Hello from the few moments I get enough internet access that I can slip in a blog.  I’ll keep this short so y’all can get back to your turkey, or shopping, or football, or what have you.  I’m down in the Lower 48 for my annual pilgrimage to my hometown in Southwest Wisconsin, which is surprising  short of a good cell signal (at least good enough for me to get my usual feed of internet, sports scores, or cat pictures on Facebook).  Will be here through Friday before I make the slow ride home.

Coming down from Alaska requires a fair bit of flexibility.  It costs a fair bit to fly during any heavy travel season, so you have to be open to going anywhere.  What that means is that I will have to find what ever airport I can get to that gets me close enough to drive home.  Truth is, where my family lives is no where near any airport, so I have to drive a couple hours regardless, so be it Chicago, Minneapolis, Des Moines, Dubuque, or Moline (aka Strugglebus International Airport); you take what ever comes in at the right price.  This time it was the massive three gate airport of Rochester, MN.

The bonus that came with it was the drive down.  I took the interstate to LaCrosse, WI which then leads to a road that runs 60 miles along the Mississippi River south to home.  Growing up, that was the drive we took a hundred times over, heading up to LaCrosse because it was where all the fun things happened – it had ‘The Mall’, it had ‘the Burger King’, it had the concerts and movies and things we couldn’t get at home.

Driving that route this week was like heading back in time, more literally than I expected.  It must be twenty years since I been down that way. I was surprised with how little really had changed.  Things seemed updated, cleaned up, but the same stores the same roads and the same things under construction.  Some things being changed, some things under construction as they have been for 20 years.  In a way its nice to see how things remain as they are; but as time catches up with me I sometimes wonder why it doesn’t for others.

But that’s for another day.  Let’s let time slow down for today and enjoy a bit of the holiday.

Happy Thanksgiving … or as they say in Canada:  Happy Just Another Thursday.

Dave Bickler, Lead Singer of the band Survivor, once sang:  “MTU Wants You to Make The Game” … so I did!

This past weekend, Michigan Technological University (aka MTU aka Michigan Tech aka ‘Tech’ … or more directly my Alma Mater) played University of Alaska – Anchorage (aka UAA) in two College Hockey Games at the Sullivan Arena in Anchorage.  Not only was this an opportunity for me to watch the team I followed for the *cough* five & half years it took me to get a degree from Michigan Tech, but it was the first time I’ve seen them play live since the week before I graduated.  In fact, the alumni gathering before the first game was the first Alumni event I’ve ever attended (except I think I went to something a couple weeks after I graduated – but I was drunk a lot that trip).  The MTU Alumni base is not too bad in Anchorage, seemed there was about 20 – 30 of us there (though most were fresh out of college, and kept looking at me as if I was old).  The whole of the weekend started with Pasties (a Cornish meat pie brought to and popular in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula where MTU is) and beer (which needs no explanation) before heading off to the game on Friday night, followed by the Saturday night second game.  In the end, Tech didn’t do so well  against a mediocre UAA; losing on Friday and squeaking out a tie on Saturday.  But the experience seemed to transcend the score.

During those years at Tech, I spent all of it a part of the Pep Band.  MTU is an engineering school, meaning no one goes to college on a music degree – so you get 100 people with little talent but a lot of brains and a good amount of free time, you get some interesting results.  Because being in the band meant we could get back into Hockey Games for free, we tended to be the most loyal, and therefore loudest, fans.  Our school was pretty isolated, being 100 miles from the next sizable city, so it was rare we went to away games — but when we did we did en masse and en voice.

What I really learned in those trips was the fine art of trash talking taking the high road; including among other things you focus on the opponent’s team not the opponent’s fans no matter how much they they want to focus on you.  It’s really fun to get into that environment, because as you start to cheer things and see it start to irritate the other team or the other fans, you just sit back and keep doing things the right way which irritates them even more (people can complain to the usher all they want, but if you aren’t swearing, aren’t drunk, and aren’t picking a fight … they can’t throw you out).  It was easy to swallow when you finished up a weekend and hit the road back home, since of course you don’t live down the street from the other guy.

This time … not as much.

The stadium was quite empty for both games, which made Tech fans the loud element there; but UAA fans (at least near me or weren’t high schoolers) were pretty smart fans.  They were pretty supportive of their team and knew a fair bit of where the flow was going.  I stayed pretty quiet (being the old guy of course) but these UAA fans still got pretty ticked off with some of what we were saying bugged them.  Okay, after getting UAA failed to score on the power play, us saying ‘You suck on the P P’ crossed the line a little … but calling their goalie a ‘sieve’ was really getting to some of them, and that is hockey’s equivalent to calling a Norwegian dumb, it’s being funny by stating the obvious.

Yet I couldn’t stop thinking that I am surrounded by my neighbors, co-workers, colleagues, even curling friends.  Made it a lot harder to be my old college self, or for that matter listen to the responses to what was my old college self.  Sure my team was the “away” team, but I was home.  This is home.  Strangely enough, it was the first time I didn’t feel at home since moving to Alaska.

But that’s what happens when you relive the past a bit I guess.  At least until next year.

What do you get when you combine one of the harshest environments in the country with the only way to leave is by the Boeing 737 you are booked on?  You get crazy flight delays.

When you talk to anyone who has worked up on a rotation on the North Slope, they are bound to tell you about a time they either couldn’t get up to or couldn’t head home from Deadhorse.  I was scheduled to return home yesterday from the North Slope yesterday on a 3PM flight to get me home by 4:40 with more than enough time to pick up the pooch, change clothes, then make a run for a night of curling and beer.  However, signs were coming early that it wouldn’t be that easy.  Instead I made it home by nearly 9PM, and the pooch was still in lock down and the curling match was over.

When I arrived on slope on Sunday, the rumor of a Monday night/ Tuesday morning blizzard was all over.  The slope issues weather restrictions using Phase Conditions.  Phase 1 means there is problems out there, and if you aren’t careful you could be in some weather related trouble.  Phase 2 means the visibility is so bad you need to convoy from place to place.  The worst is Phase 3, where the visibility is inches or feet in front of you; security and safety requires you to lock down where you are at, and if it looks like it will be a while they will send a crawler out to get you.  As a reference, at the worst point the blizzard was so bad, we couldn’t see buildings along the road from the road itself — that is Phase 1.  There was a threat of Phase 2 or 3, but that was never issued.

To get home, you just need a plane on the ground.  If its Phase 2 or 3, the plane doesn’t even depart Anchorage to come get us.  Phase 1, they let the pilot make the call.

On Tuesday, our flight departed on time from Anchorage, which was a great sign.  We checked in, got through security, and waited to see what will happen.  As the pilot approached, he made the call that the visibility was too bad to land.  Since he used up most his gas, he landed at an airport an hour’s drive away (Kuparik Airport).  Typically, this means that we all jump on a bus and ride the hour to Kuparik, and they load us there to fly home (at least that was what the old hands said, that’s a good 40 minutes farther west than I ever been up there).  Trouble is, the main road between the two airports had an oil rig on it being moved from one pad to another, meaning no busing.  So we were told to load up the bus and head back to our camp.  The drive back only made it more obvious we were up against, as we couldn’t see more than 100 feet in front of us.  Once we got there, we all got work calling our billeting office to get a place to sleep for the night, but as we checked with security, and they told us straight up not to go too far.  Thirty more minutes, and the buses were reloaded and we made our way back to the airport.  The pilot was going to make another go at it.  In that 30 minutes, we went from barely no visibility to over a half mile.  It was still blowing but we looked good to see a plane.   When we made it to the airport, the plane was leaving Kuparik for the 20 minute flight.  It landed safe and in an hour we were buckled in ready to fly.

Here’s the thing though.  Remember a couple days ago when I blogged about what it was light to fly to the slope?  The thing that is hardest to get across is that you couldn’t as a passenger treat the flights like it was just another airline.  Everyone on the plane was heading home … not just heading from a place to a place, heading home from work.  This would be like riding a bus or in a car pool.

If it was like any other airline, what do you think would have happened if a flight was delayed?  There would be a mass of people waiting in line at a counter asking questions — there was none of that.  An announcement came to head back to our buses and find a room there.  What do you think would have happened if any other airline threw you on a bus, drove you to a hotel, and said you’re on your own?  How often do you think would that hotel tell you, “don’t go anywhere, the flight is going to happen”.

Now what do you think when I tell you Shared Services is not your normal airline, eh?

Sometimes, the idea for a blog post is as easy as seeing a bunch of people getting confused with my Facebook comments.  For some reason, y’all were confused with how I get to the slope.

As a reminder, “the slope” is short for “the North Slope” which is considered to be anything north of the Brooks Range of Mountains in Alaska (because that part of the state ‘slopes’ down to the Arctic Ocean … now you get it?).  Specifically, when I come up to “the slope” I am flying into Deadhorse, Alaska and taking the buses the 15 minute ride to the Greater Prudhoe Bay oil field.  Deadhorse is a town, but there isn’t anymore than 10 full time residents, if there is at all.  If it wasn’t for the oil fields, there likely wouldn’t even be an airport here.  If you watched the show Ice Road Truckers, you could be familiar with the Dalton Highway (locally known as “the haul road”), which is the only road that connects the rest of Alaska with Deadhorse.  While there are some that come up to the slope by the haul road, but that is a minuscule percentage, and would basically be people who are hauling on the haul road.

The rest of the staff up here come up by airplane.  It’s said there is a rotating work force of up to 3000 people here at any time, all of which average 2 weeks up here before heading home and no more than 3 to 4 weeks straight for anyone.  With that many people coming and going, there are a fair number of flights.  Thing is, it makes no sense for a company like BP who operates most of the field to put everyone on a commercial flight and fly them up here; same thing can be said for the other major owner up here ConocoPhillips.  So rather than buy everyone tickets all the time, they bought their own planes … in fact, they have their own airline.  Because it’s a shared service between BP and Conoco, they thought they would come up with a jazzy and exciting name for this shared service; and that name is: Shared Services.

Just so you understand the scope of the number of people going — Shared Services runs six days a week out of Anchorage flying to either Deadhorse or Kuparak (an hour drive from Deadhorse on the western side of the oil field, where ConocoPhillips has more of their operation); sometimes the flight will layover in Fairbanks for about 20 minutes to pick-up or drop off people from there.  There is anywhere between two to five flights a day back and forth.  The planes are Boeing 737 that hold over 150 people; and are typically packed to the gills.  The flight is a little over an hour and a half and run like clockwork.

There are ups and downs to Shared Services.  Since it is basically like a charter flight, its not affiliated with any other airline — so no Frequent Flyer miles, no upgrades, no bonuses.  There is no first class on these planes either & seating is managed by someone with a sheet full of stickers for each seat, which could mean you are sitting on the aisle, a leatherneck is on the window, and the CEO is wedged into the middle next to you.  That being said, people are on the plane for work – either going to or coming from — so boarding is no nonsence.  Baggage is free, and because most people are hauling a lot with them and bags go directly to the camp, its rare anyone has a carry-on bigger than a backpack.  Overhead space then is pretty open.  Because Deadhorse and the oilfield is an alcohol free area, all you get on the plane is a cookie, peanuts, a soda, and if you want it a cup of coffee.  Heading south, though, alcohol is served (2 drink maximum), and since its the first drink most the folk have had in 2 weeks, that southbound plane becomes a party bus.

That all being said, my flight home this time is a real challenge.  I am booked to leave at 3pm, getting me home with enough time to spring the pooch from lockdown, stop by the house for a quick belly rub, then head off for a night of curling.  Problem is, a blizzard is coming in tonight, which could delay flights – or worse yet keep all of us on lockdown.  Fingers crossed I get out of here.

I got to see something I don’t think I ever seen in all my travels — not one but two sunrises in a single day, and if it wasn’t as cloudy I could have chalked up a second sunset too.

I flew to the slope today.  Since its way further north they have greater swings of daylight.   When my plane took off at 9AM this morning, I was able to see the sun come up over the mountains east of Anchorage.  The further north we flew, the further the planet earth blocked the sun from us, until the sun went behind the horizon.  As we were coming in for a landing, it was making up for time and peaked up just before we went into cloud coverage.  Today, Deadhorse, AK is getting a massive 3 hours 2 minutes of daylight, with it coming up just past 11AM (a half hour after our plane landed), and if it wasn’t cloudy I could have seen the sun set at 2:10 this afternoon.  All of that reminded me how close the solstice is coming.

Somehow, I only partially noticed the waning daylight in Anchorage.  Yeah, days are getting shorter – but with November half over, the rate the days are getting shorter are getting shorter.  Confused?  Good.

Currently (Sun Nov 17th), there is 7 hours and 4 minutes of daylight in Anchorage.  It goes up at 9:12AM and goes down at 4:17PM.  Tomorrow, we drop below 7 hours as we lose just under 5 minutes of daylight.  The thing I keep reminding people when they ask about the daylight is that when the days are really long during the summer and really short during the winter the change is really fast in between.  During the thick of it, you lose (or gain) almost 5 -1/2 minutes of daylight every day.  As we grow closer to the solstice, this rate slows, and that’s when you really know you are in the thick of it.  At the solstice, we will only have 5-1/2 hours of daylight, but most of the change to the daylight will come in the next three weeks.  After that, everything slows to a stop — and you are faced with day after day of darkness.

Unlike the summer, I get to see nearly every sunrise and sunset (weather depending).  I may miss it because I sleep in on the weekend, but when it goes up at 9AM, I have to really really sleep in. It is a lot darker a lot more of the time these days, but still doesn’t feel like the non-stop dark that I remember back in November thru March last year.  It’s still early … and with a travel schedule I am on I may get to see the differences a lot more.

Of all the things that make living in Alaska unique, the funniest are the moose.  For the uneducated, moose are the largest of the deer family (and behind only the bison the second largest land animal in North America) that stand typically seven feet at the shoulder, over ten feet long, and males have large, palm/finger-like antlers that can spread over six feet.  They look like tall horses with long, thin legs, a tiny tail, and antlers.  Okay, they look like dumb horses, with rounder snouts.  Okay they look like dumb moose.  For the record – the plural for moose is moose (as in “look at all them dumb moose, they sure is dumb them moose”).  While moose only wander a short distance south of Canada, they are quite numerous in Alaska.  In 2011, it was said their population was over 200,000; that’s nearly one moose for every three people. The numbers are high enough for annual moose hunts in the autumn to coincide with their mating season and when the antlers are at their largest.  Funny thing about those numbers, they are one of the few creatures like them that don’t travel in herds.  Basically mommies hang with their babies, but otherwise if you see a moose you will only see the one.

Now it needs to be mentioned that moose are quite dumb.  Okay, I already mentioned it, but I guess I can’t make that point enough.  They are really known for only doing three things: eating, sleeping, and making more moose.  Outside of mating season, they wander around from one place to eat to another, and occasionally stop to have a nice nap.  During the fall, they wander from one girl moose to another, and occasionally stop to have a nice nap.  Mostly, Moose don’t care where they do any of this.  If the moose sees a nice treat to eat 100 feet away, he’s going to head there – even if that means walking through someone’s yard, crossing a street, or holding up traffic.

This of course is the main danger with Moose.  Hitting a moose isn’t like hitting a deer with your car.  For one thing, their legs are so tall, you have a chance of just lifting them up so they roll over top of you and come out without a scratch.  You, on the other hand, are in trouble – because your car just hit a 1000 lbs of dumb roadblock.  Every year there are hundreds of “moose vs. car” accidents, and most of them ends with the score being Moose 1, Car 0.

Moose can be aggressive, usually during mating season for the males, and during calving season for the females.  It’s easy to tell when they are upset and usually heading in the other direction works to calm them.  There is a story of an “Alaskan Moment” when a guy was spotted riding his bike in a sprint downhill while a full sized bull moose chased after him; but again, more funny than scary.

What always shocks me is when I am just driving and spot a moose.  A month ago, one was sitting in someone’s front yard near a major street — just sitting there.  I had moose tracks in the snow in my yard as well.  Last night, I had to stop to let one cross the street in a part of the road that was fenced in.  My funniest moment was when I was slowed on the way to work when a moose decided to walk up the road from my house.  Besides only going 5 miles per hour, he stayed on the right side of the road, stopped at the stop lights, and otherwise followed all the rules.

What’s nice about it is that the moose are so goofy that I never get sick of seeing them.  So go on Marty, take yourself out for a wander, and just don’t get yourself hit by a car.

Typically, the first snowfall in Anchorage is recorded in October.  Long time residents say that it is quite common to be trudging through snow for Halloween.  While we had a good amount fall on September 23rd, it did accumulate for long enough to be counted as “the first snow fall”.  So here we were almost 10 days into November without a recorded snow, and it’s one of those things you know you will get hit with, you just don’t know when.

That when was Sunday Nov 10th.

Actually, Nov. 9th we counted for snow, but it was an ugly mess.  We had about an inch or two come down on Saturday, only enough to cover the streets and make the grass funky looking.  Rains came Saturday night, though, which melted it all and made every road an ice rink.

Sunday, there was a prediction of snow, but it didn’t seem to be all that serious.  It started falling just past noon, and didn’t seem to be all that heavy at first.  By 5PM, however, the story-line turned.  While just falling snows (no windy blizzard or white outs), it was really starting to build up.  In the end, Anchorage saw seven inches of snow, as big of a storm as we saw all last year.  In the Mat-Su Valley to the north of here, they had as much as 13 inches.  All this time waiting for winter to begin, and here it is — plus making up for lost time.

Spending the morning digging out everything made for a rough Monday, but the skies are clearing and traffic is moving.

Usually, I would guess this stuff will be here come April, but the forecast doesn’t support that.  Rain and in the 40s come Thursday will mean all this white will become a mess of soupy ugly.

I guess, though, we can now agree that it is winter time.

One of my favorite books, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Deep Thought, the second greatest computer of all of history, is asked for “the answer to the ultimate question of life universe and everything”.  His answer, after 10 million years of calculating, is:

“Forty-Two”

The punchline was, he just gave the answer, without giving the question (which in the most underrated joke of the whole book was later to be revealed as: ‘What’s six times nine?’ proving that the universe was fundamentally flawed).

Today is my birthday, and if anyone asks – I am going to say I am “The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything!” (because I turned 42 today).

So, what am I going to do today?  Great question!  I am going to do what I always do on my birthday — “Whatever I Want!”

November 5th is a surprisingly awkward time of year for a birthday.  Thankfully, it’s not right on top of a major gift giving holiday so I avoid the old “This is your birthday & Christmas gifts all in one GI Joe Action Figure” parent trap; though I did get the “your birthday is right around the corner” for six months and got “Christmas is right around the corner” when my birthday came.  It’s at a transitional period of the year, though.  Fall activities are just about finished, winter activities just started, and an awkward balance exists between the two.  More directly, those fall activities are reaching their peak, where the fun is at it’s top, but the finish is so close it gets depressing. If they finished early, you are stuck in the stupidity of the start of winter and not where you want to be yet.  It’s also that pre-holiday time when you should be getting into shape so you don’t put so much weight on before you can eat like a pig for a month.  In all honesty, there are things to feel depressed about, to feel guilty about, and to feel apprehensive about having a birthday on the 5th of November.

Something I fell into a long time time ago was a great way to overcome it.  When I was in high school, I was the symbol of being an inbetweener, doing both nerdy things (quiz bowl, forensics, and yes, even being in the band made me a nerd) while still being in three sports.  The day I turned 17, we played a football game that got us into the State Championships.  The day I turned 18, I was featured in a School Musical, Oliver.  In it’s own conflicting, awkwardness, those two birthdays I spent doing what … at the time … I wanted to do.    Sure, those days weren’t about me, but if you know me you know that doing things I want means doing things with others around me, not others doing things for me.

Since then, the most memorable birthdays I had were days when I did things because I wanted to do them.  I remember turning 29 in Milwaukee, buying my first keg of beer, and putting it up at The Lower Box – just so I could rely on all my friends showing up and having a laugh.  I remember turning 37, doing an audit with Jeremy Phillips, and enjoying a few back at a hotel in Cleveland.  I remember turning over the clock to my 21st sitting at the Library in Houghton, MI and doing my first legal shot of Tequila, more interested in the music playing than fact I wasn’t going to get arrested.

Probably the last couple years stand out moreso (maybe because I am losing my memory with age).

When I turned 40, I spent a very long, full, enjoyable day judging marching bands in Kings Mills, OH.  I remember the excitement of each show, I remember hoping around & nearly dancing to the music, and I remember hanging out with other judges that night to go over what we saw and what we liked.  Barely anyone knew it was my birthday, but I didn’t care – all I wanted to do was judge, and I loved it.

Last year my birthday was way more subdued, yet still incredibly memorable.  My birthday gift to myself pooped on my couch, puked in my car, and cried non-stop all night.  But that day one year ago was the day I became a dog owner.

So, what do I have planned for tonight?  Whatever I want!!

And I want to go curling.