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The guys working on the water treatment center finally got the go-ahead to turn everything on this weekend and have started flushing out the system at school. Those hold thousands of gallons of water so it will take a while before all the tanks and pipes are flushed out, but is amazing how quickly it’s made a difference at home. Greg had borrowed Nick’s water pump and the two of us drained the bottom of our water tanks at home, cleaned them out, pressure-washed the insides, flushed + drained again, and finally ended up with a tank you could see all the way to bottom of when full of water That was a pretty sight! Still won’t be drinkable for a while until we’ve ran a few tanks through it (even then, I still don’t know if I’d drink it right from the tap!), but is nice to turn the taps on and have crystal clear water flowing through.

Was also nice to see Derby lose today and give Sunderland automatic promotion back to the Premiership – Keano’s certainly turned things around pretty quick, and so long as Quinn and the rest of the board can stump up a good chunk of money right away in the summer to bring in players, hopefully it won’t be so much of an embarrassment next season! Hopefully having a big name manager + personality like Roy Keane in charge will help bring in some more big name players, just a shame I won’t get a chance to watch them!

9.30p.m and it was still around 45F (6C), so Kat and I headed out for a walk. We got out to the airport just as James Charles, a local pilot, was coming in to land:

He actually pulled up off the runway and looped back round to come in to land from the other side just as he was disappearing behind the trees and I stopped filming. After he taxied in to land, I was joking with him and he said sometimes he just likes to have fun when there’s no-one else in the plane to get scared! Turns out he’d been at a meeting Yuut Yaqungviat Flight School in Bethel as he’s a member of the board. Could be a useful bloke to know next year

Walking way over to the other end side of the village, and with the sun pretty low on the horizon we were casting shadows 40-50 feet across the tundra looking back across the lake to school:

Even at 10.30p.m, the sun was still happily sitting above the horizon:

But, got another letter from USCIS in Anchorage with what’s now my 3rd appointment for biometrics – May 7th, but at least it’s getting better. Will send another letter back in a few days asking for it to be re-scheduled again which hopefully will bring it back to around to May 23rd when school finishes. Getting to be a bit of a bugger not being able to start booking flights, campsites, hotels, etc. for this summer.

Our fridge-freezer decided stop working a few days ago. Frank + Mark guess the freon gas or whatever that gets pumped around inside has leaked out as the motors are running fine, just rotating warm air. Since you can’t exactly load a new fridge-freezer onto a Cessna 207 or even the 208 Caravans (well, you could if you were willing to be creative…), we had to make a new one ourselves:

That’s going to be it until the summer when the barges come back down the river. At least we have a full-sized freezer we can store food in, just makes it more difficult trying to keep cheese, sliced meat, eggs, etc. chilled. Could probably stay inside the house actually since the boiler has gradually been loosing water pressure and has needed topping up for a week, so the house rarely gets above 60-65F (15-18C). Hopefully Mark will be able to get the pump he needs to top-up the boiler on Monday, but they’ve had more pressing things to get sorted like Marie’s new floor since taking a 10 foot detour to be able to walk around the kitchen without loosing a foot through a hole was getting kinda boring for her! Least all the rain and melting snow has allowed us fill up the water tank a couple of times this past week and haven’t had to haul any from the school.

The forecasted snow hit last night and hasn’t let up yet. Is more of a wet + miserable snow than run outside and play snow So, from last night where it was sunglasses weather on the boardwalks to this:

It’s amazing how quickly the landscape can change up here. From 5 feet of snow to clear tundra and 45F in a few days, then swinging back to snow covering everything in 12 hours. Deceiving too – with the snow covering ice-over puddles it’s easy to get yer feet wet

Definately not shorts + t-shirt weather anymore. Temperature has gradually been dropping the last few days and is down to 20F, -7C, or so today. Has frozen the lakes + river again, and there’s quite a bit of snow expected along the coast so we might end up with a couple of inches here. Sun just keeps setting later and later too – this was around 10p.m:

Seems like the sun is obeying the stop sign and not going down! There still isn’t much snow on the ground around the village for snowmobiles to move around, but out on the tundra it seems fine. Most people are using their 4-wheelers to move around the boardwalks which has at least meant a couple of the bridges have been fixed making walking easier too

With the helpfulness and common sense of a goldfish, I’ve been issued with a new date for providing my biometrics in Anchorage – April 24th. Much better than April 16th, especially given the letter I sent explaining why I was requesting a rescheduled appointment in the first place (just a small matter of finding it ridiculous to spend $700 going to Anchorage just to give my fingerprints)… So, off another letter goes tomorrow asking them to reschedule it again. They want to play silly buggers and only issue an appointment for one week later, I’ll keep getting them to pay the postage sending me new appointments until we get to the end of May.

And for the uninitiated – definition of snafu.

With the weather staying in the 40′sF (4-5C), for a week or two now, there’s a whole load of standing water around. Although the ice on the lakes hasn’t melted, all the snow that was sat on top has done, leaving a good foot or so of water on top of the ice. If it wasn’t for the ice still underneath, you could easily believe they were normal lakes:

And the lake leading over to the two main stores, post office, airport, etc. is pretty much completely covered in water, although there’s still a mad few ploughing their snowmobiles through them like jet skis!

Pretending your snowmobile is a jetski doesn’t always work though – the guy on the right is trying to tow the other snowmobile out, though it’s pretty well bogged down in the mud and wasn’t going anywhere:

With a lot of the snow now clearing, you can see all the trash that’s lying around the village that people have just dropped or got blown around. There are trash cans dotted around and there is a big push to keep the place clean and tidy. Here’s the garbage man toddling around in a cool two-seater Polaris ATV emptying the trash cans before heading off to the dump (way out of the village):

Hasn’t been a great deal else going on recently. Waiting on the USCIS office in Anchorage to send through a new appointment for giving my fingerprints before we can start booking any flights for the summer which isn’t that good, but looks like we’ll be getting an extended rental car over the summer which is one less worry. When we looked at how much it would cost to pick up a decent 2nd hand car, get it registered, insured, etc. and the time it would take, plus what we’d do with it for a year whilst we’re back up here, Alamo car rental amongst others do car rentals on a monthly basis for a little over $1000/month including all taxes, breakdown cover, unlimited mileage, etc. Means we can get off the plane at the airport and drive away in a car, not have to worry about something breaking down and how much it will cost or delay us somewhere whilst it gets repaired, and can then simply hand the keys over at the airport whilst flying back.

Longer days and warmer weather. This was around 9.30p.m – the sun setting behind the Russian Orthodox church, with a lot of snow now melting and more of the tundra being exposed:

Wasn’t able to reschedule the biometric appointment in Anchorage over the phone, so will send back the form tomorrow with a letter explaining my request for a date towards the end of May. Hopefully someone will be able to apply some common sense and we can do it as we pass through Anchorage on our way to the lower 48 in a couple of months.