Table Rock Falls

Last weekend Erin and I headed up to Cook.  We picked up some linoleum along the way.  I got the wood stove going as soon as we got home to get the house all warmed up before we attempted the install.   Saturday night around dinner time we started the process.

The directions tell you to leave an extra half inch on all the edges, put the linoleum in place and then after a day of sitting to trim it down.  Well let me tell you, that is the stupidest line of reasoning EVER.  In my experience (doing this only once) when you leave a half inch on every edge, it doesn’t fit in the area you cut it for.  Especially around the corners.  Anyway after about 6 hours of work we got it all installed.  It looks pretty good.  We still have to put the trim back on the doors and put baseboard down.  The carpet should be getting installed in a couple weeks.

On Sunday I was pretty sore from crawling around on the floor for 6 hours the night before.  Jim, Jesse, and I headed out for a little canoeing trip to Table Rock Falls.  We shot an episode for the BWCACAST site.  Jesse had his camera with and took some pretty cool pictures.  Here are a few of them.

It was a fun trip.  Nice to get out on the water.  We had a few snow flakes flying in the air, and it was a little grey out, but watching the volume of water churn its way down the narrow gorge.

It should be posted in the next week or so on the bwcacast site.  Hope you enjoy.

Back Post

I just was going through my pictures and found a couple that needed posting.

When Rick was getting more video taken of him by the Discovery channel, Keegan, Rohnan, and I hopped on the snowmachine to head out on the trail ahead of them.  We were a little concerned about the snow conditions and wanted to have an outlet to get the Discovery guy back to the yurts if the trail was poor.

So we drove out to the half way point on the trail and waited to see if they’d make it.  There weren’t any problems, and the boys and I were killing some time.  I got this nice photo of the boys on the snowmachine.

We didn’t want to start up the machine as soon as they went by because they were activly filming on the sled.  So we had some more time to kill.  I talked to boys into doing snow angels off the snowmachine…

[QUICKTIME http://bbryson.com/bill/files/2008/04/snow_angels.mov 320 260]

It was fun haning out with them.  Its nice to feed off of their engergy.

Home

Well, I’m back in Minnesota again…  The funny thing is I recall three weeks ago when Erin and I were getting ready to leave she told me that when I came back from my trip it would be spring.  Well let me tell you…  Right now we are in the middle of a pretty healthy winter storm.  Forecasts say we should be getting up to 13 inches of snow by Saturday morning.  Excellent spring weather don’t you think?

I’ve been trying to get caught up on sleep.  When traveling around rural Alaska its pretty tough on your sleep patterns.  If you stay in the school, your sleeping on a classroom floor in which case you need to be up and packed up before the teachers come in the next morning.  Regardless you usually are flying the next day and have to be packed up anyway…

I was weathered in Breivg Mission for a few days, so I was able to visit with the Rudstroms..  I guess my last post kind of summed up that experience.

Anyway its nice to be back at home.  Nice to hang out with Erin again.  She’s been sick the last couple days 🙁  poor girl.  I hope that the district here decides to close school for tomorrow so she can rest up.  The downside to that is they have already canceled a couple of times and that in turn pushes the last day of school later into June.

So now that I’m back I will be hitting the video editing super hard.  I’d like to have all of it done before summer break.  I’ll keep you posted and will put finished pieces up for you to ridicule and critique.  🙂

Storm Bound in Brevig Mission

I was going through my iPhoto library to get photos for this post, and came across a picture of Sandford and Drum that Erin and I took on our way back from Valdez.

A few days ago I was in White Mountain filming a cross country ski race and a biathlon competition. It was a beautiful sunny day out and really not that cold which was a nice change from the last time I was up here and had sunny weather. I shot some video of the start of the biathlon race and got some video from different parts of the trail. I then made it over to the shooting area.  It was really fun to watch the kids ski up to the range huffing and puffing.  Lay down grab a rifle, slow their breathing down and hit 5 out of 5 on the target.

I left White Mountain and flew to Nome on my way to Brevig Mission.  I stopped over at Fat Freddies for a little lunch since my flight wasn’t leaving for another few hours.  I had a bacon cheese burger and a peanut butter milk shake and killed time watching movies on my laptop.  Lance Macky came in to eat just after finishing his latest sled dog race.

After a little food and a couple of movies I was off to Brevig Mission.  The usual rout when flying to Brevig is you leave Nome, fly to Teller, then to Brevig, then to Wales, and then back to Nome.  Well on this trip we went first to Wales then to Brevig and then they were heading right back to Nome.  So I got a little longer flight out of the deal.  While in Wales I snapped this picture of Razor Back mountain.

When I landed in Brevig the local Frontier agent gave me a ride to CO and AnnMaire’s.  CO and I visited for a little while… AnnMaire was on her way back from Unlakleet with Doug the BSSD pilot.  So when she was about to land I got to watch Harold while CO went to pick her up.  In the few minutes that he was gone the little guy crashed out.

The next day CO and I headed over to teller to get the video I needed for the BSSD recruiting video project.  It didn’t take very long, so we decided to go out for a ride around the mountains behind Brevig.  Here are a few pictures from the trip…

[QUICKTIME http://bbryson.com/bill/files/2008/04/co_slide.mov 320 260]

I was supposed to fly back to Nome to get to Savoonga the next day.  The weather however had different plans for me.  There was freezing rain in Nome, and both Bering Air and Frontier Alaska (who just merged with Hageland) canceled all of their flights for the day.  This gave me some extra time to play with Harold and visit with CO and AnnMaire.  It was very nice to have the extra time to spend with them.

[QUICKTIME http://bbryson.com/bill/files/2008/04/harold_laugh.mov 320 260]

So this morning it wasn’t looking good for me to get out of Brevig.  The weather was still pretty bad in Nome, and it was going between rain and snow in Brevig.  Really not the best flying conditions.  I got a call around 10:00 letting me know that Frontier was sending a plane out.  So I got all packed up and hopped on the plane.

I am now sitting at Airport Pizza in Nome waiting for my flight out to St. Lawerence Island.  I’ll be going to Savoonga tonight.  Then my plan is to go from Gambel to Savoonga in the morning and then Gambel to Nome in the afternoon.  I hope the weather will allow this to happen.  🙂

In the Sky’s Again

Well, I’m back up in the Bering Strait again after a very nice week in Valdez.  Erin and I flew up to visit my family over spring break.  We did a little flying and a little snowshoeing and Dad and I got all the cutting done on “The Chair”.  He is currently sanding it up and hopefully will get it all finished up and shipped down to me in time for my return back to Minnesota.

Rick Holt and I are currently in Koyuk.  We filmed at Highland Tech High in Anchorage for Monday and Tuesday.  It really is fun to see the standard based model working so well.  The students there really have a great understanding of how the system works, and take ownership over their learning.

The video we are shooting is showing how the RISC model works in schools.  This will allow Rick to show examples of the model while presenting at conferences around the country.

We’ve shot in Unalkleet, and Koyuk so far in BSSD, and we are heading to Golovin this afternoon.

Looks like its time to get ready to shoot..

More to come later.

Heading North

Its that time again…  Im sitting in the Minneapolis Northwest World Club waiting for my flight.  I’ll be flying through Portland on my way up to Anchorage.  Erin is flying out of Minneapolis tonight as well, but she is going through Chicago, staying the night, and then flying up to Anchorage tomorrow.  Seems like we never get to fly together.

Im looking forward to spending time in Valdez with my parents.  Erin and I will be driving over to Valdez tomorrow afternoon.  Its a 300 mile drive, but I really like it.  It has some beautiful scenery along the way.

For those of you who don’t know… I posted the first BWCACAST episode yesterday.  Jim is already an internet superstar with comments on the forum.  You have a few options for watching…

1.  Go to www.bwcacast.com and click on the video to play

2. Same website top right corner Subscribe to the High Definition 720p AppleTv feed.  This will launch iTunes on your mac or pc and let you subscribe to the show so that all new shows will automatically be downloaded to your machine.  A word of warning… The HD files ar VERY big.  This first one is 475 mb.  So you are really going to want to have a fast internet connection and have a way of playing it on a High Definition monitor or TV to really appreciate the file size.

3. Same website top right corner Subscribe to the Standard Definition 320×240 iPod feed.  This will also launch iTunes on your mac or pc and let you subscribe to the show so that all new shows will be automatically be downloaded to your machine.  These files are really manageable.  This first one was around 40 mb.  and will still look good being played full screen on most computer monitors.

4. If your not into the whole iTunes thing you can subscribe to the appropriate RSS feed and have it download in your favorite RSS reader.

http://www.bwcacast.com/feeds/bwcacast_hd.xml   (High Definition Large QuickTime File)

http://www.bwcacast.com/feeds/bwcacast_sd.xml    (Standard Definition Small QuickTime File)

Also its April’s birthday tomorrow.  So yeah… Happy Birthday April.

Here she is showing off her mad computer skills…

Time for something new!!

Whats so new you ask?  Well, BACON CUPS of course!

I was stumbling last night and came across this.  I just had to share it.  I guess its something of a BLT minus the bread.  Anyway to see how these things are made check it out at http://www.notmartha.org.

I hope you enjoy.  🙂

My Snap.com List-O-Rama Entry

My Snap.com List-O-Rama Entry.  The idea is to show off how much information you can add into your posts using Snap’s technology without forcing your users to leave your site.  Tell me what you think. The video and audio links will actually play in the snap preview window.

1. After living on the Bering Strait in Alaska for the last 4 years watching the Iditarod pass right through my village on their way to Nome,

2. I’ve learned to apreciate Cabela’s not only supporting the Iditarod, but also their winter product lines and pretty much keep their stocks in the green.

3. For those of you who haven’t heard of this famous dog race you should check out what Wikipedia has to offer on the subject.

4. You could also read Dogsong by Gary Paulsen. He has not only ran the race a few times, but his books are a great way to feel what its like to be on the cold isolated trail.

5. Now I don’t think WoW has a big Iditarod pull, but I was able to find something about an Arctic Wolf.

6. There aren’t many professional films out there on the Iditarod, but you may give this one a try.

7. If that doesn’t do it for you there are some semi-pro new media folks that have done some pretty nice work.

8. I was hard pressed to find a Myspace page for the few famous mushers I looked for, but I was able to find this person who seemed to have a genuine interest in the race, even though he was from the lower 48.

9. Now you can find a lot of Iditarod pictures over at Flickr, but

10. I implore you check out BSSD’s IditaProject site.

11. There you will not only find cool audio interviews with the mushers done by students as well as up to the minute race updates,

12. but you can also can subscribe to their many Iditarod photo and video gallery’s like this one.

I hope you all enjoyed this list of how Snap.com’s service can give you quick glimpes as many different Iditarod related sites.

If you’d like to make your own list on your blog check out the details and you might get a cool Snap shirt out of the deal.

BWCACAST Anouncement!!

For those of you who haven’t heard…

I will be starting an IPTV show (Internet Television show) or if your more familiar with the term VideoPodcast.

The show will be a weekly trip into the Boundary Water Canoe Area (BWCA). Most trips will be just day trips in and out the same day, but once a month the show will be a multi-day camping trip. I entered the permit lottery back in January and was able to get all three permits that I wanted. One in May, June, and August.

I will be shooting the show in High Definition and viewers will be able to subscribe to a HD feed, a SD feed, a video ipod feed, or watch each episode embedded in the website. I will be looking for sponsors for the show to help pay for equipment, travel costs, and editing time. So if any of you are connected to any companies that are looking for a new way to advertise have them take a looks at the site in a couple months, I should have some content up by then.

I have built a website for this whole new endeavor. You can find it at www.bwcacast.com.

Here is a preview….

Tied in with the website I have created a forum (Discussion Board) for viewers to chat about the show or anything BWCA related.

There is a link off the main site to the “Discussions”, or you can go directly to it by using this link. www.bwcacast.com/forums/

Here is a preview of the discussions site…

Feel free to sign up for an account. It has many features. I’ve set it up so when you log into the forum your also logged into the blog so your able to comment on both. In the forum you are able to upload a personal avatar that will be associated with all of your posts. I hope that people enjoy the show. Feel free to send me feed back on the site. I’ll need help looking for bugs and typos.

15 Hours

After a very nice couple days with Rick, Tiff, Keegan, and Rohnan I was on my way back to Minnesota. The day I left Alaska I helped Rick cut up meat for his dogs to snack on during the Iditarod. It was amazing. We cut up 600 pounds of meat, and that was only half of what his dogs will need for the race. I can’t imagine how they could eat that much, but I guess the calories they would be burning they’ll need that much going in.After we finished there we met Tiff and the boys in Wasilla for dinner. We sat and visited for a couple hours and had some tasty nachos and burgers. My flights back down to Minnesota were uneventful. I tried to sleep on each one so I wouldn’t be to sleepy when I got home.

I put together this animated giff showing my flights in the Bering Strait Region. Here are 21 of the 29 flights on my trip.

When I got back to Minnesota Erin and I went out for dinner to a fancy resturaunt. It was nice to spend some time with her after being away for almost 3 weeks. After dinner I crashed out and ended up sleeping for about 15 hours. I guess I needed it. I hope I’ll be able to sleep tonight and get back on the central time zone.