Take Me to the Moon

A few weeks ago I noticed Niwt had a telescope in his back room. And I asked him why he never took it out and played with it. Sounds like a simple enough question, but life is not simple.

If you haven't been following the weather in my fair city of late, here's an update: it's been freaking cold. Not as cold as when I lived in Fairbanks, but cold. Too cold to ride my bike to work while I contemplate what to do about my frozen truck sitting in the driveway. Anyone who might still be shopping for me, here's a hint - all I want for Christmas is a heated shop.

Where I'm going with this is that I have seen a lot of the night sky lately. Pretty much the telescope lives in Niwt's yard. Which is super fun when you have two big black dogs who are tired of being cooped up in the house all day and one who demands constant fetch with his huge ball in the yard and the only way to get him enough of a run to make the slightest dent is to kick the ball from your front porch over the fence to the far corner of the yard with the gate between yards open. A little more challenging when taking into account the telescope.

When you ask someone a seemingly innocent question it may turn into something like this. Now that I have Niwt looking at the night sky, I have Niwt telling me about the night sky and demanding I come out and see it. And can I say anything about how darn cold it is outside and that I'm nice and toasty in here with my book/tea/elfing? Nope, not a good idea. Now I just have warm clothes staged at the front door and I'm pretty quick at layering the hat, scarf, two coats, mittens, and boots on to go spend 13 seconds outside looking at something cool I have always wanted to see, just not at this temperature.

Last night was one of those things. We went outside approximately 400 times to watch the moon dissapear. It was really cool. And I mean that literally. I eventually got all my presents wrapped and ready to mail, but it took a few hours.

New Digs - 6 Months Delayed

As a study break between finals and final papers and final presentations I would like to take this opportunity to catch up on blog posts that should have occurred six months (or more) ago. I don't even have a clue where most of my pictures are at the moment, but I found these on the camera. As you can see, I have a very light living room that plants thrive in. No furniture, so plenty of bike parking. The dogs love the low windows. And the queen approves of her throne.

I do have one folding butterfly style chair in the living room and Frog totally digs it. Someday I will have a second chair so I can sit without fear of fur.

The new digs are a duplex, which is a nice halfway house between Heaven and Hell, my last two places. This one comes with Niwt, my neighbor/landlord/dog sitter/friend. He sometimes likes to borrow my dog for errands, and now I ask a lot more questions when he does. Last time, he also took Tatonka's harness and together they drug this spool home. Niwt has painted it neon green to stave off the winter blues.

I have the street side unit, but from my front door I can see the park across the creek. There is a major trail along the creek; 4 miles to school by foot, bike, or skis.

Tofurkey Day

After three days of ice, cancelled classes and falling on my but in the driveway, I woke up yesterday morning to this. The rain turned to snow overnight and there was a moose across the street. It was originally bedded down under the tree, but by the time I found the camera and charged the battery it was up and having breakfast. I was too slow to catch more than the butt of the baby's Mom passing next to the front fence. REAL OBSERVANT, I am. Filling in the gaps here for you, this means the Mom was about 10 feet from me when I took this.

This morning I was all about getting to school and tackling my mound of homework. I was a little delayed in reaching the school though. First: shovel the driveway. Next: find the lock de-icer in the toolbox in the house (locking the front door behind me for the second time). Then: bang on door to try to dislodge ice. Next: boil water and call Mom to see how her Thanksgiving went. Poor boiling water along door frame. Return kettle to kitchen (locking door behind me again). Pry open door. Start truck. Shovel snow off truck. Help Niwt's mom carry Thanksgiving leftovers to her car. Stand bewildered and look at hand with windshield wiper blade in it after clearing snow from windshield. Examine other blade to see how to reattach this one. Return to kitchen and boil more water. Pour water over blades to clear out ice. Return kettle to kitchen (locking front door again....). Spend next 15 minutes trying to reattach blade. Seriously consider having hissy fit. Remember that grad school program director lives on next block over and frequents the outside street on his way to the park. Finally get blade on. Return to house to go pee because the coffee I drank two hours ago is done being in my body now (lock front door again). Hope truck does not run out of gas on the way to the gas station.

Other fun activities this week: helping Niwt stack wood. Green wood...... though not as difficult to burn as the newspaper in my house (in OR) last weekend, still no real winner. But it was free.

The winter wonderland that is the yard and park beyond. I pre-paid for my Thanksgiving overeating by going for a run with the dogs yesterday before eating. No tofurkey this year. I saw one in the store last week, but the town was sold out by the time I got around to trying to buy one. So I ate extra pie to make up for the calorie deficit.

Howlloween

Sorry folks, but I refuse to tell you how Thanksgiving went without first telling you about Halloween. Or as I call it around these beasts: Howloween. I know, not original or anything, but it makes me smile, so it stays. Guess what was in the bag.....family tradition with a twist...aka donuts! True to our family tradition, I had donuts and tree top apple juice. But this year I got donuts with frosting and sprinkles, not just powdered sugar ones, but fresh ones! And I warmed up and spiced the apple juice. Also, Smokey and I were treated to 9 trick-or-treaters. I know, huge. I bet they come back next year and bring all their friends though. We gave out full size kit kat bars Smokey had left over from a hunting trip.

The beasts celebrated after glacier ice worm hunting and before trick or treaters arrived. They got locked in the back room with their toys and had to entertain themselves.

Judging by how quickly Tatonka absconded with both the pumpkin head and the purple people eater, Percy's joy may have been short lived.

....Percy is really good at tug of war though, so don't feel too sorry for her.

Milk Glacier

Meet Milk Glacier. Every time I got to a glacier this summer it was with mixed feelings. Usually it had taken longer than expected, the weather had been less than desirable, the snow line was further away, and the dogs were overdue to be let out of the house because my dogsitter was doubling as my field assistant. That being all that it is (namely, life), the first view never ceased to take my breath away.

In this instance it was particularly great. The hike had been steep, the day overcast, the bugs bad, the summit false, and we had used the last of our water (thinking we were just below the summit) to wash a rock out of my eye. Most of the glaciers up here have a substantial lateral moraine from the last glacial maximum 20,000 years ago and often from the little ice age 150 years ago as well that must be crossed to actually set foot on ice. In this case the moraine was not inconsequential. What looks like a pile of loose debris is actually a cemented steeply sloped conglomerate of super sharp rocks. Hence the smile and heightened appreciation of walking on ice.

The really fun part of the challenge of getting onto the ice here was the song stuck in my head while descending the moraine. Goin' up to the Spirit in the Sky is not what you want stuck in your head. Especially if it makes you laugh and teeter on the edge of loosing your balance.

The other major challenge we had this summer was weather. Nice view? Sure, until that damn cloud rolls up the valley again and your gut start to seize up because now you are in the middle of a field of white and your visibility may be about to decrease substantially.

In the end the effort paid off. Here we have the scientist at work. Mostly noting boring details like the weather and time of datalogger launching, but also a lot of details on how I got here, where in the world I left the datalogger and whether or not the route I took was one that should be repeated or avoided for the return next summer.

'What? Yes, I know about the clouds. I'm hurrying. Did you want to take the notes or are you going to shut up now?' I'm so kind to my field assistants. I can't imagine why finding an unpaid field assistant is so hard.

Okay, let's see, where was I? Oh, yes, datalogger installed on a 50 foot tiny little string tied to a big rock at the edge of the glacier. I'm sure I'll be able to find this again next year. Yes sireee, no problemo.

I always feel like I'm seeing the glacier naked in the summer. Or maybe in a bikini? Either way, May and September are my favorite months for glacier travel. In May all the crevasses are covered up with strong snow bridges and in September they are all exposed. What I don't like are moraines.

Flute Glacier

So in-between the biking to work and boating on the lake I've spent a lot of time planning trips to glaciers this summer. Of late these plans have actually been successfully implemented and I finally installed my first datalogger on Flute Glacier August 14th. Of course I intended to install 3 loggers that weekend, but that was just another rock in a bolder field of reality checks.



I don't have many pictures from the two night trip, mostly because my friend Baho was my field assistant and he is really into photography. Plus, his camera was way better. Someday he will have enough time to process the photos and send me copies. Until then, I'll just have to relive the hell, I mean fun, in my mind. Hopefully they outlast my blistered feet.



Major learning points from this trip? Where to start....how about with some physics? Like, carrying a heavy pack will indeed lead you to hike slower. And friction in boots is greater if your feet are wet. Which they will be if the creek you cross is deeper than your boots. Also, glaciers flow downhill. Which means there is a hill there and you have to climb up to it. And a map is not always your friend. Specifically one drawn in the 1950s with 100 foot contour lines. Do you have any idea how tall a 100 foot cliff is? I do. I do. I do. That is how many waterfalls we climbed up next to that plunged over cliffs that did not appear on the map, you know, cliffs - the places where the contour lines meet on the map. It's hard to find a guide book that tells you these things. It seems people aren't really into walking up to and on glaciers. There's a pretty good reason for this. Overall though, we had good weather and I got to do some reconnisance for the other two glaciers I didn't visit. Now if only my helicopter permit would come through.....probably as soon as I'm done hiking and installing the last datalogger.

Sunshine

I think you can officially say we might be having an Indian Summer here. In August I could refer to the one day of sun in July and people could recall exactly where there were like it was the day an important event happened. I for one was boating on Eklutna Lake, but have no photos because the camera was stolen.

Since then we have had several sunny days or at least afternoons and I took to storing my boat with NIWTs at his dad's house on a lake in town. It's sunny this afternoon just like last Friday when we last paddled. I even finally got Percy a life jacket that fits and she is slowly getting used to swimming longer and longer.



The goal is to ultimately get them to both be able to swim along while I paddle. So far she can handle about 15 minutes, so this might be a really long process.

Like many of my friends and fellow bloggers, I've got lots of pictures and adventures to tell you all about, but as my Dad says, "you have to make hay while the sun shines" and it is sunny here today. But I'll give you one little hint about the next post: one of the dogs above is an official SAR dog as of today!