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!

"TREEEEES!!!"

So this dated in October because I wrote it a while ago and forgot to post. Anyway....

Never have I been so excited to see trees than when I stopped off the plane in Anchorage at the end of October. We spent about 5 days in the CITY as part of our JVC Alaska retreat. The houses from Sitka, Juneau, Bethel and Anchorage all met in Sara Palin's stomping ground, Wasilla. Now that I think about it, there was a woman hawking books on a street corner that looked very similar to her. Hmmm........

One of the coolest parts of my weekend in the Anchorage area was a hike that I went on with my roomates John and Joe and our friend Greg from the Sitka house. Anchorage is beautiful. It sits right on the water and is surrounded by mountains in nearly all directions...basically the complete opposite of Bethel. Our adventure-starved crew rented a car and headed off to the nearest mountain trail. We ended up on a pretty amazing hike and experiencing our first Alaska snow. It was about 50 degrees at the base of the mountain but up near the summit it was snowing.




Just when we thought we had finally made it back to the base, we got word that there was a herd of moose just a short walk away. We certainly weren't about to let a real, in the wild, moose sighting pass us by. We hustled down the path until we discovered the perfect "National Geographic-like" scene. 16 moose were grazing just a 100 yards away! Bethelites would have been in moose heaven!

Wild Times in Bethel!!!

This past week we had an absolutely wild Friday night! And by, "absolutely wild Friday night" I am not referring to any raging parties or adventures on the town. Our wild night included...

1) Going to the "Friendly Dog Farm" where John, Jamie (our area director) and I took care of the 35 sled dogs, the same ones that I helped run in the past. The caretakers were away for the weekend and by some miracle decided that they trusted us enough to care for their prized possesions while they were gone. Taking care of these dogs is very different from anydogsitting I've ever done. At no time were we sprinkling kibble in a bowl, patting the dog playfuly on the head or tossing them a cute little doggy treat for being good.

First was the feeding...The moment the dogs even THINK that you're within 100 yards of the dog farm the howling begins. Ever hear 35 hungry dogs howling like they hadn't been fed in three weeks? When Casey was giving directions before the weekend she made sure to explain everything a good distance from the dog yard. Barely paying attention I chuckled to myself thinking, "what the hec is she so worried about?" Well, I learned very quickly. Once we got through the gate into the dog yard even trying to talk to John, who was 5 feet away, was a near impossiblity. I felt like a quarterback trying to send signals to my teamates amid the deafening roar of the crowd at an away stadium. (Basically, nothing like Alumni) John and I quickly retreated to a corner, all while dodging dogs left and right, where we strategized the best way to go about our business. I addition to the hostile atmosphere the food can really send you staggering. These dogs don't get your run-of-the-mill kibble. We had to make a carefuly measured concoction of kibble, left-over restaraunt grease, and chunks of salmon (bones and all) from a pot of a "fish stew". This fish stew is basically just a giant pot (about 3 feet in diameter) of water and full dead salmon. Let me tell you, salmon doesn't smell so good when its left out in a pot of warmed water. The farm has a walk in freezer stocked floor to ceiling with the salmon they use for the dogs. And, according to Casey, they make a transistion from salmon to BEAVER for the winter. In addition to feeding the dogs we also had a few other "small" tasks. One dog needed to take pills (why, I have no idea). All I know is I was the lucky one who got to stick the pill down Rudy's throat. I'm just glad Rudy liked me...I still have all my fingers! Other responsibilities include scooping poop, taking care of some month-old puppies (really cute), and making sure none of the dogs have escaped from their chain. A dog freeing himself from his post is not unlike the scene of a jailbreak. As soon as a dog's free, mayhem erupts! Every other dog in the yard starts hooting and hollering and straining as hard as they can against the heavy duty chain to join the escape. We only had one attempt that was succesfuly foiled when the dog dragged his chain and pole along with him through the yard just a few feetbefore he got tangled with another dog. "FREEEEEDO...ughhhhh"

2) Once we finished with the dogs we headed home. Our journey was interrupted, however, when we noticed a pack of cars on the side of the road and people standing in truck beds craning their necks to see something in the brush. We obviously had to stop and check out the situation. What if we missed something exciting in Bethel?!? We would never forgive ourselves...just kidding...but seriously, we wouldn't. John slammed on his breaks and we all leaped out of the car to see what was going on (John was so excited that he forgot to put the car in gear and it started to roll away...) Turned out that two young moose calves had wandered into town. News got around fast because half of Bethel was there to see them. Even being in Alaska it is extemely rare to have moose in Bethel. Part of the reason is that Bethel is surrounded, for the most part, by tundra which isn't exactly known for being ideal for moose. Unfortunately for my roomates and I there's a no hunting law in Bethel (something about 'safety concerns'), not to mention that moose hunting season was over. The moose flaunted their immunity and seemed to enjoy the attention as all of Bethel watched with excitement. I stood in awe watching these moose eat their dinner, then it hit me...I have been transformed, at least partially, into a Bethelite. Looking around at the masses of people I felt like part of the community and i was really having FUN watching a moose eat a bush. THEN, a voice of reason spoke from above (well actually from behind...). Examining the scene, a man commented only half-joking, "We REALLY need a recreation hall in Bethel!" Aw well...

And the winner is.....

Hey! Check out the first minute and a half of this news clip (on the right side of the page) that played on the state news in Alaska!

http://www.ktuu.com/global/story.asp?s=11277937#

On Tuesday we had our long awaited election that gave Bethel residents an opportunity to lift the local option. The issues surrounding alcohol restrictions in the area are being highly debated even more-so now that Bethel has control of its own rules and regulations. An update on this election soon to come!

"CUCKOOO, CUCKOOOOOO!!!"

Just another Sunday night in Bethel…This past weekend my roommates and I went Ptarmigan hunting. Ptarmigans (said like, ‘Tarmigan’) are medium sized birds found on the tundra that surrounds Bethel. No, we didn’t have a gun, crossbow or even a bow-and-arrow in our arsenal. We had a beat-up 1980’s 5 passenger station wagon, 2 radio stations and some good company. See, the trick to catching these Ptarmigans is NOT concentration and pinpoint accuracy …it’s simply cruising around town in any old clunker car as it gets dark. Heading out when it’s dark outside is vital… These brilliant birds actually fly into telephone wires and poles, knocking themselves unconscious. Our job as the hunter is to find the helpless poultry, throw a bag over it and kill it by spinning it around a couple times in a helicopter motion. Sounds pretty easy…

The seven of us piled into the stealthy hunting vehicle just as it neared dusk and set off to find some unconscious prey. We drove around some of the back roads for over an hour scouring the ground for any signs of these white beauties. Unfortunately, we had no luck. We pulled out all of the stops…even attempting to lure the Ptarmigans to us with my best Ptarmingan mating call. My mating calls proved fruitless and no Ptarmigans were apprehended. We haven’t given up hope however…we’ll be making the rounds a few more times over the next couple of weeks. Just last week, my roommate Joe came within inches of catching his first Ptarmigan…except when he reached for the bird it suddenly sprang to life in his hands and narrowly escaped becoming our dinner.

Clearly, our subpar hunting skill isn’t what’s keeping us fed. Thankfully, we have generous friends in the community. In addition to the millions of salmon that have been donated to us, we’ve also been given duck and moose. We had a delicious ‘moose stew’ for dinner last week. If you’ve never eaten moose, I highly suggest it. Moose hunting season just ended here so there is a good amount of moose in town right now. Each moose has about 800 POUNDS OF MEAT!!! Needless to say my roommates and I never caught the elusive moose…maybe next year?!

On a separate note, we're slowly losing our daylight here. On my first night in Bethel it was light outside until just after midnight. Since then however, we've been losing about 6 minutes of light EVERY day. Now it's actually getting dark close to 9pm. That probably doesn't seem so bad but at 6 minutes a day, we're heading for some dark days ahead. We'll continue to lose daylight until mid-winter (January-ish) when there is just about 4 hours of light a day (from 11am-3pm). There's a good chance that I'll go through an entire day seeing just a few minutes of daylight as I walk to the courthouse or lunch. TIB

This week I get to travel to Anchorage for the annual Public Defender's Conference. It will be a cool opportunity for me to a learn a bit more about the CINA cases and law in general. I'm also just really excited to see some mountains and experience another part of Alaska!

Jabzz

Please keep my friend Jabulani’s family in your prayers. He was a friend of mine from South Africa who passed away just a couple of days ago.

Next Stop: Iditarod

This past weekend I made my first, very important, step towards winning this year’s Iditarod… Our friend Mike invited me and a couple of the roomies to help ‘run’ the dogs. ‘Running’ dogs, as I mentioned in the previous entry, basically just means 'training them'. Because there’s no snow yet the dogs are forced to run the streets of Bethel. Eventually, when it snows (in like 15 minutes) we’ll hook them up to a sled and actually take them out for realski.

For a basic intro to dog sledding, based entirely on my very limited knowledge…Sled dogs stay in a dog yard of sorts. There will be a bunch of dogs chained up to posts and each with its own dog house. At this particular house there are about thirty dogs which get broken up into about three teams. The first and second team will race in all of the major races including the Kuskokwim 300, one of the biggest races in Alaska. The dogs train and race throughout the entire year except in the summer when it’s simply too “hot” to take them out. The max temperature they like to ‘run’ the dogs at is 50 degrees. Any hotter and the dogs over-heat. After the dogs’ long, boring summer they are all ecstatic to start training again which I learned quickly as I was pounced on and nipped at by excited huskies.

I’ve been helping out with these dogs on weekends and this weekend we made that major step towards actually racing. We learned how to hook up the dogs into their spots and bring them on a training run. They formation is probably exactly what you’ve seen on TV. We had 5 rows of 2 dogs. Maybe the funniest part about the whole experience was taking them from their dog house to their spot in the line. You’re supposed to grab their collar and pull upwards forcing the dogs to stand on their hind legs. Then, they hop like a kangaroo the fifteen or so yards to their spot in the line where we connected them to a beastly six-wheeler that looks very similar to a Gator. No sooner did we have the dogs in their spots than we were jetting off down the street. The entire process of unhooking the dogs from their chain and bringing them to their spot is a chaotic, noisy and sometimes frustrating endeavor. The dogs are so excited to be moving around that they have no regard for the pitiful rookie (me) trying to hop them like a kangaroo then hook them up in their spot. They don't waste anytime as the moment they’re hooked up the dogs are pulling. We actually had to put a block in front of a wheel of the six-wheeler so they wouldn’t take off without us. God bless these dogs, they were pulling as hard as they could but we kept the six-wheeler at a cool eight miles and hr to pace them a little bit.

My vantage point was fantastic. I’ve never experienced anything like it. I was cruising down main streets in a sweet six wheeler being pulled by ten very hyper sled dogs who were leaving a trail of slobber and sweat in their wake.

A couple of times an extremely bold (some might say slightly idiotic) dog would run out into the street to challenge the sled dogs who were now parading through their territory. Don’t be fooled by the amazing strength and ambition of these sled dogs... as soon as they saw a challenger they immediately slammed on the brakes and began a chorus of barking, snarling and posturing. Casey, Mike’s partner, and I sat powerless as these dogs all tried to get a piece of the poor sap that thought it stood a chance. Besides a few minor hiccups the training went great. We cruised around Bethel for about twenty five minutes. Any longer would have been a real struggle for the dogs, especially in this weather. It was about 55 degrees and I could tell by the frothing mouths and 3 feet of slobber hanging off one of the dogs that we were pushing our luck a little bit.

After the run was an equally amazing sight to the hyper, crazy pre-run moments. My roommate John commented that it looked like Casey and I had driven around the corner, beat the crap out of the dogs and come back. The dogs were covered in slobber and panting so heavily that the drool literaly poured out of their mouths. An even better indication of how tired they were…they actually let me take their restraints off. Although it was easier to unhook them, there was also the disadavantage of being covered in doggy drool.

All in all, it was one of those TIB moments. It was really cool to get an inside look at an activity that is so ingrained in the culture of Alaska. I’m really excited to see the team progress over the next few weeks until it snows somtime in October.

Random comments….

BC football…54 yards. Seriously?!?!?!

I had to wear a winter hat today on my run…very depressing.

My land line phone here is 907-543-2319. You are all welcome to call here anytime. (Just remember it’s probably a 4 hr difference for most of you!)

I miss you all and I love to hear updates so feel free to send me an email pj.driscoll1@gmail or just say ‘hi’ on my Facebook.


PEACE