Yammysun

Look what I made! It's my dear friend 'Yammysun'. Yammysun is a pincushion I knitted to keep me company during the cold fall/winter months ahead. He has a hat, googly eyes, and little twiggy arms. Yammysun is very happy showing of his chic physique atop banana-bread worthy fruits and fall-themed squashes. He is my new favorite friend--by little stabbable yam.

Our first big snow day! Our winter has officially arrived, with minimal sunlight (yes, this was the brightest time of day) and snow! Since we're at sea level, the snow is quite wet and gets slushy easily, but it makes for a pretty scene!

This is the view from our front porch on the snow day. When the clouds aren't around, it's much brighter and you can see the big snow-covered mountains on the other side of the bay. Later this day, we decided to walk to Safeway for groceries. The walk usually takes about 20 minutes. It took us an hour to get there in the snow. Whew! It was a pretty walk, though.

When we got back from Safeway, we decided to make some warm comfort food. Nachos! There are french fried onions and ground bison on those bad boys. Good thing we spent two hours hiking through snow drifts before we sat down and ate these. My stomach still hurts. 

Good news! We drove the truck around the block! Mr. Amazing Tyler was actually able to fix the problem that has ben vexing us all summer. However, since every road in Seward is now covered in sheets of ice, we can't really drive it around town yet. We need to modify the chains we got for the truck so that they'll actually stay on the tires. But if something actually finally goes well with this silly peice of machinery, we should have a working vehicle in the next week or so! Which means *gasp* we can haul furniture to our house! A bed! A bed! I want a bed! I woke up face down in the carpet this morning because I nocked my Thermarest away last night. The resulting drool/carpet combination was not a pleasant way to start the day. 

Eat a Kitten

Everyone knows how much I love ocean critters. And I think they're pretty darn tasty, too. And yes, our oceans are dyeing and something needs to be done about it, but really, PETA, really. This is just going a little too far. It's really kind of creepy....Sea Kittens. I love kitties and I love fishies, but putting them together in a campaign to make people of the world stop eating fish? PETA, you're ridiculous. 

Really, you should check out this link. Click here for PETA craziness!

Suicidal Tendancies

The time is 10:07 am. The NOAA website reports a temperature for Seward's harbor of a balmy 41 degrees, the warmest we've seen since August. The rain pours sideways from the steady southerly wind, gusting up to 26 mph. The warm temperatures have melted most of the snow, but the layer of thick ice  stubbornly does not want to leave the gravel. And here toils Tyler, utilizing the short half hour window of morning twilight to attempt a truck repair. Most people have heard our horror stories of this truck. It brought us to Alaska, then wanted to die. It hasn't been running since the beginning of June, so the penniless Barenjagers have to get around town with some generously gifted bicycles, which can be a little tiresome with the wind and the rain blowing the opposite direction. And yes, when the roads were a thick layer of ice last week, Klutzy Kristen biffed it and has the giant lump on her knee to prove it. 

We made progress on the truck two days ago, however, and fixed a problem that had been the bane of Tyler's existence for the past few months--he had to fabricate his own part. The excitement of the fix was short lived. Yesterday morning Tyler left for work, the truck sat steadfastly in the cement driveway. By the time I'd finished my shower and looked out the window, the truck was in the middle of the road waiting to be hit by a car. Tyler rushed home from work and we were able to push it to the side of the road in the gravel, which was hard to do yesterday when ice and slush covered everything. 

So now Tyler's trying to repair the truck enough to get it back in the driveway so we don't get a ticket for parking it on the wrong side of the road. The battery is dead, though, from sitting for so long, and Tyler and I have to go to work. But here is a window into our frustratingly poor life here...a suicidal truck with no will to go on that haunts us every day. And Tyler's been working on it like this for months...in his rain gear, with the wind blowing like crazy. And all I can do to say thank you is bake some cookies. And maybe give him a mug of warm wine for his troubles. 

Good thing I get to play with ocean critters at work!

knitty kitty

These are the arm warmers I just finished! I'm very proud--it's my first time knitting in the round (without a loom to help me out), the first time I've done stripes, the first time I put a hole in my knitting, AND the first time I made something get bigger as I went! Whew! They're nice and warm, though, and the woolen fibers help keep the chill of the 30 mph winds off my wrists. My long arms were freezing from the inadequacies of long sleeves made for people with short arms. I had wrist burn. It wasn't pleasant. I do, however, fervently wish I had more time for the knitting. I'm now officially addicted. Mreow!

Airspace

I pilfered some pictures, despite my inability to keep my camera during my trip to Nanwalek. Just as I boarded the plane, it fell out on the runway. I at least had my video camera with me, and these are some shots from the camera. Not nearly as great as the ones that were on the camera... such is the disappointment of my absentminded ways. 

Top picture: our six-pack plane on the gravel air strip. This one is named "John Deer" 

second picture: View from the plane, we spent the ride flying low in the mountains. so pretty!

third picture: the largest building in any village: the school. The building to the left with the green top is the general store. The village isn't much bigger than what you see in the photo.

fourth picture: The airport in Nanwalek consists of this wooden frame. Local kids painted the whales. And everyone in the town owns at least one of those ATVs!

Bushmen

    I have just returned from my visit to two Alaskan villages: Nanwalek and Port Graham. Each are on the Kenai Peninsula towards the Aleutian Islands. We were quite lucky, as the weather coming off the Gulf of Alaska can be quite horrid. All four days were sunny and *gasp* not windy. The wind around here is constant. In Seward we've had about a week and a half worth of straight 25 mph winds, with gusts up to 45 mph. It doesn't stop. The wind lull was much appreciated.

    Both places were gorgeous. Nanwalek was right on the beach and we arrived early our first morning. With some spare time, since things in the villages go on a much slower, laid back clock than anywhere else in the US, I had a chance to roam the beach. At about 10:30 am, the sun's rays were just erupting over the hillsides. The sun is so low, it pierces the eye sideways. Each rock on the pebbly beach is broken into a color spectrum-for each stone, five more exist in layers behind it, colors throbbing around the edges. It was a beach site I had never seen before. Waves crash as I stare at three immense volcanoes along the Aleutian chain, one of which I can see smoke rising from like a simmering cigar, slowly embering inside. The town is just behind me, the largest building is the school. It also employs the most people--6 teachers. There is a janitor as well. We met him our second night in town. Nanwalek has a park dedicated to his honor. He will be the next tribal chief and spends his mornings in meetings with other elected members of his tribe, his afternoons running the only general store in the village, which is open from 12-5 six days a week, and his nights cleaning the school. We came upon him after dinner at the teacher's house in Nanwalek, on our way to bed in the elementry classroom. His clothes were tattered and dirty, and his face shone with beads of sweat as he slid the vacuum cleaner back and forth across the carpet, something out of a 1980s after school special. 

"Hello! You must be the scientists" he says. We nod and give him our names.  Everyone in the villages calls us that-the scientists. We walk towards the window that overlooks the basketball game playing downstairs. We watch a 16 year old villager jump, complete a 360 degree turn, and make a basket from the 3-point line.

   "You have some great kids," I say, nodding at the game floor.

    Chief looks at me like I'm trying too hard. "They do like the game. My son Patrick, that's him on the court in the white jersey, he tells me everything that happens on this court when he comes home. Every foul, everything. He went to one of those camps, you know, for the game. They have those in Anchorage, and he brought back all the rules, the official ones. He really loves it. He wants to play college basketball. I hope he can find a better career goal, though. Someone from a little village like this can't play professional."

    This whole dialogue takes quite a while to communicate, each word is pronounced in perfect laid-back laziness, not that this man could be lazy. 

    Port Graham was an experience, as well. It was half the size of Nanwalek, so only 20 students in all K-12 grades existed in the village. I found a seal flipper, though, with a big bite taken out of it. I could see all the bones moving under the flesh, quite enjoyable. 

   The worst part of the trip was losing my camera as I boarded the plane home. It fell out on the runway, and we'd taken off by the time I realized it. Consequently, no pictures from the trip. I'm hoping my travel mates give me copies of what they took.