Our Sweet Ride, Take 2

Hooray, car!

We anxiously awaited a call today, expecting to hear from the dock about our car. Apparently they had my Kentucky cellphone number, which doesn't work anymore. I gave the Seattle office my new numbers here, but thankfully I didn't wait to hear from the dock.

We went down in the afternoon, and saw our Canyonero sitting outside the city office downtown, but it was fenced in and no one was there. Turns out that they were still down at the dock, loading the barge with stuff bound for Seattle.

The saga that followed is not altogether interesting, but sufficeth to say that around 6pm, I went down to the dock office and caught the guys on dinner. We went over and freed the Canyonero from its fence-y prison. Hooray!

So here it is, parked outside the house.

Now, I don't want to speak ill of the crusty Jeep we were loaned, since you can see that it's been snowy. I'm very happy that we didn't have to walk in that snow the whole time we were waiting on the Canyonero. We're really going to have to do something nice for the Clerk of Court, Tonya, who loaned it to us. But...

I'm looking forward to cruising around with seatbelts, valid registration, seats that adjust, fresh air-freshener scent, and a CD player. I missed our car.

After we got it home tonight, we unpacked all our stuff that we've been waiting on for weeks. Here it is, stacked in the living room.


Once the car was free of its burden, it was time to fill up the gas tank. See, the shipper won't let it on the barge unless it has less than 1/4 tank of gas. Unfortunately, gas here is about $6.30 a gallon, and the Canyonero has like a 21 gallon tank. We put in 18+ gallons of gas this evening, for around $120. I don't think I've ever spent HALF that much on a single tank of gas, so all you folks in the lower 48 had better count your blessings when you're buying gas.

Still no car

The barge has made it to the harbor, but we didn't get our car today. I'm hoping we will get a call tomorrow. But the real wait is getting the car out of a container.

In other good news we should be getting our vegetables from the CSA tomorrow. I'm looking forward to getting some fresh, organic, green vegetables. Eating frozen pizzas, hot dogs and french fries is wearing me down. Aaron could eat hot dogs everyday if he could. I need a salad and soup every now and again.

The Barge Cometh

Today started cold but clear. By noon, the snow was coming down fast. It's still coming down as I write this. In talking to the judge today, he mentioned that last year they got 11 feet of snow. He assured me that it packs down, so it's not that tall. Big comfort. It's still up to the top of the fence around his garden. That's deep snow.

It's not that deep yet, but here's a few pictures from this evening.

Today was listed as the arrival date for the Northland Services barge. All day, I kept checking the cameras to see if the barge was at the dock. What cameras, you ask?

Well, it turns out that Dillingham got a grant from Homeland Security to put cameras all over town so that the terrorists don't sneak in America's back door. Maybe it keeps Sarah Palin's Russian fighter jets at bay. I don't know. All I do know is that you can access some of the cameras at http://www.ci.dillingham.ak.us/community_camera.html and see new pictures of the bay and harbor every fifteen minutes.

All day long I waited for the barge to arrive. I checked Northland Services' website, and they still showed arrival today, in the evening. We were supposed to have a trial today, but both cases settled. The judge told me he would have dismissed one of the jurors who worked at the dock, since there was a barge coming in today.

By the time Samara and I got home from work, I was getting pretty excited. Samara looked out of our kitchen window and said "Hey, I see lights!" Sure enough, out in the harbor, there was a tug pulling a barge.

It was kind of hard to see. So I ran to the computer and checked the website. Here's a progression of pictures of the barge as it moved across the Nushagak Bay, in fifteen minutes increments. These are pictures from the end of the "T" dock facing out into the bay.

I also saved a couple of the pictures from the harbor, looking past the cannery.

While dinner was in the oven, I decided I should head down towards the dock and see the barge up close. Well, closer, anyway. It's still sitting out in the bay, waiting for the tide to come back in, I guess.

If you look REALLY close, you can see the front of the barge says "Northland." That's definitely the barge with our Canyonero on it. My guess is that once it gets unloaded, we'll get a call in the next day or two to come pick up our vehicle from the dockyard.

I'm looking forward to having our own vehicle to drive, as well as all our stuff that we humped all the way across the country.

On a side note, I ordered a pair of boots today. They were only $30--Army surplus "Bunny Boots." There are two versions of the Army's cold-weather gear boots: white and black. The white ones are good down to negative 60 degrees. The black ones, which I bought, are only good down to negative 10 degrees. I figure that'll be enough. Good thing my cold-weather gear is on its way, since even as I type this, it's still snowing.

Sea pictures

Samara wasn't feeling well today. I went to get her some ginger ale and took a walk along the beach. Here's where our barge will be appearing, hopefully tomorrow.

This is a float attached to a net laid out on the beach near the dock. At low tide, it sits on the beach. At high tide, it's in the water.


The dock is stacked high with containers, probably mostly empty to go back to Anchorage or Seattle.


This house at the top of the bluffs, overlooking the sea wall, is actually just a few houses down from us. You can't quite see our apartment building, since it sits back from the bluff, just around the end of the point.

That's it, folks. Just a few pictures to keep you entertained.

Snow and bones

It was an interesting Saturday. Samara woke me around 11am, so that we could go to the post office and check the mail. It had snowed again. Today it didn't melt as much, since it stayed cold.


Down at the post office, we had a package. It was Samara's new toy from Linens'n'Things.


That's right! It's a Cuisinart brand blender and food processor. It was sort of a belated birthday thing. Not that I actually bought it for her, mind you. She bought it. But I told her we had money to buy it, and sometimes that's as close as you get to actual gift-buying when you're married.

On our way to breakfast at the Muddy Rudder, we drove by this guy selling produce on the side of the road. He seemed to have pumpkins, and who knows what else. We didn't stop, since we have produce coming in a box from Full Circle Farms. It was a strange sight for Alaska, though.

I also took a picture of the mountains in the distance, and Samara took a nice picture as well around near the courthouse.

After our breakfast at the Muddy Rudder, I bought a box of rounds at the L&M hardware store. I thought I'd go out and do some shooting at the landfill again today. It turned out to be a bit of an adventure.

First, as I was headed out of town, I saw a guy at the AC Value sticking his thumb out. This is rural Alaska, and I was driving the only direction he could have been going, so I pulled over. He actually seemed a little surprised.

His name was Olaf, but I think he was Yu'pik. It's kind of a weird artifact of Alaska that natives might have Norwegian names. Olaf was a bit intoxicated, or at least smelled that way, and he was headed home. I didn't really understand where he was saying he lived, but I told him he'd just have to show me the way. We went out Wood River Road, because he said it was the shorter route.

As we went down Waskey Road, which cuts between Wood River Road and Aleknagik Lake Road, I was complaining to Olaf that I hadn't really seen any wildlife yet. He promised that we would see some on Waskey. I had driven down that road a few times already, and seen nothing. But sure enough, we saw a spruce on the side of the road. (A spruce is actually a spruce grouse, a wild bird native to Alaska that Yu'piks hunt for subsistence living. It's best hunted with a .22 rifle or .410 shotgun.) I told Olaf that he must be good luck. I mean, yeah, it's a bird, like the crows and seagulls I've seen already, but at least it's a game bird. That's an improvement in my Alaskan wildlife count.

Well, we passed the landfil and turned on to the Lake Road. Turns out that Olaf lives on Warehouse Road. At least that's what he called it. It didn't have a sign, but it was a few more miles up the Lake Road. He pointed out many of the other residences as we went by--he's cousin to many people around here.

His place is a little bit of land with a trailer and a small house. When I say small house, I really mean it's more of a shack. It probably has one room, but that makes it easier to heat. Olaf thanked me a few times in Yu'pik as I dropped him off. I started to pull away, and he picked something up from in front of his house and gestured towards me. I stopped and got out to see what he wanted. He was offering me a gift in exchange for giving him a ride from town. It's a caribou jawbone with teeth in it. He had both, but I only accepted one. I honestly don't even know what I'll do with it, but here's a picture of it.

I don't turn down gifts of appreciation, even if they're a little weird. I'm sure he or someone he knows shot this caribou, and it was probably great eating.

I went on over to the shooting range, and was surprised to see other people there. There was a black man (kind of odd to see here in Alaska where most folks are white or Yu'pik) and a young native guy shooting revolvers. At the other side of the benches was a guy sighting in a rifle. Just as I got there, another old guy was setting up with another revolver. So I set up with my rifle as well, and went down range to put up a target.

The only annoyances with having other folks at the range is that they sometimes start shooting before you can get your earplugs in, and everyone is competing for target space on the couple of available stands. Thankfully, the guys with revolver were just shooting at cans or whatever. The older guy with the revolver had made some shotshell handloads that he was testing on some cardboard at close range. Before long, those folks took off.

The guy sighting in his rifle was Drew, and his rifle was a .338 Winchester Magnum. Apparently it's got quite a bit of recoil. He had just run out of rounds when I got there, and was somewhat frustrated because it wasn't sighted in well at 100 yards. Of course, like me, he wasn't shooting from sandbags. That makes it harder to get a good group for testing purposes, like sighting in a rifle. He also couldn't really afford to shoot all day, even if he wanted to. Apparently rounds for his rifle are $60 a box. I thought $25 a box was bad!

As I shot, he hung around and spotted my targets with his longer scope. That made it easier for me to figure out whether I'd hit the target without walking down range. It was nice to talk to someone about shooting. I was way off today, but it was fun to shoot. I think my next range trip needs to involve more patience and a 25-yard sight-in again to make sure my scope hasn't gotten knocked around too much.

I came home, then, and Samara had returned from a Body Shop party at SAFE. Basically, one of the ladies that lives at the shelter is a salesperson for Body Shop products, like an AVON lady. Samara didn't buy anything. Then, she made us some good dinner, and now she's chatting with her brother Mike on the phone.

All in all, a pretty good day. I don't know if it's enough to make me fall in love with Alaska and want to live here forever, but it's nice to have stuff to do.

New office, big crow and more snow

I was going to blog yesterday, but I forgot my camera at work. These are the pictures from yesterday.

First is my office. See the phone, that's my phone. And my internet works on my computer. I was even able to ask the computer administrator to add Mozilla to my computer and I didn't get yelled at.
This next picture is the view out of one of my windows.
That is not the good part. The good part is when I look out of the second window I have. (Yeah, I have two windows--it's part of my corner office.)
Also here at the shelter we have a steam bath outside, around back. This is a common tradition in the Yupik communities. The women at the shelter have the option of heating up the steam bath or using the new shower facilities. I have not does this yet, but I'm sure that at some point I will. I'm not sure how I feel about being naked with my coworkers at work in a very hot room. I'm not sure how I feel about steaming in general.
This is the GIANT crow that flies around the building. It's the size of a medium dog and probably has a 5 foot wing span. I tried to get a better picture, but the bird wasn't very cooperative. I've decided to call it Poe. Poe the crow.


It was sunny and pretty yesterday. But today, not so much. We woke up to the sound of freezing rain hitting our bedroom window. There was a covering of snow on the ground and it was getting icy on everything. The good news is that after a few hours, the snow started to melt and it just rained for the rest of the day. I didn't take any pictures of rain. It's just not really worth it.

And on another note, my friend Amanda sent me a birthday package. It had snacks, socks, lotion and long underwear in it. (thanks, Amanda) While I'm talking about her, I do want to mention that she just got engaged. (Congrats.)

That's it for today.

Fall is here in Alaska

The leaves have not only changed from green to orange and yellow but they have also started falling off. There are quite a few trees without their leaves as of late. The view outside our window looks like this.

The tide was out when I took the pictures and if you look past the naked trees, out in the bay, you can see what I like to call the sandbars.

And since the tide was out, Aaron and I decided to take a walk out on the beach. The ropes that are in the picture hold the buoys out in the bay. The buoys were laying on the beach when we started walking. But as we we walking, the tide started coming back in. The rust line on the wall shows where the water level is during high tide.


When we started walking back, the sun was also starting to set. It's cold and beautiful out on the bay.
While we were on the beach, we started looking for sea glass. I found some clear-ish glass that kinda looks like someone's retainer. Aaron found some green glass. We also found some glass that wasn't as worn as it will be in the next hundred years. We took those pieces and threw them back in the bay. We are fortunate that the beach has been littered with beer and soda bottles for many years.


Besides the glass pieces that we threw back, we also tried skipping stones on the bay. Neither one of us was very successful. I think it might have something to do with the size of the rocks we were throwing.