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I’ve slowly been making a start on the Iditarod photos from Saturday + Sunday. There’s a whole bunch in this flickr set with more to come. I just love the character in the dogs, such as this guy:

As they can’t sweat, their tongues swell up to allow them to cool, which is quite safe.

You then had this guy who just wanted to keep running, not stop on the trail for a minute or so whilst the musher untangled some lines:

Peter Kaiser of Bethel was running his first Iditarod, with his father, Ron, riding the second sled:

Mike Williams Jr of Aniak is also running his first Iditarod this year. Both are currently doing well in the middle of the pack.

Up in Willow, we got to mill around the teams as they were setting up thanks to the press passes we had, which got some great candid shots of the puppies like this one after sneaking a little snack from a way-ward food tub lid:

Some mushers were more stressed out than others as they got ready for the start of the ‘real’ racing, such as Martin Buser, barely able to contain himself:

And once everything was underway, great to see all the mushers and teams make their way across Willow Lake to begin the journey, such as DeeDee Jonrowe:

I’ve processed and uploaded around 50 or so photos now, with hundreds more to go. I’ll slowly be uploading them as I go, again, check this flickr set for more now and over time. Any stand out ones I’ll also post here. I’m really going to miss photographing sled dogs. I guess that’s why I did so much with the Kuskokwim 300, Bogus Creek 150, Akiak Dash, Holiday Classic, and now Iditarod the last couple of months. I just love being around the dogs! I had been hoping to get up for the Akiak 150 this weekend, but there’s a little too much going on at work to have taken more time off so soon after the Iditarod. Hopefully I’ll be able to get another local sled dog race around Bethel before the end of winter.

We’ve just got back in to Bethel after our weekend in Anchorage for the Iditarod. It was a great weekend, though tiring! For the ceremonial start on Saturday we were in the woods around University Lake which was very quiet and exciting watching the teams make their way along the winding trail. On Sunday we then headed up to Willow for the official restart.

After dinner on Saturday evening with friends Beth + Loren, we snagged their press passes which meant we could wander around amongst the mushers and teams setting up for an hour or so which was awesome! We then headed over the lake to where the teams pull off and in to a little wooded area. It was really good fun seeing the teams start their Iditarod journey, and I’m now resigned to following the race progress via the GPS tracking on Iditarod Insider.

Today we had a lazy day around Anchorage as the weather wasn’t too good for heading down Turnagain Arm, but it was still good fun. Back to work tomorrow, and with 3 x 8Gb memory cards full of photos to process on the evenings. At least it’s Spring break at UAS so I don’t have much college work to get done over the next week or so and have time to process them. I’ll have photos on flickr as slowly over the next few days hopefully.

Bethany and I are heading to Anchorage this evening for the start of the 2010 Iditarod. Very excited! It was great seeing the Iditarod start last year out of downtown Anchorage, though going to be a little further out around University Lake this year where it should be a little more scenic and peaceful as the teams come by. Also going to head up to Willow on Sunday for the official restart, which I didn’t get to do last year. Monday is a day relaxing and hanging around town.

I haven’t packed any clothes yet, but at least am checked in on-line and have my camera gear packed I’m taking a little more than I had for the K300 races and Holiday Classic where I stuck with the 18-200 the whole time, as I’m hoping to get a little more landscape shots done around Turnagain Arm and such, we’ll see. My poor MacBook is rapidly running out of space and will barely hold one 8Gb memory card, let along the three of them I carry! So, it might need to wait until I get back to Bethel to post some photos.

Of course, it’s blowing snow and IFR here in Bethel right now, and the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center and Alyeska Resort are closed along Turnagain Arm due to severe weather, but hopefully we’ll be okay and have a great weekend! If nothing else, will be nice to get out of Bethel for the weekend. Heading up to Fairbanks for 4-5 days at the start of April, so at least gives us a couple of trips out of the delta to keep us going as winter rolls on.

Deep breath…

istartedaproject365andamnowmorethan150daysintoit(whichshowshowlongitsbeensinceiveblogged!)
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ispentchristmasandnewyeariniowawithbethanysfamily
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iphotographedtheheckoutoflocalsleddogracesandhadmultiplefeaturesraninthetundradrums
ipassedmyapplecertifiedtechnicalcoordinatorexamsinosx10.6havingneverseenwithsnowleopard
ibecameweirdlyaccustomedtodrivingontheriverinmytruck
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iwillhavecompleted18collegecreditsthroughuasbytheendofjuneafterregisteringformoreclassestonight
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ihaveanothertripbookedtofairbanksatthestartofapril
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I will try to blog more. I usually can’t be bothered and end up with short updates on twitter or Facebook. If you’re wanting to keep up, that’s probably easier. And my flickr photo stream.

The first three weeks of college classes through UAS have gone well. It’s been a little bit of an adjustment to balance out my time at work with taking the classes and fitting in all the reading assignments, but seems worth it. The goal of giving myself something to keep the brain working through winter will almost certainly pay off as my time spent doing nothing in front of the TV has certainly dropped dramatically (well, NFL season starting a week or so ago not withstanding…)!

Winter is definately coming too, I guess we’re officially in to fall now, and given it was 28F this morning with a good thick frost and hasn’t risen above 38F today, that figures. As much as the fall colors are nice, it really is kinda an in-between season – not quite warm enough for boating or walking around exploring, but not cold enough for a good freeze-up and snow for snowmobiling. The down side to all this is although I love my house, the big windows and lofted living room don’t do much for keeping heat in As a test this evening I brought the heating up to 70f then turned it off. Within 2 hours the temperature had dropped 5f. 62f is about the lowest I can keep it at, 64-65f is about as low I can go and stay fairly comfortable, so with the temperature only being 38f outside, I’m not looking forward to what will happen when it’s -38f outside!

The PFD amount was announced today, an annual payout for Alaskan residents from investments of monies gained from the mining of minerals such as oil. This year it’s $1,305 and should hit my bank account on October 8th. Nice little delayed birthday present! I’m hoping it will help pay for flights somewhere at Christmas, since my Vegas tickets (7 weeks tonight, but who’s counting?) are all paid Won’t be heading back to England, am trying to wait until next summer when I could fly return direct from Anchorage to Frankfurt for like $800.

Over the Labor Day weekend, Jeff and I headed way up the Gweek River camping. It was great fun, the weather on the Saturday was just awesome, well in to the 70F’s with clear blue skies. I have a few photos I’ll post, but the second camping spot we ended up at gave us an amazing sunset and moon rise. We were both a little tired when we got back on Sunday, but experiences like that all add up. It was quite weird to be way up the Gweek to the point of needing a canoe, and to then end up drifting back down to camp covered in camo duck hunting. It got me thinking whilst grilling salmon how much of a difference a year makes.

I never really think back on my times in Tunt and long to be back or wish for things to have turned out differently, but have thought a few times over the summer how different it must be for the teachers that find themselves stationed around Bethel in Napaskiak, Oscarville or Napakiak, or up around Kwethluk; or west coast sites like Mekoryuk, Toksook Bay or Tununak. The southern coastal sites like Tunt, Kong and Kwig are quite, quite different, and feel a lot more remote and desolate. I couldn’t imagine trees like I’ve seen around the Kwethluk or Gweek Rivers, and even small rolling hills or the abundance of bird life or fishing when I was living in Tunt. A year ago this past weekend I was spending the Labor Day weekend moving up to Bethel, and I can first remember feeling something not quite right after my second day on the job here whilst phoning back that the evening.

Contrast to today where I was calmly balancing so many district-wide servers, networking and licensing issues, whilst also taking my first college class through UAS where I’m enrolled on a bachelor’s course, and tonight have been running Facebook and Skype through my iPhone. I own a truck and a boat, and my snowmobile came back home last night and work started on replacing the rear suspension assembly for the coming winter. I would never have believed I could have found myself living in such a situation.

My first political science class went really well and seems like it will be pretty interesting. I spent the rest of the evening working on my readings for next week. The first of my oceanography classes is Monday afternoon and I have some readings to do over the weekend for that.

I also finally got an iPhone up and running out here today It’s taken a lot of patience, but other than the same restrictions on any cellphone out here in Bethel with regards to lack of data coverage, it works great. There are a few apps I’ve installed such as Facebook, Tweetdeck, Skype and Shazam which are cool, and I have a friend coming in to town next week that am sure will point me in the direction of even more. It really is an awesome little device, and even things like text messages bring on a whole new meaning when it’s formatted like iChat conversations. Very happy with it!

For a while I’ve been thinking of doing some college classes through University of Alaska, as resident tuition rates are very affordable, and they’re also well set up for delivering classes via distance learning. I’m not sure what will transfer over from my studies at Gateshead College, but I’m looking at more of a rounded education rather than focusing on a specific field such as computing as before. The great thing about the college system over here is that you can study a bunch of general education requirements that all work towards pretty much any degree. A Bachelors of Liberal Arts is probably the final goal, so we’ll see how things go.

This fall semester I’m taking two classes, both of which are a little different, but that’s the whole point. Classes are ‘Intro to Oceanography (OCN101)’ and ‘Intro to Political Science (GOVT102)’ through the Ketchikan campus of University of Alaska Southeast (UAS). I have a 3 hour class each Monday afternoon for Oceanography and a 1 1/2 class each Wednesday afternoon for Political Science, and work has been accommodating shuffling around the couple of hours in early finishes to be made up elsewhere in order to support it. I guess it’s all in their best interest anyways. The rest of the class is self study at home, which works great for me and is how they run mso of the distance courses. Will see how the course load goes with two classes per semester like this, and hopefully register a little more in advance for spring classes, as Cultural Anthropology which I initially tried to register for was already full.

Fun times, and I’m quite excited to be doing something other than computing. I guess the hardest part has been actually doing something about it – applying, getting registered, etc., as is so easy to just do nothing and get by with things as they are.

Despite the rain, Ted Berry and I headed out a few miles down river to around Napaskiak to drift net for salmon with a strong run of silvers coming through now. I didn’t take my camera out, so relied (?!) on my cell phone for one of us in action:

We hauled in 33 salmon, 31 of which were silvers, in three main drifts of around 5 minutes After heading back home and sorting out the boat, I then headed home with 17 silvers. I can see the appeal of fish camp to give you somewhere to cut fish if nothing else! It gets messy. This was my two rubbermaids after unloading the truck:

I’d been picking up fish fish here and there from the Tundra Center, so already had a 3 silvers, 2 reds, and maybe half a dozen chum, but I just about managed to squeeze in the 17 silvers from today! This is one full freezer, and also staring to see the appeal of a separate freezer:

Overall, a fun afternoon, if leading to a long evening spending hours cutting fish!

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.

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!