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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!)
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.

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.

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

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!