I’m Back by Popular Demand ;)

Well, I know its been forever and a day since I last posted.  So its time to get back into the swing of things.  Erin and I are both on our Christmas breaks right now.  We had a very nice time down in Cook, Minnesota.  It was nice hanging out with family.  Erin being the ambitious person she is initiated the creation of a skating rink in the lake.  She and her dad got to work with the snow blower clearing off the snow on the lake.  Unfortunetly the snow blower broke part way through.  So it was shovels from there.  I was able to help out with the end of the process.

After we had the ice cleared there were a few bumpy patches.  So Jim and I cut a hole in the ice with a chain saw.  It brought back memories of crabbing on the Bering strait.  With the hole cut we got out a couple garden hoses and a pump used in the summer to empty the rain out of the boats.  We flooded the rink with a about an inch of water.  The next morning we had a nice skating surface.

[QUICKTIME http://www.bbryson.com/movies/skating.mov 320 255]

At times there were many of us out there skating.  I had to go in spurts.  My new skates that Erin helped me pick out were rough on the arches in my feet.  I could skate for a while, then have to take them off and let the feet rest.  Erin was out there the whole time. She is fun to skat with.

Erin got us an awesome christmas present this year.  I was really surprised. She bought really nice tickets to a Minnesota Wild Hockey Game.  For those of you who don’t know.  The Wild is Minnesota’s professional hockey team. Here is a picture of us at the game.

This is where we were sitting.  Nice seats.

The game was awesome.  Minnesota ended up winning 5-2.  We stayed at a hotel right accross the streat, so we didn’t have to worry about traffic.  Really had a great time.  Looking forward to attending more of those next year when we are living considerably closer.

I flew home to Valdez on the 27th of December.  It has been snowing really hard since I’ve been home.  A week before my arrival they had 29 inches in 24 hours.  That wasn’t were it stopped they enededd up with about three feet in that storm.  We have added to that another couple feet by now.  Its fun to watch the big flakes falldown.

Yesterday Abby, her husband Steve, and I went out snowshoeing up Hogs Back a mountain behind Robe river.  Our approach to the base was quite the ordeal.  We missed the groomed trail that takes you right to the beginning of the ridge.

Making our own trail we criss-crossed a stream at times in the water trying to step on the big rocks to keep our feet out of the water.  When we were in the snow there was about a foot of fresh snow that we had to break trail through.  When we finally made it to the base of the ridge is when the real work began.  Snowshoeing uphill and having to break trail at times is tuff work. Since I am really out of shape, it made the whole process that much more enjoyable.  ;)  No it was a lot of fun.

The views were beautiful and the weather was warm with out any wind.  The whole trip ended up taking about 6 hours.  I am really feeling it today.

Thats kinda how break has been going.  I will be back to work on the 8th.  I’ll fill you in on my exciting adventures a little  more often now.  Hope everyone has a safe and fun new years.

The Wall is FINISHED!!!

The last of the t-nuts came in the end of last week.  Yesterday, I borrowed a skill saw from Vance (the person we rent from).  With Erin’s help we got all the t-nuts hammered in.  WE built a frame for the other side wall.  Since we bought studs instead of regular 2×4’s we had a little lip of the plywood hanging over the edge.  The skill saw made quick work of that.

After we had the back wall screwed into the side walls, it was starting to take shape. We found out that the screws we used to screw the plywood into the studs for support were sticking out the back just a little bit.  So when we would walk by we occasionally were scratched by them.  It wasn’t long before I was fixing that issue.

After we got that taken care of we went to work on the roof. It went up pretty quickly.  We were able to secure it into place which added even more stability to the whole structure.  Then it was on to the back slant.  We only used one sheet of plywood for the vertical part of the back wall.  From there we slanted the rest of the back wall to meet up with the one sheet we used for the roof.  It was a bit of a struggle, but Erin and I finally finished up construction.

It was then time to add the holds.  By this time it was around 10:30 P.M.  It had been a long day working in that little room.  Erin jumped right into bolting on the holds.

After we finished putting on the holds that Erin got me last year for my birthday, it was time for a little climbing.  Man has it been a long time.  I can’t believe how out of shape I am, and how great of a work out this is going to be.  I am really excited to be able to climb this year. The district is having its fall in-service here this week, and we have friends coming into town from Savoonga that are bringing their climbing shoes, so it’ll be fun to play a little match game, or set some routs.

[QUICKTIME http://www.bbryson.com/movies/bill_first_climb.mov 320 255]

Я вижу Россию (I See Russia)

As I sit here in Little Diomede with Russia only 2.5 miles away.  I am taken back by the beautiful views in front of me.  When the weather is nice this is a very picturesque place.

My trip started from Unalakleet at 9:00 AM Saturday morning.  A crew of us hopped on BSSD airways and flew to Nome where a couple of us hopped off.  The rest of the crew went on to Wales.  Vanessa and I were the ones who stayed in Nome.  We were the lucky ones that were able to take the helicopter all the way from Nome to Little Diomede.

When we got out to the island we were greeted by the staff and a few kids.  After we got settled in and had a bite to eat we went out to hike up to the top of the island.  It was a beautiful day.  We started hiking up the “North Trail”.    Here is a picture of the village after hiking for a little bit.

When we got near the top I snapped this self portrait where you can see the heli pad by Little Diomede Village, and Big Diomede (Russia) in the background.

We walked across the top of the island which was very flat.  We got to where we were directly over the top of the village.  Here is what it looks like from above.

The school is the building with the red roof.  Just up the hill from that is where Nathan, Ben, and Elise live.  Nathan and Ben were kind enough to let me sleep on their

couch.

We continued our hike moving around to the other side of the village.  On our decent Nathan took this picture of me with Russia in the background.

show off this amazing place.  As the sun was setting over Russia we were all sitting around visiting as we were eating dinner.  It was a very nice day.

Here I am…

I know its been a crazy long time since I last blogged.  I’m sorry for that.  A lot has happened since the 20th of August.  I won’t be able to remember all of the great stories that crop up on a daily basis, so I will just cover the basics, and fill you in on the last few days.

A couple weeks ago I flew down to Anchorage to install a QuickTime server at the GCI school access building.  We are setting up a Quicktime Streaming solution for our video conferences.  This will allow our staff members who aren’t able to make a certain conference to watch it at a later date right from there computer.  We also hope to use it for our event broadcasting so community members that aren’t able to go into the school will be able to watch events like the Native Youth Olympics and our student coverage of the Iditarod.

So I flew down on a Friday after work.  Rick Holt was up in Unalakleet for the week prior working with the high school students on a leadership program, and was flying back to town on the same flight I was one.  So we met up with his wife Tiff and their two boys Keegan and Rohnan for some dinner at the Bears Tooth.  Dinner was delicious.  The next morning at 9:00 A.M, I met up with Tom Obey the School Access Helpdesk manager.   He let me into the building and helped me get a static ip address for the server.  After that was done, I got the interface set up that enables the video conference to be recorded and streamed out.

Erin flew in the next afternoon.  I picked her up from the airport, and we headed out to Rick and Tiffs to help them work on their yurt.  It was a fun couple of days with great friends, working on their beautiful home.  Erin, the boys, and I even got a swim in at the pond/lake by their home. The water was extremely cold, but it was fun to get the boys to jump in.  We headed back to Unalakleet on Tuesday.

Erin took off for Savoonga on Monday, which is one of the BSSD schools located on St. Lawrence Island.   She was out there for her SFA job.  So I was home alone for most of the week.  Its nice to have her back.

While she was gone I started work on the new BSSD website.  I am really excited about it.  I have been working on it really hard, getting to bed around 3:00 in the morning, and skipping my lunch breaks.  I have made a lot of progress, and basically just need to port over the information from the old site.

My goal is to have it completed by Friday of next week.  It may be a lofty goal, but Erin is gone next week, and since I’m home alone, I might as well work.  I should be able to get it finished up.  I will release a sneak peak near the completion to my loyal blog readers.  (I hope both of your enjoy).

Not a whole lot else going on. Erin and I are going to watch a movie.  Hope you all have a good day.

Quick Weekend

Well after the crazy last week we had, everyone left and I found my self sitting by myself in an empty house. I can’t wait for Erin to get back.. I miss her when she is gone. The weekend starated an anniversery party for Jim and Teresa Hickerson. It was hosted at the Peace on Earth pizza place here in Unalakleet, and there were many guests. After the party was over a few people came over to the beach in front of our house, and we had a hot chocolate and a little fire.

Before I went to bed, I mixed up the sour dough starter so I could have pancakes in the morning. Well, I slept in until 11:30 Saturday morning. and got a call from Jim Hickerson not too long after that asking if I’d like to go fishing with him. So that kind of put a damper on the pancakes, but the fishing was great. We boated up the north river to a little hole the fish like to rest in on their journy up the river. We were fishing with eggs, which is almost like cheating they work so well. Now for those of you that haven’t done this before you are not using chicken eggs, you are using salmon eggs. The eggs have been sprinkled with borax laundry detergent which helps them to firm up and hold together a little better.

So you cut off a bunch of eggs about the size of a ping pong ball.  On your hook there is a loop that opens up to secure the eggs.  When you toss the eggs into the water you just let them sink to the bottom.  Its usually about 10 – 20 seconds before you have a fish on the line.  Sometimes its as soon as the eggs hit the water.  We did pretty well.

After fishing Vanessa had a few of us over for dinner.  We had home made pizza which was delicious.  The Johnsons, Carrie, and the Curriers were also there.  It was nice to visit with everyone.  We all headed out around 11:00 to get some sleep.

This morning I got some sleep, and then went up river with the Johnsons, the Curriers, Carrie, and the Howards.  We brought up Holts famous tool box grill, and cooked some hotdogs.  We caught a bunch of fish, and headed home.

Josh and I are going to smoke the fish we caught.  We stripped the fillets and are soaking them now in a salt and brown sugar brine.  In about 20 minutes, Josh will be over to help me hang them up in the smoker.  We will let them dry all night an most of tomorrow, and then smoke them for about 4 hours tomorrow evening.  We are hoping they will turn out.  I’ll have some pictures to show you of how things go.

Back to the Grind

Well, a lot has happend since my last post.  I went and had a wonderful time in Talkeetna helping Rick and Tiff build their yurt.  We got a lot accomplished in the few days I was there.  I am looking forward to seeing how it all turns out when they are finished.  I posted some pictures of the process.

I am now back in Unalakleet working in the district office.  We are training the new teachers and working with the principals to get everyone ready for the year.  Next week every teacher in the district will be here for beginning of the year training.  I will be teaching a few classes.  So hopefully they will go well.

Erin flew in yesterday which is nice.  It took me a few days, but I got the house put together before she came home.  Jim (Erin’s dad)  came in today.  So we are planning on some salmon fishing and berry picking while he is here.  It should be a lot of fun.

I am hoping to put up a web cam this year out our window.  I don’t know if it’ll be doable because I need to find another computer that can stay at home to push out the images.  I was thinking about getting a mac mini to use as a media center, which would also work out well for pushing out a web cam image.  I don’t know….  It’s a lot of money to spend on something I don’t really need.

We got up river fishing a couple days ago which was fun.  There are some pictures of that on the gallery of those as well if your interested.

Stan Stephen’s Cruise

Well as many of you know, my sister Katie works for Stan Stephen’s Cruises.  They take tourists out on large boats to look at the glaciers, and marine wild life.  Basically Katies job is to visit with the tourists on the boat, help point out the sights, and serve a lunch along the way. She was kind enough to use her free passes to take me and the rest of the family out for the day.

Here is a pictrue of Katie passing out a little cheat sheet of the animals we may see on the trip.

Here is a picture of her explaining to me what this coffee mug is.

Now when we got on the boat I was talking to Katie about her job.  We were talking about how lunch is served, and she told me that she carries out the bowls of clam chowder, bagles, and cups of juice to all the passengers in their seats.  Now having spent some time on boats like this I new that they could get a little rocky at times with the weather.  So I asked her if she had ever spilled before.  She told me that no she had never spilled, not even onece.  I told her I was impressed, that I was surprised she hadn’t.

Well any guesses what happened an hour later???

Thats right, thats minestroni all over the floor.  She was passing out the bowls of soup and other stuff, and though she had her tray, but there was one bowl of minestroni left on the back corner.  She went to hold the tray down by her side, and off went the bowl of soup.  Poor girl.  I must have jinxed her.

We saw some beautiful icebergs, as well as sea otters, sea lions, a micky whale, bald eagles, deer, and puffins.

I took the time to take a self portrait of me with the sea lions in the back ground.

It was a lot of fun, and nice to be out on the water.  Katie has a pretty cool summer job.  I will get her to post a bunch of her pictures on the gallery.  She has some pretty amazing photos.

Shrimping

Well we were back out to pull the shrimp pots today. Dad and I went out in the boat this afternoon. On the way out we discovered that the pot puller (and electric machine designed to pull pots up off the bottom) was missing. That meant we would be pulling in the pot by hand.

250 feet of rope later we had the pots on the boat. From the 2 pots we ended up with 21 ginormous shrimp.

They were both tasty…

And decorative…

Some of them were quite large…

Then we had to clean them before we headed back into the harbor. Here is a video of the procedure.

[QUICKTIME http://www.bbryson.com/movies/shrimp_cleaning.mov 320 258]

Out for a hike…

With Katie off at work my parrents and I took off for a hike on the Gold Creek trail.  It goes out along the ocean making for a very beautiful hike.

Here are my mom and dad on the trail.

Here is a little fireweed with the ocean and mountains in the background.

The mountains around Valdez are quite impressive.

One of the problems with hiking this trail is the abundence of stinging netles on the trail.  This is a terrible plant that when brushed up agains stings you like a bee.  The sting continues to throughout the day.  Here is a picture of one of those nasty plants.

We hiked out a ways until the trail became unkept and the stinging netles out numbered the other plants on the trial.  We headed back towards town and stopped off on the beach along the way to have a little snack of apples and cheese.  The dog was with, and was pretty thirsty.  We didn’t want him to drink the ocean water, so I constructed a makshift bowl out of some big leaves.  My mom posted some pictures of the bowl on her blog.

Back to AK

Well it seems as though the summer has flown by.  I can’t believe that I am on my way back to work already.  It seems like I didn’t get much of a break.
I uploaded some pictrues to the gallery of the last few days on the lake.  Feel free to check them out at your leisure.

Yesterday Erin and I got our haircut.  I don’t have a current picture of Erin, but here is one of me for those of you who forgot what I look like. 🙂

Since yesterday was my last full day on the lake, Erin declared it Bill’s Day of Fun. We went out first thing in the morning and showered up in the lake.  That has been a daily ritual for the last few weeks.  It basically consists of driving out into the middle of the lake and diving in after a bottle of shampoo and some soap.  Its a very refreshing way to start the day.

After that we went for the hair cuts and then it was back out to the lake for the remainder of the day.  Erin’s Aunt Tina, and her cousin Brennen came out for a visit.  We loaded up the boat with skis, and towels.  Brennen and Erin hopped on the tube, and we motored over to black bay.  We would whip Erin and Brennen around the lake for a while, and after Erin fell off a couple of times we had Erin join me in the boat and we gave Brennen a run for his money.

We unhooked the tube and changed its pull line out for the skiing rope.  Brennen was able to get up on two skis on his second try.  We took him around black bay a couple of times.  He even ventured outside of the wake, which was really good for his first time.

Erin and I each tried a few times to get up on one ski again.  We wanted to try without anyone else in the boat to see if it would have enough of a punch to yank us out of the water.  Neither of us were successful.

After spending another hour tubing and skiing we headed back to the house for some brats on the grill, garlic neu potatoes, sweet corn on the cob, and fruit pizza for dessert.  I was extremely stuffed by the end of the evening.

Then it was time to get all my stuff packed up, which turned into a scavenger hunt to find my things before they could be packed.  We’ll see what I missed in about two weeks.  Hopefully Erin will have room in her bags to bring up my forgotten items.

Well, I am sitting on the plane now waiting for the rest of the passengers to come aboard.  I will have to post this one when I get home.