I've been lazy…

Aug. 4, 2008

Sorry, folks, I haven’t written allot lately. No excuses. Didn’t feel like it.

The weather the last month has been kinda cool and cloudy. I’ve been able to wear my shorts maybe 5 times since early July. Now it’s August 4th and I’ve been wearing a long sleeve shirt everyday for two weeks. We have had so much rain that in the last week the rivers finally over topped their banks a little and we’ve had flooding of just a few inches shy of the famous 1967 flood. But the lessons of that time caused the city to protect itself so the damage is minor compared to ’67.

During this quiet time, I did do some stuff. Mostly though, I just came to work each day and then went home to watch TV every evening. So much so that my favorite bar changed a bunch while I was gone so only a few people who’s company I enjoyed were still there when I started going back.

Jen the barmaid came back in May but I didn’t see her working back at the Big I until late July, that’s how seldom I was going in there. I was surprised to see her again and we had fun catching up. She had been gone from early last winter and when she left, she told me that she was going to work in Juneau as a page or something at the Alaskan house of reps. Anyway, she also visited Argentina and several other places. She traveled alone for months and I have lots of admiration for her taking that trip. Something I would do for sure, but not with a backpack…too much work. So, here’s her blog address. Go check it out. Jen’s Blog.

Here’s a picture of Jen the day I rediscovered her working at the Big I, very happy to see her:

Several weeks ago, Wa took us all out for dinner at a local ‘All you can eat’ Salmon Bake place that is located in Pioneer Park. They were having a special, $14.95, for a Salmon dinner. Not all you can eat because that’s $31 during the summer and this was pre-summer. Anyway, it was cool that day so that explains the heavy clothes we were all wearing.

My dinner was not that good, it seems that they have the special to get rid of older fish. Not very tasty. The decor was good, but the dinner wasn’t. So I won’t be recommending this place to people when they check in at the RV park.

Stacy, Patty & I arrived at the same time:

Then Rikki got there:

And finally, the chronically late Wa with granddaughter:

A few days ago & several weeks after the previous dinner out, Wa again invited Stacy and me out to dinner as a thank-you for our hard work and all. We went to a nice Thai restaurant in downtown.

Our waitress is a recent immigrant from Thailand so just barely speaks English but did an excellent job, except she didn’t have a clue what ‘spicy’ or ‘spicy-hot’ means:

Stacy making her choice, we shared what was on our plates, the food was delicious:

On the way home, we stopped along the Chena river to see if we could spot a pair of fox kits that Stacy had seen earlier in the day. Now that she had her camera, they were nowhere to be seen, but the quiet time next to the river and her story of the kits antics was worth the stop:

A couple days later and the sun finally came out. So I wandered over to Pioneer Park for some ice cream and stopped a little while in the giant paddlewheel boat that’s grounded there. There is a bunch of diorama’s there behind clear plastic that I took a few photo’s of to share with you.

Then later I took the train ride. This train is the actual train that came up here to Fairbanks to help mine over a hundred years ago. It’s been refurbished and repaired and on special occasions…like the 4th of July weekend, they gather together 8 volunteers to run the darn thing. Three guys have to drive and fuel the beast while several follow it to put out fires and then more to wet down several areas in the park that might catch on fire from the sparks that are just blown out the stack. Still interesting to ride her and only $2 per person.

These two guys are just there to put out any fires caused by coal bouncing out of the hotbox while the train is underway, makes you wonder why anyone would buy such a POS in the first place:

As I headed back home, I took this picture as I crossed over the Chena River:

A couple weeks later and we had this rainstorm and it’s been like this off & on ever since: