Icewind's Ramblings

I’m Southern by Birth and Alaskan by the Grace of God so with apologies to Jeff Foxworthy and his “You might be a redneck if . . .” I have put together a few more “You might be an Alaskan if . . .” * Your idea of a traffic jam is waiting for two cycles of the light to change before you are on your way again. * You design your kid’s Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit. (It's COLD in October and yes it had snowed again this year!) * You measure distance in hours. (Is there any other way unless going to Florida or the islands and it turns to days?) * You know several people who have hit a Moose more than once. (My son is like, a moose magnet to the point of we are starting to paint a moose on his driver’s door like the old flying aces every time he hits another one) * You can drive 65 mph through 2 feet of snow during a raging blizzard, without flinching. (It must be the darkness of winter that makes us crazy) * You see people wearing camouflage at social events...

Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it. Ice

What's That Dangling from Your Earlobes? When I first arrived in Alaska years ago, one of the first indications that I had moved to a whole ‘nother planet was when I saw a really nice looking woman wearing nugget earrings. Now you’re probably thinking . . . Alaska . The Gold Rush . . . and maybe Gold nugget earrings? Wrong. Try again! Wrong. No it’s not that “Nuggets” ice cream! It’s Moose nuggets . . . Moose are very LARGE creatures here - - a thousand pounds or so, more or less, but BIG either way. And they produce little brown nuggets, the size of a small pecan and drop them in large piles. ‘Produce’ as in Poop . . . you know, like the last part of the digestive process. I think it is # 2 and possibly # 3 & # 4 combined. I mean LARGE piles on the ground. Moose Nuggets Okay, now we’re on the same page. Enterprising Alaskans do some really funny things with them. They wander hither and yon to gather these nugge...

Sleep is for the weak ! ! ! Ice

A lot of folks can't understand how we came to have an oil shortage here in America . . . Well, I think it may be a very simple answer. Everyone was busy . . . Looking for all sorts of problems to solve . . . There’s that fence thing going on for the border . . . 700 hundred miles for a 2,000 mile border. I hope the installation crew has a good fence stretcher. And which border is that again? The newspapers and the other media didn’t quite make it clear to me . . . I’m not sure if we are trying to keep my Canadian friends from coming here to get some cheaper prices on Guinness or Molson beer or is it the all those fun loving rafter’s floating over from the islands? That’s probably not right as a fence wouldn’t be needed for that, maybe a nice deserted stretch of beach for all of the rafts and inner tubes to arrive with a towel ready for everyone. It must be that Tex-Mex border thing going on with the tunnels and swimmers coming across the Rio Grande...