istartedaproject365andamnowmorethan150daysintoit(whichshowshowlongitsbeensinceiveblogged!)
iturned26andstilldontfeellikeagrownup
ibecameabigfanofprismkites
itraveledtolasvegasforalongweekendwithbethanytomeetupwithmyfamilywhichwasawesome
iwonahandinthevenetianpokerroomwithace/kingsuitedasholecards
ifinishedmyfirstsemesteratuaswitha4.0gpa
ispentchristmasandnewyeariniowawithbethanysfamily
igotanewtattoo
igotengaged
ibegantoneedamuletohaulallmycameraround
iphotographedtheheckoutoflocalsleddogracesandhadmultiplefeaturesraninthetundradrums
ipassedmyapplecertifiedtechnicalcoordinatorexamsinosx10.6havingneverseenwithsnowleopard
ibecameweirdlyaccustomedtodrivingontheriverinmytruck
igottoridemysnowmobileafterlousysnowallwintersofar
iwillhavecompleted18collegecreditsthroughuasbytheendofjuneafterregisteringformoreclassestonight
ihavetakentostudingthebibledailyandevenwenttochurchlastsunday
iamgoingtotheiditarodacoupleofweeks
ihaveanothertripbookedtofairbanksatthestartofapril
inolongerwearadressshirttowork

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.

But, I then headed over to the wood workshop for an hour or so as Jeff worked on his canoe. He’s wanted to build one from scratch since he was a kid and figured now’s as good a time as any. I played supervisor, though did help sand the inside a little Starting to look good, and looking forward to the summer. There’s plenty of little waterways around here to explore, and he’s really keen to camp out as well. I didn’t get a chance last summer at all. Throw in a couple of fishing rods and bottles of beer (hmmm, not sure on the legality of that out here actually…) and should be fun.

I appeared in the Delta Discovery newspaper this past week as a photo and brief article on the K300 fun run from a couple of weeks ago was printed. My name wasn’t spelt right again. I guess I should just get used to it! And after a friend thought I was about the same age as him a week ago (early 40’s), at least today someone else pegged me as mid-30’s today Definately a day for giving up and not caring!

Walking isn’t going to happen, we’d already dropped the idea of hitting Shogun’s for dinner earlier as 50mph winds mean rather than just sliding on the ice as your boots have no traction, you also then get blown along the ice (which is actually quite fun until you realize you can’t stop…). Not many taxis running either so hoping it’s a little better in the morning, or that my neighbor drives up to school Am *not* going on the slough again until it freezes…

I got the ignition switch connected rather than just the bungee cord system which meant anyone could technically start it, so a little happier now it needs a key. If someone wants to steal, they’ll still get it started, but it’s a bit of peace of mind. Need to see if the guys at the metal shop can solder up the leads properly tomorrow as -15F (-26C) made it a tad cold to do a good job as the iron just lost all it’s heat right away and the metal terminals were too cold. Hopefully they don’t shake themselves loose on the ride to work in the morning Will take my duck tape with me just in case…

No, the dog sled isn’t for me, it’s for a colleague here in Bethel. Was tempting though Most of the boxes made it quite okay, I have a few papers drying out and some of the electronics are slowly warming back up too. Hopefully nothing is damaged. Jeff + I were both exhausted, was 8 hours door to door, but so glad I have friends like that willing to help out. Was pretty cool riding back with the sun setting behind us, knowing everything was safe + sound. Hard to even try to capture the scene in a photograph, as it’s so just so vast and desolate, it’s 360 degrees and impossible to do justice in a single image. Least I won’t have to leave the house at 7.20a.m so I can walk to work and be in the office by 8a.m anyway (well, at least until breakup!).

Jeff is flying down to Tunt on Tuesday to work on the water treatment plant and spending the night there, so offered to get my snowmobile up + running, put new plugs on and fresh oil + coolant in, etc. It’s really nice of him, and he even suggested riding it back up to Bethel but I’m trying to dissuade him unless he can find someone else riding up. It’s not worth it enough to me to risk him getting wet or lost. But, he also told me ATS have planted two of the Casa 212 cargo planes, so I guess the idea of having it flown into Bethel is off too as I don’t think they have anything other than 207’s left or maybe one more 212, and you ain’t getting a snowmobile into a 207… If Jeff can get it running whilst he’s in Tunt and the river freezes up again through this week, we might try riding it again next weekend.

Jeff + I headed down river hoping to get to Tunt, and although there’s a beautifully marked trail to Napakiak and then down the east side of the Kuskokwim before hitting the tundra trail to Eek (literally, trail markers every 20 yards), we couldn’t find any trail down the west side to Tunt. We met one guy from Eek that said he’d seen the trail when passing yesterday but not this morning, so not sure whether the tracks were covered with drifting snow or what. We headed down to fish camp island where the Eek trail heads off river and tried heading down and across to the Johnson River, but there was quite a bit of standing water Jeff wasn’t sure about, and given he has a brand new snowmobile he’s only been riding for 3-4 weeks who was I to argue! Was just so frustrating to see exactly where we had to go, I could even pretty much make out where the trail should have left the river to Tunt, but the weather also then started closing in a little which didn’t help. We headed back around Napakiak and checked the island mid-channel where I’d seen another trail last year, but nothing, and definately nothing skirting the riverbank where it should be. I’m guessing the guys are going into Napakiak itself and down the tundra the whole way, but without knowing for certain and just being the two of us on one machine, not worth trying to break trail ourselves.

So, we headed back to Bethel where the sun was back out and hit Alba’s for lunch. I had a burger, it warmed me up. Jeff enjoyed the ride anyways and it was nice to get out of town again. Frustrated my snowmobile is still just sitting in Tunt whilst I’m schlepping around Bethel, along with half a dozen boxes I packed up two months ago that simply need taking to the post office. Really tempted just to write Northern Air Cargo a blank check and tell them to fly it here on back-haul.

A few more locals have been getting boats ready though – one of them by the river had a big pile of broken ice next to it which looked like someone had lost control of their sled after being ice chipping, but then the inside of the boat was thick with ice and it’s owner had been breaking it out! I’ve seen a couple getting towed along the river too, again, probably to get out seal hunting along the coast:

Isn’t quite as gruesome as some of the photos recently published out of Canada though, honest.

On the plus side (segue from clubbing seals…?!), GTA IV arrived through the mail this afternoon – about time, as I pre-ordered it last summer, even though it’s final release date wasn’t until this past Tuesday Pretty cool though, so can’t wait to get to stuck into it later on this evening

I’m also heading into Anchorage on May 12th for a few days, partly just to get out the village for a bit! I’m meeting up with a friend who lives there, and hoping to get an introductory flying lesson (TSA approval required for anything more) and pilot medical done whilst I’m there. Slowly moving forward I guess. Should be good, and Damond used to work in Denali National Park and has lived around the Anchorage area all his life, so I can pick his brains for when we head out at the end of July when my parents fly over Can get some shopping done and mail stuff back to keep us going over the summer as well – think I’ll have one box just of mosquito repellant!

Yesterday afternoon I went out for a while jigging (short retirement, I know…) on the Galic River. Got three hooks ripped off whilst trying to haul fish in as the hole wasn’t cut properly at the bottom and was catching the line so headed home, but did have a bit of fun riding out there – this is Pam bundled up in the sled behind Nick + Dana, Mott leading us, then a couple of guys obviously nervous the river was liable to break up

I’d guess they were just moving downriver to be able to get out seal hunting shortly, but was still funny seeing a boat being towed along the frozen river by a snowmobile!

This afternoon, moose foot and me wandered along to the airport and saw a Hageland 207 struggling to come in to land with the wind. Even the pilots have been joking on the radio about how windy it is when coming in to land. Barely seems like they’ve moving sometimes as they’re on final to land.

Least this guy took a little more time on his takeoff run-up – look at how much movement he got out the airplane whilst checking the elevator:

Kat’s feeling a lot better now, I’m blaming it on the broccoli she had on the Sunday evening with dinner The snow does seem to be slowly melting away, and there’s a lot of standing water and cracks forming on the rivers. Riding out to the Galic river yesterday the area looked so different to just a couple of weeks ago with patches of exposed tundra, so the ice may well start to break up in the next couple of weeks. Seems unlikely given how much snow and ice there’s still down (well over 5 foot thick ice yesterday), but the temperature has been slowly rising and due to carry on over the next week up to 40F. Maybe spring is here!

Anyway, other than Carl pretending he was a grizzly bear himself by sticking his hand into the water and grabbing a pike out that squirmed off Carie’s hook within minutes of starting fishing, there wasn’t much more excitement! There were stacks of people fishing round there, but no-one was really pulling out any great numbers, and I still came home with nowt At least it kept Carl happy as he joked there was someone worse than him this time as he’s not a big fisherman, highlighted by the two or three naps he took in the back of the sled through the afternoon, after which he’d calmly walk over to check his holes and find fish on the end of the line!

Coming back was a bit dodgy as the weather started closing in around 4.30p.m and by the time we left around 5.15p.m it was a whiteout all the way back to Tunt. Given that everything is so flat and devoid of anything out here, it was pretty hairy, though thankfully Carl knew exactly where he was going. Looking all around you and seeing nothing, or even being able to tell the ground from the sky in front of you, was a little different and made for slow going (around 2 hours) but we all got back okay. Once off the Kuskokwim river at least the trail markers every couple of hundred yards made it a little easier once you could see them, but I wouldn’t want to try it again in a hurry!

But, Kat was up in the middle of the night being sick so is off work today which isn’t too good. I made a run to the store to get some stuff for her and took a (little…) detour by the airport to see a plane come in. Since the weather was so overcast whilst fishing it wasn’t worth taking photos, but by chance that’s Carl winging his way up to Bethel just after taking off with a Grant 207 on the ramp:

But, now that things have frozen over again from last week’s warm weather, I headed out for a ride on the snowmobile yesterday evening for a good hour or so. Was a beautiful evening without a cloud in the sky and very little wind even though it was around 5F (-15C), and I kept stopping just to admire the peace + quiet (once I turned the engine off…) as it really was quite magical. With the fresh snow, the usually bumpy or packed-down tundra was pretty smooth and soft allowing the snowmobile to just glide over it without needing to slow down much Crossing streams was a bit dicey as the edges had softened, lifted, and then frozen again, meaning I had to get off a couple of times and walk the route first to make sure I could ride where I wanted to, especially when coming back onto the main river.

This afternoon Mia and I had wandered round to the airport just after a plane had come in to land, and it was a completely new one – a Cessna 206 rather than the usual 207’s, and belonging to Vanderpool Air. I’d never heard of them so had to look them up online – they’re a small outfit way up river from Bethel based out of Red Devil I think (pretty cool name!), so guess he was flying a charter for workers at the airport to be this far south.

As it’s getting light pretty early in the morning and staying light until 10.30p.m or so, Kat + Marie have decided to get up on a morning and take the dogs for a walk again like they were before the weather became too cold before Christmas. More concerned about Mia getting up at 7.30a.m than Kat, but sure they’ll have fun! Marie’s really excited at the moment as she was accepted by the Wycliffe Foundation a few days ago to spend two years in Africa doing missionary/teaching work and will find out exactly where she’ll be going in the next week or so. Has to raise quite a bit of funding as the training starts at the of June before flying out to Africa over the summer, but it’s something she’s been planning + preparing for a while, and although Kat + I will be sad to see here leave Tunt, we’re glad it’s to do something like that

I got my PC up and running over the weekend too – genius that I am brought over a bunch of game CD’s and applications for photo + video editing, but not the driver CD for the system board, so that took a while to download them off the internet. My graphics card (256Mb ATI Radeon 9550) seems to have gone belly up though, probably with bouncing around on airplanes when I moved over here. Works fine just on the desktop, but get all sorts of tearing, streaking and artifacts on screen at low-level (such as BIOS or OS splash screen is loaded) and anytime it kicks into a game. Tried different drivers, flashing BIOS, etc. but simply putting in a basic 32Mb don’t-ask-me-to-do-3D card works without problems so it’s not the system board. Annoying as it would still run at 50-60fps, just can’t make out what the hell it’s trying to display on screen! But, Amazon have a $30 mail-in rebate on a GeForce 8600GT with 256Mb DDR3 bringing it down to $65 delivered which is daft considering they were $150 a few months ago, and will kick the pants off the 9550 I paid the same for a couple of years back. That’s PC technology though, especially graphics cards.

After school, Nick wanted to go out ptarmigan hunting and asked me to join him. An hour and a half or trawling round the tundra and we only saw one flock of four birds which scattered on the first shot. But, ever heard the myth that if you drop your gun in the snow and get it down the barrel it will explode when you fire it? Mythbusters didn’t do a very good job claiming it’s can’t happen as it did!

Nick dropped his shotgun off his snowmobile and packed snow down the barrel, then after cleaning the snow out he held it at arm’s reach and fired it, and sure enough the end of barrel just splinted like in cartoons when a cork is pushed in the barrel of a gun! Thankfully he was okay as the pieces didn’t break off much and he held it far enough way, but I’d guess the metal barrel must have frozen with the snow packed in it for a few minutes, so when the gun was fired and the heat travelled down it caused the metal to expand quickly and just plain broke. Easy enough to replace, but still a bit extreme!

We’re both convinced we saw a wolf a few miles out the village too. Was far too big to be a fox and was grey coloured compared to the red/brown of a fox, and as we tried to chase it down and came across it’s tracks, they definately weren’t fox tracks. Wouldn’t imagine a dog would be that far out the village, and heading out, or would dart off so quickly when it heard our engines, but the locals do talk about wolves in the area, just none real confirmed sightings. Would have looked cool riding back into the village dragging a wolf behind us!

Anyway, I’m painting tables for the next two days at school…

But, without any wind down in the river it was actually a lot warmer than it seemed. I’d bought a new (i.e ‘proper’) pair of goggles from the store a few days ago and they worked wonders – covered everything + more and stayed clear the whole time. Not bad for $44 as I couldn’t have got anything decent shipped in for that price. Weird how sometimes the prices are ridiculous and other times seem like a right bargain!

Frank and I were a mile or so past Eek before we realised we’d lost Jason + Arthur. Turning round, we found them a mile or two back down the trail before Eek – Arthur’s snowmobile had problems very reminiscent of mine before Christmas when the fuel lines were freezing. After heading into the village for some Heet, it started running again, but by then it was getting on for 3.30p.m and we decided to call it a day.

Riding back to Tunt, Jason + I started playing in the powder snow and really getting some speed going. We kept hanging back to check on Arthur too who seemed to do okay bringing it back home:

I managed to play cameraman for a while in-between taking photos. It was a lot smoother off-trail even though it seems to bounce around a lot when picking up speed as I move between riders, and check out the cool cloud formations. A very nice landscape to be riding through even if we were half frozen! In the video – first Jason, then Arthur, and Frank leading the way:

Although it was very cold (I’ve got some good frostbite across my eyebrows and sides of my eyes), it was very pretty with the sun starting to get low on the horizon and the clean, untouched snow as we dipped down across streams and rivers:

Dipping down off the tundra into the streams + small rivers was also a good excuse to get out the wind which was biting cold!

We all made it back home safely, and sure we’ll try it again on a slightly warmer day! Nick a couple of the guys from the village had headed out as we were a few miles out of Tunt, hoping to make good time to Eek, but pushed their snowmobiles too hard and one broke – a bolt sheared clean off the track, probably due to the cold. They headed home empty handed too, but I think Kat was a bit relieved we didn’t return with anything as she didn’t fancy going to help out with the processing the caribou meat!

But, on a positive note, I did spy some ice fishing holes a few miles down river from Tunt, and although I thought they might be for nets and black fish traps, when we came home there was an old guy jigging. So, guess who’s going to load up ice fishing gear next week and give it a try ?

After I lunch, the weather was pretty clear and warm so I dug my snowmobile out the snow drift and headed a couple of miles out the village across the river for some target practice with a .177 air pistol. I’d bought an air pistol and rifle last summer but only used them a couple of times when out on the canoe, so after I got a couple of plastic buckles over the weekend for a set of saddlebags I bought on eBay for $10, figured I’d load up and start practicing.

It was worth digging the snowmobile out the snowdrift at home as it was a lot of fun riding through all the soft powder snow. Going along the river where it was a couple of feet deep and un-ridden, it felt more like riding the jetski back on Lake Tahoe than a snowmobile as you couldn’t really feel anything solid beneath you. Good fun though I managed to get home a few minutes before the fog set in again, yet it was so clear and calm when I was out on the tundra. Timed it nicely!

I only dug away the snow to get my snowmobile out yesterday and it’s now pretty well buried again now. Think I’ll just wait for the snow to stop falling before clearing it again. Not like I’ll be going anywhere in a hurry!

Was weird coming into Bethel across the river by the docks (I’d never even seen the docks!), and a few miles out of Bethel we started passing the markers for nets and black fish traps that have been laid, along with 4×4 trucks driving out to them! When we got to Bethel, the lady at Corina’s Case Lot said it was around -21F and can’t have been nice conditions to travel in. I smiled politely as I peeled a frozen ski-mask and neck warmer off my face But, we got a bunch of groceries and I got to Wells Fargo to open a checking account (with a really nice manager who waived the $15 on a box of checks as he’d never spoken to anyone from England and enjoyed it!), then we headed home.

My snowmobile worked perfectly, it just really doesn’t like moving until it’s nice + warm as pulling in Bethel is coughed out a couple of times. Other than that it ran like a champ and has given me a bunch more confidence in knowing how stable it is over long distances and under continued use. The thumb warmer was great too, though only seems to have two settings – burning hot and off! It wasn’t so bad, and I’d rather be sat like this with my thumb sore from it getting hot than it being numb from being frozen! Still, today was certainly an adventure – riding out on the tundra we saw nothing for miles and miles of continuous riding and whenever we stopped and turned off the engines, we had complete silence. I can imagine it being very lonely out there on your own and easy to get lost with everything looking the same, but the trail is so well marked it wasn’t a problem. And Kat was happy since I brought back a load of fresh fruit + vegetables along with strawberry ice cream