Hazy Crazy Days of Summer

Ok, so this was the scene today at about 7:00 a.m.

If you download and zoom in on that photo you will see that you can barely see the mountains in the background. It's not pollution that is doing it, it's smoke.

As in from a fire.

Currently, Dillingham is surrounded by six forest fires. Exhibit A :

Click to expand.

The saving grace is the surrounding water, so we aren't completely boxed in. Also you have to keep in mind the scale. That image represents about 120 miles across, and probably 60 miles from top to bottom. It's not like Dillingham is in immediate danger, but we are close enough for smoke to waft our way.

It does, however, make one double-check one's location.

• Fire? Check.

• Earthquakes? Check.

• Floods? Check.

• Pestilence? Check.

If I didn't know better, I would say from that evidence alone I am in California.

The Latitude Attitude Adjustment

If you are moving to anywhere in the Alaskan Bush, even Dillingham, the best thing you can do is to leave your attitudes and expectations back in the lower 48. That may come off as snarky or preachy, but it really isn't. It's just good, ol' fashioned reality.

You will discover after you hit Dillingham everything - and I do mean EVERYTHING - runs on "ish" time. When you set a time to do something - ANYTHING - with anyone else it is meaningless. If you want something to start exactly at 5 p.m., you better tell everyone 3:30 p.m. Otherwise you will get people showing up at 5ish, which is to say anywhere between 5:45 p.m., and 7 p.m. It would be better and more accurate if you just said "Tuesday" or "Friday".

It also means when the power goes out, it goes out for a while. If the internet goes out (which it does from time to time), it can be out for 2 -3 days. Rain? Hope you like it in doses a week at a stretch.

It just means your life here will in no way, shape, or form resemble the one you are leaving behind in the lower 48. You may as well figure, unless you are willing to pay a LOT for the privilege, you are going to be stepping back in time about 5 - 10 years. No, the TVs are not cutting, bleeding edge here. No, you can't stream Netflix. No, you're not going to stream Amazon Prime either.

I guess I am trying to say that if you are whiner, don't move to Dillingham. Nobody here wants to hear it. Most of the time they have it far worse than you do. In short, before you come up here make sure you leave your attitude back home. Everyone will be better off for it, especially you.

Leaving On A Jet Plane

By now many of you have heard the news. Our Alaska adventure is coming to an end.

I have accepted a position with a start-up company in Chicago, Illinois and we will be reporting there to begin our Illinois adventure 06 JUL 2015. Needless to say, this is going to be quite the shift from Dillingham to Chicago.

Boy, will it ever be a shift.

You really don't know what quiet is until you hit Dillingham. You just think you know what quiet is. When you get up at 5 a.m. and the only sound anywhere in the town is the gentle thrum of the diesel generators, then you will know what quiet is.

I am not likely to see many moose, elk, reindeer, foxes, or porcupines there either. There are a lot of things I am going to miss about Dillingham, but too many people and too much noise are not among them.

Amazon's Game Changer

Ok, I have to admit I am impressed.

Amazon introduced a real game changer called Amazon Prime Music. If you have an Amazon Prime account, the promise is simple : about 1, 000, 000 songs you can listen to for free. As in free beer. As in ad-free. The kicker : you can download the music to your smartphone or tablet to listen to it offline (for when you have no internet connection).

There are, of course, some restrictions : four devices total per Prime account. Only one can stream or download at a time. If you try to stream from two devices using one account, Amazon simply asks what device you want to cut off.

This would be fantastic - one could almost say nearly perfect - for listening to music... except for the pathetically small data caps we have here in Dillingham. If we didn't have caps here, I would probably have already filled up the memory in my iPhone with songs I want to hear.

Even so... Apple is in real trouble here. They are going to have to come up with something to counter. I am thinking an iCloud subscription service for backup / data storage / music would flatten Amazon. I guess we will have to wait and see what the future holds.

ASTE 2014 in Anchorage

So I am in Anchorage for the ASTE conference again this year. I am staying on the 11th floor of the Hotel Captain Cook, which is in tower 2. The stay has been very healthy for me, because with only one working elevator it's faster to hoof it up the stairs than wait for the elevator.

Turns out while I wasn't looking, someone advanced the hell out of automobiles while I wasn't looking. I present to you the 2014 Ford Fusion :

It has more knobs, dials and switches to adjust than a woman.

Aaaaaaaaand, of course, it took Microsoft to screw it up. There is no doubt this could have been a great interface to the car; naturally, Ford went to the anti-professionals at Microsoft to design it instead of Apple. Do you see that screen on the right? The one with four quarters? Yeah, you can't actually touch any of those stupidly large buttons to do anything. The actual touch interface is limited to a box about 2 inches long, and 1/2 inch high tucked in the corners of the screen. Half the time, even when sitting in Park you can't get the slivers to actually recognize you touched it.

Now stop and think about that for a minute. You are piloting a two-ton-plus vehicle at speeds up to 65 MPH. Which makes more sense :

a) taking the driver's eyes off the road for a split-second to find a stupidly large button, or

b) taking the diver's eyes off the road for several seconds to find a tiny sliver of a button?

If you said "a", then you have proven you are completely unfit to work at either Ford or Microsoft, you idiot. What the hell were you thinking?

Even so, Anchorage and the surrounding area continue to be spectacular. Here a kinda-panorama from my hotel window :

No visit to the big city would be complete without stopping at Fred Meyer. The old joke goes that Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a convenience store, not a government agency. Well, Fred Meyer lives up to that, and more. By God, you can buy guns, groceries, diamond rings, furniture and more under that one cavernous roof. You can also buy things like this :

Holy Art Deco, Batman !

Huh. If I could have found a way to stuff that in my luggage, I would have taken that bad boy home. I would have made space for it back home. I don't need it, but it's just so cool it's almost a crime to not buy it.

Also decided to take in a couple of movies while in Anchorage. One was the RoboCop reboot, and the other was the Lego Movie. I was surprised at RoboCop. I went in expecting they had screwed it up like every reboot that has come down the pike. I was very shocked and pleasantly surprised they had not totally screwed it up. To be sure, they came at the movie from the opposite direction from the original. They more or less ended up in the same parking lot as the original if not the ballpark itself.

Then again... maybe my opinion was influenced by this on the way into the theatre :

To give you a sense of scale, that podium came

up to my waist.

The Lego Movie was another surprise. It has been decades since I have seen a movie this much fun, this entertaining to watch. The kids are too taken in by the eye candy to get the jokes aimed squarely at the adults, but that's their loss. This is a stupidly funny movie that has no reason to exist except to over-deliver and under-promise entertainment.

The running gag throughout the movie is time. Whenever a character tells another to  - for example - meet up downstairs in the oddly-specific timeframe of 10 seconds in the future, then the screen is always taken over by a placard that reads "downstairs, 10 seconds later", then immediately cuts to the downstairs scene. It shouldn't be funny, it should be repetitive. But in this movie, in this context, it works so that kids and adults are laughing their asses off. Each. And. Every. Time. I can't wait to get the DVD or download it. This one is a keeper for sure.

So I went out exploring Anchorage a little bit and then it happened. The Holy Mecca of Outdoors anything came into my view :

Imagine Handel's Messiah as the background music. It's what I was hearing.

But then all hope was lost as quick as it came. The sign draped across the front stated it was opening April 10.

Crap.

Oh, well. I suppose we can make the pilgrimage sometime after that. In the meantime it's back to work for me.

Leaving on a Jet Plane, Part II

Here are couple of more pictures :

The queen couldn't be interested less in aircraft, and wished us a bon voyage when we went out to the airport. Turns out she and Brittany were making brownies and pumpkin muffins while the guys were off doing 'guy stuff'.

I can't say who the pilot is or what he is doing here, but just put it this way : think of anyone famous you have ever heard of in the last 20 years, and he has probably been their pilot.

Yep. Him too. Uh huh. Him too. Yes, her many times. Them, too.

So we have been killing him with kindness at the Thai Inn, so he invited me out to give it a tour. If you think the outside is something, you should have seen the inside. Wish I could have taken pictures.

UPDATE : They are gone. What a beautiful, picture perfect take-off. Now I can post something that shows mere mortals are not cut out to pilot these things :

Piece of cake.

Don't forget : there are even more knobs, dials and switches above that didn't make it into the picture.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

More to come later, but this is what I got a tour of last night :

If you think the outside is incredible, you should see the inside.

Filmed in Panorama-vision

There is a panoramic picture of wet, drizzly Dillingham, Alaska taken from the impressive camera of my new iPhone 5. You cannot imagine how much I appreciate 50's and rain as opposed to the Iowa norm of 80s to 90s and 100% humidity without rain.

As the saying goes, you never have to pay for air conditioning as long as you live in Alaska. ;-)

I should mention that is Little Airport Road. It is called Little Airport Road for two reasons : it's not very big, and it used to be the airport runway for Dillingham back in the day. I wouldn't want to try it today, unless you had hella shock absorbers with about three feet of travel on the plane. Hell, I won't do more than 10 MPH on it in a car.

Pothole-O-Rama!

That brings up another thought. The Dillingham Police are really, really good at spotting drunk drivers. They have to be. They have had years of practice honing that skill by picking out the true drunks from the people swerving to avoid potholes in the road. After all, why fill potholes when nature is going to pack them with snow and ice in another month or so?

Amazon This!

Well, as you may know by now there are only two ways to get in or out of Dillingham. One is by boat, and the other by airplane. Necessarily, this means anything you want to ship here - like items from Amazon - have to arrive in like fashion. I have noticed recently that Amazon is becoming more and more selective about what they will, or perhaps more importantly WILL NOT ship to Alaska. 

At first I understood this, because the US Postal Service is the ONLY way any package gets to Dillingham. It stands to reason if the USPS gets uptight about shipping things like explosives, firearms, or alcohol then retailers who sell those goods will not be able to get them to Dillingham. Again, this is perfectly understandable. I have no beef with the retailers, because the USPS sets the rules.

But this :

I mean, what the hell Amazon? Why in the world can't you ship me a friggin' dust mop? Look, there is no post office restriction against mailing dust mops. I checked. It's not made of lead, so it won't cost $100 to ship it. If it is a matter of shipping costs, I would pay a little more for a Prime account and get it here.

It's not just this item. More and more I am finding the goofiest stuff is now verboten for us at Amazon. In fact, I am pretty sure I could get a lead brick shipped here by Amazon. Sure enough. I just checked. I can get a lead brick shipped here - FOR FREE!

So in light of this new information, Amazon, I am again inspired to ask you : what the hell?!

FLIGHT

There are only two ways to get to Dillingham : By water, or by air. Logically, it follows if you want to get out of Dillingham, you must go out the same way. So here are few pictures of what it looks like to get out of Dillingham by air.

This is the Dillingham Airport. No, really.

This is what it looks like to walk out to the plane. Note the baggage loading on the right.

Preparing to taxi.

Breaking through the clouds and fog.

They always want me to sit on the wing. Not good for pictures,
good if you want a big, strong guy to get you out in an emergency situation.

In winter, this is pretty much all you see while going to Anchorage or coming back.

Ted Stevens Airport in Anchorage. A little bit of an upgrade from Dillingham.

Looking out at the mountains in the background from the main terminal of Ted Stevens Airport in Anchorage.

Mush!

So this is what it looks like to be in the cargo area of a dog sled : 

Simply put, when the dogs are fresh, frisky and wanting to show off for you there is nothing on this Earth - I mean nothing - that accelerates with as much G-force as that dog sled. It'll snap your neck, man. You go from 0 - 20 in about 0.2 seconds.

We also learned these dogs are unique in mushing world, in they do not fear to blaze their own trail. According to our musher, the dogs that run the Iditarod WILL NOT leave the trail. You cannot force them off it. These dogs, on the other hand, are more than ready, willing and able to leave the beaten path and merrily drag you across God's creation on command.

There is nothing they love more than being commanded to do exactly that.

Lacking any other practical means, one literally has to throw the anchor overboard to bring these eager canines to a permanent halt. When they want to run, they want to run and brook little interference from you on the subject. While their stamina may be long, their patience is short in equal measure. They will accept brief respites to rest, but their collective minds are of but one thought : run.

When choosing which 10 will be the lucky few to go running, every dog puts on his or her best show and pleads to be let loose. Pick me! I can run! Let me show you how I can run, Master! I will run like the wind today, and twice as fast tomorrow! Oh, the cacophony.

Once harnessed, you discover the enthusiasm was not a charade. If the musher does not set anchor he will soon be short one sled, and one team. Muscles tense. Sinews tighten. Anticipation builds until... until... RAPTURE! Master wants us to run!

10 hearts... 10 minds... but one thought... RUN!

First Blizzard

So a real, true blizzard hit us on Monday. This is Friday evening and we are still digging out. Here's a few examples :

It's the first time I have seen a "no parking because of falling snow" sign, but as you can see from the snow almost reaching the sign, they aren't kidding. When it falls, it's not going to be a light dusting. It could be up to a ton of snow falling at once. There's no way to predict how much will fall.

Remember earlier when I said I had never seen it rain for days on end until I hit here? Well, it doesn't rain a whole lot at a time, but it rains and rains and rains in a gentle fashion. Truly, it's like a soft, drenching fog. Well, add in freezing temperatures, and 50-80 MPH winds, and suddenly it's like walking in a snow tornado.

There isn't a lot of snow falling in any one hour, but when you talk about a week's worth of hours you are suddenly talking about metric crap-tons of snow. See that third picture down? That's a shot from our apartment windowand the snow nearly makes it to the bottom of the window... which is about six feet off the ground. That's a lot of snow.

Let us know if you would like to have some, and we will see if we can ship it down your way.

RUN FOR YOUR LIVES !

Here is what certain members of my family (who shall remain nameless for the time being) think our bathroom looks like : 

And here is the reality : 

Of course, these could possibly be the same people who thought we were caught up in the BIG EARTHQUAKE that was, in reality, hundreds of miles away. At one in the morning (our time). While we were asleep. That caused a SIX INCH tsunami over in Kenai.

So if you want to know if we actually got hit, use the Alaska Earthquake Information Center. But keep this in mind : 

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming, already in progress ... 

Kicking and Streaming

So...

My mission for the coming New Year is to drag the Queen kicking and streaming (no, that's not misspelled, it's called a P-U-N ;-) into the 21st Century. To that end, and many thanks to certain elves in Muscatine, I gifted the Queen one of these :

That, gentle reader, is a 21st Century miracle. Not only does it play good, ol' fashioned Vinyl discs, it plays CDs to boot! Replete with AM/FM radio and an input jack for playing your Apple iPod, it's a regular sonic Tour de Force. Did any of that impress the Queen? Not a chance. What did jingle her bells? Well, if you gander down the right side of the case, right next to the remote control, you will see a slot. A slot that plays something from the ancient past we used to call "cassette tapes".

Bingo! The Queen approved. Here I was throwing the Queen a lifeline to the 20th century (insert chorus from Handel's Messiah here)! Saints be praised!

(insert sound of record needle being dragged across the record here - if you are under 40, go ask your parents what that sounded like)

I know, gentle reader. You are sitting there having a conniption that all of that is 20th Century technology. Yes, you are right. But now is where I spring the trap, oh impatient one.

See, on the front are two slots that aren't 20th Century-mindset kosher. One belongs to a memory card, the other is a USB slot. What are they for, pray thee tell? Well, they are for taking the analog and converting to digital.

SNAP!

Trap sprung.

I have now removed all barriers stopping the Queen moving forward into the 21st Century. She can now convert ALL - and I mean ALL - her big, bulky ANALOG cassette tapes (ha!) to teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy DIGITAL ones and zeroes and cram them all in the Queen's iPod Nano. Now she is forced to relate to 21st Century technology, and we can reclaim a dump truck load a lot of space.

Sometimes the Lord takes pity on fools and technical geniuses named Buster. ;-)

Mush!

Well, I done gone and did it.

This is either going to be one of my better ideas, or a frostbitten lousy one. For the Queen's Christmas present I bought her a two-hour dog sled ride.

Two Hours.

In the frozen Alaska tundra.

In the middle of Winter.

Where even if the wind isn't blowing the phrase "wind chill" is still going to be in play.

That if we don't watch what we are doing, we are going to freeze our assets off.

Pulled by hyperactive canines that have running as their idea of a good time.

In my defense, it sounded like a really, really good idea while sipping hot chocolate in a 70 degree (with wind chill) apartment. Now? Not so much.

We have been warned that if we dress warmly enough, we will have a blast. If we don't we are going to be miserable. Ok, fair enough. I already have boots and a winter coat that are both rated to -40 F., so I think I am good to go. Donna also has a coat and boots rated to -40 F., so she should be set.

The plan is to take along two smartphones with video capability so we should have some awesome pictures and video that will let you know what it's like to drag your carcass across the frozen wastes of Alaska at up to 20 MPH. We will suffer, so you don't have to.

Lord, Toto... we're not in Kansas anymore. ;-)

There's No Place Like Nome

Due to popular demand, here are the pictures of the homestead :