Filming in the cold

Well, I’ve got 6 flights under my belt. I am sitting in Shaktoolik after a very busy day. I started out this morning in St. Michael. Dan Edie was nice enough to put me up for the night. I shot some video around the school and the town before catching a ride on the 13 mile road to Stebbins. I only had about an hour and a half there to shoot a little around the school. I think I will need to go back out there for some more video.

I was supposed to have a fancy bag that zips around the camera that is basically a sleeping bag to keep it warm while shooting outside. It even had a place for your had to slip inside so it stays warm while your shooting. Well the company that BSSD bought it from sent the wrong model, and it turned out to be way too big. So I had to send it back to Unalakleet to get it changed out, meanwhile I am out shooting with some very cold hands. I am told that the replacement should be showing up in the next few days. They say Saturday, but shipping never really seems to work out like its supposed to.

As you can imagine its not the best time to be out running around. You can’t see it very well in this picture, but the snow is blowing around like crazy.

I flew out of Stebbins on Bering Air. With the wind around 30 – 40 miles an hour the plane coming in for a landing came to a stop pretty much as soon as it touched the ground. I got some pretty decent video of it landing. There was a building in the way right at the end, but It was still pretty impressive.

So I hopped on there and was the only passenger with a direct flight from Stebbins to Shaktoolik.

So I’ll do a little more shooting tomorrow, and then be on my way to Koyuk.

Stay tuned for more updates on the 14 sites in 13 days.

Finally on my way

Well, I made it into Unalakleet just fine on Pen Air.  I totally lucked out and got to fly on the BIG plane.

As I walked into the terminal though I was informed by the Bering Air agent that they didn’t have any room for me.  So I called up Hageland and they said they weren’t going to St. Michael this evening.  So then I called Teresa over at the district office and told her about my perdicament and she said hold on I’ll call you right back.  She called back about three minutes later and informed me that I was going to be on a Hageland flight.  So Ted and Damon drove me over to the Hageland terminal and I got my bags checked in.  They told me the pilot was going to fly up to Koyuk and Shaktoolik before taking me to St. Michael.  So I went over to the district office for about an hour and visited with the folks over there.

At 5:00 I got a ride back over to the Hageland terminal and hopped on this sweet ride a Cesna 207.

We flew right over the frozen ocean on our 30 min flight with what little light left in the day disapearing quickly.  The pilot did remark how nice it was that at a quarter to 6 in the evening that it was still light out.

I will start shooting video tomorrow morning and then get a ride the 13 miles over to Stebbins.  More to come on how that all goes tomorrow.

Back at the airport

Well, I’m back at the Anchorage airport again.  Winds today in Unalakleet are a manageable 14 miles an hour.   I head off to St. Michael pretty much as soon as I land in Unalakleet.  I’ll try to snap a couple of photos for a post later tonight.

The Joys of Weather

So I didn’t make it out to the Bering strait.  The winds were up around 60 mph at times, and well that isn’t exactly the best for flying.  So I’m still sitting in Anchorage.  I went out to dinner at the Glacier Brew House and had a delicious steak and a couple beers.  Since I’m still kinda on Minnesota time.  Im back at the hotel and thinking about going to sleep.  We’ll see if I can pull that off.

I try tomorrow at 1:30 for another go.  We’ll see if the planes feel like making their way to the far north.

More to come….

Bad Start to a Long Trip

Well, I am currently sitting in the Anchorage airport awaiting my flight out to the Bering Strait. My journey began early yesterday morning in Baxter, Minnesota. Erin dropped me off for my 7:30 A.M. flight the first of what was supposed to be three for the day. Upon checking in for the flight I was informed that the flight was delayed due to a mechanical issue with the plane, and that it would be about an hour late. This of course was going to cause me to miss my connecting flight in Minneapolis. Now I try as often as I can to go online and select a seat for my flights. I had done so in this case and had a nice exit row seat for my flight from Minneapolis to Seattle. Now all of a sudden I am not going to make that flight and they are looking to book me on another flight. The agent finally tells me that she has found a seat for me on a direct flight from Minneapolis to Anchorage, but all she could get me was a middle seat in the back of the plane. As you an imagine I was not too excited about going from a nice roomy exit row to a middle seat in the back of the plane, but under the circumstances it was better than not making it to Anchorage at all. So the plane showed up about an hour late and we took off for Minneapolis. As we touched down I looked at my watch and realized that I might just be able to make my original connecting flight, the one with the exit row seat. So as soon as I got off the plane I took off running through the terminal. Of course my next flight was basically at the other end of the airport. As I came racing up to the counter to check in the agent told me to hurry they were about to close the door. I handed her my boarding pass I had printed off the night before and she tried to scan it. It wouldn’t scan. She told me just to run down to the plane and find an empty seat. So that’s what I did. I got on the plane to find my sweet exit row had been reassigned to someone else. 🙁 I was lucky though to find an isle seat near the front of the plane and thats where I sat.

As we took off I started thinking about what was going on and realized that I may have made a terrible mistake by getting on this plane. My bags were being checked on the direct flight to Anchorage, not on the flight I was on. Sometimes when a passenger doesn’t board a flight they will take their bags off thinking that the person is avoiding flying with their luggage for some reason. So now I’m thinking that when I don’t show up for the direct flight to Anchorage that they are going to pull my bags there in Minneapolis. That would not be so good.

When we landed in Seattle I went over to my connecting flight to Anchorage and found that when they had re-booked me in Baxter that they had taken me off the flight from Seattle to Anchorage, and the flight was completely full. I explained to the gate agents what happened and they were able to book me on a different flight that was actually leaving a little earlier. So I hustled over to where my new flight was leaving from and boarded shortly there after. As the plane was being pushed away from the terminal the connecting rod that they push with snapped off. So not only did they have to find another one of those little pusher deals, but they had to have someone come over and inspect the plane to make sure nothing happened in the incident. So after about 45 min of sitting on the airplane we pushed back and were on our way.

We landed in Anchorage and I headed down to baggage claim. Of course my bag didn’t come off the plane I had just landed on, and I was about to file a lost bag claim when I looked over at one of the other bag claim areas and noticed a flight from Minneapolis had just landed. I had a glimmer of hope. My bags should be on that flight since it was the one I was supposed to be on. I waited and waited and finally near the very end when almost everybody had already received their bags and left my bags emerged on the conveyor belt.

Now today my original flight to Unalakleet was supposed to be on Hageland, but I was informed about two hours ago that they canceled their flight for today, so Teresa (BSSD’s Travel Person) was kind enough to rebook me on Pen Air. So that’s where I am now, sitting in the Pen Air gate hoping that my flight will take off in 20 min like it is scheduled to do.

On a side note the weather up there isn’t the best right now. In Unalakleet the wind is blowing 41 mph and gusting to 54 mpg. So the landing could be a little exciting when I get there.

My time in Unalakleet should be pretty short as I am scheduled to head over to St. Michael this afternoon.

I’ll fill you in on how things went when I get to my final destination for the day.

There is something in the Air

I was starting to do a long detailed blog post about the new things that Apple came out with, but then got tired going over all the details that no-one that reads my blog really cares about.  So here it is in brief…

• New airport base station that has a hard drive in it for wireless backup and storage.

• New components on both the iPhone and iPod Touch.  From mail on the Touch to location triangulation in the map feature on both devices.
• Movie rentals from all major movie labels via iTunes.  Movies cost 3.99 for new titles, 2.99 for old titles, and add a dollar to each if you want it in HD on your apple TV.
• Apple TV interface redone adding the movie rental option, flickr photo viewing, .mac photo viewing, and other features I’m not too sure of.
• Finally the thing that people were most interested in….. The new Macbook Air.  This new laptop is the thinest laptop in the world. Weighing in at only 3lbs.  The thickest part of the laptop is only .76 inches.  The thinest point is .16 inches.  It has a 13.3 inch screen, a full size backlit keyboard, standard 2 GB Ram, 80 GB HD (option to upgrade to a 64 GB SSD HD for 1000 dollars) and a 1.6 Intel Core 2 Duo processor, and 5 hours of battery life.

The movie rentals I feel are a little too expensive.  You are given up to a month to watch the movie after renting, and once you start playing you have 24 hours to finish it.  You can watch it more than once, but it has to be in that 24 hour time period.  You are able to transfer to your ipod, laptop, or Apple TV.

The Macbook Air’s battery is built into the computer like they are in the iPods.  So if you are flying you can’t take an extra battery with for additional computing time. It does not have an optical drive built in.  You have the option to buy an external super drive for 99 dollars, or they also give you the option to use other machines optical drives on your wireless network both mac and pc.  The Macbook Air only has one USB port, no FireWire ports, no line in, and the line out is not optical.  So if you are a power user that needs these functionalities then the Air is not for you.  If your looking for a super portable laptop then this is the one for you.   They retail at 1799.

Blog Posts from the Past

I just finished up posting all the blog posts from my old static HTML blog I ran while in Brevig Mission.  If you wanna take a look back on what the time was like for me then, all you need to do is click on the “Old Blog” link in the categories section in the sidebar.

Or follow this link….  Past Posts

Hockey and Holidays

Well I know it’s been a while since my last post. I’ve been to a couple Wild hockey games in the last month. The first one Erin had a girls night at our house, so I needed somewhere to go. I saw that the wild were playing at home, and started looking for tickets. I found a couple and called up Jesse (April’s soon to be husband) to see if he wanted to go. He lives in the cities so there wouldn’t be much driving for him. He was game, so I ended up getting the tickets off of Craigs List. I drove down and we ended up with some pretty awesome seats. We were about 7 rows up from the glass right by the Wild bench.

The wild lost, but it was fun to be that close to the game. They sure do have some mean looking players. They had one guy named Hill that was pretty tough. He threw some pretty good checks during the game.

The next game I went to with Erin and Katie. Katie had just taken the train over from Tacoma so Erin and I drove down to the cities to pick her up. While we were down there we rented a room in the hotel across the street from the Excel Energy Center (where the wild play) and went to the game that night. We were in the very last row in the upper deck, but there really isn’t a bad seat in the place.

We were lucky enough to attend the game where the Wild played the Rangers. Marian Gaborik scored 5 goals in the game which hadn’t been done for quite some time.

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It was a lot of fun to see.  Very nice to have Erin and Kaite there to watch with.  I wish Erin and I could get to more games.

Christmas was very nice.  Mike and Amanda gave us this sweet Rug.  It is nice on the feet.  Very cushy and brightens up the kitchen.

While we were up at Erins house I worked on the skating rink some more.  There were a few problems though.  First off the snowblower was on the fritz and on top of that it snowed EVERY SINGLE DAY.  You would spend all that energy clearing off the snow, and then the next day you’d have to do it all over again.  I finally gave up on the project, but here is what it looked like.

There were a few trips down to the ice in a little different ware.  As most of you know I spend most of my time in shorts, even in the Winter. So on this occasion I didn’t have a shirt handy so I threw on my parka to run down the the rink for a second.

You really can’t go wrong the bunny boots either.  I think I may try to see if I can get them to be the new rage in the lower 48.  I know they don’t need any more advertising up in Alaska.

I was very lucky to get very nice presents for Christmas.  The geekiest thing I got however was from Jesse and Arpil.  This shirt really fits me not just in size, but also full fills the tech aspect of things.

This sweet shirt actually detects wifi signals.  If there is a signal present it illuminates the radio waves to the right and left of the antenna.  It really works quite well.  If you just have to have this cool shirt you can find one for yourself at thinkgeek.

8 things huh??

Well apparently I’m supposed to list 8 thing about me that most don’t know about me since I was tagged by Erin a couple days ago. So with out further adieu….

1. My wife reads the blogs of “The Office” characters.
2. I used to have a trap line in 2nd grade hunting the elusive Alaskan rabbit.
3. I only read books on airplanes. (I have the internet the rest of the time.)
4. I have read all of the John Sandfod books on airplanes, and the entire time was listening to Nickel Creek on my ipod, so now when I heard those songs it makes me think of a police officer in Minnesota chasing down serial killers.
5. To piggy back on Laura’s post I enjoy shoveling snow especially when there are huge Valdez snowflakes falling from the heavens. I especially enjoy when a really big one lands on my face or down the back of my neck.
6. Erin and I have our very first Christmas tree set up in our living room this year. (I got to put two of the four ornaments on it.)
7. I went on a routine climbing trip with Jeremy out in Wyoming and ended up climbing the Grand Teton.
8. We didn’t have running water sometimes in the winter living in Northway. Having to use the outhouse in the cold dark night I’d get scared walking back to the house with the dark forest to my back and jump out of my parents bunny boots and scamper back to the house leaving the boots in the edge of the trees.

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)

Many of you have heard about the infamous 100 dollar laptop. Well they are in production now and they cost a bit more than a 100 dollars. The whole idea behind this is to help children in under developed countries get this technology into their hands. Well right now the people that are pushing this have setup a deal where you can buy one of these laptops for a child overseas and you will also get one for a child in your life. The cost runs $399. Along with the laptop that you recieve you will also get a years free subscription to all of T-mobiles wifi hotspots. This will work not only on the little green laptop, but on your cell phones and other computers. Pretty cool idea. So if you have a few hundred dollars laying around its something to think about.

For more information check out http://www.laptopgiving.org/en/give-one-get-one.php