The Epic (fail) of GCI Alaska

Below, please find the contents of a Microsoft Notebook file that I have been composing throughout the day:

Well, it's been a while since postings on this blog have wound down from a crawl, to a drip, to a nothing. I suppose I should apologize, but as anyone who knows me is aware, I haven't given up on filling everyone in on the mundane details of my existence. I've just changed forums. After constantly updating Facebook and twitter, there always seems little left to package up into an original blog post.

But today I need to post about a topic that will take me longer than 140 characters.

The latest chapter in our ongoing, now 4-month loathe/hate relationship with GCI, has prompted me to put the whole story (or at least as much as I can accurately remember, with my notes from phone calls, etc) into writing. Mostly as catharsis, but also as fair warning. Yes, GCI has a monopoly in Bethel, so if you want cable, a cell phone, and internet (though there you have a couple other options, I believe), you'll have to deal with them...but be afraid. Be very afraid.

Sara and I got our cell phones this spring in Nunapitchuk. It was an exciting time, as GCI had just put up a cell antenna, and this was the very first time such "big city" technology was going to be availiable in the village. The representative set up camp in the community building, and residents flocked over to sign up for their contracts and get their phones. I headed over after work, got in line, and after 45 minutes of waiting we were told that the reason the line wasn't moving was that the coverage was down, and that we could stay in line or come back in a bit. This wasn't the first time that day the cell coverage was out, and the reps weren't able to call in and activate new phones. In retrospect, this should have been my first hint at what was to come, but the tech was new there, so there were bound to be bugs, right? Well after getting to the head of the line, watching people be told they were going to need to put down 4, 5, 600 dollar deposits (which I totally understand, by the way), I signed up...only to be told they were now out of phones. Well, not out of phones, exactly...the representative, seeing the results of my credit check, began a "hard sell", trying to get me to "just go ahead and get a blackberry". When I asked (already knowing the answer) if the service to support data was even availiable in the village, he said "well no, but it will be someday!"

Really? So I should purchase a $300 smartphone that won't even work to make calls in the village half the time, in preparation for whenever GCI brings data service to this village? What are the odds that such a thing will happen before this particular model is hopelessly out-of-date? But I digress...

We waited, called Anchorage, got our phones by mail, and they worked about as well as we would have expected in the village. That is to say, not always, but at least as often as out land line, and without the 8-second delay. So we were happy. Then came summer, back in WI, where the service map correctly told us we'd have service in our hometown and points north, but none at all once we ventured 10 miles south. Trips to Madison and Wisconsin Dells confirmed this...no problem, it was expected. Odd things with out phones, though - some folk's text messages wouldnt come through, while other people couldn't call us, only txt, and others would try calling us only to get an error as "invalid number". All calls had a 5-8 second delay. When I asked about this while later on the line with a particularly competant GCI tech, they mentioned this was most likely the fault of whichever service ran the particular towers we were bouncing off of not recognizing GCI phones or their setup, which sounds plausable considering I can't imagine Verizon in Central WI has much use by cell phones from Alaska. GCI gets a pass on that, in my book.

Then in August, we head back up to Alaska and move into Bethel. Hub town, lots of services, obvious the cell service would be better than in the village, right? Heh. This is where it gets interesting.

To date, I have not made a single call from my home lasting longer than 5 minutes that has not been "dropped". And that's when I'm lucky enough to be able to make a call. Often, dialing and pressing send gets a "BEEP BEEP BEEP" and a big red error message on my phone. The specific error rotates: "NETWORK BUSY" is most common, with "UNABLE TO COMPLETE CALL" and "NETWORK ERROR" also making appearances. Now, I know what you're thinking...how's the signal strength in your house? Well, as I sit here at my computer desk typing this, my phone is next to me, showing 4 bars. It was showing 4 bars throughout my conversation with a GCI tech this morning, during the course of which the call dropped and he called me back 4 times (I have taken to asking, first thing when I get on with a human, for them to call me back if we get disconnected. It works.) Now, mind you, this didn't stop a GCI Cell Tech from sounding annoyed and suggesting that I just stand by the window or go outside whenever I want to make a phone call. Dispite the fact that I told him I had 4 bars and that I wasn't convinced signal strength was the issue. Oh well.

This would be a good place for me to interject that the bright spot in my whole interaction with GCI has been their 1-800 line customer service reps and techs. I would say that 75% of the ones that I've talked to have tried to be helpful, and even when they couldn't (and usually after having to call me back 8 or 9 times in the course of a 15 minute converation) they've been very sympathetic, saying they couldn't *believe* how bad my service was, how they'd never heard anything like it, etc etc. One even managed to put a $100 credit to our account for the trouble, which was nice, considering our bills are currently in the $150-$180 range for cell and internet combined. Now if only they could get something done about maybe letting us be able to use it.

Anyways, to shorten up the story of everything leading up to today, we've been struggling to use our phones. After complaining on twitter (much as I intend to now, after today's incident), I was contacted by the very nice, helpful person in charge of the GCIAK twitter account, who forwarded my information and problem to a Cell Help Desk specialist(?), I think, named Michael Lane(?)...the reason those are currently uncertain is because I can't access my email at the moment to confirm them. Anyways, Mr. Lane was extremely helpful and informative about the situation in Bethel, and told me that there were some tower upgrades going on, and asked for some feedback as to how they improved my service. It was marginally better for a few weeks, but as the Internet Tech I spoke to this morning and who had to call me back a nuber of times because the "network was too busy for my call" at 8:45am can attest...that improvement is no longer.

So that gets us to now...our cell phones suck, but they are what they are. Internet is expensive, and the transfer limits archaic for current browsing, but we stay off of youtube, don't download much, and just suck it up and pay the overage when we ultimately go over by a couple gigs a month. Then, yesterday. Heh. Well, our internet just plain stops working. Power-cycle the modem a few times, it's fine, no errors, all lights are good, no firewall issues, no hardware issues, went outside and checked the cable line into the house...it's fine. My first thought was that there was an outage, as happens sometimes...it would suck, but there are other things to do rather than check my email, so no big deal. I wait a few hours, try again, still no luck. Try calling the Bethel GCI office, first two times my phone disconnects before the call rings twice. Third time, "NETWORK BUSY". Fourth time, it's ringing! And ringing...and ringing...no answer. At 3:45pm on a Tuesday. I chalk it up to "it's Bethel" and txt Sara, to see if she can try calling from work while I try the 1-800 number in Anchorage. She gets ahold of someone at the Bethel office who curt and annoyed, tells her there's no outage and we should just turn the modem off and back on again. Thanks. Meanwhile, I have no luck getting my phone to call Anchorage, so I decide to just let it sit unplugged overnight and hope things resolve themselves.

This morning, same thing. Internet connects for maybe 10 seconds, then freezes, "limited to no connectivity". Boo. So, I wait until after 8 and call the 1-800 number to talk to GCI internet tech support. Not to much of a hold at this hour, so I get a tech quickly and tell him my usual "if you lose me, can you call me back?" schpiel. Explain the situation, he runs through a couple things, it's all good, he puts me on hold while he talks to some people. Call drops, he calls me back, and has some interesting news. Our modem has been shut off for non-payment. Mind you, I pay my bills online, have emailed confirmations, recipts, and entries in my checkbook program and on our bank statement SHOWING exactly when and for how much we made our payments. Here's where the frustration turns to absurdity and hilarity. What have we not paid? Our cable television bill! We do not have cable television. In fact, we pay an extra $7.99 a month "cable access fee" on our internet bill specifically BECAUSE we do not have cable TV. I explain this to the internet tech, who is instant messaging different people at GCI in customer service, etc (i'm not sure), and they all agree something is seriously messed up, but that the "shutoff" was initiated in the Bethel GCI office, so he isn't able to do anything right away, he has to leave a message for the people in Bethel.

So that's where I stand with GCI Alaska right now. Despite the troubles we've been having with service, I've been paying my bills on time, using their online "my ebill" system, getting recipts, bank statements, never a word of problem...only to have them shut off my internet for non-payment of a service they do not provide me.

It's 10:40am here in Bethel as I'm tying this. I got off the phone with the internet tech (whose name I sadly cannot remember at the moment, because he was excellent) about an hour and a half ago. He told me he'd do whatever he could to get this mess resolved ASAP and give me a call back. As I'm not going to be able to post this text/manifesto until I get internet back, I will continue to update below if/when anything happens.


*UPDATE* - 11:15am: Nothing from GCI yet, no call and internet not working. Interestingly, just was told by my wife by txt that of the handfull of people around her in her office, two have had similar billing problems with GCI here in Bethel. Now that I think of it, it isn't our first billing problem with them here, they charged us double for installation on our September bill, and double rates for our first month. Not sure that even ever got resolved on our account. I remember calling Anchorage, having a CSR there look at my account, and say "what the heck are they doing at that office there?"

*UPDATE* - 3:12pm: RESOLUTION! So get this. After not hearing from them by 2:15pm, ww decide Sara would call the Bethel office to see if anything had been resolved. She texts me, while still on the phone with them, "they say we never paid a connection fee!" So as you can imagine (see my previous update, re: being DOUBLE CHARGED for a connection fee), this gets me pretty darn hopping mad. I call Anchorage. The CSR, Stephanie, is very nice and helpful, and reads through all the notes on my account, and as far as she can figure, the error has been corrected and our internet has been turned back on as of 11:20am...yet I still have no internet. She forwards me to Rick over in Internet Tech support, who magically zaps my modem and bingo, back online.

Now back to the subject of the mysterious unpaid connection fee. Remember the connection fee of $24.99 we were double billed for in September, the one i mentioned above with the billing problems? That I then called and had corrected by the good folks in Anchorage who couldn't figure out how the Bethel office had screwed up the billing? Yeah, that was for "Internet Setup"...apparently, according to the good folks in the Bethel office, there's another $26.99 connection fee for CABLE SERVICE, even though we don't have cable, and already paid the internet setup fee. Apparently when you set up "Cable Internet", they charge you for each word seperately.

Why didn't we pay this Cable Service set up fee, you ask? Because we never got a bill. Why didn't we get a bill, you ask?? Because the cable billing is ON AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT COMPUTER SYSTEM THAN THE INTERNET/PHONE BILLING SYSTEM, AND SINCE WE DON'T HAVE CABLE TV, THEY DIDN'T HAVE OUR INFORMATION! That's right, the global communication company can't even get it's Cable Department to communicate with the Cell phone and Internet department. They didn't have our address, didn't have our phone number (our GCI cell phone number, I remind you), and as such, simply waited 'til the time had passed when we were far enough past due on our cable setup fee and shut off the cable line to out internet modem.

The genius of this system surpasses anything my mind is able to comprehend.

But at the moment, since my internet is back up and running (thank you un-named tech from this morning, Stephanie, and Rick in Anchorage), I'm going to click "save" on this notepad file, and get to posting. I'd promise more updates later, but god I hope not...

*UPDATE* - 4:37pm: Wow! So the Internet Tech that I spoke to first thing this morning - his name is Carl, by the way...I had forgotten that earlier - called back to follow up. I told him how things played out this afternoon. He did some checking in the notes on my account, with his supervisor sitting beside him checking along, and decided that they need to send a message to Bethel and the CSRs. Apparently, the way Bethel Office explained it to Sara (separate fees for hooking up cable and internet when you're only getting internet) is NOT how it's supposed to be done. And that emphasis is his, not mine. When I told him the Bethel office had waived the late fees and was sending a bill for the "overdue" $26, he asked "Oh, so you haven't paid that yet? Good. I'm going to personally make sure this gets figured out and we get your charges on your account right."

Video Dump!

So! Facebook video uploads are still not playing nice with our internet, so we have a minor backload of videos from the last couple weeks. Mind if we throw them all into one big post? K, here ya go:

Here's Loki out for a swim this morning, dodging chunks of river ice...

Here's Isaac walking home from school Thursday afternoon...

And now some from the Bethel trip. First, a video of our transportation to and from the airport :-P...

Isaac spent an entire day continuously running around the Yurt, destroying everything within his reach...here's a sample...

And finally, a quick one of us taking off from Bethel, heading home!

Hibernation

So you know what the problem is? Too damn many social networking sites. By the time I get done posting pictures and "status updates" on Facebook, not to mention Twitter now, there's really nothing left to come here and write a blog update on without being redundant. Seriously, is this form of blogging becoming obsolete? It might be, at least for me...

But! In the interest of trying to not go, oh, a full month between posts, here's an update. Because really, there has been news.

First off, we spent last weekend in Anchorage! Well, a long weekend, that made up our abbreviated Spring Break. We headed in on Wednesday evening, by snowmachine because the weather (of course) wouldn't let our chartered plane fly out to get us. Once we got to Bethel, sore and soaking wet, we discovered that the jet from Anchorage was actually going to come in for the first time in two days! Buoyed by the news we might actually make it out, we trucked over to the nearest diner to have some supper and kill the few hours 'til the plane was to arrive. Then, the scariness began. We were traveling some friends/coworkers and their baby, same flights, same hotel, everything. After we ate (and only a couple minutes after Sara, Ike and I had started to walk back to the terminal while our friends got ready), our friend had a seizure and collapsed, while her husband frantically called for an ambulance. It's astonishingly lucky that this happened while we were in Bethel, where there's actual medical care available, as if it ha happened in the village they would have had to rely on help to fly out, which in the weather would have been nearly impossible. So...while Sara, Isaac and I got word of this, let the airline know that their bags needed to come off the plane, etc., and flew to Anchorage on our regularly scheduled flight, our friends were taken to the hospital, and then on to Anchorage a few hours behind us on a medivac flight. Unreal.

So, our weekend in Anchorage was a combination of relaxing, sobering, productive, and adventurous. We helped our friends as much as we could, did some shopping, ate some good food, drank some good beer, and generally did what bush teachers do when they head into the big city. We even got memberships at Sam's Club, filled a cart, and braved the "bush order" process. Our boxes are supposedly on the way, but I'll let you know how that goes :-P

As for other big news...it's LKSD Shuffle season. Contract time. Our version of the hot stove league. The time of year when gossip is afoot about who's leaving, who's changing sites, who's moving up in the world and who's giving up and going home to the lower 48 to lick their wounds. Well, as you may have known, Sara's position has been eliminated for next year. Nothing to do with anything, other than the fact that the district had apparently used the wrong funding for the program, and has to alter the way the job gets done. Not a huge deal, since all the teachers in those positions are pretty much guaranteed jobs either at their sites or elsewhere in the district if they so desire, but it has made "shuffle season" a little extra shuffly this year.

As for what Sara plans on doing, we had (or so we thought) a few options. One of the potential jobs was as a teacher coach, basically teaching teachers how to fill in the blanks left by the fact that the ELD positions were going bye-bye. Then there was the option of simply taking a regular teaching job, either here in Nunap or elsewhere in the district. This is pretty much where we thought we were headed, with a sweet, sweet spot in Oscarville with one of our good friends at a great, small school only a stone's throw from Bethel. Until....Sara heard about an opening for a jig at the District Office in Bethel, and was encouraged to apply. For various reasons, we assumed this was sort of a pie in the sky, not really plausible, "hey, I'm gonna do this just to practice my interviewing skills" kind of job application.

Turns out....she got the job. We're moving to Bethel.

I can't even wrap my brain around what this means, both in terms of challenges and advantages. The Cliffs Notes version from our "very serious discussion" about whether we wanted to take the job and move "into town"? Here we go.

Cons: Moving sucks (but we were going to have to do that no matter what), we'll have to buy a car, we have to find (and pay for, at Bethel prices) our own housing, Sara stepping into the unknown re: working at the D.O. and we'll have to live at a more "real world" pace...no more laid back lifestyle of the village, where most days the big decision is whether or not to hit up the Post Office and the store on the way home from work. It's amazing how stress free life can be where there is simply nothing to do.

Pros: Access to stores and restaurants, easier travel (it basically removes a step), stuff to do, hosting friends from the villages, work/volunteer opportunities for me, easier for people to come visit from the lower 48, access to a vet (not to mention our own, human, medical care), and a downright cool, quirky community.

Yeah, the decision was scary (as are it's implications), but it wasn't all that tough to make. Bethel ho!

Happy Trails

You know, it's amazing how much of a difference a little less drifting can make.

I took advantage of the long Thanksgiving weekend to take a ride into Bethel on Saturday to pick up some groceries and a new mattress for Isaac (he's gotten too good at climbing to be just in the co-sleeper at night). The plan worked out well, as a few of our neighbors flew in early to visit the craft fair, and the husband of one of the fliers wanted to ride along, as he had never been into Bethel by snowmachine, so I didn't have to ride alone.

Last year, the trail was so rough from the light snow and windy weather that the 26.3 miles from my front door to the AC store was anywhere from a 2 to 3 hour ride, most trips. The best we did all last year was to run a pace that would have gotten us there in around an hour in the early spring when the weather was warm and the trail was flat and slick, but unfortunately the warm weather and our...aggressive pace...caused my co-traveler's machine to give out (to the tune of a couple new pistons and cylinders :-/ )

This year so far, knock on wood, the trail is much better. I don't know if it was the early freeze or how much snow we've had so far, but the trail was better Saturday than it was at any point last year. We made it in only an hour and fifteen minutes, which is pretty darn fast considering it was Jim's first time on the trail. Even heading back pulling a mattress and boxspring on the school sled, we got back in less than an hour and a half. That is, minus a tail light (from sled impact) and a chain clip pulled apart like a paper clip (from the weight of the sled), of course.

Unfortunately, it's been snowing and crazy windy for the past few days, so the trail could be wrecked by now. I guess I'll find out next time I go riding :-P

Five. Five-dolla. Five-dolla foot longs.*

*(Unless you're in Bethel. Then they are nine-dolla foot longs)

Well! What's new here, you ask?

Not too much. Can not believe we're coming up on December and the end of the semester already! Maybe it's because I've been at home with Isaac and not teaching, but this year is just flying by. We'll see how next semester goes once I'm...knock on wood...back to working part time (or maybe even full time? Rumors are afoot...)

I got to make a surprise trip into Bethel last weekend. It's actually kind of funny, because on Sunday morning while we were watching the Packer game, Sara made a joking suggestion that I snowmachine into Bethel to get Subway. You see, Subway is the only national-type chain within a good 450 miles, and sometimes the lure of the TV advertising does its job. I, of course, replied to her suggestion in the negative, stating that with the trail conditions as they were, it would be 4 hours until I returned with her sandwich, by which time she would have surely eaten something else. We considered the matter tabled.

Well, little did I imagine that later that day, we would receive a call about our Principal being stuck in Bethel due to weather and planes not flying, and asking if I'd be interested to ride in and help pick him and his bags up. Of course, having yet to get out and "stretch my legs" farther than to Kasigluk so far this winter, I jumped at the chance. The trail had actually improved a little bit due to a few inches of light, fluffy snow that fell over the weekend (and without wind to drift it about), and we made it in at a decent pace...about an hour and 15 minutes.

So we picked Garry up, made it back before 9 (which was a plesant surprise, considering we didn't leave 'til after 5), and Sara ended up getting her Subway after all.

If you've ever wondered...

...about why we're living in a dry village up here, and just what that means, read this:

Bootleggers Playing Hide-and-Seek on the Tundra - New York Times, 10/12/08

Long, boring catch-up post.

Oof, I really have let this get away from me, haven't I? If you're still checking here, thanks...hopefully your persistence will begin being rewarded again soon. It's been a combination of lack of post-worthy things going on, the ease of just posting tiny updates on Facebook instead of trying to expand them into blog posts, and the fact that most of what I'd want to post in this election season would have been more suited for my old blog, and not this "Alaska Journal" specific blog. My days are pretty locked into a routine of bottles, diaper changes, and naps (while trying to fit in some school projects and other things where possible), but here goes a bit of a last-3-weeks roundup :-P

A day or two after my last post was the pushed-up date for my first Alaska PFD check. Woohoo! A nice little chunk of change. So, like many Alaskans, first thing I did was purchase some plane tickets. In my case, back to WI for xmas break. In order to save a few hundred dollars, we decided I would fly back a week early like I did my first year up here, so I'll be back in the midwest starting 12/14. Just in case you were wondering.

This year's check was even larger than originally expected, thanks to an additional $1200 tacked on by the legislature (supposedly at the behest of our Governor...you may have heard of her recently), for the expressed purpose of ofsetting the insane cost of living increases out here in rural Alaska, specifically the cost of energy. Well, in many cases, it's having another effect...people are just moving from the Bush into the hub cities, or even into Anchorage. In Bethel, I've even heard a term coined for it..."energy refugees". Now, I'm not up at school enough to be really "in the loop" as far as knowing exactly what's going on all that much in the community, but from what I hear, most of the moving that's going on here is for other reasons, but it seems (to my admittedly narrow perspective) that there's more people moving away from the village. It's by no means scientific, but we're appearing to fit the pattern. Shrug.

Speaking of Alaska news (how's that for a segue?), there was a story on the Anchorage news last night about people here paying more attention to the political news, blah blah blah, and how it can raise stress levels. They even interviewed a therapist who said people who are feeling overstressed by everything should know when to "take a break"...which I found a bit amusing, seeing that I did just about the exact same thing a few weeks back. I dunno, the whole selection of Palin and the lying BS of the Republican convention Alaska attention politically...my head was threatening to explode, so I just decided to stop paying attention for a couple weeks. And guess what...it worked. I managed to save my sanity and not go completely bonkers before election day. I hope.

One thing that's been interesting is all the attention Palin is bringing to Alaska politics. Some has been good, but most of it has been of the negative variety. While national scrutiny has blown open the Troopergate deal and the Stevens trial, it's also basically put the McCain campaign basically in control of state government, acing as council for the Governor and basically maneuvering the day-to-day operation of state affairs to the best benefit of the GOP presidential campaign. In the short term, it's helping Palin and McCain (even though Caribou Barbie's approval rating has gone from 82% to 68% here as news of some of her more...interesting...positions have come to light, McCain/Palin has basically locked Alaska's 3 electoral votes up at about a 15 point lead...you may think AK was going red anyway, but Obama had cut it to a 5 point deficit in August!), I think it's going to hurt Alaska's "solid red state" status long term. I mean, the state is still super "independent"-minded, plus lots of oil interests, etc...but when the newscasts every night are the latest gaffes by our ever-more-obviously imbecilic Governess, followed by daily coverage of our senior Senator's trial and our longtime Representative's scandals and poll deficit...well, let's just hope we can crack this ice yet.

Let's see, anything I'm forgetting? Oh, I had the chance to chaperone a trip to Bethel a couple weekends ago. Got to shop, eat out (gyros!), and watch some of the best cross country runners in the state. I was even able to bring back some goodies for Sara (sushi, anyone?) thanks to some miracles of scheduling right before we left. All in all, it was a good time and a nice 24-hour break.

At the moment, I'm going to keep watching the Brewer game while Isaac naps...with the Twins out of the playoffs thanks to a coin-flip and some shady dealing from MLB, and the Packers facing an uphill road to an 8-8 season thanks to brutal injuries, the Brewers are the only think I've got going at this point. And they're down 3-0 at this point in game one. Yee-haw.

Pistons, Pitchers, & Pike

Well, spring is almost here, and I'm less than a week away from heading into Anchorage for the big event, so what this blog needs is one last good adventure story from this winter. Right?

So on Friday afternoon, Maria asked if I'd like to go fishing. "Of course," I said, not realizing (though I should have) that she didn't actually mean fishing around here, seeing as the pike haven't made their way this far upriver yet. She meant down on the Kuskokwim, as I soon learned. Either way, I was definately up for doing it, considering the snow and ice are fast melting, and that my remaining snowmachine days this year are numbered, and I'd pretty much take any excuse to get out and ride and do something fun before weather forces the machine into hiding for the summer.

The plan was to meet Christina and Erin in Bethel A.S.A.P., head down to the mouth of the Johnson past Napakiak, fish, and get home before dark. It was a good plan.

We got dressed and our stuff together, gassed up, and headed out. It's been pretty warm the last few days, and the trail was as smooth as I've seen it. And smooth, of course, equals fast. So we're making good time, and just a little past 2/3 of the way into town, when all of a sudden I see Maria fall off behind me. Her machine just died. Started to sound weird, then just lost power. So we check it out, and right away it looks bad, but we though maybe she'd just overheated. We let it sit for a while, and it got better, but still wouldn't stay running. Long story short, a guy that happened by did an impromptu test of the cylindars, and yeah, looks like she dropped a piston. Which sucks. So we knew we had to get her machine either back to Nunap or into Bethel for repairs, and so it didn't get stolen or stripped if left it on the trail overnight. We tried hauling it with my machine, but pulling it, with both of us, was really straining my engine and the though of having both machines broken down on the trail was scary enough for me to convince Maria to hop on with me and head into Bethel and figure out a solution from there.

When we got to Bethel we met up with Christina, as well as some folks we didn't know were going to be there. Not to mention, certain refreshments we weren't expecting, as well. So after, ahem, refreshing ourselves, Maria and a small crew headed out to wrangle her machine into town, while the rest of us continued to...refresh. At this point, we knew we weren't going to be doing any fishing Friday night, and after comtemplating heading back to Nunap, I decided to head down with Christina, Erin, and Maria to Oscarville and crash there. We still didn't know how Maria was going to get her machine fixed, or exactly how she'd be getting back to Nunap, but we did still want to try to get some fishing in. So, after a slight gas issue in the parking lot of the Bethel post office, and a visit with Bethel's finest out on patrol, we made it down to Oscarville around 2am and caught some sleep.

On Saturday morning, Maria got a hold of the repair shop (where she had just had her machine tuned up a week before!), and got them set to pick up and work on her machine, as well as getting a hold of our Principal, who with her husband was going to be headed to Napaskiak and back to Nunap in the afternoon. We made tentative plans to meet up with them and ride back together in the early evening, so we knew we had a few hours to head out fishing. We got our stuff together and headed out down the river about 10 miles, past Napakiak to where the Johnson comes into the Kuskokwim. There were probably half a dozen spots where people were fishing, with dozens of families out at each spot, but eventually we found who we were looking for and settled in to try to catch some pike.

One of the reasons I was really excited to get out ice fishing for the first time this spring, was to try out my new hand auger that I'd gotten back a little while ago. So I un-strap it from the back of my machine, screw it together and start drilling. And drilling. And resting. And drilling some more. Well, I don't know how deep was in the spot where I was drilling, but it was at least 44 inches, because that's the length (I measured) from the tip of the blades to the handle, at which point I couldn't turn it any more. Don't believe me? Check it out for yourself! But luckily, the people we met up with had some extra holes cut, so we just hopped on into those. It was a nice day on the river, and the fish were biting at a steady pace. Not an overwhelming bite, but enough to keep it interesting. I got five in the hour and a half or two hours we were out there, including a couple pretty good sized fish (nose to tail about the same length as my pole, so about 24"), and everyone else was catching at roughly the same rate.

After a couple hours, as I said, it was time to head back to meet up with our Principal and her husband to head back to Nunap. Maria rode in the sled they'd brought stuff down in, and proceeded to get drenched as there was a lot of water on the trail. But it was another smooth, fast ride, spooking up flocks of ptarmigan every few miles. Had I been thinking, I'd have brought my shotgun along too. But all in all, I was really glad that despite the drama and the "quick trip" becoming an overnight adventure, it was really great to hang out with Christina and Erin, to get all "refreshed" with Lee and some other coworkers, and definitely worth it to get out and do some fishing. Because hey, I leave for Anchorage on Friday! Not only is this likely my last snowmachine outing of the season, it's my last spontaneous trip before fatherhood strikes!

So yeah. Good times :-P

Gotta take a step back..

Been busy lately, as you can probably imagine, but wanted to update on how the rest of last week went, as well as what we're up to this week here in Nunap.

The multimedia training last week was a lot of fun for the kids. They basically got to work on video projects (this group on the right was filming their short movie at Bethel's video rental shop!), play with new effects and learn things about iMovie, as well as hang out with friends and see some of the games at the district basketball tournament that happened to be going on at the same time! So, all in all, while it was a big ol' pain in the butt to be in Bethel and away from home for a week, I have to admit it was well worth it. I even learned how to do green-screening (or chroma-keying, as I found out) in iMovie. So I've got a tarp and a few good ideas...once I get something together in post-able form, I'll be sure to share :-)

And this week is Cultural Week here at A.T.M.S. in sunny Nunapitchuk, AK. I won't go into too much detail (for fear of digressing into an epic rant), but let's just say it's not the easiest week of the year. There are some attitudes on both the student and the staff sides of the coin that combine to make this one of the big "humps" to get through second semester, as I learned last year. This year is certainly proving no exception to the rule. Though on the positive side, I was able to get my snowmachine into the school shop this afternoon and have a couple of the high school boys help me fix a problem I've been having, so that was pretty productive. But I'll post a more comprehensive Cultural Week entry after it's entirely in the rear view mirror. I promise.

So let's take stock...

Here I sit, on a chair in the District Office in Bethel. I'm tired, I'm hungry, I vaguely smell. And my week is just getting started. Time to take a look at my situation.

Sara and I went to Anchorage on Saturday, hung out and had a generally good time, and had our last pre-coming-in-for-good appointment yesterday morning. The plan was to try to get back to the village yesterday afternoon, get a day (and more importantly a night) back at home, and then come in for the multimedia competition and training here this afternoon, and staying 'til Friday.

Well, as often is the case, the weather had other plans. Bethel weather was crappy yesterday, so our flight from Anchorage to Bethel was late, and flights out of Bethel to the villages were all shut down. Too windy and rain/snow mix. Then, Era Aviation, who we like to fly when we don't have the dog with us (slightly cheaper, much more convenient than Alaska Airlines for BET-ANC), bumped our bag. We've flown with them twice now...the first time they sent our bags to Kodiak, despite everything being clearly labeled and us checking in 2 hours ahead of the flight. This time, they just "bumped" our suitcase...the plane wasn't full, our box of groceries made it, thankfully, on the plane, but our suitcase did not. It wasn't heavy, it isn't large, there was room...they just didn't bring it. So I don't think we'll be flying with Era again. Their baggage people in Anchorage are just too...sketchy.

So we spent last night in Bethel, paying Bethel prices for a Bethel-quality B&B room, picked up our bumped bag at Alaska Air, who brought it in for us last night on the jet, and got Sara on the first Yute flight back to Nunap. I'm just hanging here, as it didn't make much sense to me to fly back to the village this morning, only to turn around and fly back in with the team this afternoon. So Sara's going to send a bag with some clothes, my school-issued Macintosh that I need for the training, and other etceteras with the team when they come.

So here I sit. I'm depressed because Favre retired today and the last starting quarterback I've seen for the Packers was Don Majkowski when I was 12 years old. I'm tired, I'm grumpy, I'm dirty, and I'm ready to go home (notice "hungry" disappeared from the list...a very nice lady took pity on me while i was writing this and gave me a donut :-P ). And my trip hasn't even started yet. I'll spend the next three nights on a classroom floor. Wish me luck.

Stick-venture!

Well, our trip to Anchorage went really well...relaxing, productive, and fun. But since I last posted, we had a bit of a time getting home. So by popular request, let's continue the theme of stick figure representations of our trip, shall we?

Here we are at Era Aviation in Bethel, finding out that our checked bag and box of perishable groceries had not come with us from Anchorage, but had instead been sent to Kodiak.

Here we are at the airport in Nunap, with me, Trent, and the pilot pushing the plane back onto the runway after getting pulled down towards the tundra by a snowdrift.

Here I am racing to turn off the washing machine after realizing the draining wash water was draining onto the bathroom floor due to some pipes freezing/plugging/who knows what.

Weekend.

Ever see the movie Memento? Let's work backwards through the weekend that was:

Sunday

How about we just not talk about the Packer game. It's just. too. soon.

Saturday

What the heck is up with this weather?? By the end of last week they were predicting a major storm for the weekend, with a blizzard "watch" in effect until Sunday. Well, the system showed up, but instead of 25 degrees and snow, it was 35 degrees and rain. The wind was crazy...on the left is a picture of our weather gauge from sometime Saturday afternoon (bottom two readings are sustained wind and highest gust). And our wind speed reading is typically about 10-15 mph low, depending on the direction the wind is coming from (darn buildings), so who knows how high the gusts were actually getting. Either way, it was crappy out...mostly because we went from having really nice, deep, powdery snow cover to having a few piles of crappy snow and foot-deep puddles of water everywhere. Good times.

Friday

Now here's a funny story.

Remember, oh, last fall or so when we had a bit of an adventure with taking the boat for a ride over to a neighboring village? If not, it's ok. Just a bit of an adventure...one of those things that are a little frustrating, even scary at the time, but you have a sense even while it's happening that it'll make a pretty good story later on. Assuming you get through it.

Ok, I'm being way over-dramatic, I'll admit it. But it's still a good story.

So our friend Sara was planning on hitching a ride over to Akiuk from Napaskiak in order to retrieve the snowmachine she had left there in the spring, and was looking for some of us to ride back with her (the trail pirates are back....shiver me timbers!) Of course I said I'd go, I've been looking for an excuse to head in to Bethel and try out our sled and the new rig we hooked up to it. The original plan was to make the trip on Saturday, during the day, but Friday afternoon we all saw the weather forecast, and worried about getting caught by bad weather, decided to head out right away after school. We knew we'd probably be headed back after dark, but better the dark than in a "blizzard", was my thinking.

Well, everything started off well, except for getting a little later start than we expected. Which was troublesome, considering Christina was planning on meeting us in Bethel at AC at 5:00, and we didn't leave the gas station and get on the trail 'til about 4:45. But that didn't concern me *too* much...she knows we're poky, and probably wouldn't too worry too much if we're an hour or so late. So Carey, Maria, Sara R. and I headed out into the dusk, and were making pretty good time when our first little snafu happened...somehow, the bolt holding her hitch on came loose and the sled came off. I was riding behind her, with Maria behind me, so all three of us stopped and tried to figure out a way of hooking the sled back on without the bolt. In the meantime, Carey hadn't realized the rest of us had stopped behind her, and had kept going, so Maria went on ahead to catch her, and I stood by being very little help as Sara got her sled reconnected using some rope she had with her and the snap clip I still (luckily) had connected to the tow rope of my sled. By the time we were done and good to go, Maria and Carey got back to us and we all headed on, having lost a little time and one bolt, but with no real harm done.

Next comes the embarrassing part for me. So as I believe I mentioned before, our new tow bar for the sled was made to break down into pieces to allow us to bring it up here, in a box, from Wisconsin. Well, when I put it together last weekend, I did so on the living room floor, considering it was mighty cold outside, and I wanted to do as little of the work outside as possible. The problem, however, is that I failed to notice that I had put the bolts on the rear portion on upside down, that is to say, with the nuts on top when I put the thing together on the sled. In my defense, I had every intention on fixing them Saturday morning before we left (per the original plan), but in the rush to leave Friday afternoon, I kinda forgot. That is, until we stopped to fix Sara's sled and I noticed I had already lost one bolt, and the nuts on a few of the others had rattled darn near off as well. So I tightened them the best I could with my fingers, which I then crossed as we headed off to Bethel. By the time I got to AC I had lost two more bolts. Everything was still holding together, but only by a thread.

So Carey and Maria had headed on to Napaskiak with Sara, and I had broken off to Bethel, partially because of my precarious sled situation, and partially because at this point, we were a full 2 hours late meeting Christina and her roommate Erin, and someone needed to let her know we weren't stranded or hijacked somewhere. Here would be a good place to point out that when I arrived at AC, I parked by two snowmachines. This will become vital information in a minute.

But in the meantime, I chatted with Christina and started my shopping (including some extra tools to allow me to shore up my sled before heading back.) Carey and Maria showed up, having gotten Sara to Napaskiak, and were doing their shopping when Christina and Erin (who had been at AC for, oh, three hours at this point), decided it was time for them to head back to Oscarville. Or so they thought. I got a sick feeling in my stomach as soon as I saw Christina walking back down the aisle toward us, which only got deeper when she said something along the lines of "well, now I can top your guys' story for tonight"....her snowmachine, which I had parked next to only an hour or so before, was no longer there. Stolen.

So! Our new plan: Erin has her snowmachine there, but they both have groceries, and no way of hauling them back, so we'd all head the 6 miles down the Kusko to Oscarville, drop her off, and head back. Which is precisely what we did after everyone was finished shopping (and I made my...ahem...sled adjustments). The only problem on the way down was that I was riding 3rd in a line of 4, and the two machines ahead of me kind of...well...took off on the clear, wide, flat Kuskokwim, while I and my sled, better attached but not 100%, and feeling like a parachute behind me with the added weight of everyone's groceries, couldn't go much over 25 or 30 mph. But, Christina was on Maria's machine behind me, and thankfully passed me up and lead me to Oscarville after I had missed the turn off the river trail.

So we warmed up for a few minutes at Christina and Erin's, I called my lovely wife, as it was now about 10pm, 6 hours after we'd left and around the benchmark time we'd earlier set at which point she was "allowed" to start worrying. Luckily, she had been sewing some cool stuff (how domestic! Seriously, she should post about it...you all need to bug her to post on her blog, mmkay?) and hadn't really gotten *too* worried just yet.

A few minutes after 10, we headed out from Oscarville, thinking we had about a 15 minute ride back to Bethel, and then a roughly hour long ride back to Nunap (depending on how quickly the sled would allow me to go). However, none of us being familiar with this particular area, there were "issues" finding not only the trail, but the right direction to head. I'll leave it at that :-) Suffice it to say, after a little bit of wandering around the middle of the Kusko in the dark, and one frightening run-in with an overflow (yeah, I had never seen one in person before...damn...) later, we got on the trail, in the right direction, and back into Bethel to fuel up for the ride home.

At this point it was 11:20. We found the H-marker after a little detour, and we set out, breaking trail as the storm was starting to kick up and it was windy and drifting, despite clear sky above, all the way back. Despite the bumps and the worry about the sled, the last 20 miles were really quite a nice ride...the moon was out, the wind was mostly at our backs, and due to how late it was, there weren't any other machines out on the trail. We rolled into Nunap right at 1am, a little cold, a little stressed, but really happy to be home with our machines, or groceries, and ourselves intact.

**********

Happy ending postscript: So Christina's stolen snowgo? Well, she reported it to the Bethel police, of course, right away, and they took down all the information, etc. And guess who got a phone call from Bethel's finest around 2am? Yup, they found her machine, out of gas, about...oh...a couple hundred yards from where she had parked it. Nobody can figure out what happened, if the thieves took it joyriding, and then just happened to run out of gas at the video store next door, if it was all someone's idea of a joke, if someone was just drunk, or what. But hey, whatever the scenario, the machine is back with its rightful owner, and Christina will be able to ride over and visit Nunap this weekend! Hooray!!

Edited to add: If you're interested (and, unlike me, you live somewhere where you can access Myspace), here's Christina's blog entry about her super-fantastic snowmachine theft adventure!

iTraining

I spent last Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday with a great group of students, in Bethel for training for some of the great multimedia tools that are on the school computers. The district flew up an Apple trainer from California who, from the sound of it, does a ton of these sorts of workshops. At first, I was a little skeptical of how the training was going to work, but I have to say, he won me (and more importantly the kids) over right away and just took off running with showing us the capabilities and the nuts and bolts of some of the "iLife" programs that come with computers that the schools have for all the students to use.

Now, I've never been a "Mac guy", but that's mostly been because I've never had occasion to use a Mac for any reason. So when I did, it was only to, say, check my email on Sara's school computer, and of course the interface was pretty foreign to me, and I just didn't have the comfort level to use it like I do with my PCs. But now that I'm using them more, and seeing the kinds of programs available on Macs, and their focus on creative-type stuff, I'm definitely seeing the appeal. I'm even entertaining the possibility of having a Mac around at some point in the near future, and splitting my time on seperate gaming/work-focused and creative-stuff-focused setups. Not that I want to buy another computer right now...just saying I can see myself doing it in the future sometime. Like maybe a tax-return or PFD time splurge...

But the training itself went awesome...can't wait to get started on some of the website and podcast stuff we're going to do with the High School students next semester. I think they're going to have a blast...

Into the Homestretch

So what have we been up to since Trivia? Not much, not much.

Last week was my first week post-subbing, and really, it was quite boring. Nice, but boring. I got our snowmobile put away for the summer (sad!) and some calls made and stuff taken care of for the wedding, but other than that, didn't have too much going on.

Then, over the weekend, we had to fly into Bethel for another marriage prep session at the church. Even without riding in on snowmobile, travel was a little hairy. The airport here in Nunap is on the opposite side of the river, which at the moment is right at that sketchy stage where there is ice in most spots, but it's not very good ice, and you have to have a good idea where to go or else you're going to get wet. Thus, with noone willing (smartly) to take us by snowmobile or 4-wheeler, we had to walk to the airport to catch our plane. We got there, made it to Bethel, walked around and got some dinner, and had a lovely time Saturday night at the White House. Sunday we made it to mass and got our last conversation in with the Priest, and still had time to do a little shopping before heading back to the airport for the quick flight back to the village.

So after worrying about whether the ice on the river was going to be good enough for us to cross back and forth to the airport a couple times over the weekend, what have we been up to since? Well ice fishing, of course!!

Gotta love ice fishing in May :-)

It's not like running to Copps

Happy Sunday! Just lounging around today, and since I'm able to get a bit of an internet signal here at home, I thought I'd post quickly just to share a link to an article about the looming hike in the bypass mail rate and its effect on the prices we pay for stuff out here in the Bush.

You know, just to give you all a little perspective :-)

But remember, when they're talking about Bethel, that's still a snowmachine ride (or at this point in the year, a plane ride again) away from us. Who knows how much it's going to affect prices out here at our little store...

Kickin' it in Bethel

Coming at you live from the White House B&B in sunny Bethel, AK!

We rode in yesterday and stayed the night just for kicks. I'll have a nice photo-post coming this week, as I've managed to take a bunch of pictures the last couple days, but for now, here's a preview shot of Sara on the trail with our friend's machine. Notice the bare ground...yeah, despite (or rather, probably because of) the cold, we've had very little snow this winter, so riding around on the trail at the moment is mostly on bare ice, sometimes a little packed snow, and even some bare frozen tundra. Eat your heart out, Lambeau.

Don't get me wrong, it's still fun zooming across the tundra, but I wish we had more snow for the sake of the machines, not to mention a smoother ride...the bumps get a little tough to deal with after 20 miles or so.

Nothing too exciting...

...unless you've been stuck in the village for a while.

This is just a pic of the AC store in Bethel on Monday night. Mecca of assorted grocery items otherwise accessible only by a large shipping fee. Like produce.

(picture taken from Subway....mmmmm, Subway)

What's been up.

It's been a while, so I'm going to do this post list style. Cool?

1. It's a bit surprising how warm 14 degrees can feel when there's no wind. Seriously.

2. Been fighting of my first real illness since I've been up here, it seems. One of those colds that just vaguely makes its presence known, then lets you beat it back with vitamin C and other such weapons, then *wham* hits with a vengeance. Luckily, I made it to the weekend, so I was able to sleep for the next 48 hours if need be...in theory, anyway.

3. Did a lot of snowmobiling a couple weekends ago. Went out with some folks bird hunting out on the tundra on Saturday, and out to help with mushing again on Sunday. Lots of fun. Had a bit of excitement Sunday when Eric was knocked off his dogsled by a "mechanical failure" and after I doubled back for him we had to chase down the now-runaway dogs. After catching up to them (not always with both skis touching the ground, I might add), we had to figure out a way to get them stopped...yes, even at the time I was aware of the similarity to the cowboy movie cliche. But, after some proper russlin'...and untangling...and attempting to herd/tow the pack home...all ended up safe and sound, no worse for the wear. Except Eric, that is, who was a little sore from the initial fall. Excitement all around.

4. You know what else is similar to herding cattle? Teaching elementary school. Seriously. I'm not going to go too far into it or complain too much, I promise...but damn. And really, it's not been all bad, I'm just a wimp. And some of the kids are really great, but not great enough for me to not end up wanting to stab myself in the ear with a pencil 4 times a day :-)

5. This past weekend was pretty laid back, thankfully. Slept a lot (or at least as much as Loki would let us), and did some stuff around the house. Took a ride to Atmau just for fun on Sunday...there was a tentative plan to go to Bethel, but the weather was just too bad, so we just went out to see how the trails were, etc. Managed to get a little frostbite on my face...not too bad, but enough to remind me to bundle up whenever I get on the machine...heh.

6. Ended up making that trip to Bethel yesterday after school. It really is amazing how much faster the trip is when you're traveling with just a couple of people and not a whole group with 5 or 6 sleds. We managed to make it there in less than an hour...the first time we rode in, I remember it being close to a 3 hour trip. Of course, the trail was pretty bad then, too. Anyways, it was good to get in and go grocery shopping. Even hit up Subway (the only chain-type eating establishment within, oh, I don't know how many hundreds of miles)....very nice indeed.

7. A big ol' CONGRATS! to Eric and Sherry on their new baby! Looking forward to meeting the little guy :-)

And that's the Cliff Notes version of my last couple weeks...sorry, I've jest been so busy during the day with my class that once it's time to quit for the day I just want to head home and decompress for a while. I'll get back on the posting bandwagon here, I promise. Even have some pictures to post...some which may be to gory to actually put here...we'll see :-P

26.3

That's how many miles the trail is from the AC store in Bethel to our house in Nunap. How do I know this with such precision, you ask? Well there can only be one answer to that question...we got our snowmachine! Oh glorious day!!!

We had been kinda-sorta planning on flying into Bethel today to pick it up, but our neighbor and superstar-teacher Eric called at noon yesterday and told me that with the weather being so nice, he and Kenny had decided to ride in that afternoon, and suggested I call and see if there were any flights I could still get on in the afternoon so I could get the machine and meet up with them to ride back. I called around and had no luck, at which thought I figured it just might not be meant to be. Then, he suggested that it might be possible to borrow someone else's machine, and if Sara and I both rode in, one of us could bring it back while the other rode ours...common sense, of course, but the thought hadn't crossed my mind. Would anyone let me drive their snowgo to Bethel and back? And could Sara get out of work for the afternoon? All I could do was ask.

So with Eric warming up his machine for himself and Kenny, I ran up to school to see if we could figure out a plan. Sara was in a class, which I rudely interrupted, and she was down with taking off and riding in. So now a ride. She had happened to be in Carey's class at the time, so we asked if we might be able to borrow her sweet, sweet Ski-Doo...and she graciously let us (thank you, thank you, thank you!!!)

With that, and after gathering a few things and bundling up, we were on our way. Eric with Kenny in the lead, and Sara and I following. The trail is pretty well defined, and a bunch of the markers are up, but I'm really glad I had someone to follow. Riding the trails here isn't exactly like trails back home, with maybe a mile or two between bars and roads and houses all along the way. 8 miles or so out from Nunap you go by Atmau, but other than that there's nothing until you get to Bethel. Other than that, it's a pretty nice ride. Not too bumpy at all, no major obstacles, only a few tricky banks to go up or down when going on to or off of water. Snow conditions could have been a little better...the snow from last weekend's big snowstorm had been turning to slush during our 30 degree days this week, refreezing overnight, and leaving a lot of packed ice on the trails. Being the uber-rookie snowgo driver, I just followed Eric whenever he went a little ways off the trail into the fresh snow to be a little nicer to the skis and treads.

So, an hour and a half or so later, we were on the outskirts of Bethel. Eric and Kenny's real purpose for the trip was to head down past Bethel to Kenny's old village, Napaskiak, to get his snowmachine, so it was time to split up. Mind you, I've been to Bethel a grand total of three times, two of which were just flying through, and neither Sara or I have no idea where to go or how to get there by snowgo. But, we could see where the airport was, and with some pointing in the direction of the correct trail from Kenny, we just headed that way and played it by ear, agreeing to meet Eric and Kenny at the AC store whenever they got back from Napaskiak.

All was fine, we followed the trail to the highway, which we crossed after a little confusion, and finally got ourselves to the airport. Now, I don't know if I've ever explained the Bethel airport here or not, but here's the problem. It's basically a long strip of hangars and terminal buildings for individual little charter and air cargo services, all lined up along the side of a runway long enough for a large jet to land. All we knew about the location of "Everets Air Cargo", where our machine was located, was that it was at the airport. Somewhere. So we started along, riding on the side of the road, looking for a sign saying Everets. Just a building or two in, and we were at Grant Aviation, which I knew from Sara's stories was pretty cool and usually very helpful, so I stopped and asked if she wanted to go in and see if she could find out where exactly Everets was. She did, and when she got back the directions were shaky at best. "The other end" was basically the jist, so we headed down the road expecting to eventually run into it. Until we got to JP Air (and brats...yeah, it's on the sign), which is basically the end of the row. Confused, I went in and asked for directions. And then drove around for a while. And came back to JP. And drove around again, the same direction, but a little farther, at which point we found Everets and got our sled. (Note: Yes, I said sled. For you upper-Midwestern folk, you know what I'm talking about. It's slang for snowmobile. Here, I've slipped and said "sled" a few times and people have just looked at me funny. Probably because here, people often tow actual sleds behind their machines, hence it not really making sense to use the same colloquialism. Even "snowmobile" isn't used here. It's snowmachine. Or snowgo.)

So, half the battle was won - we found our sled at the airport. Now for the other half of the battle...getting into Bethel proper and finding the AC store to meet up with the guys. So we backtracked to where we had split up before, and headed towards town in the other direction, simply aiming for what looked to be a commercial part of town. Not that there's that much of Bethel to choose from, but still. Anyways, I soon saw what I thought I remembered to be the slanted roof line of the store, having passed it in a cab a couple times, and we made it there having to travel only a couple of blocks on the side of a fairly busy road. After about an hour or so, Eric and Kenny got back from their extended trek, I picked up some coolant and oil, and we got on our way. We had originally hoped to get back before dark (maybe an optimistic goal, considering the limited amount of daylight available this time of year), but the sun was well set before we left the AC parking lot. No matter, there were four snowmachines now, meaning plenty of headlights, and with Eric leading the way we made the haul back just fine, and no worse for the wear.

And with that, we have our smowmachine. It's pretty darn sweet, if I do say so myself. It's a 2000, but it's in great shape, and it just rolled over 1000 miles on the way back last night. Not to mention, I could definitely tell the difference right away driving the 500 compared to Carey's 380 on the way there. Lots more "getup", if you know what I mean. No pictures yet, unfortunately. But I'll be playing around with it this afternoon, and I have to go get gas and stuff, so I'm sure I'll have pretty pics to post tonight or tomorrow.

Bright lights, big(er) city.

Well that was fun. Like I mentioned, we went into Bethel this weekend to do some stuff and really, just to get away for a night. Which, I think, was about the perfect amount of time in Bethel, really. You see, we have this dog, and he's a bit...hyper. But yeah. One day was enough time to eat out a time or two, do some (okay, a whole lot) of shopping, and get back home without going too crazy. Not to say there wasn't craziness and a little frustration, but knowing we were headed home pretty quickly kept things from grating too hard, I think.

The problem with Bethel, it seems, is transportation-based. Not to say that transportation in Bethel is a problem in general, I obviously don't know the place well enough to judge that, just that it was a problem for us. We flew out after school on Friday afternoon with a few other teachers, and after the short, 10 minute or so flight, we were at the airport with some decisions to make. Namely, how do we want to do this? We had a short list of things we needed to do, as well as a couple things we'd like to do if we had time/a way to get there. Here's where the proper putting-of-things-into-order became crucial. we had gotten in just barely too late to get to the bank to deposit the cashier's check I'd brought with from my bank in Wisconsin, and they wouldn't be open again until, well, today because of the holiday weekend, so that plan was done for. The only thing remaining to do that night was to check in to our hotel and find something to eat.

After grabbing a taxi and checking in to the Longhouse again (which you may remember as the place we stayed when we were weathered in Bethel back in March), we walked over to the pizza place where we had made plans to meet up with Christina and Richard. We sat down, and since we were a little early, in true Wisconsinite style ordered some delicious fried cheese as an appetizer. Now, I don't know if I've mentioned this in passing in any posts before, but Sara has a little mantra that she's learned from living up here a few years that I'm trying to take to heart my cheap self..."Just don't look at the prices. It's not worth it, you'll just get upset." I'm learning quickly the wisdom of these words. You see, anything that gets out here for us to purchase likely wasn't produced within, oh, a thousand miles or two. Combined with the fact that there aren't even any roads on which to truck said products to us consumers, and you can see how the overhead might make things a little bit pricier that I'm used to. And being fairly cheap in the first place, it makes certain bullets harder to bite. But aaaaanyway...

So that was basically the extent of Friday night's excitement in Bethel, we poked around Swanson's until they closed and got an idea of things we'd look for while shopping the next day, then walked back to the hotel and were slugs and watched some Chapelle's Show until we fell asleep. Next day, we grabbed some "continental breakfast", a.k.a. watery coffee and one of those little boxes of cereal you remember from your childhood. Apple Jacks, yum. And here's where the transportation issues come into play. We're on a pretty good stretch of road, with a bunch of things within walking distance. the problem is, everywhere we want to go today is somewhere that involves purchasing things. And not just a couple things that can be thrown into a bag and carried with us to our next stop. We're talking lumber, gallons of paint, groceries to last us weeks, etc. That leaves us with the taxi, which are flat rates instead of by time or mile, and generally a pain in the butt. So along with Swanson's (which is really three stops: the hardware store, the lumberyard, and the grocery store), we also hoped to get to Subway...an honest to god chain fastfood place, akin to civilization...as well as the A.C. Which would require some fancy taximanship, loading up from Swanson's, one of us being dropped of on the way to the airport, while another took our massive quantity of stuff we'd purchased to the airport. This seemed like a good plan, until we got through at Swanson's and decided that, yeah...Subway's not worth it, not even now. Let's just go to the airport. Mind you, this is the sanitized, hindsight version of the transportation saga. At the time there was much debate and deliberation. Long story short, or I guess pretty long at this point, is that I think it will be a lot easier to get around Bethel, if maybe not to Bethel, once winter sets in and we can just take a snowmobile the 15 miles or so.

So after getting everything boxed up and to the terminal at the airport we got out of Bethel around 24 hours after getting there...a few hundred dollars lighter in the bank account and a few dozen pounds overweight with freight for our flight back (each passenger is allowed 40 lbs of luggage/freight on the bush planes...we were at about 130 between the two of us). And after getting our stuff home from the landing strip and surveying the damage done by Loki and hearing the tales of his dual dogsitters, I must say it was good to be home and not have to worry anymore. Either about how he was doing or how we were going to get to the next place we were going.

And that's the long, rambling story of the Bethel trip. Exciting, huh? Well at least we got right on the ball with using the painting supplies...I'll have to post before and after pics of the living room soon...remind me, ok?