Heat wave!

We went from -40 here in the arctic to a balmy -3 today! Yesterday I watched a lone caribou scratch the ground for something to eat. I couldn't help but think what a lonely existence it must be for them here during the winter. It amazes me that people choose to live this far north year round. It is so amazing how diverse and completely different life is in all parts of the globe. I saw a poster the other day of a grass hut on one of the French Polynesian atoll islands and thought about how nice it would be to lay in the sun there and do nothing for awhile.

Luckily I am escaping soon to sunny San Diego for a couple of weeks, it is for training for work but at least it will be warm and sunny.

I haven't written for awhile but I must say that nothing exciting has happened. All work no play it seems like.

Happy New Year!

Well I am a week late here but since I spent New Years Eve and New Years Day on the couch unconscious with a head cold I don't feel too bad. Theraflu is a miracle drug, even better with a shot or two....

I was at work until the day after Christmas so I ate well and missed out on all of required obligations that people expect of you during the Christmas Holiday. I thought I was the only one who thought Christmas was too commercialized and didn't mind skipping out on it, but I found out that it must be genetic. My Dad threw himself down on a curb and broke his hip just so he could skip out on it! I need to talk to him, I'm not sure but I think it is less painful and a little more lucrative to volunteer to stay at work......

Luckily for Dad 2005 is officially over! Now if he can just get moving again, two major recoveries in three months. WOW. I know he is still tougher than me!


So far 2006 has given us little snow and 2005 has left us lots of ice. I am optimistic that we will get some good snow sometime soon, but until then I think I'll crush up some of this ice and have a margarita!

Just kidding, I'm at work and they have breathalyzers here too!

Oh well.
Happy New Year

The Lights of the North Pole are bright!

Just over the horizon I can see the glow of lights from the North Pole. If you listen verrry closely you can hear the elves calling out children's names as they load the toys into the sleigh. The only thing I was able to make out today was that they were loading a big box of tissue for Ted Stevens, since all of his opponents got their early present today.

Rudolph has the gang ready to go, they have been doing touch and go's on all of our roof tops getting all practiced up. Time is getting short and they really need the practice. The first attempt they made cost Donner his front left leg and us a satellite dish! He is going to be out on medical until next year. Luckily for him he filed his claim before they cut the medicaid budget.

I am keeping the faith that they will be ready on Saturday though.

I'll keep you posted.

Or is it the ice cream and pastries causing laziness?

Could it be the ice cream or the cookies, or maybe the really good pastries the baker has been making. I am not sure but I do know my motivation has been pretty low lately.

I did actually get some pretty amazing pieces of concrete molded for a fireplace surround. The have many compound angles and were pretty tricky but turned out pretty good. I will post some pictures soon.

I finally decided working in the cold is really not any fun so we are going to build a shop/barn this summer. It was cold the last time I was at home and it seemed everything I had to work on was frozen. I had my truck full of sand and aggregate from mixing concrete and what was left froze in the back of my truck and I had to chop it out with a splitting maul. If I would have had a warm place for my truck it would have taken a lot less effort.

I will be at work for Christmas so anyone that was going to send me presents at home can just give them to Saint Nick and he can drop them off on his way over.

Rachelle told me that Sydney is not allowed to say Merry Christmas at her school, it has to be happy holidays. It amazes me that as over commercialized as Christmas has become in our country that we aren't even supposed to refer to as Christmas anymore. I say get rid of the commercialization and let everyone continue saying Merry Christmas and there would probably be a lot more happy people in the world. At least then nobody would be let down when they didn't get a gift from me!

Well I haven't thought of to much to say lately but I am trying to get back into the writing mood.

Cold; does it cause laziness?

I haven't written in a while due to a severe lack of motivation. It is mucheasier to just get off of work and lay in bed than to entice thoughts and put them into words. It has been between -50 to -60 degrees (including windchill) so about -35 or so ambient. That in itself causes me to be unmotivated. Luckily I go home on Wednesday for a couple of weeks to get out of these frigid temperatures. Hopefully I will get a little more time to write in the next few weeks. Everyone have a good Thanksgiving.

Moose Flu....

We have named the virus that we are all taking turns with the "Moose Flu". So far everyone here has had it, Sandi's dad Chris got it a few days after we got here, then Tim yesterday and today is Stefani's turn.

Not to let a little stomach virus get in the way we had lobster tonight! It was amazing, I bought four pounds of steamer clams and six lobster for $56. It is so great to cover the table with newspaper and just make a mess!

It has rained cats and dogs all day, Boston was supposed to get three to six inches today. I don't know what we got here but it is still raining and the streams are full and some peoples yards are disappearing.

One of the things I have a hard time with here is that there isn't much open space and there aren't any landmarks so my sense of direction is all screwed up. For one the roads through the towns aren't straight (they are very windy) and you will sometimes go through what looks like a side street through a residential neighborhood then right onto the interstate. I guess since most of the roads used to be wagon roads that got paved I understand why they are the way they are, but that doesn't help my sense of direction.

So for now I am lost somewhere in Maine.....

Maine in the Fall......

We stole away to Maine for ten days to visit Sandi's dad and take advantage of the seventy degree weather they are having here. Unfortunately Sandi and I both ate something on the way that gave us food poisoning, so we were both sick (and I mean SICK!)all day yesterday. The long flight (12 hours of flying), three hours of driving, and a four hour time change are enough to exhaust a person, but we were lucky enough to be sick on top of all of that!

I was expecting beautiful fall colors but we are a little early and everything is still green. The weather is great so I think I am going to go lay in the grass in the sun.....

Do you ever feel blessed......

I feel so fortunate to know the people that I know, I love the people I work with. I spend six months a year with the people I work with. When you take into consideration that we work a minimum of twelve hours a day, I think I spend more time with these guys than I do my own family. So anytime someone has a personal crisis our whole group pulls together to help and support them, and I am glad to be a part of it.

Shannon Marler is one of the people I am fortunate enough to know and work with. Shannon lives in Sulfur, Louisiana and is going home tomorrow to see if he still has a house. Last night we sat up and watched hurricane Rita head directly for Sulfur on CNN. Unfortunately we can't have any alcohol up here so I went to the chow hall and snagged a couple of Miller Sharps (that's near beer for those of you lucky enough to never have had it) so at least we could say we had a beer and watched the hurricane that demolished western Louisiana and eastern Texas. He doesn't know for sure yet if his house made it through. His family was safe but they aren't allowed back into the city to find out yet.
All of us up here were hoping and praying that his house survived. I personally feel that it did. Today we looked up the meaning of his name and if was a little erie...

Shannon Lee Marler
Shannon- "Wise little owl"
(I don't think he was as amused with this meaning as the rest of the crew was)
Lee- "sheltered from the storm"

What are the odds! Either that means his house was sheltered or it means exactly what it says; that he was smart to be 4000 miles away and he was in fact sheltered from the storm because of it.
I am leaning towards the first one.

My friend Rob who was stuck in Houston (with nothing inside of the new house he signed the paperson two days before Rita hit) decided since there was no plywood or duct tape he would do the next obvious thing.
He bought a new TV and a 12 pack. He said his neighbor looked at him like he was crazy so he told him "hey, I'm from Canada, maybe there's a hockey game on".

I don't know about material possessions, but everyone I know from the gulf coast area came out unharmed.

Is it worth 3 months of darkness?

Is living in Alaska worth enduring three months of darkness every winter? After what I have seen this fall in the gulf coast I would rather endure three months of cold and dark every year than hurricane season.
I'd rather have the possibility of earthquakes and volcanoes than hurricanes, tornadoes, mudslides, and floods.
I'd rather have bears than snakes, salmon than bass, and most of all I would rather live in a state with a population of 600,000 than endure the masses of most of the rest of the country!

I tell people that I was born in New Mexico but got lucky and my parents moved to Alaska when I was two.

Currently I'm about seven miles from the Arctic Ocean, so you wouldn't think I'd be affected much by a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. However a great number of my coworkers (and close friends) are from the region and I also have family in Houston. At least they were in Houston before they spent all of last night driving. It took them nine hours to drive what normally takes five hours. If they would have waited until morning they might not have even made it. They said it was taking eight hours to travel ten miles today. People are running out of gas on the freeways.

My friend Shannon left Lake Charles Monday evening to head to Houston to fly to Alaska for work and couldn't find a hotel to stay in in Houston. He finally found a place to stay but he said it was less than desirable. When he left home Rita was headed for the Florida Keys, today his wife is stuck on the highway trying to evacuate Lake Charles. Luckily after driving all day she has almost made it to Baton Rouge. She tried to go north but sat in the same spot for two hours on the highway before she decided to head east. Had Shannon had any idea this was going to be how it was going to be he wouldn't have come to work this week.

My friend Rob recently moved from Calgary Alberta to Houston Texas. He and his wife just found a house to buy and she has a new job at a local hospital. Rob flew home on Tuesday and closed on his new house on Wednesday not knowing if it is only going to be wiped out by Rita. He went to Home Depot to get some plywood and duct tape and there was a line to get into the store and they were out of everything he was looking for. The hospital wants his wife to stay at the hospital and since he has nothing in the house to cook with or eat or drink (or furniture), I think he is going to stay at the hospital during the storm.

I hope and pray that everyone I know will get through this storm (and the whole hurricane season) safely.

Today is the day!

Today is the beginning of the rest of my life......
Oh yea, and the day I decided to stop letting my body keep heading downhill. I have been trying to point my mind in an uphill direction since Dad went through his aneurysm fiasco. I decided then that life really is to short to worry about all of the things that I have no control over and focus on the things that are most important to me, ie. Family, mental health and finally I have decided that I have to stop being lazy and work on my physical health.

Yoga, wow! My experience with yoga this far is that it really hurts! That and I am not sure how to get my leg out from behind my head now that I got it there. I bought a yoga box at the book store last week that has 2 CD's and about 150 flash cards with different poses on them. All I know is that my body doesn't want to bend the way these people expect it to. I realize it is a matter of time but right now I have to sit down to tie my shoes! I have let myself slide more in the last year and a half than I ever have.

So this is it: Today I have started my physical health in a positive uphill direction. How I am going to work tomorrow standing on one leg with the other behind my head I haven't figured out yet.

I haven't watched the news in a few days and have been keeping my TV on the soundscapes music channel in my room and the world seems to be at peace.

I bought a ticket to go to Maine with Sandi and Thane. Sandi's sister Stefani and her partner Tim are going to be there as well. We are going to go visit Sandi and Stef's dad (my father-in-law) Chris and help him continue work on his beautiful house on the Kennebeck River. I am rather excited to take a breather from my regular life, even though it hasn't been regular since the 8th of August.

It doesn't really seem like we are as close to winter as we are, I am not ready yet. I have a major concrete project to finish in a very short amount of time. As with all things, I guess it will work out and be fine. I have great resources on which I can rely when I really need them.

Well, I had better try and get some sleep, but not without another amazing Helen Keller quote to ponder.........

I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.

tyson

Global Warming!!!!

Thanks to those Republicans and their global warming the ground here is not frozen yet and I am having to walk around in the mud.

Politics...... How wonderful a place would the world be without them? Or would it?

My problem is that I don't really fit into any party. I share some of the values of each party, but disagree with most of the values each party. My wife is a democrat, my parents are republican, I work for an oil company and love the outdoors. That is exactly why I voted for Ralph Nader! Now my wife, parents, and all of the animals in the forest can't blame me for our current situation.

I think my feelings on politics are much like my feelings on religion. I know what I believe but I don't really agree strongly enough with one party/denomination to claim one.

If Al Gore were in office would 9-11 have still happened? How would he have handled it?

If John Kerry were in power would hurricane Katrina have still obliterated the gulf coast? Would the mayor of New Orleans or the Governor of La been blaming the situation on Kerry?

I don't think GW is great either but what is the right answer? Who would Kerry have put in charge of FEMA?

I don't think the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do and I don't know if the people of Iraq are any better off now than they were before, but I heard about a pretty good bumper sticker that says "War never stopped anything except slavery, Nazism, Fascism and Communism." .

That is hard to argue with, but I hate the fact that we have troops over there dying for what seems to be nothing. My wife's cousin was a Marine and was killed in Baghdad in April '04, his dad fought in Vietnam and felt that we need to finish what we went over there to do. I have never experienced war so I don't really think I can sit here and say what we should or shouldn't do, but I hate that our troops are getting killed over there and the only thing that seems to be getting accomplished is that more people hate us.

Anyhow I just got on here to bitch about the mud and throw out another Helen Keller quote that I thought was great:

People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.

I guess that why I try not to think too much!

August Morning Fog 

Back in the Arctic......

I made it back to work today and amazingly there is no snow!

On the plane on the way up I had a cup of coffee. There was a quote on the cup by Helen Keller that I am sure everyone has heard;
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

I looked up the quote the make sure I got it right and found the whole thing;

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.

It is a simple sentence until you think about who said it. It just made me think about how many people out there that might not be physically impaired, and yet their life is not a daring adventure.
However in light of recent events I am sure there are plenty of people who would disagree that avoiding danger (or a hurricane) is no safer in the long run than exposure.

Actually I found a lot of great quotes by her that I'll save for later posts, they are pretty amazing. I know most of you heard these years ago but cut a little slack for us undereducated folks. I feel like a whole new world has opened up since I started writing (and reading) on a frequent basis.

Home at last!

We arrived home on Sunday afternoon, I have been too busy (lazy) to add a post. It is definitely fall here but the yellow and green leaves are beautiful and the temperature is in the mid 60's. We have a ton of things to get done before the ground freezes and I go back to work tomorrow, so I am off to get a few things done.

Whitehorse, Yukon Territory

I must admit I just ate the best bison steak I have ever eaten. Come to think of it, it was the only bison steak I have ever eaten......

We arrived Whitehorse after an uneventful trip up the Cassiar Hwy. The fall colors are magnificent, there are some amazing orange trees mixed in with mostly yellow. We didn't get into any snow, although I heard that they have already had snow on the part of the highway that we bypassed.

We stopped by a jade shop that mines and sells jade. They had some amazing slabs of jade and a few other minerals. I bought some small pieces to compare to some of the bigger boulders that we have retrieved over the summer. Aside from one gas stop and a couple of pee breaks the jade shop was the only real break we took all day.

Thane has been great, Sandi took him to a playground to burn a little energy before we strap him back in for the night.

We are going to try and make the Alaska border tonight. I figured in the unlikely event somebody did something stupid tomorrow(as it is Sept 11), I didn't want to get stuck here. It wouldn't be so bad if I were in the middle of the country but I don't want to spend a week in Beaver Creek.

Happy trails.......
Tyson

Split Decisions....

We were planning on going from Prince George to Ft. St. John and then to Whitehorse. We spent the morning playing in the pool at the hotel so our day didn't get started until after noon (we had to get coffee and all of the other morning necessities).
We have both recently read the book Grass Beyond the Mountains by Richmond P Hobbson, and it was based west of Cash Creek, where we ate dinner last night. Sandi has read his last two and the last ranch he owned was in Vanderhoof which is about an hour west of Prince George. Sandi found out that they actually have a museum in Vanderhoof with a bunch of Rich Hobbson collectibles.

So we headed west instead of north. I have wanted to check out Smithers for awhile anyhow. Our split decision was wether or not to drive to Vanderhoof then drive the hour back to Prince George and up, or continue from Vanderhoof to Smithers and then up the Cassiar up to Watson Lake. We are getting ready to leave Smithers now that we have found some espresso.....

If we aren't heard from in the next few days we are somewhere between here and Watson Lake.

Wish us luck........

Beautiful British Columbia

We arrived Prince George last night about 10:30 pm. The first hotel coming into town is only eight months old and is a hotel/casino. We stayed here because they have a pool with a water slide, and I was ready for some instant sleep. I was talking to one of the hotel employees this morning and he said that they are planning an addition to the hotel already. Apparently Prince George is going through the same growth boom as everywhere else I have been lately.

The trip is going well so far. The biggest difference I have noticed is that there isn't much difference between the US and Canada these days. The exchange rate isn't near as beneficial as it used to be (for those of us from the US anyhow). The gas in Canada used to be much higher than in the US but the difference is about as minimal as the exchange rate with our latest gas prices.

Well I have a monkey that I need to get off of the drapes and down to the pool, so until next time.......

Tyson

80 Degrees in the Pacific Northwest is so heavenly......

We made it to Washington around 7pm, it was about 22.5 hours total from Phoenix but the trip computer which only logs the time the van is on said 22 hours and 10 minutes. That was to go from Jim and Kay's in Tempe to Brad and Tiffani's in Scottsdale, then to LA, then Sacramento, then Portland Airport to get Chris' truck, and finally up to Longview, Wa.
I am losing my faithful Copilot and won't gain another one until tomorrow morning in Seattle. Sandi gets in at 7am with Thane then we'll head for Alaska.

When we left Phoenix last night at 8:30 pm it was still over 100 degrees F. When the sun came up this morning it was 90 degrees everywhere we stopped until Washington where it was a cool 80.

Until next time........

And they're off.....

So this will be my last post from the scorching heat of Arizona. We are headed for Portland tonight and hope to be there this time tomorrow. Wish us luck. Hopefully we won't get lost in Compton on our way through LA.

Finally!

Chris and I got picked up the van around noon, took a tour of the plant that does the conversions and then headed for some lunch and groceries for the road. The VMI plant is pretty amazing, they convert 46 minivans and 6 full size vans a week on average. They have a full assembly line that they strip them down, install the lowered floors, cut out the original floors, then put them all back together again. It is like a production line chop shop. Here is their site: http://www.vantagemobility.com/minivan.asp

We are going to hang out here until rush hour traffic dies down and visit with family for a little while then head out west. Everything went well and I didn't even have to choke anyone.