Grand entry image from Kivgiq leads more to come soon; Barrow today

Within 48 hours, I hope to make a good Kivgiq post, with a variety of images. In the meantime, here is Isabelle and Vernon Elavgak and their young son (I am so sorry, I do not know his name - but I will find out) leading Tagiugmiut Dancers of Barrow onto the dance floor during the grand entry.

And here is what I saw late this morning as I stepped out of Pepe's North of the Border Mexican Restaurant, where I had just finished another big breakfast comprised of a combination omelet, potatoes fried with peppers and onions along with a side of wheat toast.

It was a beautiful, blustery, day in Barrow and I loved walking about in the frigid wind.

Kivgiq - a random pull

At the moment, I am pleasantly exhausted and lazy - far too lazy to do any kind of search or edit of my Kivgiq images - not even a superficial one. Plus, my internet connection here is very slow and, couple that with some of the awkward features of Squarespace, my host for this blog, and it makes posting images here a slow, tedious process.

Yet, to have all these consecutive posts with no images troubles me. 

So, I just plug a CF card into my laptop and grabbed the first image that came up and this is it, Robin Jonah Kaleak of the Barrow Dancers.

As for me, I finally got to bed about 6:00 AM. I woke up more often than I wish I had, but still I got some sleep and then finally got up a bit after noon.

Feeling pleasantly exhausted and lazy, I was slow to get moving, but I was also very hungry and I wanted a good breakfast, so finally I got dressed and walked over to Pepe's North of the Border Mexican Restaurant and ordered an Omelet with extra wheat toast.

It was delicious and I took my time, and sipped cup after cup as I finished off the toast, then walked back here.

The temperature was about -13 (-25 C), the wind about 15 knots and at Pepe's, there had been a fair amount of talk about the weather, about how nice it was that it had finally warmed up and was so pleasant outside.

I should do something, now, but I am much too lazy.

Maybe I will take a long walk a little bit later, with my pocket camera, to take advantage of this pleasant weather.

The muzzled dog; I prepare to see Obama become President; too much water

In just four hours, Margie and I will climb into the new Escape and drive to Anchorage. There, we will meet Lisa and begin a trip that will put us in Washington, D.C., for the Inaugural of President Barack Obama. We are nowhere near ready to leave. So I will keep it brief.

Despite the lack of time, I had to take a walk today, just to try to be somewhat sane. As I walked, I came upon this muzzled dog. It wanted to bite me, but it couldn't.

I was not really presentable to go see the President. So I went to Envision, and got a haircut. I'm still not presentable. Oh, well. The President will never notice me.

On the way home, I drove through a puddle created by this horrendous warm-up. This is right in front of the place where celebrants huddled around the bonfire in the cold, just this past weekend.

I will be traveling for approximately six weeks. I would like to say that I will post everyday, but I really doubt it. I will post as often as I can.

When it becomes challenge to take a walk; we give Hawaii giant surf, they give us a mess

Despite the warm weather, I have continued my daily walk. With each step, I worry about falling on my still-healing shoulder and sending myself back to the operating table. But I don't worry a great deal. Caleb gave me some spikey little cleats mounted in a shoe-shaped rubber band that I pull over my shoes.

I still slip now and then, but, so far, the spikes have always caught within a few inches. That is pretty easy to recover from. Most of the time, they don't slip at all.

I hate this weather. I miss the cold, and wish that it would soon return. I love the cold. Margie does not share this sentiment.

The only thing that I regret concerning the cold that we had been blessed with from early October up until now is that this shoulder injury has prevented me from getting out and doing what I like to do - like taking my cross-country skis up to Hatcher Pass.

Or maybe venturing into the mountains on the snowshoes that my kids, fearing that I was going to go out on my cross-country skiis, gave me for Christmas.

And now I am going to be traveling for six weeks. When I get back, I will go out. My shoulder is much stronger now, even if still weak, and I think by then I will be well ready to slap on my skis and go.

This sander passed me on a different stretch of road. If you look closely at the window, you can barely see the face of the driver, looking at me. He waved, too.

A friendly sander.

And here is a snowplow, pushing ice and slush off the road. Right now, we suffer from what is known as the "Pineapple Express." There is nothing but open ocean between this part of Alaska and the great state of Hawaii/ Sometimes, we give Hawaii a great gift - our powerful storms kick up the sea and send down the giant surf that has made the north shore of Oahu so famous.

In return, Hawaii sometimes curses us with these warm, wet, winds that shoot straight up from the tropics to make a mess out of everything. 

When this happens, I wish that we did not live so close to the coast. A mid-winter meltdown in the Interior is a rare thing and on the Arctic Slope all but unheard of.

Sometimes, a whole series of Pineapple Express storms line up one right after the other and then ruin everything. It has been much worse over the past decade then ever before. That is why Wasilla lost the Iditaord restart - the true beginning of the race - to Willow. 

Too many times in a row, the Pineapple express ruined our snow conditions, but not Willow's, which is only about 30 miles up the road.

Since I cannot get Margie off the road system, perhaps, one of these days, we will move to Willow.

But then, she wants to go to Arizona for the winter.

One more thing - whenever the Pineapple express gets really bad up here, the cold air that should be sitting here slips south, and plunges the northern plains into the deep freeze.

Just check the temperatures in Montana, Dakota and Minnesota right now and you will see that I write the truth.

All bloggers should write the truth, just like I do.

The weather goes to hell - Margie beats the rap

We are having the very worst kind of weather that we ever get around here - warm temperatures and rain, right in the middle of January. I hate it when this happens. I prefer 40 below over 40 above.

And the wind was fierce and growing stronger - in some places the gusts are forecast to reach 105.

But today, the bad weather was our friend. Back in September, on a bright, sunny, day, Margie drove down a stretch of the Old Glenn Highway that she seldom traverses only to have a cop pull up behind her, lights flashing.

As he walked toward her, she removed her seat belt so that she could get to her driver's license. When he saw that she did not have it on, he wanted to give her a ticket for not wearing a seat belt, but she defied him on this point, held her ground and he backed off. He did give her a ticket for exceeding the speed limit in a school zone. That ticket was going to cost us $350 and put six points on her record. 

While it is natural for a husband to defend his wife, Margie is, in fact, most diligent and conscientious about slowing down to the 20 MPH limit whenever she comes to a school zone. And many has been the time when she thought I was approaching a school zone too fast that she has admonished me to slow down.

So she found it difficult to believe that she had done so on this day. When she went back to take a look, the yellow warning light hung in the midst of yellow leaves illuminated by the bright sun.

So she decided not so much to contest the officer's contention that she had not slowed down in the school zone, but to argue that, on this fall day, the light had been hard to see and to plea for some leniancy - a reduced fine, perhaps; not so many points put on her driving record.

Her court appearance was scheduled for 9:30 AM, so we planned to leave here about 8:00, or shortly thereafter.

The wind was blowing, rain was falling and on the roads water was flowing over ice. Many of the people who were out driving were sliding off the roads. A bit before 7:00, an announcment came over the radio that all the schools in the Mat-Su Valley and in Anchorage had been closed due to hazardous road conditions.

Furthermore, traffic was reported to be moving about 10 mph along much of the Glenn Highway.

So, hoping to get there on time, we set off just after 7:00 AM. All the way in to town, we passed through a gauntlet of disabled vehicles - the vast majority of them four-wheel drive pickup trucks - that had piled into the snow alongside the highway. Some of them had tipped over. Some of them had collided.

Even so, moving traffic was shockingly light. It almost seemed like a ghost highway.

Just before we reached Anchorage, a radio announcement told us that the Anchorage Court System had closed for the day.

Still, I dropped Margie off at the courthouse, then drove around a few blocks while she went inside. She found the judge just about ready to close her court, but because Margie had come all the way from the valley on the slick roads, she took Margie's case - and dismissed it. The officer who had issued the ticket was not there to testify against her. He was probably out tending to cars that had slid off the road.

No fine to pay; no points against her driving record.

I took the above picture afterward, while stopped at a red light, waiting to turn onto Tudor.