Arctic Yo-Yo Brunch and Hut07

we wrapped up the weekend at Martin and Tawna's for brunch. there was great food, from eggs and salmon to french toast and berries. lots of good food this weekend that started at Kristen and Ned's for moose spaghetti. this picture is Martin showing us how the arctic yo-yo is played.

i gave it a try, but i was only good for a laugh.
i spent the weekend out at the field site. here is the met tower ben helped me install. only this was the wrong one, we took it down and installed another one that has two different wind speed and temp levels. ben says he wants on the payroll as an assistant to the Simpson lab, but participating in all this science should be payment enough :-)

ben and i carved a pumpkin at trevor and ed's pumpkin carving party.
i left my camera at ed's. of course i had lots of interesting pictures. this is ed.

a great ski weekend

The snow fell all Friday night. Julie and I went to Creamer's with the dogs and had a great ski. This snow is awesome.


We got up early and headed to Roasters before the ski swap, turns out the entire town had the same idea. Skiing is on the brain.


We all headed to Birch Hill for skate skiing, all the trails are groomed. Tower, White Bear, Roller Coaster, can you believe it? How you can live here and not love to ski is beyond me. Touring, Skate and maybe a tele turn or two at the Moose tonight...the weekend doesn't get much better. I am glad I am feeling good and able to get out there every day. My new classic set up will be ready Wednesday from Fred at Raven's Cross Country, who's up for the backcountry?. He has good deals on all that is xc and threw in the marks and wax for free. Ben is missing all this his, but his last call he was in Coldfoot and shooting photos so his weekend is excellent as well.

field site

Randy and I moved our instruments out into the field to sample air. It is literally in the middle of a hay field 20 miles outside of town on unmarked dirt roads. These are the shelves that carry our instruments and the computer hut, on huge skis in the background(double click image). This is last night and you can see the ground is mostly grass, our goal was to gather data before snow.
.....and today, ooops. it is snowing big time. at least i have my new 40 below boots, they are not the standard military issue white bunny boots, but they will do. It is pretty warm right now, only 19F, but being outside all night sitting around it feels much colder.

potato, pie and turkey fry

2nd annual potato, pie and turkey fry at the Trainor house. We definitely exceeded the max number of people you can fit in one room to eat. no one can miss the great food that comes to this event. This year Sara Petitio won both categories for her sweet potato pie and mushroom potato dish! most interesting was Tom Clausen's moose kidney pie.Later in the night we headed to another famous party house, trevor's for game night. Lisa and I finally were able to hang out after being fairbanks blog friends(dorks, really), she and Dan are a hoot. We made it just in time for midnight round of balderdash.

Chena Dome Trail

We hiked part of the the Chena Dome Trail today. The first 3 miles take you up to the ridge where the views are awesome. A snow storm came in soon after this for our hike back down. The loop is 30 miles and we have not back packed the entire route yet, but soon.
Ben carried his 4x5 camera up to the ridge, we stopped in this blowing grass area so he could shoot a portrait. Pella of course ran around like nuts. Ben has 4 framed photos currently showing in a Detroit Art Gallery, pretty cool.

Anchorage, again.

It was a lonely drive down the Parks on Wednesday night, as the stops are boarded up now that tourist season is over. I think Ben can do this drive with his eyes closed, this is the 4th surgery this year.
We stayed at the usual bed and breakfast, Glen knows us now so we get a good discount. The Copper Whale is right downtown walking distance to all the hip Anchorage spots. Glen also serves up a great breakfast here in the main lounge area with views of the ocean inlet.We still have no good news on the blood tests and we are still playing this waiting game. I am hoping at least with the new tubes I will have a few months of feeling better and no infections.

we decided it would be a good experiment to collect data from another site other than the IARC before going into the field. so i took one of our instruments home to run outside the window and collect aerosols. i would have collected more, but what you can't tell from this picture is the vacuum pump is just obnoxious. trying to get ahead before we leave for anchorage on wednesday.

finally it is snowing!

The temps are in the 20's now and the snow is finally falling. We went for a walk on the UAF trails this morning. I have not been out to do anything exciting for a few weeks now, I have not been feeling well. We are headed to Anchorage week next for a another catheter replacement surgery.

first fridays

We headed out to all the local hotspot galleries in Fairbanks this evening. Patrick had some photos hanging at the Annex outside of town.
Patrick with his photos of the northern lights in the background.
Wells Street Gallery was just packed. We saw a ton of people out tonight and some great art. This is where Ben is having his solo show in February, very exciting. Tonight was a juried show and all the top prize winners received raw meat. You gotta love Fairbanks.