Icewind's Ramblings

One more Summer fishin’ and crabbin’ adventure. With the Autumnal Equinox passing today giving Alaskans a ‘normal’ day of almost equal amounts of light and darkness it was nice to have another opportunity to head out fishin’ one more time this summer. In what was a slight turn about of seasons I awoke Friday morning to an unexpected sight . . . the sun . . . with hardly a cloud in the sky?  We have had cloudy and somewhat rainy days the last few weeks so everything appeared to our heading into fall and winter.  I had packed away rain gear and warm clothes so I could layer up if needed for a trip to Homer Alaska to meet up with a friend of mine, Lance who owns an insulation company that I contract with to work on many projects all over Alaska .  He had recently bought another ‘boat’ and he wanted to hook me up with a few of his contractor associates.  It would be a great break from the office to network more work in a social setting. I left early Friday mor...

Yesterday was another one in a long series of days that seemed to go on forever. I had a job meeting for the new super Walmart we are building in Kenai Alaska at 9 am which meant that I needed to be out of the house by four in the morning to make it to the shop, load up items we were taking down, and make the almost three hour drive to the jobsite. We are still in our “light gain” period for another three weeks so we gain about three and a half minutes a day now as the sun slows it trek northward for Solstice on June 21 st . Sunrise is 4:34 AM and sunset is 11: 24 PM leaving the five hours between with a semi-full light for about 3 hours and twilight ‘dusk’ period for the other two. I went to bed Sunday evening just after midnight with the birds still singing their songs and when I awoke at 3:30 AM the light was on again with no clouds to block the soon to rise sun rays peaking out from behind the Chugach mountains to the east of my house. I was not tired as I ...

For no reason at all. That line was from one of my favorite movies, “Remember the Titans!” We do construction work all over Alaska and see some pretty incredible things especially when you get off the limited road system within the state. Our mode of travel at times is sometimes a little unconventional taking a ‘bush plane’ into the interior to some remote village where we may be working to build a school or medical clinic. I have had to be taken once by dog sled from one location after being stranded there in bad weather where the plane could not land for several days so one of the Native locals trekked me over 40 miles to a larger village with an airport so I could return home. At those times Life is an Adventure and you just kind of go with the flow. At others things do not work out so great. A friend whose company does a lot of work on the North Slope recently sent me a couple of photos taken by DEC personnel during a site inspection. Th...

A mother and her young son were sitting out front of a Starbucks having a conversation about God. It went something like this. "Where is God?" asked the little boy. "All around us." Answered the mom. "What does he do?" Asked the son. "Answer our questions about everything." Said the mom. "Oh." Hey Kid! That’s not God your mother is describing, that’s Google. God sees our prayers as status updates on Face book too. Have a nice day! Speaking of religion . . . it was interesting at church this morning as everyone talked about all the recent activity here in Alaska . There was also great music and our youth ministry talked about the trip 34 of our kids took over spring break to Costa Rica to help build a church and interact with the local community. Other topics . . . Spring in Alaska . . . Its great! The temperatures are around 30 degrees after ...

Over the last several months there has been an increase in seismic activity with numerous small earthquakes within the volcano. Beginning last Sunday night there has been a series of eruptions. One on Thursday sent an ash cloud over 65,000 feet into the air. The last time the volcano had erupted was during a four-month period in late 1989 and early 1990. Winds over the last few days has mainly blown towards the north sending a light coating of ash into the interior but after a couple more blasts yesterday the winds have shifted towards the east and southeast sending ash into Soldotna and Homer. So far Anchorage has been spared with only minor ash fall into the city and it has been mixed with snow. There were two more eruptions this afternoon at 5:35 pm and 7:25 pm again causing a disruption of air travel throughout the state. Mount Redoubt bellows steam and ash, seen from across the Cook Inlet in Ninilchik, Thursday, March 29, ...