Icewind's Ramblings

Or Flight of Fancy Talkeetna Bound The weather this last week brought some much needed rain along with some flooding on the Kenai Peninsula in the towns of Seward and Soldotna. In Seward the airport runway was underwater for several days and the large town waterfall was so powerful it was crashing down on the bridge about forty feet in front of the waterfall. Finally on Friday evening the winds died down the clouds parted and Saturday morning dawned with clear skies and warmer temperatures. My breakfast was nice with only Frank, my boss showing up since most everyone was out of town this weekend. I did not have many chores this morning so it was back home until noon when I went out to Merrill Field one of the local airports a few miles from my house to meet Wayne (one of my coworkers) who keeps his Cessna 177 (Cardinal) tied down there. The weather was nice with broken clouds so we decided to fly up to Talkeetna , Alaska and have lunch. We did ...

I have spent several years now posting on Blogger.com with not many changes to the original layout or sidebar content. At times I look into going for a revised look or possibly a new host and even created a Wordpress blog of the same name to see if I liked the format better but at the time I did not carry on after the first couple of posts. The idea was to learn code better so I could expand what I had wanted to do but lack of time kept me from pursuing that endeavor. I have now visited hundreds of other blogs in blogger.com land using the next blog icon on the navigation bar while leaving a few comments here and there. It has been an interesting journey and I thought I'd share a few observations. It doesn't take long to notice that the original templates are radically altered on some blogs by masterful manipulation of the HTML code. This is often associated with a very artistic looking blog, and some fine art work. Unfortunately some of these blogs are ...

A lot of you know by now that I try to keep my eyes peering for anything that may strike my fancy for a blog. I think people who observe things or people around them find inspiration almost anywhere. I had to make a late-night run to the 24 hour Fred Meyer store down the street from my house the other night - and it was not the fun kind. You know what I mean, when you were younger and stayed out late at night making that pit stop between parties when you grab Doritos, eye drops, Red Bull and aspirin and you're off to the next hot spot especially here in Alaska where there is the always constant daylight in the summertime. This sortie from home was after eating more fajitas than I should have which was not to say there wasn't a sense of urgency involved in this trip. So I hurry into the store, run to the aisle marked "stomach" (although let's face it, it wasn't really my stomach I was worried about) and stop in sheer awe of the selections avai...

Awhile back I was telling you that I had taken out my hot tub from an elevated deck and replaced the 8 foot x 8 foot hole with Trex decking. I then put up a 12’ x 12’ gazebo over that area making it a covered outdoor “room” for our limited summer season. It took a weekend to demo the hot tub, disconnect all of the wiring, tubes, motors, and covering to be able to get the weight down enough for three of us to lift it up out of the hole in the deck. The tub was recessed into the deck about eight to ten feet off the ground. It took about two hours to lift the tub clear of the deck when we took it out. The hot tub sat on my deck for about 5 days before my next door neighbor told me she wanted it and would get her father to make a flat patio and install it for her. He was an electrician so it should not be too bad for him to get the job done. It has been moved over to her yard now for over two months with no work or progress. I can still see it but it looks like a gia...

I heard someone say, “Opening a new jar of peanut butter is one of the simple pleasures in life.” I tend to believe that and think about that sudden rush to the senses of the fresh roasted peanuts when I open a jar. It smells like Heaven should be and one of the many wonderful smells that overwhelm you as you arrive. Many times I see people who travel to Alaska to take in the beauty and uniqueness to this wonderful place. I’ve talked with many who look in every nook and cranny to find wildlife or that special vista they have seen in books only to come here and either the weather obscures the view or the wildlife is off on their own vacation. It has sometimes been suggested that it is a hoax that the Bureau of Tourism puts on and that there are no real things for the tourists to look at or find other than the signs placed strategically to insure they keep those cameras poised at the ready for that great snapshot. For some of us the search actually come...