fouldsy.com

Even though I only have three weeks left working at LKSD, I’m determined to make the most of it. There’s a big project building up for the summer with a large scale Open Directory deployment going on district-wide, with 40 or so Xserves that have come in to the department along with three Promise RAID arrays, fibre channel switching and other network gear. I’ve taken the opportunity to put myself up for travel duty to install Xserves at our village sites.

So, on Monday I flew in + out of Kwethluk, Tuesday I hit up Toksook Bay and flew back to Bethel via Newtok, then Wednesday I flew down to Kwigillingok and then on to Kipnuk where I camped out overnight at the school before coming home on Thursday. After getting things squared in the office through Thursday afternoon and Friday, I then helped figure out next week’s installs So, this Monday I fly to Mekoryuk (where it wouldn’t be awful I got stuck overnight…) and then Tuesday I’m scheduled for Kasigluk to do installs at Akiuk and Akula, before then heading to Atmautluak on Wednesday. Phew!

It was really nice to get back to Nelson Island again and spend the day in Toksook Bay, and then getting down to Kwigillingok and Kipnuk on the coast was great after being out here 4 years and Tunt being fairly close to them. It was quite, quite different to what I expected. It was a lot more desolate than I thought it would be – pretty much every day direction was completely flat and devoid of shrubbery or elevation change. The climate was also totally different. Kwig had 4ft high snowdrifts alongside the boardwalks where they’d plowed the way, and Kipnuk had boardwalks impossible to walk on at times because of the snow! I rode a snowmachine back to the airport on Thursday and really got cold in howling winds, before then driving around in Bethel not two hours later with sunglasses on, window down on the truck, and no snow to be seen at all! I’m quite intrigued as to what Mekoryuk will look like, as Nelson Island was still covered in snow.

So, it’s now the end of April; Saturday ushers in May. The days are rapidly counting down to leaving Bethel on May 30th, and Alaska itself a week later. Hotels, rental car, and day trips are all booked for that, as are our flights. I’m all moved out of my old house, got the deposit back and banked, sold my snowmachine, have sold my truck but am thankfully getting to keep it until we leave, and today have pretty much sold my boat. As of yesterday I’ve mailed out 24 boxes and have a running total at the post office hitting $650 now. I guess it’s a little too late to change my mind!

I’ve got one final paper to write for my GOVT101 class, and finished off my PHIL101 class a few days ago. I’ve got ENGL111 and SOC101 coming up this Summer for 6 weeks, and I’m registered for four classes this Fall at St Louis Community College which I’m really looking forward to. Not quite sure how I’ll handle 12 credit hours whilst (hopefully) working full time, so we’ll see. I’m sure it will be okay, and will at least know to only try 9 for Spring if it’s too much.

I’m definitely loving my iPad which I bought on our way through Anchorage a few weeks ago Combined with the Kindle app, it’s fantastic. I’ve read half a dozen books on it, and it’s great to have Whispersync go between my iPad and iPhone so I can pick up on one device right where I left off. I’m eagerly awaiting Barnes & Noble releasing their dedicated iPad app, and think it’s very smart Amazon and B&N are focusing on still delivering eBooks to the iPad, which is where their primary market should be (selling books).

At the moment, we’re looking at figuring out plans for June. It’s starting to look pretty busy! The plan is to be moved in to St Louis by the start of July

Didn’t get as many funny looks of “look at that silly gussack” as I was expecting when moving my boat last night:

I’ve got it parked at Pat’s house and will put it up for sale next week once I’m back from Fairbanks. Seemed weird to be towing it away knowing I’d be selling it. I always looked at life out here as experiencing things whilst I could, and buying a boat was simply a case of being able to buy a boat and use it until I moved. Was a good experience

The last few days have been a wash of events. Having made the decision to leave Bethel (and Alaska) at the of the school year, I’ve been slowly sorting out packing things up to ship out, sell, donate, or simply throw away. After a couple of fun trips to the post office, I’ve amassed twenty boxes and $500 in shipping fees:

Has been weird shipping all my possessions off to Bethany’s parents, but figure they’re pretty trustworthy So long as Jericho doesn’t try to eat my Playstation or something… It’s also been a good excuse to go through things and get rid of things I just don’t use/wear. I donated 4 trash-bags of clothes to the Catholic church along with a couple of big blankets; have some canned and dried foods to donate to the Lions Club; and threw out 8 bags of trash. Some things like a mass of flying magazines were tough to get rid of (though the FAA has just adjusted their stance on medications meaning I’m not totally ruled out now), but overall it’s been good. Means I’m starting out a fresh. And have less things puppies will chew when we’re able to get a place in St Louis where we can have dogs.

So, as of today I’m now all moved out of my old house and living with Bethany for a few weeks until we move. It really doesn’t seem like a year ago I was moving in my old house! Other than the cost of heating, it was a nice house, and all the space and light was great. But, as much as I know I *can* live in these conditions, I don’t *want* or *have* to, so it’s time to move on. I have my desktop computer for editing photos since I have some Iditarod photos left, Cama’i photos, and whatever I end up with from our Fairbanks trip in a few days, but pretty much everything else has been mailed off or gone one way or another. I’m hoping to be able to sell my boat, snowmachine, and truck okay, I’m not stressed about it. I have a lot of money tied up in rental and utility deposits and vehicles, so will be a nice chunk of change by the time we head south.

Alaska Air were running a sale on tickets last week, so we got our plane rides sorted. We leave Bethel on Sunday 30th May and have a week exploring Anchorage, Kenai and Mat-Su Valley with a friend of Bethany’s from Phoenix, then fly to Minneapolis and drive down to Iowa on Sunday 6th June. The plan is to have a house sorted in St Louis and be moved by the 4th of July weekend Exciting times, just a lot going on at the moment what with my college classes too!

It seems like the Cama’i festival came and went in a blur! We started out by getting together on Wednesday evening for dinner at Tim’s house and then the show set-up started on Thursday evening until 1a.m or so, but then Friday night’s opening show came round and the dancing started and suddenly it was midnight on Sunday and we had everything packed away! It was great fun though, it was nice having experienced it all last year so I kinda knew what was going on with sound + lights, and we extended it to run up to 4 video cameras which really made things fun. Plus, Marty came back again from last year so we all kinda knew each other and could cause trouble without too much hassle!

I made sure I got to photograph some of the dancers though, one of the advantages I guess is seeing which groups are really cool when they first perform so I could get down by the stage to photograph them later on in the weekend These are some from the first batch I processed last night, starting out with the amazing Mary Ann Sundown of Scammon Bay:

Well dressed dancers from Marshall, including the elder sitting at the front (of which I have some more close-ups to come):

I checked out St Mary’s a couple of times as they were quite lively. This is an overview of how we had the stage, lights and video projectors set up:

And bear in mind, this is a pretty big high-school gym where a district-wide basketball tournament was held a couple of weeks ago!

Tomodachi Diako Taiko Drummers were really impressive, a group of Japanese immersion students out of Anchorage:

One of their leaders was very friendly as we hooked up a wireless mic for him, and his flute playing was awesome:

And here’s one of Marty starting to look a little tired by 8pm on Sunday evening:

Overall, it was a great festival, and as with last year, I really enjoyed being part of the sound + light crew and being able to help put on such an awesome show. Pat is retiring next summer and leaving Bethel, so Cama’i 2011 will be his last show after doing it for 25 or so years. He’s already trying to convince me to fly back up for it!

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!

It’s been a long while since I wrote anything on here. A mix of privacy issues elsewhere and work bouncing from stressful to plain stupid hasn’t helped. In general I’ve just been spending a lot less time around a computer outside of work, focusing on playing elsewhere The last four weekends I’ve been out boating + fishing, with other trips inbetween too. A rare photo of me I like was from taking my little boat way up past Kwethluk fishing, which it coped with just fine, and nice to know I can do a long trip like that without any problems in my boat:

That weekend I found out one of my best friends from school had died in a car crash. Finding out by reading such seemingly meaningless posts on Facebook and having the comments going back and forth made it all seem so impersonal and frustrated me a lot. Partly why I haven’t blogged for a while. The one plus point was at least I had some kind of a connection, regardless of how impersonal it seemed.

A few days later, a friend made it in from Anchorage to photograph local events for the paper. That was fun, and gave me an opportunity to try heading home from work on a sunny day, hook the boat up, drop it in the water, and go play for a couple of hours. Knowing I have that kind of freedom makes such a difference, so we had fun going down to and exploring Napaskiak and Oscarville. Plus, she also made a good photo of me:

Since we’ve had a few good spells of weather and fishing opportunities, we also headed out with Captain Macy (and Erin…), Brian and Bethany to go fishing.

With four of us out there, it was a fun afternoon, though the little noseeums gave me some grief! This is me fishing with Bethany:

Last weekend Jeff and I decided to go explore the Gweek River in anticipation for moose and bird hunting. We did a little fishing, but not much around there except pike, but we had a good day exploring a new area. An hour and a half out of Bethel, quite a way’s up the Gweek, we stepped ashore and found a bunch of moose tracks in an area quite unlike anything I expected of the delta, and very reminiscent of Scotland:

The photo’s don’t do it justice as I just had my little point + shoot, but it was quite a beautiful area. Jeff is certainly going to return in the 10-day moose opening from September 1st onwards.

I also then purchased a Remington 870 12-gauge shotgun this past week to get out bird hunting. The act of purchasing and owning a gun doesn’t phase me anymore, but to walk in to the AC grocery store on a lunchtime and walk out 20 minutes later with a gun was a little weird. So, Wednesday night Jeff + I took a walk out across the tundra just getting used to it (he’s been great in going over the safety aspects, the gun components, hunting methods, etc. and is looking forward to a partner this fall), and Nikko ended up leading the duck count, managing to retrieve an already injured white-fronted goose. Bird hunting doesn’t officially open until September 1st, so we weren’t really looking at doing much ourselves, but again, is nice to have more options for getting out on an evening and weekend now.

This weekend Erin is moving, which is helpful, as Bethany is then moving in to her old place the following weekend. Means Iain’s Moving Services are required for two weekends, but beer and pizza are good forms of payment. If this fairly okay weather holds that we have today, am sure Jeff will be forcing me to go out on the river too. Which would be just awful I have a few more snowmobile parts coming in soon too to get my Indy 500 ready for the coming winter. The temperature dropped below freezing and gave a good frost a few days ago, so we’re definately easing out of summer.

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.

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