Over the New Year's weekend I mentioned to a friend who knows this area that I hadn't seen many moose in the past couple of years. That was when someone should have said, "Knock on wood." Three days in a row, now, I have had to chase moose off the road, two in darkness and one of those a little close for comfort. We had a bit of a confrontation until my car horn got too irritating for him. So it goes.
And if more moose weren't enough, we are now getting pounded by a wind storm. When I came around the curve before the bridge over the river last night, bammo a whiteout of snow blowing up from below and before I could even hit the brakes I slammed into a snowdrift big enough to almost stop the Jeep. Then I had to stop anyway because for a moment I couldn't even see the guard rail next to me.
Intermittent power outages since early this morning, to add to the fun. Already have more snow than I have seen in a whole winter since I moved to this area with more forecast over the week. And, of course, the snowblower is back at the shop while we all try to figure out why it is throwing the transmission drive belt. Temperature rose from a couple of degrees below zero when i left for work yesterday to 34 today. That means all the hard packed snow in the driveway softened up and trying to get out today I almost got stuck with the Jeep in four wheel drive with the trailer toting the snowblower attached. That is not an inviting prospect. When you get a four-wheel drive vehicle stuck it is stuck, there is no easy way out. AAA might get a call before this is done.
Soooo, been up since 7 struggling with this including having to go out in the wind to split some kindling for a fire just in case. Could I get away with telling you the wind blew some of the smaller sticks away? I didn't think so. Would have been fun to report, but it didn't happen. One of those days when it's too windy to haul rock. Still, through all of this, the birds are crowding the feeders. Along the drive this morning there was an eagle trying to buck the wind and he was pretty much standing still in the air, barely holding his own. And the drive to work, beginning with another precarious trip down the driveway still in front of me while I try to catch a quick nap.
The road into town is supposed to be clear and very driveable. Knock on wood.
A BIT OF AN UPDATE: So I wrote "knock on wood" but I didn't knock. As a result, I was able to blast out of the driveway and make it to the corner, but about 200 yards down the road I got the Jeep stuck, in four-wheel drive, in a snowdrift in the middle of the road. There's a broad flat expanse of a gravel yard that the wind was howling across only to build the drift up in the roadway. One car was already stuck and I tried to go around it, unfortunately into a deeper part of the drift. Still, I was about to make it when I saw another truck, a white one with no lights on (so easy to spot in blinding blowing snow) and I stopped, that was it, all four wheels spinning. There were a couple of people around to help the first car so I joined in, then we got mine out and off I went again heading for work.
On the way I learned later a gust of 104 mph hit across the mountains above where I was driving at the time. Again blowing drifting snow brought traffic to a complete halt in a whiteout, only this time on a six-lane 65 mph highway. Scary what was coming up behind me. But, we all got through it. Gusts so hard they moved the Jeep sideways, with that big sail area. So now, all I have to do is get home tonight. Winds are supposed to die down a couple of hours before I leave so I should be all right. Knock on wood. Now if I could just find some wood in this sanitary bland office.
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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
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Man caught driving stolen car filled with radioactive uranium, rattlesnake, whiskey
Man loses his testicles after attempting to smoke weed through a SCUBA tank
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How zombie worms have sex in whale bones
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Woman stabs husband with squirrel for not buying beer Christmas Eve
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