Monday, November 29, 2004
North Slope Arrival
Well, we're here, plunked down a couple bucks for internet access in my room so depending on the schedule you might check back for a picture or two, not that there's anything to see, It'll be more like check out the crazy thing on tap for yesterday... The weather is not good but not as bad as it could be, either. There's a level 1 driving advisory so that means watch for drifts. Otherwise it's above zero with wind chill dropping it to -25. Party on.
Thanksgiving Decompress
Well, the pies were as advertised, tasty. If you're in to coconut that coconut custard is a real snap to make. Pecan's more like moderate to make(I would say easy but there's some cooking involved in addition to the baking and sometimes that can slow some folks down). Apple was yummy and of course so was the pumpkin. What's up next... baking in the toaster oven, a 9" pie fits in the without trouble. Look out world!
Thursday, November 25, 2004
Thanksgiving pie list
Well, I'll keep you posted but the pies I made this year were a coconut custard pie and a pecan pie. They looked great tonight so I'm hopeful. Mary made a couple of pumpkin pies and Margaret slow baked an apple pie that I'm sure is going to be the best pie of the night. It was cooking nicely for quite a while. I can hardly wait for Thanksgiving so we can try out these new pie flavors. Anyway, if you're curious about the recipes I used these two:
Coconut Custard
Pecan Pie
Happy Thanksgiving
Coconut Custard
Pecan Pie
Happy Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving Auroras
Well, I hope the rest of the weekend is even better than tonight but with a full moon and it finally crystal clear it is totally beautiful at night. Midge and I went out on the ski trails by my house tonight to shoot auroras after we got back from pie making at Mary and John's. The trail was super crunchy. We're having such a great winter... how scary is that to say. Anyway, here is her cute little self
The night was cool though, the moon as you can see was super bright even through a light haze of clouds:
... The aurora had a few decent moments, too.
Definitely a nice way to cap off the week.
The night was cool though, the moon as you can see was super bright even through a light haze of clouds:
... The aurora had a few decent moments, too.
Definitely a nice way to cap off the week.
Misadventures in CPCRW
Well, finally this week is coming to a close. It was a real bear of a week. We're gearing up for the north slope trip next week and so I've been busy preparing for it. Tuesday I still had to do NADP out at CPCRW though. I headed out on one of the snowmachines I'd just gotten back from the shop. Well, made it out without trouble but coming back I couldn't get the darn machine started. I ended up tugging away for about an hour and a half before calling Larry and telling him I'd be walking back. So, an hour and a half later I was finally back at Poker flats. I was all set to write a thank you letter to the editor for whoever the kind soul was who was going to pick me up when I was on the road tromping away in bunny boots but, didn't get that opportunity since no one stopped for me. Oh well. It was a great night. When I first got there around 3pm the moon was on the horizon totally pink. Great sunset and a great, bright night. So, I hiked back in the dark. Let me tell you, Wednesday I was stiff. Those hiking muscles apparently don't get used that much in the bike ride to and from work. So, I'm totally dragging tonight.
The beauty of it was I couldn't start the snow machine for the life of me out there so today I went out with Larry and he started it on the first pull. So, that's typical of how things work with me. The icing on the cake last night was dropping the chain on the bridge's gate down into the snow below and hunting around for it for five minutes at -5. Nice and crisp at that temperature.
The beauty of it was I couldn't start the snow machine for the life of me out there so today I went out with Larry and he started it on the first pull. So, that's typical of how things work with me. The icing on the cake last night was dropping the chain on the bridge's gate down into the snow below and hunting around for it for five minutes at -5. Nice and crisp at that temperature.
Saturday, November 20, 2004
Worth a Chuckle...
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Moose!!
Well, there's a moose family that's been hanging out around the neighborhood lately affecting my life in all sorts of ways. I've bumped into them once on my way to work, walked my bike past them after a bit of a standoff, crashed coming home one night when one of the kids surprised me and had a couple close encounters at home. The night of the Carhartt ball they surprised the heck out of me when I saw their shadows outside my house, they were just outside my downstairs window, a momma and three calves.
There'd been some people shooting off fireworks earlier and at the time it sounded like gunfire just nearby so I was kind of edgy and then to see their shadows, man! Freak central.
So, I've been pretty careful about letting the dogs out, don't want any encounters or anything. Well, tonight the moose were in my neighbor's driveway when we got back from Freddy's so I kept the dogs on the leash when I let them out. However, just before bed I wanted to let them out one last time. Well, I popped my head out the door, no moose. So out goes Midge free and Bergey on a leash. Whoops! This calf was hanging out about 20 feet from my door, I totally missed him!
Lucky for me my dogs aren't that smart sometimes and hadn't yet picked up on his smell. So, I got Bergey in right away, she didn't know what the fuss was about. Midge though was all happily playing outside oblivious to the moose. It was a tense few moments until she came back inside. So, then I snapped off a few pictures with the moose happily chewing away on bushes.
There'd been some people shooting off fireworks earlier and at the time it sounded like gunfire just nearby so I was kind of edgy and then to see their shadows, man! Freak central.
So, I've been pretty careful about letting the dogs out, don't want any encounters or anything. Well, tonight the moose were in my neighbor's driveway when we got back from Freddy's so I kept the dogs on the leash when I let them out. However, just before bed I wanted to let them out one last time. Well, I popped my head out the door, no moose. So out goes Midge free and Bergey on a leash. Whoops! This calf was hanging out about 20 feet from my door, I totally missed him!
Lucky for me my dogs aren't that smart sometimes and hadn't yet picked up on his smell. So, I got Bergey in right away, she didn't know what the fuss was about. Midge though was all happily playing outside oblivious to the moose. It was a tense few moments until she came back inside. So, then I snapped off a few pictures with the moose happily chewing away on bushes.
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Ivotuk Preview
So, Wednesday Margaret and Hagen escorted me as official volunteers for the university (so if something happened on the drive up I wouldn't be stuck by myself) up to Coldfoot from where we flew out on a Beaver with skis to a little place called Ivotuk south of Barrow and north of the brooks range a little bit. Hagen got some great pictures of me working (displaying the gear that recently allowed me to become the Fairbanks 2004 Carhartt man of the year). It was cold but not quite frigid, maybe -12 and a breeze of 5 - 10 mph. So, the task for the day was to 1) pull some batteries out to the station that was running out of power...
I'm dragging batteries on an abomination of a sled, it has two skis bolted to the bottom of it. Hillarious but for this hard packed snow it seemed to work well.
2) Figure out what's wrong at the station and wire the new batteries in.
The trip was great, our pilot was cool and he had a CD player built into the beaver so we flew listening to some old country CD.
The drive up and back was long, the middle 200 miles was all snow flurries and so the trip one way was about 7.5 hours. Oh well, it was totally worth it. The aurora was going like crazy up in Coldfoot. All in all a cool trip. I'll try to get more pictures up this weekend on the rest of the website.
I'm dragging batteries on an abomination of a sled, it has two skis bolted to the bottom of it. Hillarious but for this hard packed snow it seemed to work well.
2) Figure out what's wrong at the station and wire the new batteries in.
The trip was great, our pilot was cool and he had a CD player built into the beaver so we flew listening to some old country CD.
The drive up and back was long, the middle 200 miles was all snow flurries and so the trip one way was about 7.5 hours. Oh well, it was totally worth it. The aurora was going like crazy up in Coldfoot. All in all a cool trip. I'll try to get more pictures up this weekend on the rest of the website.
The new job
So, here's one of the places I spend a lot of time working at now with the new job....
Fall:
Winter... prior to freeze up:
It's the Chatanika River, I cross it to get up to Caribou-Poker Creek Research Watershed (CPCRW). So yup, I continue to be spoiled rotten by my job.
Fall:
Winter... prior to freeze up:
It's the Chatanika River, I cross it to get up to Caribou-Poker Creek Research Watershed (CPCRW). So yup, I continue to be spoiled rotten by my job.
Test-o-rama
Hi Everybody (pretty much just me for the present)
Well, depending on how busy I get I figured this would be a new way to keep in touch since I seem to be such a slacker on the main picture section and adding other things. I figure I'll also throw in news and science stuff more for me than for you... to give my bookmarks extra context. Who knows, I'm always on the look out for crazy stuff.
Well, depending on how busy I get I figured this would be a new way to keep in touch since I seem to be such a slacker on the main picture section and adding other things. I figure I'll also throw in news and science stuff more for me than for you... to give my bookmarks extra context. Who knows, I'm always on the look out for crazy stuff.
