Sea Ice Workshop in Barrow

Mid-November took me to Barrow (place to hunt snowy owls), Alaska, the farthest north town in the United States and one that I had never been to before. I, along with a few other people, gave a tutorial to representatives from various coastal Alaska communities on how to access scientific information about sea ice on the internet. The workshop was a success, and I was happy to have finally visited the town of Barrow because we may set up a field site there next summer.

The workshop was held at the Barrow Global Climate Change Research Facility, whose doors were just opened last year, and it was a great place to host a meeting with plenty of computers and high-speed internet access.


The signs labeling the rooms were given in English, brail, and Inupiaq.



I'm thinking about taking an Inupiaq class in the spring, but I'm not sure how well I would do. We'll see how it goes. The Barrow Arctic Science Consortium provided lodging in a Quonset hut onsite.


After the meeting was over, I got to drive up and down the coastline a little bit. It looked just like you would expect the Arctic Ocean to look this time of year...frozen.


Another treat for me was the opportunity to see the last sunset of the year for Barrow. Goodbye from Barrow until the spring, old friend. Makes me glad I live just below the Arctic Circle.

Halloween

Steve Springer hosted his 10th annual Halloween party on November 1, and as always, the costumes didn't disappoint. In this posting, the pictures pretty much speak for themselves:

The monks...


I went as Joe Six Pack.


Georgina the illegal alien...


Marla the penguin...


Karen the queen and Hank the witch doctor...


Party host Michael Jackson...


And what respectable Alaskan Halloween party would be complete without a Sarah Palin?


Paige the crazy sweater lady and Cody as Ali G...


Cashell the Care Bear and Tim the gnome...


Max, Kieran, and Mette straight out of The Wizard of Oz...


Carrie and Duff as Olive Oil and Popeye...


There was even a band, Steve Brown and the Bailers, and they dressed up too!

Another Work Trip

Another trip to Red Dog Mine to check up on the equipment that we installed presented quite a different season than the one we left it in. It was now winter, and lucky for my sometimes touristy nature, the Western Artic Caribou herd was migrating through Cape Krusenstern National Monument. This wasn't the ideal situation for our driver, who wanted to get to dinner on time rather than wait for caribou to cross the road, and it probably didn't help that I was taking pictures from the back seat,

but fortunately there was a small gap in the action after only a couple of minutes, so none of us went hungry.

Everything at our field site was quiet and calm. All ships have to be south of Bering Strait before November 1st due to sea ice, so this place really slows down in the winter time.

Just a day or two before we got there, a big storm threw chunks of ice up onto the beach, which made for some pretty trecherous beach combing. Glad I missed that one!

Oh yeah, we did some work too, but soon enough it was time to head back home. On the return flight, we were afforded excellent views of Denali and Mt. Foraker from the west-southwest, which was a new angle for me.

Playing With the Queen of Hearts

Sometimes, there's not a whole lot that goes on in an Alaskan town when the temperatures start to drop, the amount of daylight begins to dwindle, and everyone waits for more snow to fall, so you can imagine my excitement when I read in the newspaper on Friday that Juice Newton was going to be giving a concert in Fairbanks on Monday night. Juice Newton! She is one of my all-time favorites, so I knew I had to go.

Juice was only one of the acts that night. Gary Puckett (yes, of Gary Puckett and the Union Gap) was also playing. It was a fund raiser for the Fraternal Order of Alaska State Troopers. Playing in the local hockey arena, the crowd was a little sparse. Poor advertising? I don't know, but the fact that I didn't find out about it until three days before makes me think...yes. At any rate, showing up ten minutes before the show was plenty of time for my friend Ellen (who was lucky enough to be in town from Delta Junction) and me to find seats in the fifth row. We could have even sat in the second row, but that seemed awfully close.

Juice was great! Unfortunately I forgot my camera, but oh well. Playing acoustic with a couple of fellow band members, Juice had a great sense of humor, could still carry a tune, and just generally rocked the house. Highly entertaining! I even got her autograph between bands:


When Gary Puckett took the stage, I realized why Ellen and I were pretty much the youngest people in the crowd. Let's see...how do I put this. I guess I'll just say that I don't think I really appreciate music from the late 60s and felt that I needed to leave a little early. Maybe I would have liked him more if I was in a lounge in Las Vegas, and he was opening for Wayne Newton or something. Who knows?

First Snow

Well, it isn't the greatest picture, but it proves the title of this entry. It's winter.