Icewind's Ramblings

Sad news this morning . . . John Travolta & Kelly Preston’s son died yesterday while on holiday in the Bahamas . Sorry to hear that for anyone’s family but this one had more impact than usual. Years ago when I was a corporate pilot I did my training for my ATP and type rating for the business jet Cessna Citation in Dallas , Texas at Flight Safety. John was going through his training at the same time and we had the same flight instructor during our training. This was after his ‘sweat hog’ days but before he became a ‘famous’ movie star as he just loved flying. We fell out of touch after that time but I was always struck that he was just a nice guy and as we did our check ride in the airplane one after the other the world was in front of both of us. He commented at the time that if he had a son he wanted to name him Jett and later on I see he did that which brought a smile to my face. My heart goes out to you and your family during this time of sadness and ...

In the continuing saga of a cool family living in the wilds of Alaska where the Alaskan Pipeline parallels the haul road as it makes its way from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez , Alaska in a little village called Livengood. Many families living in a rural area face many challenges and ours is no different from those found in our area. We live a subsistence lifestyle living mainly off the land seeking out berries, fruit, and the abundant fish around. Taking time out of our day for play time and the occasional trip into Fairbanks to stock up on food we enjoy time spent together with family. I spend some much needed quiet time with the baby . . . While the children do their work home schooling . . . While Icy washes the car . . . And there is always laundry to do . . . ...

Happy New Year everyone and to start off with something slightly different I present a family living in the far northern reaches of Alaska, out in the middle of nowhere and a figment of my imagination upon seeing some pictures in the Anchorage Daily News . My mind kept thinking of these pictures all night awaiting the approaching New Year. About 2 am under a clear sky and cold night I remembered a small spot on the road on my drive to the Arctic Circle a few years ago to see the Arctic Ocean . I drove from Anchorage to Deadhorse where the oil companies have their camps for the ‘slopers’ who work in the oil industry. As you can see I have too much time on my hands during my one day off to celebrate the New Year. Enjoy. Welcome to Livengood Alaska , population 26 in the summer and the 6 of us in the wintertime. It’s a quiet place where you can let your kids play with no worries unless the abundant moose and the occasional bear wander too close to the house. ...

Is it just me or do you hate those stupid commercials that seems to come out during the holidays? One that drives me nuts is the Jared’s Jewelry Commercial. One of the actresses in it used to be in the “What Ever Happens in Vegas” commercial and her crooked smile (mouth) makes me nuts to watch her. Now she plays one of the ‘friends’ asking if Mr. Wrong has a brother. I was hoping the holiday jewelry commercial would drop off but it has continued so I will please ask, can we stop with the "He went to Jared!" Ads? Is anyone going to be that impressed that you scraped together a few bucks to blow at a mall store only because the pressure and her pregnancy got to you? A better commercial to demonstrate true love might be, "He went to planed parenthood." Or maybe just say no until after you were married. The most misnamed business ever by the way. No one goes there because they had a plan. They go there because they didn't...

Two for Tuesday Observations . . . The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread. My wife has been sick since Christmas Day with the flu with some really nasty respiratory congestion. She sounds like she is coughing up a lung and you can tell it hurts. She headed to work yesterday and I received a phone call alerting me she was at the hospital being treated and had been there most of the day. She was hooked up to two bags of IV fluid, one bag of IV antibiotics, and given an inhaler to help her breathe. There were several prescriptions which needed to be filled so hopefully she can start to feel better. All of this has made the dog Gus crazy with him not getting the attention so he has decided to eat every Christmas ornament from the floor to half way up the tree. Gus has shredded newspaper, paper towels, and even pulled toilet paper off the roll in the hall bathroom and made it all the way across the living room in one...

I have worked for the Hughes Service Center for the last four years The cold has crept into Alaska over the last couple of days making things interesting again. The interior is even colder with their temperatures around the minus 40˚ to - 60˚F below zero. On top of that some areas are getting high winds for the next two days. Texas and Louisiana has their hurricanes but for most people I think they could not even fathom hurricane winds at 40 below. That probably puts the wind chill factor below minus 100+ below zero. That’s Alaska tonight and I do not see the Weather Channel or Today Show doing any live broadcasts from here. They’re wussies I guess as I talked to one of my contacts in Fairbanks earlier today who said several people came into his store wearing shorts. Yeah, we are slightly off kilter here. I had several who made comments to me today about wearing my Hawaiian shirts at minus 20 below. I told them “it’s a dry cold” but really it was colder than...

I saw in today’s paper that there were over 50 vehicles in the ditches around Anchorage yesterday. It doesn’t surprise me as it seems people making the drive out to the valley do crazy things while making that commute back and forth every day. It warmed up on Christmas Eve then snowed all night and day. It lingered into the evening hours but late last night things were getting back to normal when temps started falling again and yes, it finally HAPPENED!!!!. I was shocked to see things had gone crazy here. While out running errands on my day off yesterday this dick in a truck pulled out in front of me on the way home as it has been snowing all day and everything was slick and people were upside down in the ditches. I was able to miss this nut but couldn't quite catch up to him to get a license plate number. Luckily I do keep a camera with me for job pictures so I was able to get a quick picture to help me find him again...