Making Our Own Fun

The trick to surviving a winter that lasts from October to May is that you need to stay busy.  Luckily, we are pretty good at making our own fun. 

We started off with the first birthday gauntlet of the year--four birthdays in roughly five weeks. Somewhere in the chaos, Rick took several trips, Aeryn got baptized, and the girls finally managed to teach Claudia how to walk.  We all lived and were mostly satisfied.

One kid wanted a unicorn, the other wanted a pika.  You guess who wanted what.

Yet again, I had grand designs to go to the annual Bardathon hosted by the Fairbanks Shakespeare Company and yet again managed to miss the entire thing.  I had the best of intentions, but when it came to actually finding a babysitter and getting in the car, I couldn't do it.  Next year we'll try again.  Or at least talk about it.

I've never expected to associate dogsledding with spring, but now I do.  People run sleds as long as there is snow, and the hybrid kennel-trucks are a common sight during the winter, but they're ubiquitous in February and March.  Handmade signs at intersections advertise dogsled rides, and multiple community venues offer free mushing-themed events with sled rides and puppy petting zoos.  There is even the occasional sled lashed to the top of a Camry, on its way to one race or another. 

The two biggest races up here are the Iditarod, which everyone has heard of, and the Yukon Quest, which everyone outside of Alaska and western Canada has not.  The Iditarod runs roughly 1000 miles from Anchorage to Nome, retracing the 1925 run from Nenana to Nome to deliver diphtheria antitoxin (yes, Balto is based, however loosely, on a real story).  The thousand mile trek covers every sort of arctic terrain, and is accomplished by one musher and sixteen or so dogs over 8-15 days.

I know you can't tell, but that is totally a river.

Like the Iditarod, the Yukon Quest is run in February regardless of weather.  The Quest stretches a thousand miles from Fairbanks to Whitehorse, Canada (or Whitehorse to Fairbanks, depending on the year), covering the old Gold Rush and mail delivery routes from the early 1900s, and takes approximately 10-20 days to finish depending on conditions.  Due to the extremely remote route, severe weather conditions and harsh terrain, it's actually considered by some to be tougher than the Iditarod.  This year the Quest started in Fairbanks. The first leg of the race ran up the Chena River, which bisects Fort Wainwright, so naturally we bundled up and waddled out to the river to watch with the rest of the people lined up on the river to whoop and cheer and catcall the racers.  Jane was less than impressed, but was mollified by getting to play with the camera.

Our next adventure was to visit the Ice Park.  Every year Fairbanks hosts the World Ice Art Championships, where international teams compete in carving huge sculptures out of thousands of pounds of locally harvested ice.  Last year we missed out because Claudia was all of two weeks old and Rick refused to let me take her out into single digit temperatures (something about being "a good parent" or some such tosh).  This year, the championship had been canceled because of a building that burned down, but there were still plenty of sculptors at work.  There were also a ton of slides, including one two-story beauty that was my personal favorite.  Some of us were less than enthusiastic.  I dragged them along anyway.

I used Rick for scale.  The ice is cut from local lakes and is referred to as "arctic diamond" because of its clarity.  Isn't it gorgeous?

The best part of the park.

The injustice of having to go to the ice park can be crushing.

A few weeks ago Rick and I ventured out for some Fairbanks haute cuisine.  (Haute or not, I still can't say enough good about the gyros at the roadside stand called, appropriately enough, Gyros.) The Turtle Club sits off the old highway north of town, across from a quarry and next to a construction company.  It's got what I'm coming to consider the Alaska flavor--eccentric and pragmatic, and a certain "we didn't ask for your opinion" charm.  There are candles and glass goblets on the tables, turtles of every conceivable material and design in cabinets and on shelves, and bear traps on the wall.  They serve prime rib and lobster and that's it.  It was delicious, and the best part was the giant tray of homemade desserts that was brought around at the end.  The meal came with an Alaska-size price tag, but was probably some of the best food I've ever had.  So, you know, if you are ever up in Fairbanks and need to spend all of your money before you go home, stop by The Turtle Club.  You won't be sorry, especially if you like cheesecake.

The next adventure has technically been a couch adventure, but maybe next year we'll go see it in person and help put up the tripod.  The Nenana Ice Classic is an international gambling event that takes place in April, and marks the "official" start of spring for many Alaskans.  Every year Nenana, a small town about 50 miles south of Fairbanks, erects a giant tripod in the middle of the frozen Tanana River.  The tripod is attached to a clock by a trip wire.  Once the tripod is standing, the town starts taking bets on the date and time that the river will finally break up and send the tripod plunging to its icy doom.  The purse is split between the winner(s) and the chosen charitable recipients of the year.  Since a winner can expect anywhere from $4000-$12,000, I will definitely be entering next year.  Worst case scenario, I don't win and inadvertently donate to Nenana Elementary.

Aurora season is drawing to a close.  A couple more weeks and the nights won't get dark enough to see it.  Fortunately Lady A and Steve have put on a good show lately. (Tangent: yes, it is actually called Steve--a new vertical aurora first so named by a bunch of aurora chasers who were being funny, and then given a backronym--that's a wonderful word--by the people in charge of such things: Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement.  STEVE.  I don't know what I love more, the fact that it's called Steve or that the scientists retroactively fitted the official scientific name to the popular one.)  

This isn't Steve, just a cool picture from my porch.

That's all for now, folks.  This summer's shaping up to be busy, so stay tuned.  If your interest has been piqued--or you're a homeschool parent grasping for end of year social studies material--check out the sites below.

http://www.yukonquest.com/about

http://www.icealaska.com/www/en/about-us/history-a-benefits.html

Digging out of Winter

Spring in Alaska is a process.  It isn't just a simple, gradual warming, the snow mysteriously melting away and replaced by violently brilliant flowers.  Please refer to the chart below.

It makes sense that it takes a while, though.  The last I saw, the total snowfall for Fairbanks this winter measured 78.4".  In laymen's terms, that's a crap-ton of snow.  The vast majority of it (approximately 70") fell over three months.  As much as I love the winter there were definitely times that it seemed like we were all stuck in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers*.

But that was then. To quote another awesome movie: "The world is changed. I feel it in the earth. I feel it in the water.  I smell it in the air."

In short, break-up** is underway.

Housing guilt-tripping us into cleaning our driveway.  These are actually some pretty cool machines--first a snow plow breaks up the ice, then this contraption comes behind and scrapes it up, crushes it, and spits it into the back of trucks to be driven away and dumped in political dissidents' yards.  Okay, maybe not the last part, but it's still fun to watch.

The day is stretching, seven minutes at a time--it's subtle at first, and then one day you realize the sun didn't set until 9:30. The temperatures still yo-yo to single digits and even occasionally dip below 0 at night.  The sidewalks are visible, the roads are clear, and the snowline is slowly creeping back from the concrete. So much snow is melting that ankle-deep floodplains are developing and the constant drip off the roof sounds like rain, and everything is STILL mostly white.  The icicles are massive and vaguely terrifying.

As of last Thursday, the first geese were spotted in Creamer's Field.  The cold has shifted from "painful" to "brisk" and even occasionally to "refreshing." It's a daily struggle to convince the kids that 30 degrees still means they need to wear shoes and some sort of arm covering.  The locals are venturing out in t-shirts, and it's nice to open the windows and air out the winter fug that's permeated my house for the last four months.

It's like they're trying to get hypothermia.

I am a little sad that the snow is finally melting, but only because I have to stop driving on the sidewalk.  I will not miss Bertha skidding into the intersections, and I won't miss the sideways lurch as the tires spin on the ice and suddenly catch.  That being said, break-up is the worst time to drive up here.  As the snow melts and refreezes, it gets ridiculously slick. Trying to drive on rotten hard-pack is equally bad.

You can't tell, but Bertha is well and truly stuck.  This was taken while we waited for a tow-truck after getting another truck stuck trying to pull us out the first two times.

One of the more unpleasant parts of break-up is that the hard pack--the 4 inches or so of compressed ice and snow that you've been driving on all winter--has to be removed from your driveway.  Now, if you're smart, you hire someone with a machine to come do it and count the money well-spent.  If you're Rick and me, you do it yourself and promise your aching body that you'll be less cheap next year.

Rick with his sledgehammer.  There's actually a pretty awesome video that goes with this, but I can't get clips to work on the blog.  Let's just say Rick's a beast.

We got the savages out working on it, too.

Just in case you were wondering why we needed a hammer.  The stuff below was 4 inches thick; it was closer to 5 by the street.

Of course, there are compensations for doing it yourself.  No one else had an inuksuk*** in their yard.

*(Sing along if you know it): "In November the snow starts to fly / Piling up, ankle-high. / By December it's up to your knees/ Still a bride's a bride to be. / January, higher still, /  To the parlor window-sill. / February finds a drift / and a storm that seems never to lift. / March comes in like a lion, what else / Still the snow never melts. / April showers will come so they say / but they don't, and it's May..."

**The term is supposed to describe the process of the frozen rivers thawing and breaking up, but the idea of breaking up with winter is also incredibly appropriate.

***Freestanding sculptures of stone made by Inuit to convey messages, but that definition lacks nuance.  If you want more information, here's a link.
 www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/inuksuk-inukshuk/