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This morning I had my practical driving test after the written test a week or so ago. Given I was doing it at 8a.m, I ended up passing it before I’d even had breakfast The plus side is my new Alaska driving license has me looking like a serial killer!

I also then called up the immigration department after not being able to check the status of my green card renewal online or on the phone for a week or so. I had received a request for additional information which was due back by July 23rd, and I was getting concerned the mail had messed up and they hadn’t received all the paperwork I sent them. After being transferred up the chain to a supervisor and starting to really get worried, I then had to explain my problem again, which the very helpful lady didn’t seem to understand. She casually informed me my case had been approved on July 22nd and that the new green card had been queued for printing and mailing out Well, that certainly was a lot better than I was expecting! I think I had to ask her to repeat it, just to make sure!

Hopefully it arrives pretty soon, as I’m still a tad nervous until I actually have it in my hand. Would much rather still be able to see the status in writing online as being ‘approved’ as with previous cases, but certainly sounds like it’s for real! Within like two hours this morning I’d tied off the last couple of major things with being over here and getting through the renewal on my own. Has also gone through incredibly quickly if so, given I didn’t file until the end of March, but then I had got a biometrics appointment within 3 weeks, and everything seems to have moved smoothly. Will see what I get in the mail over the next couple of weeks.

The past week has kept me busy finishing off a bunch of projects at work given people start rolling back in to the office next week. I was also on dog watch for for 4-5 nights around last weekend as Jeff went down to see Angel. The weather has been very up and down too, last weekend was just wet + miserable the whole time, then Wed-Fri have been nice through the day, and rain pretty much bang on 5p.m!

Last night I went to fill up the gas cans for boating and literally as soon as I stepped out the truck the heavens opened! As I’m filling up the cans, I say to the guy at the next pump doing the same thing: “You going out boating tonight?”. He looks up, dripping wet, smiles and says “Nope. You?”. I look up, dripping wet too, and reply “Nope”. Regardless, Jeff and I decided today we were going, rain or no rain!

That was my truck + boat at the top of the small boat harbor south ramp waiting to lower in to the water. I’m slowly getting better at reversing the truck with boat trailer, but am glad Jeff is around to help and is patient! It’s quite difficult trying to learn to reverse a trailer in the first place, let alone when you’re going downhill and in to water, the last part of which your brain tells you is stupid!

Anyways, we’d wanted to go run the Napaskiak River so we knew where it came out and what it looked like, as it’s on the main Kuskokwim channel between Church Slough and Kwethluk, the primary marine highway I guess. Here’s a rough map of our explored areas now:

Red was today’s play time, yellow was our camping trip a couple of weeks ago. The others have been shakedown runs of Jeff’s boat and mine or from exploring the Kwethluk River before our camping trip. The Gweek River is next up, the one just starting at the top directly north of our red route from today, which is meant to be quite pretty and good for wildlife. The Kisararlik (sp?) is also a planned trip, past Kwethluk and heading off in the top right hand corner, which is a good fishing river apparently.

Gas wise we got to within about a mile of the boat harbor coming back before I ran out of gas. There was still a little left in the tank, but that whole red run was done on 6 gallons. Not bad for a 2-stroke. As a comparison, Jeff’s yellow run was done round-trip on about 12 gallons, so there’s seemingly not much between the 2-stoke 30hp and 4-stroke 40hp, though Jeff is pushing an 18ft boat loaded up wih gear which then shows how fuel efficient it is. But, even at $5.10/gallon, that’s a good 2 hours or so on the river today for $30, and fun going exploring some new waterways

Given the difficulties of towing a boat with a bicycle, I decided I needed something a little more useful:

It’s ’92 Chevy S-10 4.3l V6 4wd pickup which for a Bethel truck is in a pretty good condition Will haul my boat to the harbor and back and get me around town rather than walking in the rain. Quite pleased with it!

Saturday morning I got things ready to put my boat on the water I was a little nervous, especially trying to lower it down the ramp with the truck given I’ve never reversed a vehicle trailer before, let alone in a long pick-up and with it being boat trailer! But, Jeff guided me in and the boat engine fired up and we started heading out:

Yesterday I moved the seats round in the boat, as is more natural for driving from the opposite side. Hopefully is a little easier driving like that. But, the engine itself ran just great, a lot better than I was expecting, very little vibration so the prop is good, and was okay on gas too. A little loud with it being a 2-stroke, but not uncomfortably so. Overall, very happy with it!

We then swapped out boats and headed way up the Kwethluk River with Jeff and the dogs to go camping. The weather was just great, and with a little breeze, very few bugs either. After a little battle with the fishies, I finally landed a pike which went straight on the grill Tasted great:

Our camp site was in a really nice spot, on a little beach and getting enough sun whilst still staying fairly cool:

My tent was a bit small for the dogs as well, though just fine for Jeff + I, so we will need something a little bigger to have those guys getting a more comfortable night away from the bugs. But, overall, was a good shakedown trip to figure things out for next time now we know what we gear have that works and doesn’t (and not to leave stuff in the boat unless you want it covered in dew in the morning!). Am tired today, but good fun!

A few days ago I headed down to Hangar Lake, local float plane base, after work to make some HDR photos of the airplanes since we had such nice weather it would have been a waste not to This was Myron Angstman’s (I believe) Cessna 172:

There was another 172, a 207, Maule and Aviat A-1B docked along the shore, plus this Piper PA-18 belonging to the State Troopers or Fish & Game, looking just awesome in HDR with such intense blues:

I’d set up a function key on my EOS 50D to allow the AEB switching to be easily able to shoot more than 3 bracketed exposures, so these photos and others on Flickr were from a 1EV 5 exposure sequence in Photomatix. This gave a much more even tone and less graininess which I experienced doing a 3 exposure sequence last week with the abandoned Army truck and burned down house. There’s definitely some great uses out here to capture the range of tones, especially blue skies. I can imagine in the winter time especially there could be some fantastic opportunities at sunrise and sunset!

For the 4th of July parade and festivities, the Tundra Drums asked me to send in any photographs I took, so I spent a few hours on the Saturday morning moving around getting really good ones detailed in my flickr set.

Being around whilst people in the parade were getting ready gave the opportunity to get Iditarod 2009 musher Harry Alexie to pose in a dog-sled cart:

I pretty ran the length of the parade route, meaning I got to a bunch of shots from different parts around town which although tiring, was actually pretty good fun. No-one seemed to mind the idiot sitting the middle of the road whilst a dog team or truck was coming right towards me. Which was nice. Here is the well adorned Girl Scouts float:

At the carnival itself, the were some fun little market stalls set up, food vendors, raffle tickets for sale, etc. I managed to find a fun shot of Brian Kay adorned in the stars and stripes:

One more photograph I made mainly for the newspaper was of a couple of elders enjoying the festivities going on around them:

All in all, I was really happy with how the day turned out. I filled an 8Gb CF card in like 3 hours with 360+ RAW photos and then spent pretty much all Sunday processing them to get them in to the paper for the the 8.30a.m Monday deadline. But, they ran 6 photos in full color which was cool. More photos from the day are detailed in this flickr set. I’d then ended up spending the rest of the 4th out on the river with Jeff, so was a great day!

Since I figured my snowmobile doesn’t work that well in the summer, I bought a different toy – a 14ft Lund with a 30hp 2-stroke Nissan outboard motor, complete with trailer:

Which means I have a DMV title for a boat trailer, but technically no car to haul it!

Am working on that part But, am planning on leaving it down at the boat harbor once I get my harbor permit tomorrow. Is weird to think I have a snowmobile and a boat as my methods of transport. Can’t wait to get out on Saturday and take it out for a spin!