Airport Rd. and University Ave. around 1pm, -45F

The thermometer has been well and truly stuck on -50F for 3 days now, I tap it, wiggle it, scream at it, nothing moves.

Mazzy Mae is originally from Georgia and she loves going for a walk in -50F.  I don't get it.  She sticks her nose in the snow and hunts for mice, never gets cold feet and demands biscuits when we get inside.  Unfortunately she is useless in a harness.

I pulled the truck over to get Angela in front of the sign at the base of the University.  I passed the sign 4 times later on in the day and there was someone taking a picture every time.  One time I even saw 2 girls in bikinis screaming at their friend to hurry up and take the damn photo.  I have never seen anyone in bikinis in Fairbanks before, let alone in -43F.  Unfortunately I did not get a picture of that but it made me think that camping out in front of this sign on a -40F weekend day could make for an interesting photo story.  I think the trick is to catch the cold snap early on.  Now everyone is sick of it and the novelty is wearing off.  I should also like to take this time to thank the frozen truck gods for looking after my toyota and keeping her running.  I shall buy her a round of Marvel Mystery oil for her tank in celebration.

Stay warm friends and Happy New Year!

Well I'm hot blooded, check it and see

Yet another -40F morning at the cabin.  I have sealed off the big window upstairs and when I took a peek at it this morning ice was a good 18 inches up the window and building.  When it warms up there will be a flood of water to deal with but so be it.  The truck started like a champ and the air is so clear it hurts to look at.  I drove Angela to work this morning and then went to bLowe's and bought some trim wood for the next phase of counter top, should have it assembled today and maybe even installed.  The ice fog is thickening but hasn't really dropped to the ground yet, -50F is projected for the end of the week and that should lower air quality significantly.  I'm off to create more sawdust in the garage.

Get up dogs, you ain't tired.

It's -35F at the cabin this morning in Fairbanks, Alaska which is just about the right temperature for the holidays.  We have had a great time with the family over the Christmas week and I've enjoyed adventuring with my nephew.  

We built a massive snow fort outside Grammy's house.

Bonfire party at Sam and Jillian's Christmas Eve.

Then Jillian and I took the dogs out for a run before she took off for the Gin Gin 200.  I put Max in the sled with 9 dogs out front.  He was wrapped in good gear and a sleeping bag and the only complaint was "I can't see!" when he slipped down into the foot of the sled.  About 6 miles out he fell asleep and slept the whole way home.  When we pulled into the yard I scooped him out and put him in the snowbank while we put the dogs away.  This picture shows him in his wad of sleeping bag next to the sled.  It was about -5F at the time.  When he woke up he said, "What am I doing here?"  I'm sure barking dogs and a snowbank are a bit different from most of his nap surroundings.

Now I just hope Jillian makes it back from the race ok- the weatherman actually said it's cold enough to freeze warts today.  

Merry Christmas to All, and to All a Good Night

Happy Holidays everyone, don't forget to stop and make a snow angel from time to time.

If We Couldn't Laugh We Would All Go Insane

Well I'm back in Fairbanks and it's good to be home.  The sun down south is great, and I'll write about that in a bit, but the Lower 48 has crowd control problems we just don't deal with up here and I'm glad for that.  Crowds suck, and that point was driven home with a night of hell at the Seattle Tacoma airport where we got weathered in on the way back from Mazatlan.Here's a shot I took about 9pm Saturday when AK Air was still feeding us the line that we might get out that night.  Snow was coming down hard and over 4 inches was on top of the plane.  I figured we were doomed and then I saw this:

When Jolly St. Nick can't get home for Christmas what chance do I have?  And so it was at 1am they officially cancelled our flight, sent us back out through security and said get in line for a new ticket.  There was well over 1,000 people already waiting in line and beside the line people were sleeping everywhere in the most horrible open mouth broken neck positions that only the truly exhausted can perform.  

We stood in line all night, inching along and trying not to calculate the hopelessness of it all.  Finally, at 6am we stood in front of an agent.  He looked nervous and unskilled and happily informed us there was a flight out in the evening, of December 24.  Angela went white, then gray, then red and said very calmly, "That cannot happen."  Meanwhile I had a brief vision as the next 3 days stretched out before us.  There were riots, burning luggage cart tires, cannabalism and the leering faces of TSA agents eating fried chicken from behind the security lines and laughing as families huddled under in-flight magazine covers for warmth.  

I had to do something, and quick, so I put my finger to my left temple and whispered, "Help me Obi wan, you're my only hope."  I have uttered many oaths, phrases, curses and movie lines in my life but none with as much yearning of spirit and soul as I did Sunday morning.  Almost instantly a new ticket agent walked up and took  our man's place.  She dismissed him with a quick nod and a wave, cracked her knuckles, and looked over the top of her computer at us with calm determination.  Once she knew where we had to go her fingers blurred and the keyboard grew hot as she typed her demands into cyberspace.  

She mumbled under her breath as she worked her Jedi magic, "I'll enter you both as backslash 'k' upgrades on a dash 9 layover with section P clearance.  That'll get you to Anchorage, then it's just a matter of inputing the high tide coefficient for Turnagain Arm on a leapyear and it's done.  Now do you want window or aisle seats on the 8am flight today?"  

The upshot of it all is that our firstborn must now be named "Tracy" regardless of gender and we got home within 24 hours of when we were supposed to.  We did make it onto an 8 am flight but then spent 4 hours waiting in the plane for a de-icing crew to show up.  It wasn't until the gear folded into the plane as we lifted off that I began to feel some relief.

The Ted Stevens Convicted Felon International Airport never looked so good.  A few other things I would like to mention:  I saw maybe 100 blue blankets passed out to the thousands of sleeping people stranded at the airport, no one but Starbucks stayed open late to feed anyone, and supposedly the airport handed out bottled water for about an hour but ran out before I saw a drop.  

For all the billions that have been squandered on TSA theatrics true terrorism is watching an airport that handles 30,000 people a day shut down.  We will never forget...

I'm Not the Man I used to be Lately

It is December in the Golden Heart City of Fairbanks, a time of sparse daylight hours, cold temperatures, blank stares, frozen vehicles and thoughts of Mexico.  Angela and I have hunkered down accordingly and booked a flight to Mazatlan where we will ingest copious amounts of seafood and sunshine for the next two weeks.  

For those of you staying behind and toughing out the winter I recommend Max Dog's tried and true technique pictured above.  Max cautions that his remedies may lead to atrocious gas and poo breath, you have been warned...

My Baby is American Made

Angela is the proud parent of a new snowmachine today and we are both very excited.  Weighing in around 360 pounds, she's good looking and appears to be fit and healthy.  It was a bit of Craigslist luck and perfect timing and coordination with Rachael in Anchorage but we now have a 2000 model with reverse.  So sweet.

They Judge a Man by What He's Got and they wanta have more and more

Well this last week was spot on awesome.  I got to go to the mountains and answer the call of the wild for a few days and that does the soul good.  I left Fairbanks under snowy skies and dropped in on Iniakuk through a hole in the fog with my friend Max in his little Champ.  It is a great little plane that is as close to hang gliding as you can get and still have a prop out front.  I stayed with the great Paul Shanahan, Slayer of Large Bears and Teller of Tall Tales.  Here are some pics:

Here's Paul in his kitchen looking for caribou while I take apart my snowmachine engine.  The crankshaft seized so I brought the whole mess  back into town with me.  Damn iron dogs.

Here's Max hand-propping his Champ after dropping me off.

Cutting wood with Paul is an adventure in the improbable showing impossible how to get the job done.  It was -35F, the wood pile was empty, and Paul's wood hauling sled had just lost a battle with a tree.  We had to wrap the chainsaws in sleeping bags so they would stay warm enough to run.  Good times.

Fairbanks in the rearview mirror.

Moonrise over Iniakuk Lake at 4 p.m.  I was headed back to Paul's after looking for caribou and happened to look back over my shoulder.  I had to shut off the machine and watch until my camera froze.  And then I thought about what happened to Luke Skywalker on Hoth and I got the heck back to Paul's warm fire before I was forced to crawl into the warm ribcage of a caribou I hadn't shot.
Here's Max buzzing the cabin as he comes in to take me back to the bright lights and big city.
Paul's plane hasn't run since freeze up and it's keeping his riverboat and outboard motors company on the edge of the lake.
Here's the main lodge, shuttered and waiting for more snow.  There were snowshoe hares all over on highways of packed trails.  I've never seen such rabid rabbit density.
Sunset at 3pm with overflow in the foreground adding a little steam to the cold air.

Watchin' the world go by, surprisin' it goes so fast

Well pictures of the day continue to be skiing in the back forty as Angela and I explore the hood and take advantage of the short rays of November sun.  

Temperatures have been pretty mild without much below zero so it's easy living.

I almost think Mazzy would sleep outside if she wasn't so afraid of the dark.

And finally the upper cabinets are in which means the kitchen is starting to look like a kitchen and we're actually cooking meals there and enjoying the place more.  Next week the lowers and a more permanent running water system.  Although I may have to jump out for a quick trip north...

Where's your head at?

This has been a very strange week and we're only halfway in, I'm not sure if I'll make it to the weekend.  On Monday Angela and I decided to go for a ski on the multi-use trail out the front door.  The weather was nice and there's just enough snow to cover all the grass and roots.  We'd been skiing for about 20 minutes when we came upon a squirrel caught in a leg trap.  Some jackass had a trapline about 2 feet off the trail where it could have easily caught a dog.  The squirrel was caught by about 3 toes so I reached down to release the steel jaws of the trap and he bit the crap out of me.  Probably should have seen that one coming.  So I took off my hat, held the little bastard down, and then released the trap.  He shot out of there like he was on fire and we all went our merry ways.  We soon realized we were not far from Jillian's so I called

 ahead and she invited us in for tea.  I generally like to have a cup of tea after I've been squirrel bit, black tea if I can get it with a band aid and a bit of neosporin.  Jillian had it all and then we were off again.

On the way back I thought we should explore a different route so we did and it added just enough distance so Angela ran out of gas.  For those of you who have not seen Angela in the woods when she's hungry let me just say that getting bit by a squirrel was not the worst part of this ill-fated voyage.  But we made it back in one piece although Angela took a wrong turn at one point and disappeared for about 20 minutes which did wonders for her mood.  Apparently it was my fault for not noticing that she was no longer behind me.  What ever.  But we rallied after some hot soup and went out to Chena Hotsprings for a soak.  The rock pool was 107F which is the hottest I have experienced out there and we had to keep crawling out on the rocks to cool off.  Of course the weather turned while we were out there and we came home in a blinding blizzard.

Tuesday the Nation elected Obama for Prez.  WTF Nation???  I didn't think you cared!  So now we've got that going for us, which is nice.

And then the Chickadees attacked.  They are small but they are viscous.  I do not let Mazzy out of the house when they are around.  But today, during a break in the Chickadees, Mazz and I went for a ski.

It was zero degrees which is perfect for both of us.  Along the way we discovered a homeless shanty town (for real) and I would have taken a picture but I have seen what they pick up at the dump and I didn't want to be pelted by discarded household goods so we gently backed off down the trail.  I had always thought the ski trails would make a good shanty town access... apparently I was right.

We got home just at sunset which is now a bit before 4p.m. and I hung the last of the kitchen cabinets.  I'm very happy about that and look forward to cooking in a real kitchen once again.

You Can't, You Won't and You Don't Stop

by Patrick Moberg

Put another log on the fire

I have spent waaaay too much time in the garage lately but at long last the upper kitchen cabinets are done and ready to be hanged, or hung, or shot.  Actually I've had a good time, just inhaled a lot of sawdust. 
I will be very glad to get the cabinets up and move on to the counter top, which theoretically will be easier now that I've put in some hours.  Famous last words.  

I have to give a shout out to Superior Hardwoods because they are the best wood store in town.  I bought some hardware and birch there the other day and had some questions for Rick the owner but he wasn't there so his wife took my cell number and called me back as I was driving home with the answers.  What kind of shop does that any more?  My only complaint is that they don't have a little coffee area because I would like to sit there and drink coffee while they mill wood.  The shop is so awesome.  Of course sandwiches would be nice too Connie if you're reading this.

But all this woodwork has pulled me far and away from photography and in my eternal quest for balance I will now begin a "shot a day" posting.  I shoot nearly every day but often with just the camera phone whose quality I detest but whose omnipresence I adore.  So the shots will be with the Nikon and more than 2 seconds of my time...