So Shaw has this strange rule about its ftp, apparantly you can’t log in if you aren’t using shaw’s internet. So I can only post pictures when I get home, which is precisely what I did. Check out Alaska Pictures here.
At least it’s not as hot as yesterday
June 27, 2004 Anchorage Alaska
I just got back from a run/walk around the local water hole. It’s a beautiful evening here, according to my friends at WeatherUnderground.com it’s a stunning 14°C right now at 11pm local. On the return leg of my walk I went passed some people sitting on a bench just chilling out. As I passed them I smiled and it went like this:
Guy1: “Beautiful evening hey?”
Me: “Yeah, the best”
Guy2: “At least it’s not hot like it was yesterday”
Me (a little confused): “Uh yeah, totally”
At this point let me tell you that yesterday’s average temperature was 20°C, only six degrees more than the current, and that was the heat worth complaining about!
I spent most of the day tied to the computer trying to solve some software problems. It’s really frustrating that we have a multi-million dollar setup and yet I have to roll back dates on the computer and endlessly screw around with the licenses. It is doubly frustrating since I would much rather be outside hiking or paddling or something, at least I did get out for a walk.
One thing I also love about being in the field is the opportunity to take as many naps during the day as I wish. Today for example I dropped the guys off at the airport at 7am and came back here, round 9ish and slept till 10. It’s wonderful and definitely not something I get to do when I am in the office, or at least something I have to be more sneaky about in the office.
I saw an add today for the Oral B Brushups a portable, one-use, finger-glove-sized toothbrush. The add was full of attractive people dancing in the subway and singing a catchy jingle whilst brushing their teeth with these small finger gloves. I find it hard to believe that our society needs these finger-glove toothbrushes, I am all for oral hygiene but do we really need to carry small glovebrushes so we can freshen up at any moment and then dance our way out of the subway? I think not.
PS I just caught the end of the Jack vanImp Show… I think that guy is a wacko, certainly a master spin doctor. He can take anything in the “news” and twist it to prove that the apocalypse is upon us. I’ll give him kudos for his amazing ability to remember bible verses and also to rattle them off like a WWII machine gunner on the beaches of Normandy.
Weather I am biased
June 26, 2004 Anchorage Alaska
I think that summer in Anchorage is causing me sleep deprivation. I went for another drive tonight since it was absolutely beautiful and didn’t get back till nearly midnight! I kept thinking to myself ‘yeah it’s still early yet I can stay out longer’ but the clock kept ticking and the sun kept sinking. That’s the other really neat thing about being up here, the sunsets (and I presume sunrises) are really long. It is really neat to see and made for some good photos.
I really like the climate up here, I find the temperature is just right. I think though that with this job I am spoiled; we can’t ever fly in bad weather so we only end up in places during the best times. I’d be willing to bet we hit one of the best weeks all summer here in Anchorage and I suspect that this gives me a slightly biased view on the actual climate. At any rate I still really like it here and I think I’d like to see a winter too, a whole one might be a little long but I still think I’d like to see it. Anyone interested in a road trip to Whitehorse this summer?
Land of the Midnight Dusk
Anchorage Alaska June 24, 2004
Everyone calls Alaska the land of the midnight sun, I would say it is more accurate to say midnight dusk. The current local time here is 12:57 and it is moderately dark out, certainly dusky at any rate. Alaska is really neat and the flight up here totally rocked, the mountains looked awesome and we even flew by Mt. McKinley (I think). I would love to come back here once I am done my stint in the field, it would be great to see the Yukon and NWT as well. The climate here is nice so far, I haven’t encountered any bugs which I think is yet to come. When I got here I was kind of expecting it to be chilly; it is strange though because I knew that it wasn’t going to be, that it would be as hot as Calgary almost, but somehow I still expected it to be cold… very strange.
The whole midnight sun thing is really neat too and it has to be seen to be believed. Again, it was something I could rationalize and understood but it didn’t have any meaning until I saw it. I know exactly how it works, how the days change with the seasons and the tilt of the earth and what not but on my walk at 11:30 tonight it was still bright as day, very disorienting but very neat.
Wolf Lodge Steakhouse
June 22, 2004 Coeur d’Alene Idaho
The nights here are absolutely wonderful, just the right amount of chill and a good mountain smell too. The mountains here are mountlets really just foothills in my mind. They do give the horizon the wonderful bumpy nature that I seem to like so much and differs from Texas in an excellent way. The sun also goes down much later here than in Texas but still earlier than at home. I really enjoy the long days it gives me a feeling like it is really summer, winter is for short days summer is for long days and nights on the patio.
The city is totally packed with people right now because the International Ironman Competition is on here this weekend. We went to probably 7 hotels today before we found one with enough rooms for us. It isn’t great but it is better than sleeping in the airplane. Tomorrow I am going for a drive up to Sandpoint to see if we can get a better place that doesn’t have 1000 screaming kids in it.
We went for an excellent dinner tonight at a place called the Wolf Lodge Steakhouse; it was packed even on a Tuesday. The walls were wooden and covered with all sorts of western gear, the beers were big and the steaks were even bigger. I had the 24oz porterhouse that was absolutely perfectly done. I had intended to take some back with me for tomorrow but it was so good I couldn’t save any.
The clouds here are really good they tend to stay out of our way and let us work. We got a whole bunch done this morning and tomorrow will be another good day I think.
Idaho is not hot and muggy
June 21, 2004 Lewiston Idaho
Idaho is not hot and muggy.
Idaho however, is really nice. I actually really like it here, the air is nice and warm but not too warm and the river has a nice smell to it, the factory beside it however doesn’t. I went for an excellent walk tonight, there is a beautiful pathway by the river that took me a mile and a half before I turned around. I also like the terrain here it is much less flat than Texas, but not quite as jagged as Alberta so it is a bit of a compromise.
Lewiston is a border town, the border between Idaho and Washington anyway. I think Lewis and Clark were perhaps twins separated at birth and then reunited to take on an amazing journey across the frontier. And being twins they did everything together, even get cities named after them. Lewiston and Clarkston are side-by-side co-joined even; at some points while I was driving around today I couldn’t even remember what town I was in! We are flying out of Lewiston and were going to stay in Clarkson, but the accommodations there were all full. We ended up in the Sacagawea Motor Inn, it’s not exactly run-down but it’s not exactly top-of-the-line, but for the price it’s worth it. Uhm, nothing really super exciting today, a little bit of office politics and gossip, but nothing I need to write about. Oh! We did get searched at customs today but it wasn’t a big deal, the guy just made us pull out all our personal stuff and he looked through it. He was really nice and only accused us of being terrorists once, which was nice of him.
Another day another state
June 21, 2004 Lewiston ID
Well just a quick update. We had a whirlwind trip back to Calgary because our camera malfunctioned in all the humidity. After a brief weekend at home, well at the office really, but in Calgary at least, we shipped back out to Lewiston Idaho. It’s a decent town, only about 30,000 people and seems like there is lots to do, and the skies seem really cloud free!
Oh, I got the webspace at shaw updated although it is really finicky so I dont’ know how often I’ll be able to do it. Anyway, you can check it out here.
Nothing Really Earth-shattering
June 17, 2004 Corpus Christi Texas
Well nothing really earth-shattering to report. Just thought I would check in and say that today was totally average. Woke up, had breakfast, went to the café where we watched ‘50 First Dates’ which was actually far better than I expected, came back and had lunch, went to the gym, made spaghetti for dinner which wasn’t as good as homemade but still hit the spot, then sat and read for most of the evening. I am currently reading ‘The Crystal Caves’ it is the classic Arthurian legend told from Merlin’s point of view, starting even when he was a small boy. It is an excellent story and has sucked me in completely, I love it when they do that. As a result if my language in emails seems more florid of late I have only Mary Stewart to blame for that. I find that after I read something told using slightly archaic speech patterns, i.e. this book and most of Tolkien, that I adopt the speech at least in my head and writing. I suspect that the clerk running my groceries through would look at my strangely if I said ‘thank you my dear lady, may the sun shine upon the hour of our meeting and may all your days be bathed in golden light from the gods.’ At any rate a post that was intended to be straight forward and to report that I did nothing today seems to have wandered a little. For now, the Crystal Cave calls me. Good night all.
Gun addition
I forgot to mention in the last post that this shooting range had a “Ladies Night” (every Wednesday) and a “Kids shoot free on Sundays” policy. They guy said that if we showed up in dresses for ladies night we could get half off too… but the thought of wearing a dress in a place where red-necks with guns congregate kinda scares me.
Gun Culture aka Shooting M16s is fun!!
June 15, 2004 Corpus Christi Texas
I think we are becoming regulars at the local internet café; we were there for approximately three hours today. It was good, didn’t do much surfing though, they had Bruce Almighty on TV, it was really quite amusing. After the café we went to the local shooting range “The Sharp Shooter”. We walked into this place and there were more guns than the local militia! We walked in the door and it went like this:
“Can I help you?” says the man walking around in the assault vest.
“Uh, yeah we’d like to know about your shooting range.”
“Ok have you shot here before?”
“Uh no. We’ve never shot before, we’re from Canada.”
His eyebrows went up, crawled around his forehead for a moment and then he grinned like a man reeling in a huge fish.
“So you’ve never shot before, what do you want to shoot?”
The man in the assault vest looks at me, I look at Aaron, he looks at me, I look back at the man in the vest. “Uh, what would you recommend?” I say hoping he’ll just hand me a gun say ‘this one, this is the one you want.’
“Ok well we have these and these and these and these and these and …” he swings his arms around the store. “Actually you can shoot anything in the store; I’d recommend the 9mil though the ammo is the cheapest.” Aaron and I look at each other, “Ok let’s get a 9mil.” The man in the vest smiles, “Ok, which one do you want?” Long pause. “I’d recommend a Glock, they’re pretty good.”
So we get the Glock and some silhouette targets and two boxes of ammo, the eye protection, ear protection and a quick lesson in working the gun and head out to the range. The gun was surprisingly heavy and the ammo was too. We loaded the clip popped it into the handle, hit the slide-lock button and zipped the target out 10yrds. I got the honour of going first, stepped up to the line, aimed at the target, squeezed the trigger and totally missed the whole target! The recoil was surprising and the noise was surprising too. There were a few times I actually hit the red center too, it was really neat. We quickly blasted through the 50rounds of the 9mil and decided to try a different style. We tried a 45cal based on the styles from 1911. Another box of ammo quickly disappeared through the barrel of the 45. I found it had much more kick and made much more noise than the 9mil, although they called is a ‘rolling recoil which was much more pleasant, less of a bang, more of a boom’; which elicited nothing but blank stares from us hapless and gun-foolish Canucks. After the .45 we decided to up the stakes all the way! We went for the big-boy the M16. It was also the most expensive in terms of ammo, $7 for a box of twenty, and a single clip holds 20! We got two boxes and each took turns doing clips of 10. The noise from this gun was amazing! The recoil was low and it was fun to shoot… expensive, but fun to shoot.
Using these weapons was an eye-opening experience for me that gave me a new outlook on the police and movies. The weight behind these devices is amazing and the power doubly so. It isn’t hard to extrapolate the holes made in the paper targets to the holes made in a human body. It scares me to think if the ease with which these weapons can be acquired. I asked the man in the assault vest what it took to get one, he told me it was 1-Texas ID, 1-background check, 1-set of paperwork, in half an hour I could have walked out of t hat shop with a enough firepower to take on a militia. At gunshows it’s even easier, you don’t even need ID or a background check!
I haven’t seen ‘Bowling for Columbine’ but I understand it is about the appalling gun-culture here in the US. After doing some shooting I can believe it.
