Really interesting article about a major social issue in this region...

http://www.adn.com/2010/07/14/1367324/suicides-in-y-k-delta-take-toll.html

COOL PICTURES....

-Alaska-

-Skipping Stones at the Glacier-

-Hiking in Beautiful Juneau-

-"Folk Fest-ing" in the Streets-

-Strumming the Metal Tie-

Emerging from Hibernation

Soooo apparently I owe you an update...

Let’s start with…wait for it…get ready to be shocked…yup, Bethel’s absurd weather!!! Unlike all of you spoiled Lower 48 people, we’re still experiencing winter weather here. Honestly, it is the winter that goes on “FOR-EH-VOORRRRRRRRR” (said like “Squints” from the Sandlot.)

On the subject of Bethel weather...One afternoon I was adventuring outside to go meet someone at the Office of Children Services. As I made the short walk across the parking lot my client noticed I was only wearing a polo shirt outside in single digit temps. She then paid me the highest compliment I think I could have ever received from a Native Bethelite...She exclaimed, “You’re a real Eskimo now!!!” I was flattered. However, I quickly assured her that I was nowhere near “real Eskimo” and that the subzero temps would bring me to tears except that my tear ducts were frozen.

Thankfully, temperatures have started to improve here. Just last week, as I stepped off the plane in Bethel, I could hear gasps all around – “WOOOWWWW, It’s waarrrrmmmmm!!!!!” – “Can you believe this weather!!?!?!” people exclaimed. Left and right, jackets were shed and people grinned those bright, warm weather grins you only see when it is REALLY beautiful out. We were glowing! Well, it turns out I’ve just been in Alaska too long. I looked at the airport thermometer…25 DEGREES BABY!!!

While the temperature still says it’s Winter, our daylight has improved quickly. The shortest day of the year was back in December. Since then, we have steadily gained sunlight at a rate of about 6 minutes a day which I am consistently reminded of by one of Bethel’s THREE radio stations. It’s amazing the difference that 6 minutes a day makes. We now have sunlight from about 7:30am-11pm! Of course, I whined about the lack of light all winter…now you’re gonna have to listen to me whine about how little sleep I’m getting because its TOO light out.

In addition to absurd amounts of sunlight in the Spring and Summer another perk of living in Bethel is the exposure to Native Yup’ik culture…and that includes exposure to some unique foods. Since coming to Bethel I’ve tried to keep the attitude that I would try any Native food once as this will probably be my only opportunity to eat foods like Walrus or Otter (yes, seriously). Without further ado, here are some of the foods that I’ve tried since coming to Bethel (with some commentary as well.)

Salmon – (Really good…The first 17 1/2 times I ate it)
Assorted fish – (White fish, Halibut)
Walrus – (Still had the hair on it and was a TOUGH meat)
Herring Eggs – (Actually quite tasty…just add ‘seal fat oil’)
Eel – (Tastes exactly like you would imagine a creature that ‘beautiful’ to taste like)
Seal – (Not my favorite. Very “fishy” and covered in “Seal blood gravy”)
Salmon – (...Ok, getting tired of it)
Otter – (Super chewy and not as cute on the bone…CLICK HERE)
Rabbit – (Not much meat but tasty. Eaten in a stew)
Caribou – (Really good in stew! Little bit ‘gamey’)
Moose – (Unfortunately, we didn’t catch this one…But still my favorite meat since coming to Bethel)
Oh yeah, did I mention Salmon?

If you’re interested in recipes for any of the aforementioned foods then I’d be happy to share!

Other Bethel notes…

I finally saw the Northern Lights for the first time since coming to Bethel. It wasn’t quite as astonishing as the pictures you see online, but it was cool nonetheless. I can finally cross it off my Alaskan Bucket List!

Despite the vote back in October that made Bethel “wet”, no alcohol has been sold…well, legally at least. Of course, with these votes, there’s always a “catch”. Even though we can technically be a “Wet” (legally sell and purchase alcohol) city…Before any establishment can get a liquor license they need to apply for one through City Council. To date, City Council hasn’t approved a single license and it doesn’t look like they will anytime in the near future. For now, to possess alcohol, it must be bought and shipped in from Anchorage. While people can’t legally sell in Bethel there are still benefits to the decreased restrictions. For one, people are no longer charged with felonies for “bootlegging” alcohol in Bethel. This is really important because felony convictions carry far greater repercussions for our clients. It was absurd that, in a city where people can legally drink, selling alcohol resulted in felony convictions. (Jumping back OFF my soap box now)

I also just got back from an amazing adventure in Juneau where my roommates, my girlfriend Alexia (our honorary JV) and I were in town for the annual Folk Music Festival. While I’ve never been particularly attracted to Folk Music…well…ok, so I’ve always thought Folk Music was a little weird…it was actually a really fun weekend. Where else, but at Folk Fest, can you see someone playing a shovel while their band-mate strums his metal tie?!?! I also don’t think I’ve seen that much flannel since the annual Lumberjack Convention. ONLY IN ALASKA!!!!

Mackey (and "I", using the transitive property) Wins Iditarod...AGAIN

Here is a quote from my post back in January at the K300 Dog Sled race in Bethel...

"Mackey’s team (winner of last three Iditarods, ESPY nominee) came sprinting up the river bank in second. I quickly checked him in, noting his time and having him sign the log. For the sake of a speedy turnaround Mackey asked me to hop on his sled as he grabbed the lead dogs and we maneuvered the sled around the checkpoint back to the river bank. I think that single moment of sheer glory, actually standing on a legendary musher's sled is about as close as I’ll ever get to racing in the Iditarod. You gotta start somewhere!"

Today he won his fourth Iditarod IN A ROW. He was competing against 70 other teams over an almost two week race. CLICK HERE for article.

Clearly, he couldn't have done it without me!

Much Needed Article Misses the Point

Article about the Office of Children's Services in Bethel. OCS is the organization that removes children from the home. We are then assigned to represent the parent.

OCS is responsible for removing children, helping the parents identify and address the problems at hand and ultimately re-unify with their children....

(CLICK HERE)

This article completely misses the point. "Bandwidth" is NOT the problem. They need EMPLOYEES first, then maybe bandwidth becomes an issue....

The "Three Stooges"

Last weekend, my roommates and I had the unique opportunity to run a checkpoint in the “greatest mid-range dog race in Alaska”, the K300. The K300, is named for the 300 mile course that begins in Bethel and runs 150 miles up the Kuskokwim river before turning around and heading back to this wonderful “city”.


Joe, Ariel and I were stationed in the village of Kalskag. It was about an hour flight in one of those tiny prop planes that make you feel like you’re on a never-ending rollercoaster ride. My family will be shocked to know that I decided, in order to combat the stomach plummeting turbulence, to just pass out. Waking up in Kalskag I thought we had accidently flown to Anchorage. There were trees AND mountains…well actually the locals called them “hills”, but after living in Bethel for the past six months where the highest point in any direction is a water tank...they were MOUNTAINS!


Our job in Kalskag was to check dog mushers into the checkpoint as they arrived and make sure they had everything they needed for their dogs such as food and hay. 18 Mushers from all over the state originally signed up for the race, which included an $800 entrance fee. However, the weather and trail conditions were so poor that 5 mushers dropped out before the race even started, leaving 13 Mushers to take part in the race with a $100,000 purse. The temperature was dipping into the -50’s with wind-chill and good snow was hard to find with the majority of the course running on glare ice. (We recently had a warm spell and a snow drought). Among the group of 13 that decided to brave the conditions were some of the best mushers in the world including 4-time Iditarod winner Martin Buser and perhaps the most famous musher of all Lance Mackey. Mackey has won the last three Iditarods, was an ESPY nominee in 2008 and is also featured in Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong campaign as a recent survivor of throat cancer.


When we landed in Kalskag on Friday afternoon it was about -15 degrees…and a mere -40 degrees with wind-chill. Standing on the runway (in most villages it's just a gravel strip) it hit me, like a 40 mph gale of ice-wind, how underdressed I was for the weekend. I was wearing a jacket that had served me well for all of my snowboarding/outdoor adventures out east but it definitely was not intended to spend hours in the bitter Alaskan cold. I also was wearing leather “work boots” which became a running joke at the awards banquet. Joe, Ariel and I became lovingly known by the mushers and K300 staff as the “Three Stooges.” It was clear to everyone involved that we hadn’t been in Alaska long when we showed up to the K300 without bunny boots. These very stylish boots are a staple in Bethel. They're about as warm as they are goofy.




Over the next few days the temperature was around -25 or so with wind-chill hitting -55. Experiencing this kind of cold on a walk to work is one thing. Standing outside in the middle of the night when it's that cold is an experience entirely unlike anything I have ever had. When it's that cold, your face masks, eye brows, beards (if I could go grow one) ice over from your breath and just looking into the wind forces your eyes to tear. It's almost too cold for a runny nose.



Our first night at the checkpoint we got to bed around midnight and woke up at 3am to prepare for the arriving mushers. Around the 3:30 the first mushers started to arrive. On the way up the course the mushers were required to take a 6 hr layover at our checkpoint, Lower Kalskag High School which sat right on the river bank. When a musher arrived we noted their time in and helped them park their dog team, which we discovered, was fairly miserable when you’re dealing with 14 exhausted/hungry dogs and 1 sleep deprived musher. If any of the dogs were injured or too fatigued to continue they would be left at the checkpoint, as “drop dogs”, under our care. The 6 hour layover seemed like a promising time for some sleep but it turned out that it just wasn’t meant to be. Just after the last of the mushers arrived in Kalskag (some four and half hours after the leaders) the frontrunners were already stirring, anxiously awaiting the green light to hit the trail after their mandatory layover.



Once the mushers all left our checkpoint, around 2pm that day, we were finally able to catch some sleep before preparing for their return early the next morning. The second and final time the mushers passed through Kalskag it was clear that the weather and trail conditions were taking a toll. Mitch Seavey, the reigning K300 champ arrived at our checkpoint complaining about sore eyes….Turns out his eyes were FROSTBIT! The brutal wind and grainy snow had been whipping Mitch’s bare face for hundreds of miles. “Where the #*$*@ were his goggles?!?!?!” you might ask. Welllllll, despite how crazy it sounds (especially going into a 40 mph headwind) racing without goggles is not uncommon. Eyewear easily fogs up from the musher’s warm breath. Sooo obviously, several mushers had some serious windburn and one other musher’s eyes were “frost nipped.”


While the frostbite on humans sounds bad, the dogs suffered perhaps the worst maladies of all…well, more specifically, the male dogs suffered the worst maladies. Something I had never considered was the dogs getting frostbitten...well...they do....and it ain't pretty. Parts of the male anatomy of a dog are pretty vulnerable. These dogs are then racing hundreds of miles where these “parts” are exposed to ice, frozen tundra and 40 mph winds. I’ll let your imagination do the rest... Lets just say that we had several male “drop dogs” that were none too happy.

Perhaps the coolest part of the entire weekend came at 5am Sunday morning…We knew that three mushers, Mackey, Buser, and Baker had all left the previous checkpoint within minutes of each other. However, over 50 miles a couple minute spread can easily turn into a 45 minute spread between mushers. This morning however, as we stood on the river bank, squinting into the piercing wind (tears were literally freezing at the corners of my eyes) we could just make out 3 headlamps off in the distance. Moments later the three teams (looking about as beat up as you can imagine) arrived within seconds of each other. Mackey’s team (winner of last three Iditarods, ESPY nominee) came sprinting up the river bank in second. I quickly checked him in, noting his time and having him sign the log. For the sake of a speedy turnaround Mackey asked me to hop on his sled as he grabbed the lead dogs and we maneuvered the sled around the checkpoint back to the river bank. I think that single moment of sheer glory, actually standing on a legendary musher's sled is about as close as I’ll ever get to racing in the Iditarod. You gotta start somewhere!


Just like the marathon, every musher (and checker in this case) tells themselves that they will “most certainly NEVER put themselves through this misery again.” And yet, at the banquet, the mushers, though tired, were once again in good spirits…many of them even declaring their candidacy for next year’s K300 title. They were in such good spirits that the Veterinarian, Radio guy from Anchorage, our Race Marshall and a few mushers had no problem dishing out some good natured trash talk about the “Three Stooges at the Kalskag checkpoint” during their few moments on stage to accept their awards. We eventually got enough recognition that the MC decided it was necessary to introduce us to the semi-confused crowd.


The winner, John Baker, ended up finishing the race in just about 50 hours. That’s right, 50 hours on a sled in -50 degree weather and maybe 6 hours of sleep over the 3 days. May I also point out that for the first half of the race he was going INTO 30+mph winds.


The K300 was an absolutely amazing experience but I have come to a somewhat devastating realization…

I NEVER want to be a dog musher!

Brrrrrrr

Ok, so I’ve been a big time blog slacker of late and I’ve got a couple of major updates since my last post.
1) I’m freezing my snowballs off.
2) I’ve made some headway on my quest to win the 2010 Iditarod…

So, I’ll start with being cold…since that’s exactly what I am ALL day. The weather has taken a serious dip in the past few weeks. To be short, it was nearly -40 degrees with wind-chill on my way to work on Thursday! This past week it’s been consistently -10 to -15 degrees without wind-chill. Honestly, I thought I was pretty tough and fairly prepared for the weather here. I mean, c’mon, I’ve survived a few Boston winters! But, it is so cold here that when the weather climbed up to about 5 degrees early in the week I was walking around with out a hat and several people declared it, “warm”.

To make it even more challenging, the sunlight is heading the way of the warmth…Sunrise is after 10am each morning now and it is setting before 5pm. Now that’s not too bad but, as I’ve mentioned before, we’re losing our sunlight at a rate of about 5 minutes every day. It’s amazing to think about but we’re actually just under a month away from the darkest day here. On December 20th, the winter solstice, we’ll have just about 4 hours of day light. In anticipation for this I’ve already started taking Vitamin D supplements, and plan on spending at least a little time in front of our “happy” lamp.

Don’t get me wrong…I’m not complaining. I think this is awesome! I’m not sure I’d want to deal with this every winter but I’m very excited to experience what’s well known as a “Bethel Winter”. Even in Alaska, you’re considered pretty hardcore if you live in Bethel. And, there are some really cool benefits to this weather. For one, my walk to work has been almost cut in half. Typically, I had been walking through my neighborhood to a boardwalk that crossed the tundra and ponds to my office. Now I walk out my backdoor and walk straight across the tundra and a pond to come up right behind my office. There is also some cool recreation that comes with the cold. For all of you current and former (tear) BC students you’re probably familiar with “Broom Ball”. The Campus School at BC held a Broom Ball tournament every year in Conte Forum. Well, every Saturday since we arrived in Bethel there have been pickup sports games. It started as soccer and turned into flag football once the fall came. And now, we’ve advanced on to weekly Broom Hockey games. This is no rag tag pick up game. We have official broom hockey sticks that look almost like upside down lacrosse sticks. The ball we use is very similar to a mini-soccer ball. Even at -10 degrees Saturday we had almost twenty people out there for a couple of hours. For the Broom Hockey newbies, the sport is played in sneakers/boots and is just like roller hockey with out any pads, even for the goalies. They’re so hardcore here we even (kind of) play with offsides! Our Swamp Donkey’s team would have our work cut out for us! And it should be noted, that since we’ll have ice here until April, our Broom Hockey season will take us through March...

As for the Iditarod…Recently (and fairly unintentionally) I received a crash course in dog-mushing. Our family friends, the Klejka’s, have their dog team and sometimes need a hand running the dogs. When mushing the dogs outside of town on the tundra you need a small crew of people just in case things go awry…and with a team full of dogs that have been waiting impatiently to get out and run around, small ‘hiccups’ are likely. On the sled, you have the Musher; the person who is standing and controlling the dogs. There is also someone who sits in the sled. Basically, their job is damage control. Typically this has been my job. I was handed a pair of hooks attached by about 8 feet of rope to the sled. In case the Musher gets tossed from the sled, I can theoretically stop the dogs simply by tossing the hooks to the side and allowing them to catch in the tundra, pulling the sled to a painful and abrupt stop. "Theoretically" was the key word in that sentence. A couple times on our training run, our fearless musher Jessie was thrown from the sled leaving me in a semi-panic stricken, semi-ecstacic state bouncing around on a runaway sled. And, while the hooks stick well in the snow on the Tundra, they are completely useless on ice. A couple of times I was left trying to jam hooks into the frozen ponds as the dogs pushed eagerly on into the great Alaskan wilderness. Needless to say, I finally jammed the hooks into the ground once we reached a patch of tundra, Jessie breathlessly stumbled up to the sled and we made it back to tell the tale. It may not have been the smoothest few practices but I’m finally making some serious progress in conquering the Iditarod. In fact, Jessie Klejka’s older sister Jessica (interesting fact: all 9 members of the Klejka family begin with ‘J’) actually won the Jr. Iditarod last year in dramatic fashion, coming in just 3 seconds ahead of the 2nd place finisher after having to carry an injured member of her dog team on her sled for the final leg. Soooo, I’m learning from a family of winners…Basically, it’s in the bag!