Faceless in Fairbanks

Well, it is December 30 and it is truly cold...and has been for the past 3 days. It has gone down to -40 and seems to be staying there.This is how I look now when I go outside.  Its no easy task between getting me loaded up with clothes and then Fred outfitted as well.  We had two neighborhood families for dinner the other night, and between taking clothes off and putting them back on, many minutes went by.

We actually did go outside and throw boiling water up into the air and watched it evaporate.  Wow!  Quite funky.  Of course, nothing changes.  Life does seem to go on.  However, if it does not "warm" up to -20 by next Saturday, we cann ot go ice fishing.  We have reserved an ice house on Chena Lake, with 4 holes, two seats and a wood stove.  However, the borough won't auger out the holes if it goes below -20, and since we do not have an ice auger, we might be out of  luck.  Oh well.  Only time will tell.

On Christmas day we went to North Pole to see their ice park sculptures as a pre-curser to the big show downtown in Fairbanks in February.       the highlight, for me, was the ice slide, which, of course, I just had to try.The big baby strikes again!

We have been to several great holiday parties, the latest at our neighbors.  All are potlucks with great, great food.  Not only wase verything homemade, but the turkey we ate was home grown and the berries on the pies were picked this su

mmer!  Great fun at gift exchanges which are always chinese auctions where you can "steal" a gift if you don't like what you have chosesn.David made quite a hit in his Vietnamese holiday vest.

In the category of "Only in Fairbanks". this was posted in freecycle the other day:  A woman was giving away a dead goat to be used for dog food.  Quite a popular item around here since there are so many dogs.  Usually we see offers for freezer burned meat to be given away.  This was the first time I saw a newly dead goat offered up.  YUP!

Ho! Ho! Ho! Winter is Here

Well, it is now December, the solstice has come and gone and we are now gaining seconds of sunlight rather than losing minutes of daylight.  we now have about 3 hours and 45 minutes of sunlight which means that the sun rises around 11 am and goes down about 2:45.  however, the dawn is quite long as is the dusk and the dark is wonderful.  Bright starry nights with the moon twinkling on the snow and auroras lightly skimming the sky. 

David has a job with Design Alaska which is a general engineering firm right in Fairbanks which is quite community minded and is a prominent sponsor of the symphony and public radio.  The folks that he works with are all very interesting, as are all of the people in Fairbanks.

I am still working two jobs, one a the Yukon Quest and one at the University while hoping that the University job finally comes through as a staff position rather than a contract one.  I finally had an interview, and now am waiting to take a computer literacy test, of all things.  The wheels of acadmia grind very slowly.

The job at the Yukon Quest has offered some amusing moments.  I am now in charge of events and put on a Hawaiian Lua fundraiser in December full of sand, leis and, as you will see, coconuts.  We had to come in costume and David, we did not have his photo taken was in shorts and long underwear bottoms and a Hawaiian shirt which he insists on wearing to work.

The Yukon Quest 1000 mile race is coming up on February 14, so to get prepared David and Iwent to a 100 mile race that started about 10 miles up the road from us.  Silly us.  We thought that sled dog racers were spectator sports, but about 10 minute after we got there, after asking what we could do to help, we found ourselves holding lines while dogs were snapped on, holding dogs, and then running like crazy while haning on to lines and dogs while the sled drove to the start line.  That was quite scary because 12 dogs on a line are so, so powerful; there were too many lines and too much bumpy snow and too much speed to cross a tiny, short space.  I was scared I would fall and get my leg snapped off. 

The dogs were incredible.  Silent as could be when they were in the dog boxes atop the trucks and howling, jumping and screaming when they were on the line waiting to go.  But all good natured and friendly, allowing one and all to haul them around. this is a shot inside a dog box and the next shot shows the dogs outside the box. Once they were at the start line, off they went! Here are David and I as we watch the race. Notice, you can see our eyes, nose and mouth.  This contrasts nicely to the next outfit we were wearing.  I, ignorantly asked what next we could do and was told that we should man the nighttime road crossing.  Well, this involved waiting for a phone call which told us to be a the point where the trail crossed the main road at a certain time and then making sure that we stopped the cars and tracked the teams as they crossed to road for their two hour home stretch.  This was after their 5 hour first leg, 4 hour layover and then about 3 hour trip back to the road crossing where they would thent ravel about another 2 hours to the finish line.  Didn't seem too bad. 

The call came to be at the crossing at 10 pm for the first team that was scheduled to cross at about 10:30.  2 pairs of long underwear, lined pants, 2 long underwear tops, sweater, snowsuit, 3 pairs of socks, jacket, neck gator, scarf, hat, hand warmers and mittens for each of us.  We were unrecognizable...but it was -8.  What we did not know was that, although the first team would, indeed cross at 10:30 (Lance Mackey..the reigning champ), Lucy, the last musher would cross 5 hours later!!!  BRR!!!

Would we do it again.  You bet.

A few weeks earlier, we had decided that we too could be mushers and borrowed a harness for Fred and bought a child's plastic sled from WalMart,and went to Dog Musher's Hall where the real mushers go.  First we let Fred run with the harness and just the sled.  Then I sat on it...and he sat down, turned around and seemed to say, "What the hell?"as you can see, Fred and I make quite a team!!!

There seems to be a common expression here which goes..."only in Fairbanks" and the other day that seemed to be true.  I was downstairs in the Yukon Quest building, which is a lovely log cabin on the banks of the Chena River when one of my co-workers called down the steps..."There's a lady coming through the doors with a reindeer.  Of ocurse, the rest of us came crashing upstairs, and sure enough, for no apprent reason, a woman had walked in leading her pet reindeer by a red lead.  Coca was quite friendly and cow-like and very tiny with giant, thin antlers.  We took a photo and then she strolled on out and we all went back to work.  Yup!

 

We are quite enchanted with the scenery since the angle of the sun on the winter trees is magnificent.

This is also the beginning of ice sculpture season, with many businesses having them sprout in front of their entrances.  This was taken outside of David's office and on Christmas Day we are going to North Pole to see their ice park.  The big festival is in Fairbanks in february and we can't wait.