Jumbo Squid Strikes Again

The news that "jumbo squids move north, voracious predators may pose threat to Pacific salmon stocks" is wonderful for those of us who are fans of everything calamari. Jumbos are still smaller than the Giants, but I'd love to have a lightly battered lemony ring the size of my fist. BRING IT ON SQUIDY!

Alpine: A Woman Behind Every Tree

Whomever named this place certainly had a sense of humor. There can't be a tree for several hundred miles. We're on the North Slope, just to the East of the Colville River delta, near the Arctic Ocean. Our camp is the Conoco-Phillips western base up here on the Slope. The native village of Nuiqsut is several miles up the Colville. Aside from that community of a couple hundred there's nothing but flat plains, drilling pads and wells as far as the eye can see.

The CP drilling and exploration base is a modest compound of pre-fab quarters and physical plant facilities. Water is pumped from nearby lakes to hydrate the base and power is generated on site. We drove here over an ice road from the Kuparuk oil fields near Prudhoe Bay. The only sign of life was a flock of ptarmigans, barely visible over the snow and a few isolated caribou. The sky and ground were nearly indistinguishable, making it difficult to chart our progress along the drive. Only the appearance and disappearance of glowing skyscraper-sized drilling pads along the tundra delineated the 40 or so frozen miles.

The CP compound here is bustling with shift workers. Some live as far away as Arizona and Arkansas. 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off. And dozens of hours of flying in between. Inside are hallways of small double-capacity dorm rooms with signs posted "Quiet, day-sleepers." There's a dining room with a fake fireplace and no other even ironically charming features. There are "reading corners" in some hallways with pulp fiction and a full spectrum light. Three times a day hot meat and remarkably fresh salad are served up to glazed-eye workers on 12-hour shifts.

Our first day in the field was pretty miserable: 30 mph winds make -5 F feel like -35 F and with blowing snow visibility was down to a few meters. I was sampling snow depth and density and several of my density cores simply blew away.

Our second day was spent over the the National Petroleum Reserve and the weather was far more pleasant. Colder, but less wind. Ice roads had been built to both the lakes we sampled in the Western Operations Area (WOA). This meant we didn't need to bump along the tundra in a painfully slow track vehicle.

Each morning that we were based out of the Alpine oilfield, we were required to attend a 6:00 am "Toolbox" meeting, a.k.a. safety briefing. Since normally we rely on the survey contractors to give us a ride to our field site in the track vehicles, we attend the surveyor's safely meeting. After a discussion of safety hazards specific to the day's tasks or weather and a round-the-room sharing session of personal concerns, we go through a required series of stretches. Imagine eight people in a cramped field office dressed in Arctic weather gear doing toe touches. Though it seems absurd, the emphasis on safety is important. The work here is dangerous (~6 trucks a day were sliding off the ice roads) and medical evacuation could take most of a day.

We left the WOA late Thursday night. It's good that it's already light most of the night here because we got stuck behind a 10-story tall drilling rig. Being back at British Petroleum's Prudhoe Bay Operations Center on the Eastern side felt like being in a classy European hotel after a few days at Alpine. I guess in some sense it is.

Today was my day to leave so our team dropped me off at the Deadhorse airport. I checked in and walked through a cloud of diesel ice smog over to the Prudhoe Bay Hotel. There I could hold court in the galley for the six hours before my flight. In the end, listening to CNN at top volume for six hours was a pretty high price for internet access. The highlights at the hotel included a coed bathroom and intermittent harassment from the workers. There was a funny old geologist who came over to talk to me a couple times. "Excuse me, is the plural for musk ox musk oxen?" And later, "I'm writing a poem about seeing the musk oxen and I want to describe the tundra vegetation. Can you tell me the scientific names for all the tundra plants? I can only remember Betula."

The time passed eventually and I boarded the 737 combi (cargo/passenger) plane back to Anchorage en route to Fairbanks. I'm one of only two women on the entire plane, aside from the flight attendants and by 20 minutes after take off, most of the passengers are drunk. I'm happy the Slope is dry; I don't see how women could work here otherwise. A couple of months ago Alaska Business Monthly's cover story was "Women of the Kuparuk Oil Fields." I think I discovered one of the incentive packages: free feminine products in EVERY bathroom. Who needs stock options when the boss buys your maxis!

The Face of AK

Could someone please get Lance Mackey some full-spectrum light? And maybe some vitamins?

The Dirtiest Job

The informal Urban Dictionary lists three separate definitions for shit storm, believe it or not:

1. n. Figuratively, a huge downpour of shit; not to be confused with an actual dump as experienced by a headshitter

Dude, I fucked up large. Now I'm gonna face a gale force shit storm!

2. When all the shit hits you at once. A whole bunch of criticism, or problems all at once. when in the shit storm you are being shit hammered.

ex: "Man my wife left me, a cop pulled me over and gave me a ticket for no insurance, and no registration, and when I came home my house had been broken into, and burned to the ground, it was a real shit storm."

[NOTE: This entry is from Alaska where all of these events often do coincide]

3. A euphemism qualifying a noun with a greater sense of intensity rather than as plainly stated.

After this past census, there's been an ongoing debate over gerrymandering by elected officials. This underlies the shit storm of controversy over who stands to gain by redrawing the new district lines.

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So this is all I can think of as I'm sitting in a cloud of methane in our living room right now. Hopefully the cloud won't burst and nothing in this storm will rain down any more than it already has. The 25 year-old septic tank finally filled, froze in the pipes, and flooded the house last night. Real bummer. The people you call to get you out of this mess showed up at around 3 this afternoon and looked like they walked straight off the set of a Cohen brothers film.

Not everyone in town will pump your septic on a Saturday when it's -40 F: these guys were true professionals with about 4 or 5 teeth between them. When they discovered they were unable to thaw the pipes from under the house, they moved the whole operation into the house. When I asked if I should throw away the towels barricading the crap water in the bathroom, one of the guys replyed, "Oh no mam', it's going to get worse before it gets better." Great. Well, I supervised as best I could without vomiting while Bob kept the dogs under control upstairs.

As they were leaving I asked them if they ever watched the show "The Dirtiest Job." They said the videographic team was up here two weeks ago filming them but hadn't yet decided whether to run the footage on the "Dirtiest Job" or the "Coldest Job" show. I can totally believe it. Well, we've got some work ahead of us.

Fun in Barrow Sun

This past week I spent some quality time in Barrow working on a snow sensor. What better time to go than when it's -35 F. Actually, Fairbanks was -45 F, so Barrow felt warm in comparison. The sun only made it above the horizon on January 22nd or so, but it was already up for four hours a day while I was there. I'm going to let the pictures below speak for themselves. They include a skinned Polar bear that was shot while I was there, our site operators helping me install the sensor, and photos from around Barrow. Enjoy!

EXCUSE me, is this the line for Paradise?

We've been boring many of you for months with talk of our pending trip to Hawaii. Now we can bore you with tales of how wonderful it was. It really was paradise. Alaska Airlines knew what it was doing when it started offering direct flights from Anchorage. Purportedly, 5% of the state of Alaska goes to Hawaii every year. Go a couple of years without your circadian rhythms and you'll understand. Waking up to the sunrise in your tent feels a lot better than watching the sunrise during your lunch break.

How did we do it, you ask ? We spent a couple of nights on Oahu, staying with friends A. and A. who research 1) whales and 2) reef microbes respectively. These two had some foresight when choosing their scientific passions. Their work has taken them all over the Pacific islands and still allows time for triathlons, surfing, and spear fishing. Not bad. A. and I lived together many years ago in Woods Hole, MA where she would jog to the beach every morning and swim a mile in the ocean. Pretty ambitious lady. She took Bob and I for a drive around the island which culminated in watching the pro surfers catch the 25' waves on the North Shore, some of the worlds best. I'm happy to stay a spectator on this one. Watching the little bobbing men get completely thrashed around by the ocean looked tiring and like it probably removes brain cells.

Next we flew to the Big Island and spent the duration of the trip there. We camped all over the island on beaches like this one (Laupahoehoe) and tried to generate another couple of months worth of vitamin D. We did some amazing snorkeling at the site of Captain Cook's demise and in the Keauhou tide pools. I'll have to post separately on those adventures when we get the underwater film developed.

Another highlight of going to the tropical Pacific in January is that plants are alive. And alive they were. We headed to the botanical garden north of Hilo and found these beauties. For more, check out my album on Flicker. Of course, these aren't like the pros. We saw a number of very serious plant photographers and their giant tripods hobbling up and down the trails. And what would Hawaii be without waterfalls. And volcanoes. I'm trying to provide a sampler here. A pupu platter, if you will, of Paradise's offerings.

The volcanoes were a major highlight, even though the National Park and it's cute little cabins were FREEZING (like 50 F!!). Meanwhile, Fairbanks was suffering -35 F. Ha Ha. So as some of you know, the Hawaiian chain of islands are mid-plate hot spots which are formed by magma shooting through the plate like a geyser. The plate kept moving as this happened, which is how the chain was formed. So the Big Island is the most active, being the current geyser. Maui still has some fire in the belly. The others are like old pimples...scars, but no gooey stuff.

So here's a giant caldera in Volcano National Park with sulfur vapors and steam coming out. Very cool. And stinky. Many old tourists seemed to cluster around the caldera, despite all of the signage telling anyone with respiratory problems to keep their distance. This glamorous lady was one of their handlers.

There was quite of bit of hiking to do all over the park and the island in general. We found these gorgeous pink flowers growing right out of the lava on a hike down to a remote beach. Actually, it was on a foray across someone's ranch. We were totally lost. But found some old ruins where probably someone or another was roasted over a spit. The old ways. Change isn't always bad.

Well, it was a great trip, but eventually we had to come home. The dogs had a GREAT time at doggie camp while we were gone and ended up with these souvenirs. Lucky them. To overcome the 12 new inches of snow in our driveway, we bought a shovel on our way home. Sigh. Time to start planning next year's winter break!

Wickersham Dome, -5F

After our Christmas gorge here in Fairbanks, we were quasi-inspired or at least not utterly uninspired by our semi-pro athlete friends H. and J. to drag ourselves into the out-of-doors. More than just a leisurely ski around campus, that is. Our friends A. and P. are game for almost anything, so all four of us had our first backcountry ski experience. I'm totally sold! Not only because it was a blast but because it gives us an excuse to gorge more! We headed out at day break to the White Mountains north of Fairbanks and skied the aptly named Ski Loop part of the Wickersham Dome trail. Bob votes for the summer hike here instead, but the lack of other people and mosquitoes lead me to prefer the winter trek.
We dragged Midge along with us (behind me) who was having a great time so long as we kept moving. Even sled dogs get cold. All five us hit the Hilltop Cafe truckstop on our way home for some burgers. Well, Midge stayed in the car, but she still got her fill. I think somehow the waitress figured it out. "One hamburger-to-go for table 6, Jeanie. I THINK IT'S FOR A DOG." If you don't mind your burger charred and elongated, I recommend you order from the Hilltop this way: I think there was twice as much meat as in our people burgers.


There's a new book available out from UAF press that has a ton of great info about adventures around the AK interior. I highly recommend it so far. We're putting together a check list of all the trips we want to do.

Le Flat Place

Before Christmas proper, I headed down to Nebraska to check in with friends and family. I took a Great Lakes flight from Denver to North Platte aboard a little Beechcraft 1900. This is an awesome little plane. Unlike AK, the sun still shines (occasionally) in Nebraska this time of year. Here are some sunflowers at A.'s place holding up the weight of the snow. But it's no Caribbean. Or is it?

These palm trees at the local hot tub shop suggest otherwise. Unfortunately there were no pina coladas growing on them.

North Platte is known for a few things. Trains being most of them. Some sources claim the local Baily Yard is the largest in the world. That's a little hard for me to imagine. The same sources claim that "North Platte is an extremely boring railroad town" so perhaps neither fact is entirely objective.

A. claims there is actually a huge market for railroad tourism on which North Platte is a "real whistle stop" if you know what I mean. Again, this is difficult for me to me to wrap my mind around. There is a Golden Spike visitor center despite the golden spike having been laid (driven?) in Utah. Check your commemorative quarters, people.

NP had some other things going for it, namely a couple of cozy restaurants, some good photo-taking opportunities, and of course the company of an old friend.

Arctic Bowl

Boy, you might wonder how we pass the time during these long winter nights. Us too. I have never been overly fascinated with bowling, but I have found myself at the Arctic Bowl twice already this winter. In a couple of years you'll probably see me getting lessons from this Ned Flanders look-alike as is this lady here. We went again Friday night with friends and it was hoppin'. There were several separate clans there which I might describe as "future enlistees and their future wives," hipsters sporting beards who look like the guys in Brooklyn who are trying to look like Alaskans, and a strange M/F couple I'll call the Graceful Bowlarina dancers (Pas de deux).

Amazingly, there are actually at least three bowling alleys in town: one on campus, one on the Army base, and Arctic Bowl. Other proposed indoor activities include curling and women's hockey. I'll let you know how those go. Arctic Bowl is the best because 1) they serve Fairbanks lager 2) they are adjacent to the best (& also the sleaziest) Korean restaurant in town, which is 3) also adjacent to an Asian grocery store. So really it's three exciting destinations in one. And if I wanted to learn Tai Kwon Do there would be four.

The Worst is Over?

Well, we made it through the winter solstice, which is a big deal here. Shortest day of the year. Civil twilight began at 9:32 am. The sun crept above the horizon at 10:58 am. Sunset was at 2:40 pm and civil twilight ended at 4:06 pm. 3:38 of sun above the horizon is pretty rough. The moon was a waxing gibbous at 93% which made it almost tolerable. Right before the solstice we had a cold snap of -40s. Yish. I missed most of that while on travel. Climatology has us at +5 high and -9 low for December; not half bad. According to our friend at Swingley Development, the current running average is probably pretty close to climatology. The cold snap made up for warm anomalies early in the month. The sunlight minimum has passed but the average temperature minimum is typically in January, thanks to thermal inertia in the climate system. We here in the 'banks are all generally weather obsessed for obvious reasons.

What are some of the impacts of -40 on our way of life? Good and bad. Our tires are square in the morning. They tha-thunk down the road until they warm up. On the other hand, freezing food is free. We like to cook a lot and squirrel away the extra in the chest freezer. The cold helps us save on energy costs. With the cost of oil and the cold temperatures, we fuss a lot about energy consumption. Bob's good about installing timers and unplugging stuff when we don't need it...I don't know if it's the engineer training or just common sense.

We recently purchased an "energy efficient" counter top dishwasher from Edgestar. It's slightly bigger than a microwave and supposedly holds 4 place settings worth of dishes, silverware, and glasses. Uses only 3 gallons of water and has an internal heater, so the input is cold water. Perhaps the verdict is still out, but after one load all signs point to "piece of crap". Like all other consumer products these days. And because Compact Appliances wouldn't ship to AK, I shipped it from Nebraska at great expense. Oh well. I don't think our expectations were too high, but like many Alaskans, custom made cabinetry meant no chance of a regular dishwasher. Bourgeois problems.

Well, we've been busy dirtying dishes as well, since our friends A. & P. gave us this incredible cookbook. We love Deborah Madison's Veg Cooking for Everyone, but a lot of these soup recipes are really new and interesting. I made the lentil walnut cream soup yesterday, which was delicious, even with my substitute of hazelnuts. Bob's been doing mad baking all month which is nearly killing me. I finally got out for a ski today and look forward to working off the latest chocolate cake. Yes, I think the worst is over.

Goose vs. Tofurkey

We had a great thanksgiving this year. Two of them, actually. Thursday night we cooked this 9 pound goose. Or rather is started at 9 pounds and cooked down to about 7 after I followed this recipe for Scandinavian-style roasted goose from 1964. It turned out dee-lish. We're planning to roast some potatoes with some of the goose fat next week. I think we should have enough to fulfill our goose fat needs for the next couple of years, in fact. We didn't have any apples or plums to stuff it, so I just used whatever I could find to plug it up: a lemon, an onion, and a potato finally filled the inside.

Bob made his usual crazy assortment of pies. This time it was pumpkin and eggnog cranberry. Wow. Where did I find this guy?

I also made a stuffing from scratch that was multigrain bread, sage pork sausage, sauteed leeks, fresh sage, and craisins. I promised Bob that I'd make it again for Christmas; it was that good!


We had our friends P., J., & M. over and they brought sweet potatoes and bean casserole. It was a sight to behold. As if that wasn't enough, Friday we had a second motherlode of good eats when more friends G., I., M., S., J., & P came over. This time the menu was vegan. I made cabbage roles filled with barley, veggies, and tempeh, which got covered in tomato sauce and baked. I also made a phyllo strudel with yukon gold potatoes, artichokes, onion, tofu, and lots of fresh tarragon. And that went with mushroom gravy, if you can believe it. Bob made a plum chocolate cake which was pretty good, especially after I rescued it from the oven and put in all of the ingredients he forgot including the leavening. G. & I. brought a tofurkey, which was pretty darn good, as well as pie, salad, and half a dozen other things. It's hard to even feel guilty after you eat this stuff.

Sour Cream Cranberry Rye Bread

This turned out pretty yum! We put some of R.'s pluot jam on the bread and ate it with the last of the king crab Bob brought back from Nome in July. The rye-cranberry combo is very similar to a lingonberry bread we found at Ikea this summer. The ground cranberries are subtle and only add a perfumey taste to the rye. The recipe says make two loaves. I made three and let it rise on our soapstone wood stove while we were out skiing.

1 c. warm water
2 pkgs. (2 scant tbsp.) dry yeast
1 c. sour cream
1 tbsp. salt (!!! I used 1 teaspoon)
1/2 c. molasses
1/4 c. sugar
1/4 tsp. allspice
1/4 tsp. cloves
2 c. fresh cranberries, ground
3 c. rye flour
4 1/2 to 5 c. unbleached flour

In a large mixer bowl dissolve yeast in warm water. Add sour cream, salt, molasses, sugar, allspice, cloves, cranberries and rye flour. Blend together on low speed, then beat at medium speed for 5 minutes. Add enough bread flour to make a soft dough.

Knead for 5 minutes. Place in greased bowl; cover; let rise until double in bulk. Punch down. Divide into 2 equal parts and let rest, covered, for 10 minutes. Grease 2 (9 x 5 inch) loaf pans. Shape each piece of dough into a loaf and place in pan; cover and let rise until double in size.

Bake at 375 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes until deep golden brown. If loaves become too brown, cover loosely with foil during last 10 minutes of baking. Remove from pans immediately and cool on wire racks. Brush with butter while still warm, if desired. Makes 2 loaves.

Galliformes!

Well this Bonasa umbellus of the Galliformes order came traipsing across our yard today. Bob's first impulse was to shoot her, as he went hunting unsuccessfully for these little birds earlier this fall. I did a split second calculation about not wanting to figure out how to clean it and decided to shoot it with my Nikon instead. These grouse are related to ptarmigan and prairie chickens. Big, low flying, and slow.

For future reference I found (of course) an Alaskan website on grouse cleaning. This is NFV (not for vegans) but shows some good AK color.

Lady Chainsaws

Me and some girls from work had a ladies' night out a couple of weeks ago. This was pretty fun. The cast of characters included A. from Mexico via Chicago and California notable for her *licensed* Noguchi lamp collection, O. from Hawaii/Nebraska who spent her teen years living in her parents RV and now rides a badass motorcycle, M. who is also a former Nebraskan and the alternate state climatologist (there is a longtime debate about the official one living in Anchorage and some kind of illegitimate usurpation of that crown), and O. who is a German linguist who studies dying Athabaskan languages on the upper Tanana River. Great bunch of gals.

You really know you are in Alaska when the topic turns to chopping fallen trees for firewood and your lady friends offer you their lady chainsaws. Uhhh, I had no idea there was such a thing as a lady chainsaw. When one searches the internet for "women's chainsaw" one finds the following convo:

From: Brushcuttingirl

"Hi all. Does anyone have any suggestions for a good chainsaw for a woman to use? We have several different makes and models and I can run the smaller to medium ones but my biggest problem is getting them started! I just can't seem to yank hard enough. I've been thinking about buying an electric but have heard that they don't have that much power. I read the discussion on electrics on board and it only reinforced my decision to go electric. Mostly what I'll be using it for would be to clean up the woods around the house. Not the back 40 mind you, just around the yard!

Thanks in advance for any advice (appreciated) and comments."

Response from: Phorester

"Sounds like you will be using the saw well away from an electrical outlet, and don't want to drag around a couple hundred feet of extension cord?

On the high end gas saws you can get one with a decompression switch. This reduces the amount of strength needed to pull the starter cord by quite a lot. Your local dealer will know about this.

Also, how are you attempting to start the saw? Setting it on the ground and putting your foot through the back handle while holding down on the front handle with your other hand should anchor it pretty well to pull the cord.

But my wife had the same problem. We could only solve it by letting me use the saw, she used the splitting maul."

Uhhh. Yeah.

P.S. Here's Jill's solution to the problem.

Anchorage Underworld

Well, this post is coming to you from Alaska's seedy center, Anchorage USA. Since I seem to only have time for reading on airplanes, let me tell you about this gem I found at the airport. Kim Rich wrote this memoir about her rearing by a gangster and a stripper in high-flying 1960s Anchorage. Pretty sordid stories, but it's a really captivating book that breaks out of the Alaska literary mold. That's Jello not fungi.

These days the underworld pretty much mingles with the overworld. One need only to stand at the central bus station for a few minutes to witness this. Last year Bob and I watched a station attendant roll a sleeping man over long enough to wipe up the small pool of blood under him, then he just rolled the guy back. Downtown is a regular lineup of cheap ivory shops, drunks, and hookers. And a stolid 6-foot tall blond woman selling reindeer sausage out of her minivan.

I had breakfast at the adorable Snow City Cafe. A real bright spot on the downtown landscape. As some of you know, most of downtown Anchorage was destroyed in the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake, the largest recorded in North American History at 9.2 on the Moment scale. My impression from Rich's book of Anchorage before the earthquake is a mix of northern slum and glitzy nightlife. Well it was rebuilt so that every building looks like the Mutual of Omaha headquarters, which is to say not pretty. Tragic considering the gorgeous ocean inlet and neighboring snow-covered mountains. Now a canyon of brown tinted glass and stained stucco.

Of course, Anchorage people don't see it that way and they have plenty of criticism for Fairbanks. Though I'm spending most of the week with oil barons, I did get to meet up with R., with whom I went to college. She hosts one of my favorite Alaska-based radio shows. And she lived in Iowa City and is hitched to a Nebraskan. So we've lived in many of the same places, just in a different order. R. brought along a friend, H. who is a pilot for a well-known aerial photography company and has seen many corners of the state. We all had a fun time comparing our AK experiences. After a beer under a deafening broadcast of Law and Order, we paused in the hotel lobby to soak up an 50 person strong ukulele jam-and-sing. There is a convention for Hawaiian diaspora here this week and the consensus is that folks in the 49th state could learn a lot from those in the 50th. These people were having a blast.