Thursday, January 26, 2017

The trail more traveled

A photo posted by Tim Jones (@orcahonus) on


With apologies to Robert Frost, for once that option looked better. The trail to the East Pole yesterday was the best it has ever been, smooth, no ruts, few moguls and I made it to all the way and three fourths of the way up the hill to the cabin in about half an hour. On a good day in the past, it usually took about 40 minutes just to the beginning of my trail.
The other fourth? Well that took a little longer, three lightering trips to get everything up the hill then a trek down and a lot of shoveling to free the snowmachine. But, no complaints. That was the farthest I ever got for the first trip in pulling a load. I might have made it all the way if a moose hadn't scratched around and probably slept, making a huge hole at a crucial point in the trail where I have to turn sharply uphill from a side hill. So it goes.
A welcoming crowd greeted me. The chickadees came around even before I could get the feeder out. Today there are a couple of dozen crowding the place, sometimes three at a time on the feeder, though aggressive ones often chase the others away. Everywhere in the nearby trees you can see motion where those waiting to come in flit about among snow covered branches.  Most of them show no fear of me whatsoever. They keep coming even when I am working close to them on the porch. The chopping block is just about under the feeder and I can hear their wing beats overhead. One even crashed into my hat. Not many people here so they have no reason for fear.
MATHEMATICAL CONVERGENCE
The electronic thermometer here saves the highest and lowest temperatures recorded since it was turned on or the batteries changed. The highest temperature recorded over the past month was plus 32 degrees F. The lowest? Minus 32 degrees F.
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE: When did National Public Radio decide to go all Trump, all the time. I usually have NPR on most of the day and into the night. For one thing being tight against a hill directly to the south most other radio broadcasts don't reach the cabin. I've always enjoyed it, at least until the last trip and this one. Incessantly all day long one pundit after another gets interviewed either interpreting what Trump has done or predicting what he will do. No facts, no news just opinions that are no better than mine for that matter. I give it this, if I yell at the radio once, OK, but if I yell a second time the radio goes off and silence takes over. I didn't come out here to have analysts pounding that criminal into my head all day long. NPR needs to take a path lest traveled.

Monday, January 23, 2017

Don't you just hate it when somebody could have killed you?



National news has been so overwhelming the past couple of weeks it's been difficult to pick out a single subject to write about. Then the other day something happened that was more down to earth and personal, a minor observation at a gas station where one man's inconsideration and unsafe actions could have killed us all.

In working on boats I quickly learned the safety precautions necessary when fueling, having read about several and seen one boat blow up from lack of such care.

So, I followed a guy into a gas station the other day and where people are asked to pull ahead to the open pump, this guy stopped at the first one and I had to maneuver around him with a trailer to get to the one in front of him. That was the inconsiderate act.

But that was just impolite, the next two were far more dangerous. First, he put the nozzle into the filler pipe on his car, set the switch to full and walked away, went into the attached store for something leaving the pump unattended. This is the first safety no-no. Even with automatic shutoffs and splash guards, so much can go wrong no one should ever leave gas flowing without someone watching.

Then he came back from the store and without even looking at the operation opened the door and sat inside the car waiting for the pump to shut off. When it did, he got out of the car and pulled the nozzle out of the filler hole. Then he tapped the metal nozzle on the metal filler pipe several times to shake out any excess gasoline that might have spilled on his car. Does anyone know what can happen when you strike metal against metal?


If you can't guess, I will tell you: SPARKS! All it would have taken was one little spark caused by that tapping and the car and possibly the whole place could have gone up. In that situation there is also the danger of static electricity buildup creating the spark that leads to fire as in the attached video. It has happened before and probably will again.





Friday, January 13, 2017

Redpolls

What goes around comes around. In early 2013 common redpolls ganged up in the yard for a couple
of months. In all they went through 11 40-pound bags of sunflower seeds. They were recorded in large numbers at least from Homer to Talkeetna. Since then they have been few and far between, at least until yesterday. I looked out the window and there must have been a couple of dozen of them spread among four feeders in the yard. I had to make a hasty trip to the store for more seed. They are back again today so this may be another irruption that lands them in southern Alaska. They are fun to have around, if a bit expensive. And it's good to see them among the Pine grosbeaks, nuthatches and chickadees who've been here all winter. More to come.

Here's the story of the 2013 invasion.

Friday, January 6, 2017

A whole new level


This trip to the East Pole so far has been one to tax the problem-solving capabilities. Nothing seem to work on the first try. So far I haven't gotten all the way to Plan D or further as I mentioned in a post a year or so ago, where as you try Plan B you should already be thinking about Plan C and so on.
      It started with the new snowmachine which to my mind broke down and proved unusable for almost a whole week. Though I am not a mechanic, I confess to falling victim to the mechanic's mentality in that when something goes wrong I immediately assume it is the worst possible failure. I mentally went through tearing apart the whole clutch assembly and drive chain looking for the failure. What it turned out to be was much simpler, in fact it was so simple I am saying it happened but not what it was. Sufficient to say everything's running smoothly now.
     With the snowmachine running, other projects looked more doable. The first was to put a couple of shelves up in the kitchen to hold spices and other stuff that would clear some counter space. Now, I have written before about the lists of tools I made before I went off on this adventure. I built this cabin pretty much by myself. I have been coming here for the past 30 years and almost every time performed some sort of carpentry task. Given that history you can imagine my surprise when I searched the house and could not find a level to put up those shelves. There wasn't one anywhere in this cabin. How could that happen? I mean a level is the third thing on the list after a hammer and a saw. But I didn't have one. It does explain a lot of things, like why the gravy always flows into my green beans and why I often have to chase a rolling pen across the desk.
     Shortly after I built the cabin I mentioned to a friend that I had some difficulties with square and level. He said he had built his house 30 years earlier and there was nothing square or level in it. Now that I am at the 30-year point (I moved in Feb. 6, 1987) I guess I have reached some sort of notable milestone. I know that place of my friend's is still standing so that's 60 years out of square and level. Not bad. So that explains the title and the picture.

This is the upper half of the 
cut. It is upside down. You 
can see the angled wedge cut 
and the horizontal back 
cut on the right. That thin, 
ragged ridge between them
 is the thread that was 
holding the tree together.
     The next one was bigger than the other two and more threatening and may have been resolved by divine intervention. This is firewood season and I went down the hill to begin cutting. I approached another large birch that has been interfering with my Denali view for years. I did what I always do. You figure which way you want the tree to fall and you cut a wedge out of that side of the trunk. I had chosen the direction by the way the tree seemed to be learning. Once you cut out the wedge you go to the other side of the trunk and make a horizontal cut above the wedge cut. In variably the tree falls away from you in the direction the wedge has indicated. Only this time it didn't. As I was making the back cut all of a sudden the saw stalled, stuck by pressure in the tree. What had happened was instead of falling in the direction it was supposed to, the tree came back and clamped down on the saw, squeezing the bar and chain tightly under maybe a ton of pressure. As  you can imagine, this is a very dangerous, unstable situation. Now I had a tree cut nearly through leaning in the wrong direction and who knows where it could fall.
     After some consideration, and assured the saw was embedded deep enough to allow this, I drove a wedge into the cut. After a few sharp blows, the tree gave a little and I was able to pull the saw out of the cut – one problem solved but there was still this huge tree sawed almost through and hanging on by the proverbial thread.
     I hiked up the hill, collected a come-along and a length of rope. I attached the rope to a nearby tree and the come-along cable around the trunk of the tree that was ready to fall and started cranking. I will tell you that assembly came up tight. I kept cranking, the pulls more difficult with each yank. It reached a point where it was so tight you could have played a tune on it. When things get that tight, you begin to wonder what's going to give way first, the tree? the rope? the come-along? I had a vision of that metal hook on the cable flying at my head fast enough to take it clean off.

     As it was getting late and dark anyway and tired, I decided to give it up for the night and try the next day. Keep in mind through all this I kept a wary eye and ear tuned to the tree in case it started going and before I did anything I analyzed potential escape routes depending on which way it decided to go. With that in mind, I took one more crank on the come-along and heard wood crack. I took a step back, but the tree wasn't moving. Tired, I decided to leave it and try the next day; in the back of my mind the hope it might fall during the night was entertaining if nothing else.
     That's where the divine intervention came in. When I went back down the hill next day, my mind entertaining plans D and E, the tree had fallen, and not only that, it had fallen exactly where I had intended it to – divine intervention indeed. Some of it is now already under the house ready to split. Some days the medicine DOES work.

Sometimes you have to take a step back in order to see the spirit of a situation, rather than the nails and the 2x4s. My friend Joe May does that better than I do. This was his comment:

Joe May Old cabins have a soul, and each its own character. With age they settle into the earth from whence they came. With temperature changes they creak and groan and shift,
seeking comfort, like duffers in rocking chairs.
Rehabilitation is a study in patience, frustration, and eventually...satisfaction. 

Crooked windows, crooked doors,
crooked walls and slanted floors.
Original builder unaware,
of plumb-bob and levels,
and framing square.
JM

Sunday, January 1, 2017

Why didn't I think of that

 
 I came across that picture mucking around the other day in a storage space in the cabin. It's a mock front page of the Anchorage Daily News the last night I worked there the first time around. It's a tradition in the news business that has now probably gone away under the weight of the internet.
     It brought up a memory of a more recent encounter. A few years ago I went to a Christmas party put on by a friend in my most recent and last tour at good old ADN.
     Over the course of the evening I was introduced to a guy about half my age who had recently left the paper for another job. When it came out that I was at that time editing the paper's web page he looked me over and then without the hint of humor, he said, "I would have been your boss."
     I immediately had one of those introvert moments. How could somebody say that, and why? I just stared silently until I finally mumbled something about nothing and then someone interrupted and they went on to talking about something else while I wandered aimlessly looking for some place to get away by myself.
     The next day, of course, the reponse came to me. How do you think this would have gone over?
Something like, "Really? Wow, and 30 years ago I would have been your boss. Oh wait, were you out of elementary school yet?' Only a day and then about five years too late.

Best headlines ever

Naked pair fed LSD gummy worm to dog

Owners of a Noah's Ark replica file a lawsuit over rain damage

In Southcentral Alaska earthquake, damage originated in the ground, engineers say

A headline that could only be written in Alaska: At state cross country, Glacier Bears and Grizzlies sweep, Lynx repeat, Wolverines make history — and a black bear crosses the trail

Man kills self before shooting wife and daughter

Alabama governor candidate caught in lesbian sperm donation scandal

Sister hits moose on way to visit sister who hit moose.

Man caught driving stolen car filled with radioactive uranium, rattlesnake, whiskey

Man loses his testicles after attempting to smoke weed through a SCUBA tank

Church Mutual Insurance won't cover Church's flood damage because it's 'an act of God'

Homicide victims rarely talk to police

Meerkat Expert Attacked Monkey Handler Over Love Affair with Llama Keeper

GOP congressman opposes gun control because gay marriage leads to bestiality

Owner of killer bear chokes to death on sex toy

Support for legalizing pot hits all-time high

Give me all your money or my penguin will explode

How zombie worms have sex in whale bones

Crocodile steals zoo worker's lawn mower

Woman shot by oven while trying to cook waffles

Nude beach blowjob jet ski fight leads to wife's death

Woman stabs husband with squirrel for not buying beer Christmas Eve

GOPer files complaint against Democrat for telling the truth about Big Lie social posts

Man shot dead on Syracuse Street for 2nd time in 2 days

Alaska woman punches bear in face, saves dog

Johnny Rotten suffers flea bite on his penis after rescuing squirrel

Memorable quotations

The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent

"If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us." — Mick Jagger

"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend

A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader

“My children will likely turn my picture to the wall but what the hell, you only get old once." — Joe May

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth. Kurt Vonnegut

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”Stephen King

The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?

My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"

“The rivers of Alaska are strewn with the bones of men who made but one mistake” - Fred McGarry, a Nushagak Trapper

Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”

Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

Exceed your bandwidth—sign on the wall of the maintenance shop at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center

One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends

It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes

Everything is okay when it’s 50-below as long as everything is okay. – an Alaskan in Tom Walker’s “The Seventymile Kid”

You can have your own opinion but you can’t have your own science.—commenter arguing on a story about polar bears and global warming

He looks at three ex wives as a good start—TV police drama

Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker

“You’re either into the wall or into the show”—Marco Andretti on giving it all to qualify last at the 2011 Indy 500

Makeup is not for the faint of heart—the makeup guerrilla

“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti

“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places

As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again

Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

Each day do something that won’t compute – anon

I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration

Life should be a little nuts or else it’s just a bunch of Thursdays strung together—Kevin Costner as Beau Burroughs in “Rumor has it”

You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer

Being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are—Michelle Obama

Sports malaprops

Naked pair fed LSD gummy worm to dog

Owners of a Noah's Ark replica file a lawsuit over rain damage

In Southcentral Alaska earthquake, damage originated in the ground, engineers say

A headline that could only be written in Alaska: At state cross country, Glacier Bears and Grizzlies sweep, Lynx repeat, Wolverines make history — and a black bear crosses the trail

Man kills self before shooting wife and daughter

Alabama governor candidate caught in lesbian sperm donation scandal

Sister hits moose on way to visit sister who hit moose.

Man caught driving stolen car filled with radioactive uranium, rattlesnake, whiskey

Man loses his testicles after attempting to smoke weed through a SCUBA tank

Church Mutual Insurance won't cover Church's flood damage because it's 'an act of God'

Homicide victims rarely talk to police

Meerkat Expert Attacked Monkey Handler Over Love Affair with Llama Keeper

GOP congressman opposes gun control because gay marriage leads to bestiality

Owner of killer bear chokes to death on sex toy

Support for legalizing pot hits all-time high

Give me all your money or my penguin will explode

How zombie worms have sex in whale bones

Crocodile steals zoo worker's lawn mower

Woman shot by oven while trying to cook waffles

Nude beach blowjob jet ski fight leads to wife's death

Woman stabs husband with squirrel for not buying beer Christmas Eve

GOPer files complaint against Democrat for telling the truth about Big Lie social posts

Man shot dead on Syracuse Street for 2nd time in 2 days

Alaska woman punches bear in face, saves dog

Johnny Rotten suffers flea bite on his penis after rescuing squirrel