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.

[youtube FMR24pmDKsc]

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

Deer Hunt and Family Visits

A couple weeks ago Dad flew down and we headed up by Bemidji to do some hunting. My parents own some land up there. Neither of us have been lucky enough to get a deer yet, but that was bound to change this year. I wasn’t looking for the Boon and Crockett deer this year. In fact I was just looking to put some meat in the freezer. So Saturday morning is when the season opened, and dad and I were out in our stands waiting for the sun to come up. I didn’t see anything until 10:30 that morning when 3 does ran by in front of me. The plan at that time was to wait for a big buck. We hunted the rest of the day without any luck. That night the game plan changed from a big buck to any decent sized deer. The next morning we headed out just before day break. Dad’s stand is closer to camp than mine, so he split off to go to his. I kept walking towards mine and got almost there when I heard a shot. The tough thing about hunting down in MN, is there are shots all the time from every direction. I’d heard plenty of shots the day before I was sure belonged to one of the people hunting with us. So I thought it might have been dad shooting, but wasn’t sure. I got up into my stand and waited for the big buck to arrive. Well after about 45 min a doe came running into the clearing in front of me. I raised the gun up and sighted in on her. I was debating weather she was the one I wanted to take this year. Since I didn’t really and was only looking for some food, I decided she’d be as good as any. She paused a second and I put one right behind her front shoulder. She went down right away, and didn’t get up again. Sometimes when you shoot a deer, they will run a long ways before they die. This was not the case. I was shooting the rifle I use for Moose, so I’m sure there was enough shock value in the bullet to stop her in her tracks.

I went to go get my dad to help clean the deer. When I came up to his stand he was nowhere to be found. After a little searching I found him over working on the deer he’d shot right at daylight. The shot I’d heard was him. He had just gotten into his stand, turned around and there was the deer, which turned out to be a small buck. So cleaning deer was on the menu for that day.

So we began the process of cutting up the deer.  They are basically just like a moose, just much much smaller.  It was snowing out and pretty chilly, so the hands got pretty cold.

We finally got it all boned out and into coolers.   Wayne gave me a ride with the meat back to Baxter.  The next few days we took the big pieces of meat and turned them into roasts and stew meat, and the scraps we brought into a meat market to get made into summer sausage and pepperoni sticks.  We just picked them up a couple days ago and they are delicious.

The next weekend Erin and I went down to the farm for a visit.  It was nice to catch up with everyone.

Have you ever printed a boarding pass?

Well this little feat has been a long time coming.  For those of you who have worked with me in Unalakleet you probably have heard about my aspiration of using the poster printer to print my boarding pass.  Well two days ago my dream became a reality.  I logged onto nwa.com and checked in for my flight.  Selected my seats and chose the option to print my boarding pass.  Well as you know Mac computers make it super easy to print things as a PDF file instead of to a printer.  So thats what I did.  I was on two different flights and both boarding pass tickets were on the same page stacked on top of each other.  This wouldn’t do I need each boarding pass to be on a different print out to really dramatize the “Big Boarding Pass”.  So I took a screen shot of each individual one and then took them over to the poster printer.  Each one printed out to be about three feet wide and about 1.5 feet tall.  I put them in a picture tube and flew to Anchorage.  My flight was on Hageland which doesn’t require a boarding pass, so none needed for the first leg of my trip.

After my arrival at Anchorage I got my bags checked and headed to the TSA security screening area.  Rebecca tagged along to take some pictures from a distance as I made my way through security.  I flashed my MVP card to the first TSA lady who let me into the MVP line without the need for my boarding pass.  Then it came to the person that checks your ID with your boarding pass just before the screening area.  Here is how it played out.

The TSA agent asked for my I.D. and boarding pass.  I handed him my I.D. and then unrolled the boarding pass.

After a look of surprise he said “Is that your boarding pass?”  I told him “Yeah… I didn’t have any other printer at work, and was running late for my flight”.  He told me to stand back and called on his radio for his supervisor.  He took my boarding pass and headed back toward the main TSA desk which was on the other side of the metal detector.

The supervisor came over and they exchanged a few words.

He came back to me and said “Okay… You are going to need to carry this through the metal detector with you.”  and he let me on through with a smile.

I made it through the metal detector, and didn’t even get an extra pat down or anything.  So that was nice.  My backpack needed another scan.  It usually does with the pleathra of hard drives and extra batteries that I always have with me.  So while that was happening a TSA agent came over and asked if he could look at the giant boarding pass.  I handed it to him.  He took it back to their little area and laid it out on a table.  He called over all of his TSA buddies and they all hovered over it checking it out.  I heard comments like..

“Thats an official boarding pass?”

“yeah..  Look it has everything, just really big”

“Man.. how’d he get it so big?”

“He must be an architect or something.”

I finally got my backpack and headed over their way.  They all had smiles on their face and said that I was very original.  I told them I was hoping to lighten their day a bit, and thanked them for having fun with it.  Here is a picture with one of the TSA guys.

I then headed down to my gate.  When I got to the check-in place. The agent asked for my boarding pass.  I unrolled it and he started laughing.  Mentioned somthing about not being able to scan that and just typed in my seat number and told me to have a nice flight.

After my extremely long flight down to Minneapolis I headed into the World Club (NWA’s rendition of the Board Room).  When you enter their facility with an Alaska Airlines board room pass you need to show them a NWA ticket to get in.  So I handed them my board room card and unrolled my boarding pass on the counter.  The two ladies looked at each other and started laughing.  They called over the other people working in the world club over to take a look.  They asked me if I had won a trip or something.  I told them that I was just doing it to get a smile out of people.  They laughed and told me to have a nice day.  One of them said that they’d like to see the gate agent try to scan that thing in.

After my 4 hours of sitting in there waiting for my final flight, I headed over to my gate.  When I went to check in there I unrolled my other ginormous boarding pass, and the lady just started laughing and said “is this for real?”.  I told her that it was and so she punched in my seat number into the computer just like the last one had and said “can I have that?”.  I said “sure, can I get a picture with you?”.

So it turned out to be a good trip.  Everyone involved really seemed to enjoy the whole thing.  I wish I could have gotten a little video of the encounters, but that would have been pretty difficult to pull off all by myself.

I hope you enjoy the story.  It made my long journey just that much better.

Flights….

A quick recap on the last two and half weeks of travel…

Here is a video I did in Google Earth to show how my last two and half weeks has been spent.

[QUICKTIME http://www.bbryson.com/movies/tour.mov 320 260]

So as you can see I’ve had a busy two weeks. Lots of flights. Almost one a day. I did spend two days over a weekend in Brevig Mission, and two days in Unalakleet over another weekend. Besides that I was only in a village for one night and off to the next village the next day. Needless to say I slept like a hibernating bear my weekend in Unalakleet.

This last Monday I flew with Doug (the BSSD plane) to Koyuk at 8:00 AM from Unalakleet. I spent the day there shooting video and then Doug swung back by Koyuk around 5:15 P.M. and took me to Shaktoolik. The weather was kinda sketchy with slushy rain falling outside and a fair bit of wind bouncing the plane around. We flew the trip at about 400 feet off the ocean. The GPS in the front of the plane was displaying the yellow (we may just hit something if you go any lower) and Red (If you fly towards me you will hit something) warnings of well pretty much our entire surroundings.

I took a little video and used the seat in front of me to stabilize the camera to the best of my abilities. As you can see it wasn’t very easy.

[QUICKTIME http://bbryson.com/bill/files/2007/10/bit_bouncy.mov 320 260]

So I spent a night in Shaktoolik the weather there was pretty much terrible. Blowing like crazy and rain pouring down. The next day I wasn’t sure I was going to make it out of there. John Concilus was there as well, so we both kind of had a weary eye on the sky. Hageland decided to get a plane out flying so we had our chance. The pilot landed the 207 there in Shaktoolik and we quickly loaded up all of our gear. Then a truck pulled up with 500 pounds of mail to be added into the back. We were pretty packed in there. Here are few pictures from the short flight from Shaktoolik to Unalakleet.

We made it into Unalakleet safe and sound.

My parting picture for this post will be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in Unalakleet. For those of you who lived in this building. Yow know how far from the truth this actually is.

Old Stomping Ground

I left Gambell and St. Lawerence island on Friday heading for Teller which is just a mear 7 miles from Brevig Mission where Erin and I taught a few years ago. I got some pretty decent footage in Teller, stayed the night, and shot a little more the next day. Around 5:00 I was on a plane to make that quick journey to Brevig. C.O. and AnnMaire were out at the airport when I stepped off the plane. I was lucky enough to stay with them while in Brevig. It was fun to see all of the students that we had worked with. AnnMaire and C.O. have a very nice house. They have it decorated up very nicely. We stayed up talking late into the evening enjoying some tasty Muskox for dinner.

The next day was beautiful out and we decided to hike up the mountain behind the village. I was hoping to get some video of Brevig from up above, and it was a nice day to be outside. As we approached the base of the mountain we found two of my old students. Sherosha and RayRay on a dirtbike. They were checking out the small herd of Muskox that had come down off the top of the mountain. We talked the boys into riding around to the other side of the heard to get them to run back towards us in hopes of getting some video. They were up for the challenge and did just that. The heard however headed up the side of the mountain, so I got some okay video but they were kind of behind a ridge. The boys met up with us as we were heading up the mountain after us. They said they’d try to go around them again and get them to come by us again. So we continued heading up the mountain.

We were about three quarters the way up the mountain when the boys finally had the heard coming back our way. I squatted down and started filming the heard coming my way. I was looking through the view finder and watching them get closer and closer. The hard thing to tell is how far away they actually are. I think it should have that little disclaimer “Objects are closer than they appear”. Well needless to say when I opened my other eye to see where they actually were, they were close. I stood up so they could see that I was there, and they were nice enough to divert their direction away from me.

We spent a little time at the top looking at the amazing panorama views. The weather was still very nice with some clouds rolling in.

We headed down the mountain and back to the village. After a little dinner we went over and I got my first look at the new school that was built since Erin and I left. It is amazing how its changed. It actually feels like a learning institution. You can see why the kids are more likely to be in a working mode. Really amazing to see such a nice school in the place our old run down one used to stand. After the school tour we went down to the beach and shot got some video of the sun setting over the ocean.

Today I left Brevig on a Bering Air flight that followed the coast landing in Wales. Wales lies on the tip of the Seward Peninsula and the Bering Strait. Wales has a few things in its surrounding area that are fairly well known. The first is a land feature known as Razor Back Mountain.

I hiked up the Razor Back and shot this photo looking between two if the spires looking over the Bering Strait.

On my hike up Razor Back I was surrounded by the tundra changing colors in the fall. It was really pretty.

Over behind the village is this huge hand statue. It is a peace symbol facing Russia. Apparently its waving to the Russians, and there is one on the Russian side waving back. I can’t really go to Russia to take a picture of it, but here is what the one on the US side looks like.

This is a picture of me with the village of Wales in the background.

I am off to Shishmaref tomorrow, so I’ll keep you posted in the next couple days on how my trip is going. I am really looking forward to getting back to Erin. It has been entirely too long to be away.