Icewind's Ramblings

It has been hard to find time to post lately as many things are happening right now so finding time to sit and let the writing flow has been hard for me.   Not writers block by any means but I just haven’t felt like putting words to paper or in the digital age we live in type or text to some machine. I traveled to a couple of villages last week and seeing them in an unfrozen state with children playing and jumping off the bridges into the water (freezing cold to many of us) and swimming in the river enjoying life in a much simpler way than many in the modern cities. I enjoy my time in the villages and talking with the people and children who always seem to come out to see me when I am there.   I do not know if it is because a ‘stranger’ is in town or they are curious to this dude with Hawaiian shirts and baseball cap riding around on a 4 wheeler.   They come out and want to ride or see if I have anything for them, like kids all over the world have done in my travels. ...

It is hard to believe that it has been 20 years since the start of Desert Storm in the Gulf War to rid Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, Iraq still owes its smaller neighbor billions in reparations and more than 1,000 people are still missing. Saddam is long gone . . . many of us only remember his statute falling at one of his palaces and the excellent “war” coverage by CNN. It was in August 1990 that Iraq invaded, declaring that Kuwait was its 19th province.  The United States led a counteroffensive starting January 16, 1991. War came to television in real time with the CNN broadcast by Peter Arnett, Bernard Shaw, and John Holliman who gave us continuous coverage from Baghdad for the first 16 intense hours from their room in the Al-Rashid Hotel.  January 17, 1991 the world’s new organizations and everyone on the planet was captivated by what was happening. Wolf Blitzer and Nic Robertson (the sound man during that broadcast) look back at the start of the war and it is i...

Happy Holidays! Ice

Tomorrow is Bike to work day and my company is hosting a BBQ for our new interns who come in to work with us during the summer months.  The combination bike day and a welcoming BBQ will make it a fun time and the weather is looking great for the event.  I was volunteered to help cook and people were bringing side dishes and deserts.  I figured I would give everyone a treat with my slightly different baked bean recipe. Baked beans are a favorite side dish in the South.  It's rare to go to a barbecue or to a pot luck dinner and not see a baking dish with baked beans. Some baked beans are a whole lot better than other baked beans . . . it takes some "doctoring up" to make the really yummy baked beans . . . the kind that means you come home with an empty casserole dish or crock pot.  If you’re really lucky someone will take the cornbread and lap up the juice in the bottom of the dish. There are probably as many baked bean secrets in the South as there are South...

It has been busy here with work and travel as the construction season ramps up.  I had written these next couple of posts while I was out in the bush last week but did not have internet in the villages I was in so I’m going to try to catch up now over the next couple of days. Monday 5/26/10 I’m on another trip for work so leaving the office around noon on Monday seemed kinda weird not being there all day long.  Getting the items done and heading off to the airport midday was not something I had done before.  The weather was deteriorating as I arrived for the Alaska Airlines flight down to Kodiak.  I had a late afternoon meeting and would overnight in Kodiak and head out early Tuesday morning once my superintendent arrived from Anchorage . The flight down is short in just under an hour flight time.  There is no time for coffee, snacks or in flight movie.  We quickly climbed out to altitude which was 33,000 feet and leveled off briefly before starting o...

I work in an engineering firm where we have a wide mix of people working in our various departments.  We are the division of the Native Hospital group that provides the design, engineering, and construction of clinics and water and sewer projects in rural (bush) Alaska .  With it brings great changes to many lives that have never had medical care or running water/sewer in their homes before.  These changes with something simple like clean water help those families live a healthier life with less trips to the “city” for medical care. Working within an “engineering” environment sometime means you can have a little fun with co-workers as their analytical ‘mindset’ seems to run a little differently that those of us who have a more practical ‘street smart’ way of thinking. I put up a "Microwave Use Tracking Form" in the break room before everyone arrived this morning to see what if anything would happen.  It had blanks for writing down what you heated up, when and ...

As many of you know with my work I travel all over the State of Alaska visiting many of the rural bush villages where we build clinics, water and wastewater treatment plants, large water tanks and lagoons for treating sewage. It is very fulfilling work seeing the differences made in people’s lives who may have never had indoor plumbing to bathe, wash clothes, or even brush your teeth with suddenly have these conveniences many of us take for granted. With the travel come many different forms of transportation.  I have flown in all kinds of airplanes, snow machine, 4-wheel all terrain vehicles and even on a dog sled.  The weather conditions are often ever changing even within an eight to twenty four hour period. A few weeks ago I posted about several of my recent trips, one to Selawik and the other to Old Harbor where I have projects going. The trip to Old Harbor has two flights on Alaska Air Lines between Anchorage and the City of Kodiak .  They are Boeing 737...

With the ongoing problems with people trying to do harm to our country there is a way that these ‘enemy combatants’ . . . yes we are still at ‘war’ after the attack on our country on 9/11 . . . could be handled that is workable for almost everyone. Trying to solve the world’s problems with style takes thinking outside the box.  This administration has been trying to figure out what to do with the Gitmo detainees.  Do we close the facility or continue to keep them in Gitmo? De we set them free to wander off to parts unknown to continue their mission?  What about sending them back to their home country to be revitalized into their organized cells?  Do we let them loose inside America to wreak havoc on our soil again? How do we get our heads around this so that it makes sense and can be monitored to ensure our safety?  This might work and can be done with technology that is already used . . . just modified somewhat in scope and magnitude.  Each detai...

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...

* Warning rant ahead, bifocals optional. I’ve been out of town lately so I have been somewhat lacking in the news department for the last month so when I started to catch up on a few things I was blown away about a few things. Probably many of you were too. Turns out AIG again took millions of dollars of the bail out money the Government gave them and paid more executive bonuses. Now this is the second set of bonuses paid since the financial collapse started. One guy received six million dollars. I read that over fifty others got more than a million. All right, it is an outrage. But wouldn’t you want to work at a company that rewards failure on a historic level with million dollar bonuses? I don’t know about you but I have never screwed something up on a job to the point where we had to go beg the Government for financial help three times and then the boss sat down with me to write a giant check. I wonder what you get for doing your job really well...

Continuing my post from last night it has been hard to get the song Fishin’ out of my mind all day today. There were a few flurries but warmer temperatures in the twenties so not a bad day unlike a few weeks ago. Friday the 13 th had no bad incidents only the normal hustle and bustle that goes with a Friday. Too much to do, not enough time to get it done, and other things pulling me in many directions keeping me from the items I wanted to accomplish by weeks end. I apologize for the size of the pictures as for some reason the scale is not bringing them down to the size I expected. I hope it is not a pain to look at them. Last summer there were several trips doing all kinds of fishing which is pretty normal for me? My brother in law and me for the last several years embarks on a crazy 72 hour fishin’ marathon where we load up some food and first head out to a local river (Eklutna Tailrace) here in Anchorage after I get off of...