The Friday Night Fever

Greetings and salutations to all of you beautiful people out there. I don't think I can even apologize for my gigantic gap in posts over the last month, so we will just pretend like I've been keeping up as intended. There has been soooo much going on in my life since I last posted, this post is sure to be loaded with pictures, videos, and an abnormal amount of tidbits from my life. Oh yeah, the title of this post refers to the "Spring Fever" that is so common up here; the snow has been melting and the temperatures warming up significantly, but I'm just opting to stay inside on this lovely, Friday evening (this is mostly due to the cold that I'm getting over and the overall soreness of my body, I'll explain more about the soreness later).

I'll start right where I last left off (this is going to be a long one, that was almost a full month ago). I mentioned the $500 shopping spree that I had won at the local store, well, here's the picture from the collection of items I nabbed.
Here's the rundown of what I picked up: 18 twelvers of soda (not even close to all of it being for me), two boxes of milk, two rolls of paper towels, a cutting board, two boxes of party mix, a can opener, an axe, a hatchet, three boxes of donuts, four boxes of french bread pizza, six potatoes, two onions, a jar of mayonnaise, soy sauce, two packages of cheese, and one box of rocky road ice cream (is that not an awesome shopping spree?). Some of the soda is for me, but a lot of it is also being distributed to my students over this last stretch of the school year (gotta get them at school somehow, right?).

During that same week of the shopping spree was also the state testing. The testing is really important, particularly for my high school kids who need to pass the High School Graduate Qualifying Exam. We were at the school early every day to prepare breakfast and make sure the students were primed for testing. Overall, I feel that my students tried their hardest and now we are anxiously waiting for the results; I've told them many times that it doesn't matter how they do, it's whether or not they gave it their all. I'm hoping that their scores reflect all of the hard work that they've put in over the course of the year, despite the number of setbacks that occurred (the shortened school days because of no water, being out of our classroom and crammed in a tiny temporary room for 10 weeks, etc.). My high schoolers showed a solid level of perseverance through all of the complications of our year; I'm just hoping that these same complications that helped bring out this positive quality, did not have the potentially negative effect that generally comes along with obstacles such as these.

The next week I noticed a slightly different vibe coming off my students. To a certain level they feel that school (after testing) is unimportant or less valuable. This is one of the negative aspects of testing and the amount of pressure that the students feel during testing week. I realized that their change in attitude wasn't entirely due to testing being finished, it also has a lot to do with the changing season and the amount of sunlight we are now happily receiving. As of right now, it's 11:08 pm and I can still see almost perfectly with the amount of visible light (it's such a nice change). I also woke up at 4 am this morning and noticed that it was already starting to get light out. With the temperatures heating up and the rediscovered sunlight, everyone around here is catchin "the fever." That next week went by really quick and Thursday afternoon approached me in no time at all. That Thursday (April 16) brings me to the next big thing that's been going on in my life.

If ya'll recall, I mentioned Katy (whom I met at the Anchorage technology conference in February) a couple of posts ago; I will have to say that her and I have been talking an ever increasing amount since then. After spending numerous, and always enjoyable, hours on the phone (and sending a copious amount of e-mails), we decided that it would be a good idea for me to come hang out with her down in Pedro Bay, Alaska. That Thursday, I hopped the afternoon flight to Fairbanks and then nabbed the connecting flight down to Anchorage. Here are some quick pictures from the first leg of the journey.

This Army helicopter had landed in Bettles for a quick re-fuel, first time I had seen one all the way out here.

This is a nice little piece of the interior between Bettles and Fairbanks.

I stayed at the Millennium Hotel (a quality place to stay) on Thursday night and got up early to catch a few more flights. I made it to Iliamna Air Taxi around 10 o'clock Friday morning and was ready for my next two flights. The scenery was pretty awesome from Anchorage to Iliamna, and it was extraordinary between Iliamna and Pedro Bay. The flight from Iliamna to Pedro Bay goes across Lake Iliamna and then through a gigantic mountain pass, the flight definitely goes down as one of the best flights I've yet to experience in Alaska. Pedro Bay is a beautiful little village that is tucked nicely between Lake Iliamna and some spectacular mountain peaks. Here are the pics and a video from that Friday morning in the air.

This is the terminal for Iliamna Air Taxi in Anchorage.
This is Anchorage from the air.
This next picture is of Lake Iliamna, almost directly over Iliamna, AK.
I was excited to fly in my smallest plane yet, on the way from Iliamna to Pedro Bay, this is the full size cargo hold...well, I guess you can put stuff in the nose as well.
This is the short video I shot while flying through the mountain pass on the way to Pedro Bay, it's not the best video I taken, but you'll get a small taste of how awesome the flight was.

Katy (who I'm delighted to now call my girlfriend), was a very gracious host. She gave me a tour of the village and surrounding area the first afternoon and shared some delicious moose meat with me that evening. The following day we just hung out and played some card games most of the day (I'm going to straight up lie and say that I won a majority of the games that were played). That evening she taught me how to roll Sushi, which was an incredible amount of fun and equally delicious.

Here's what my first lesson in Sushi turned out to look like.

Sunday was by far the most challenging day of the weekend (yes, Katy is that difficult to deal with sometimes, haha). We decided that we were going to climb up Pedro Mountain. I tried not to make it obvious, but I was a little skeptical about my climbing skills (it was a long and lazy winter). None the less, we got some rain gear on and started on our way. The first fifty meters was by far my worst showing (how embarrassing, right?) as I was gassed out pretty quickly. After the weak attempt at a roaring start, I found my stride and put on a pretty good showing (ya'll know by now that I'm not afraid to toot my own horn a little). The amazing view increased steadily with the altitude on the ascent, and it was all definitely worth the workout (we were doing some major post-holing in the leftover snow). Here are a couple of videos and some pictures from the climb.

This is halfway up the mountain, as the narrator with the sexy voice explains (that was a good one). Don't mind the person feeding me lines about the geographic place names of the scenery, I knew them all anyway.

This next video is from the summit of Pedro Mountain.

Here is a picture of Katy, her dog, Gaia (as you can tell, she's totally pumped for the picture), and her neighbor's dog, Nanook.
Here I am near the summit of the mountain (check out those sweet, green rain pants).

After hanging out at the summit for a while, we began our descent. For some odd reason, the descent took almost twice as long as the ascent (doesn't sound quite right does it?). The reason was that Katy and I both missed the trail coming down and over shot it by probably 200 to 300 yards. We ended up trekking through some pretty rough terrain the whole way down, and had many instances of falling down or sinking into crotch-deep snow. On the way down, I did a good job of keeping my cool and just taking things in stride (Katy also did a good job remaining calm, but I could tell she was becoming a little perturbed, cut her some slack, she's a red-head after all, and they are known for their fiery tempers). After finally making it back to the four wheeler, we had to hurry over and start fixing dinner. Katy's neighbors, Jason and Teresa, plus their son, Ronan, were coming over to her house to eat and Katy needed to start cooking pronto. She ended up having enough time, and it was definitely a good meal and good company.

Here's Katy working her magic in her kitchen.

Monday morning came faster than I thought it would, and Katy was hauling me up to the airport to take off. I made it to Anchorage by 1:30 and then had a bit of a layover and didn't make it to Fairbanks until 8:00 Monday night. I stayed at the usual, Sophie's Station, on Monday night and was back out in the classroom by 9:30 Tuesday morning.

This week was a busy one for sure, we had our Health and Career Fair that took place on Wednesday and Thursday. We served two dinners at the school (one on each night), so I stuffed and cooked consecutive turkeys on both days (the smell in my house was intoxicating, and the tryptophan was thick in the air). That basically brings me up to today. Ohhhhhh wait. I failed to mention why my body is sore. On Tuesday night, I took the snowmobile out on the flats to check out the sunset around 10:45. I was cruisin' along at about 25 mph and decided I was going to turn around, so I started to turn off the trail and cut over to the next one (I'd been out here quite a bit and hadn't run into any soft snow in quite some time). Next thing I knew, my front right ski sank straight into the snow and the thing toppled over itself, all the while launching me (upper body first) into the ground. I popped right up, shook off the nerves a little and gave myself a quick once over to ensure that I still had all of the proper appendages. After catching my breath (just got the wind knocked out of me a little), I started working on turning the snow-go back over and re-attaching the windshield. After getting it upright and letting it un-flood itself, I got it started and made my way back home. The next few days I slowly started to feel like I had been hit by a car and developed a wicked upper body soreness (shoulder, neck, ribcage). Long story short, I'm definitely getting a helmet for next year, you could get hurt on one of those things.

Well, I hope you stayed with me till the bitter end. It's getting remarkably close to the end of the year, and I will try to crank out some good posts to finish strong. Everyone remember to keep your attitude positive and your outlook on life the same.

Peace and Love,
Nicholas

P.S. Here is one last picture from Pedro Bay, Katy has an amazing view out of her living room windows.