Migratory Birds

Another sign of spring has arrived. The first Canada geese have arrived at Creamer's field, about .5 miles from our house. Dominik and I have taken nightly walks to see if we could catch the first sighting. Yesterday we saw our first pair of Canada Geese and today we saw 14 geese altogether. Within 5-7 days, I have been assured that counting will be impossible!

It's nice to live so close to the wide variety of wildlife that we find here. Somehow it makes you feel a little more connected to life and it's probably healthy to see a bear or a giant moose and truly feel small. It reminds us how inconsequential we are in the greater scheme of things and how tiny our little problems are.

Life is good in Fairbanks. The sun is now shining from 6:20 am to about 9:30 today...but in another week or so we'll be going from 6:00 am to 10:00. It's great! The sun feels very warm and the snow is on it's way out in a hurry.

I'll get some pictures of Creamer's field when it's more than jsut a handful of birds. We're going to visit frequently. It's dinner at Sarah's and a hockey game for Easter. More later.

Hello family and friends!

It has been a while since I posted, so I figure I'm overdue. Spring is certainly in the air now and the streets are all bare, so there is no more riding the snowmachine. We can't get out of the yard and to the waterways or bike paths....the good news is that it is supposed to snow all weekend. With a little luck we might get a little more winter. I'm hoping that no Alaskans read this or I might get shot for wishing that. They all figure that 7 months of snow is plenty, but we had a late start. 

Temperatures have been up around 40F for the days and drop down to about 10F at night. Dominik and I got the bikes out and went for a little ride yesterday. We're really anxious to cruise all the bike paths all over town. You can get anywhere safely by bike. 

We are adding so much sun every day that it is almost unbelievable. The sun is now coming up at about 6:40 and setting after 9:00. In just a few weeks it will be from 5:00 to 11:00.  I'll be picking up mom and dad at the airport around midnight on June 19th and it will be full sunlight!

Samantha and I have been talking almost every day and she wants to get up here ASAP so we're going to try to get her up this summer. Unfortunately, that depends heavily on how well the business is going. We've been in lockdown mode and on a budget since we arrived here. It's fairly expensive to live here, but business has been better, so we're hopeful!

The moose have been absent for a while. Dominik is hoping to see a bear in the yard but that might be a stretch. Yanik has gone through a total transformation. He has been the laziest little beggar you could ever imagine and wouldn't walk, etc...but now he wants to walk everywhere and even requests to go on walks! Yanik is still not much into the skating yet, but he really likes to fight, so we're looking to sign him up for jiu-jitsu or something like that. We're also going to get the kids into swimming lessons and maybe try some soccer this summer. Our outdoor ice rinks are dying quickly now, so there probably won't be anymore skating outdoors until October. Dominik may join a mite summer league (just games) and then we'll get back into coaching in the fall and join the local program. By then Yanik may be a black belt.

sled dogs by our house

Here are a few from by our house (down on the slough) on the area that I call the snow machine highway. There is also a picture of the river bridge where the dogs enter and leave the Chena River and also where I enter and leave the river on my way to work.

North American Sled dog Championships

Today dominik and I went downtown to watch our first ever dog sled race. It was packed! Teams are made up of anywhere from 10-16 or more dogs, as far as I can tell. The dogs are so funny to watch when they are at the starting line. You'll never see animals that are more full of life. They are really anxious to go!

The dogs ran down 2nd avenue and then down the Wendell street river bridge before racing along the Chena river. They turn off the Chena and head up the slough and then out onto Creamer's field and the golf course before turnig back for home. This is the same route I take to work on my snow machine! I'm going to include a few pictures from dowtown at the start/finish line and then a few from down on the slough.....right beside our house. We just walked down there to snap a few pics.

Far North Workout

Since I'm still dreaming of doing the 2009 Northwest Atlas Bodybuilding contest, I have been working hard to get in shape. The funny thing is, the workouts are a little different here. Rather than get up and ride the bike for 45 mins, I decided to go out at 6:00 am and split wood for the same amount of time. I should have thought of this earlier! Sitting on a bike feels like a total waste of time when there is wood to be worked on.....and there is ALWAYS wood to work on around here.

I feel like Rocky Balboa...punching sides of beef....while the other guy trains with all the high tech stuff.

We have hit an end of winter cold snap the last week or so. It has been -30 ish. The good news is that we have now officially passed 12 hours of daylight. The sun rose today at 7:55 and sets at 8:06....and we're adding about 7 minutes more each day. Pretty soon we'll have bright mornings and late evening sun and it will warm up fast. I don't know what is going to happen when all this snow melts.

We thought we had a line on an 06 Toyota Tundra that was old man driven, but he decided to keep it at the last minute. It's probably for the best as $$$ has felt very tight. I'm still very much in the building stage and we haven't had much of an income to make us feel ready to jump on a truck. We definitely need one up here, though. A big summer job will be to track down good wood cutting areas and stock pile for winter...need a truck for that.

Moose blocks path

Hahaha. Moose overload. Only in AK could this happen. Dominik and I were cruising around town on the snow machine and decided to fly down a skinny little bike path along the expressway. We come around a corner and are face to face with a young moose! We stopped and tried to figure out what to do. The moose wasn't giving us any space and didn't seem afraid at all.......it was the same one that stomped our broom! We figured mama had to be right around there and mama moose are known to be very protective so we were a little concerned. To make it even worse, a local drunk was stumbling up the path from the other direction and collapsing the space that the moose had between us. Ahhh!

With a mild panic I turned our heavy machine around in a space that I'm absolutely certain was narrower than the length of our machine and we got the hell out of there. We hung out below the young moose on the slough and watched to see what the drunk woud do. This guy was DRUNK! Would he actually try to wak by? Would he turn around? Would he try to make love to the moose? Hey, the guy was DRUNK. From our vantage point we saw mama and now the drunk was between mama and baby. Mama's ears went back and she began walking toward them. We heard some yelling and then mama seemed to relax. I think the drunk pissed his pants and dove onto the expressway. We decided to drive away quickly before we put ourselves into the hopeless good samaritan scenario. What was I going to do? Leave Dominik on the snow machine and go toe to toe with a mama moose over some damn drunk? An easy ethical dilemna. Never a dull moment around here!!

snowmachine commute!

Here I am at 8:15 this morning getting ready for my commute. I am always looking to do something unique, so today I drove the snowmachine to work. It was -18F when I left home and -28F at the clinic, but I hardly noticed. The clothes were warm enough and the experience made it fun. I might make this a Saturday routine until it gets too warm out. The largest part of my commute involves speeding down the slough and then the Chena river and I'm not a very good swimmer. It's pretty neat....it's like a highway for snow machines!

After work, Dominik and I spent 2 hours skating at the Big Dipper outdoor rink. After that we hit the library for some kiddy spanish books. As soon as we got home we saw our new wood had been delivered, so we set to work chopping it. Kari and Dominik played sled dog and hauled the wood away. It's amazing how much work you can get out of a 6 year old when they are pretending. 

The air is cold today and it is going to be -30 tonight, but the sun is getting MUCH stronger and at least we have wood for a fire tonight. 

Cheers, family and friends!