Bridge Work...

The dog trail crosses a small creek a little ways from our house. When the old bridge collapsed, my neighbors, my wife and I built a new one. Now every few years, we need to do maintenance on it. The bank sloughing led to moving it a ways downstream, then a corner of the deck broke and needed more support. I guess it's kind of like that poem about making fences, except that here it's good neighbors that build bridges.

Iron dog...

Now that the dog runs are over, it's time to haul in fire wood with the ski doo. During the winter, I cut up dead and down trees along the trail and stack them up, then bring it back in the spring. When I first started to run dogs, I did all the trail work on foot, skis, or snowshoes. The wood was hauled by me and the dogs. A few years ago, I broke down and bought a snow machine. Then built a trail groomer. It occurred to me that with skis attached, the groomer could double as a sled. So now I haul a lot more wood than I did. But maybe not quite as much fun as it used to be.

Tax Day...

Finally got the taxes done. Used the E-file option for the first time. It seemed like a good idea until it came back, refused by the IRS. So so after several more unsuccessful tries, I finally called the IRS. They found the error and I filed it again. It finally worked, but what a waste of time. Unlike the so-called tea bag protestors, who apparently didn't know that teabagging was gay slang for oral sex, don't understand that most folks are getting a tax cut, or maybe want to go back to the nineteenth century and not pay any tax, I don't mind paying something. But it should be a lot easier to file. I don't know if a flat tax is the answer, but the current system is a joke, on us. 

Last dog run...

The weather has finally warmed up, it's been getting to near forty the past few days. Looks like this could be the last dog run of the year. I ran the younger dogs in one team, then took the five oldest in another. My old leader Springer is 13 and his half-litter mate Luna is 11. They ran all winter, mostly short distances, for my wife's occasional dog run. She calls them the Alzheimer's team. They still get all excited and go like heck for the first hundred yards or so, then slow down to a slow but steady trot. A lot of sled dogs don't even live to 13. Springer still has the same enthusiasm he had as a pup, even if he can't run as fast or as long anymore. I guess there's a lesson there somewhere.

Flight Time...

Drove down past Big Delta to help my friend Mike do a survey on the Delta River. I go down there several times a year, it reminds me of what it used to be like to work for a living. It was a fine day, sunny and warm, until just a few miles north of Black Rapids, when the wind started to blow the snow around. At the survey site, it was nearly a ground blizzard with snow drifts blown across the road. Mike was already setting up the equipment, so there was no discussion about doing the work with that wind howling, we just got started and worked until we finished. What would normally have been an easy two hour job took twice that long under those conditions. Afterwards, we talked about working in that wind and laughed about how miserable it was. Big joke. Mike wanted to take a picture, so I stood out on the river like a ski jumper trying to fly. It almost worked.

White Mountains Trip

Took the dogs on a trip with my friend Bill up to the White Mountains Recreation Area, about fifty miles north of Fairbanks. The BLM maintains a system of cabins and trails there. It's about as close as you can get to a Brooks Range wilderness experience and still be only about an hour from town. The weather was brutal the first day; the wind was from the north at about 20-30 mph and at one point blew me and the sled down off the trail unto the scrub brush that grows on the hillside there. Bill's dogs were leading and they ran great into that wind. Barney, my fearless leader, also ignored the wind and kept my team going. As Bill said when we got to the cabin, the only good thing that happened all day was that we made it there. The next two days were much better weather as the wind died off and the temperature got well above zero. A crew from the BLM stopped by the cabin, so we made coffee and enjoyed their company for a bit. On the second day, we ran into some overflow on the creek crossings. One of my older leaders is deathly afraid of the water, perhaps it's overflowbia? Or maybe that'll be when he's over his fear of overflow. The trip out was a bit of a slog, with fresh wet snow, but the dogs continued to do well. It's always a little amazing how they respond, they're really born to run.

Readin' the funnies...

Don't subscribe to to our daily newspaper, the Fairbanks news minus (http://newsminer.com), anymore. I sometimes read it on line. Since you don't get the comics on line, the funniest parts are usually the comments that follow many of the articles. There's a core of letter writers who link most everything, regardless of the issue, to Obama's latest plot to turn the country into a communist, no fascist, wait, maybe even a socialist dictatorship. Why we could become just like Sweden!  Not sure what the problem is in that, unless they'd force us to eat lutefisk.

Almost spring...

It was minus 15° F this morning and with the wind blowing, it certainly feels a lot colder. A good day to run dogs. Most of my dogs are large and fuzzy, not the sleek houndy/pointer crosses that you see wearing coats and booties at the race track. I wouldn't say my team is slow, but I round my run times to the nearest hour.  This is also good weather for the musher with a hangover, I call it a medicinal dog run. Not that I get hangovers much, well maybe a few, but the cold air really does clear the head.

Where we're at...

Now that I've recovered this blog from electronic limbo after almost forgetting everything I originally did to create it, I'm not sure what I expected to do here. I guess it was meant to counter a lot of the negatives about Alaska that were generated by our half-term governor and her ill-conceived presidential campaign. Now that's all behind us, so I'll just try to write about the Alaska I see every day; there's still a lot of humor in it all. The blog is registered under the nick name that's followed me around since high school, Big Jon, but will just use the initials BJ here, since that's how I usually sign my emails nowadays.