Chaos Leaves Town

As many of you know, I spent several months in Alaska without having my beloved WiFi connection. This made updating my blog, especially if I’d wanted to post pictures, mind-numbingly difficult. So I slacked off. This post will try to rectify my laziness.

Back in June (’11), Ice Alaska was offered some land. It has two ponds and 60 acres to work with. We bought it, which meant that we had to vacate the land we were on that the railroad seemed to want back so badly. So we began to tear down the existing buildings, electrical infrastructure, and load all the office paraphernalia. The  Conex shown below is one of nine we arranged around the grounds that eventually were filled. Even that fence in the background was dismantled and taken. Quite the job.

Conex ready for office equipment.

All the buildings on the leased property needed to be dismantled and moved to the new site.

Shop building roof removal.

A couple more of the Conex's ready for loading.

Walls coming down.

Dick running the whole show with his clipboard.

As for me, I was in charge of getting the Conex’s set up in their places, getting the web cam room ready, removing a bunch of wiring associated with the computers and general crew bossing. Pretty boring work. And no pay other then a free place to stay and free meals. Came out to around $2/hour in compensation.

But, it’s mostly a labor of love. Love the people up here, the ice carving event, the cool summer weather, etc. so it was worth doing.

Well, I finally left Fairbanks and am back on the road. It was a hassle being at the new Ice Alaska site with only electric, no water, sewer or WiFi. I had to run down to my favorite bar 2-3 times a week to check my em’s, do my banking, and the like. Since my laptop is so slow, I never attempted to update my blog. Sorry about that.

Anyway, a friend and I left FB on Sept. 16th, 2011. He had planned on flying down to Spokane, had a cat he wanted to take (it saved his life by waking him in his smoke filled bedroom a few months before) and since the cat is skittish he feared for it in the hold of a jet plane. Kenny also had a medical emergency at home as his father is having problems so although I had to push my departure date up a couple weeks, the $400 he paid me for the ride made it an easy choice for me. Plus I saved him over $600 for the move since he would have had to pay for his & the cats trip & to ship his belongings back home.  Then, although he doesn’t have a current drivers license, he also didn’t have a DUI on his record either or any accidents so I let him drive quite a bit. This made the trip 3 days from FB to Oroville, Washington whereas it took me 5 days to get to FB from there the last time I did the trip alone.

Being the passenger allowed me to take a bunch of pictures and after dropping Kenny off in Spokane, and after a two night stay at Fish Trap Lake RV park to reminisce about my friend Maria (who lost her life to brain cancer a few years back), I arrived in Walla Walla on Sept. 22nd early in the afternoon. That evening I took my kids out for dinner and a few drinks. But I forgot my camera in a karaoke bar late and on the way home decided that the bar would hold it for me. I didn’t know the name of the bar so couldn’t look up their phone number. Checking with them the next day turned up nothing. I’m hoping one of my daughters friends picked it up and saved it for me. If not, I’ll have to go camera hunting soon.

I’ve seldom lost anything of import over the years and I do need a new camera anyway so I’m not to torn up about it, except the 100 or so pictures that were on the memory chip. Bummer.

The road in Canada was as brutal as usual and just after we crossed the border, I smelled smoke in the drivers seat. Couldn’t find anything and it would come and go. A few miles later I noticed that the ‘Park’ light on the dash was lit. You can’t really see it well while you’re driving because the top of the steering wheel blocks the idiot lights. The smell was burning brake pads and the smell was suctioned up to the front of the RV. Anyway, after noticing that, and discovering I could get it to disengage if I downshifted on hills, the brake pads burnt out enough that it wasn’t impeding travel so we pressed on with the idiot light on all the time. We were miles and miles from any services when it happened, and Canada is so expensive I just ignored it while on the trip. Kenny’s brother looked the rig over for me in Spokane and found that the parking brake pads were indeed totally gone and gave me some advice on what caused it & required repairs, but until I can get it fixed, I have to drop one of my landing pads (hydraulic, so it’s easy) whenever I try to park so the rig won’t roll.

Then while he was under the rig checking that out, he noticed that the passenger side axle coming out of the differential was leaking oil past the seal. He thought I could get another 3,000 miles out of it, which means I could get it down to Mexico to one of the great mechanicos down there. Probably cost me $300 whereas it would cost $1600 or so in the good ol’ USA. I had some 80W90 gear oil with me since I’d spotted a wet spot there myself a few days before. This time I topped it off while I was under there checking. It took 16oz out of the 24oz bottle but I hope that the beating the rig took in Canada made most of that leak out and the better roads down here will let me get a few thousand more miles. I’ll be checking it often until I can do something about it.

I officially retire Feb. 5th, 2012 and my SS will kick in, plus I can dip into my 401k without that huge tax (30%). Then I can relax a bit and really do some adventurous travel. I expect to buy a newer rig in April or May…I’m not rich so I’ll have to look for a real bargain. But I will be able to afford payments. Just finding the right rig will take some time tho.  I plan on making a trip over to the east coast, maybe all the way to Florida too. Should take me a year, dodging hot or bad weather. This winter, I think I have just enough money to make it down to the SW. Then if I can find a caravan, down into Mexico. I don’t think I’ll try that trip (like I’ve done numerous times in the past) without being in a caravan. Too dangerous to travel alone down there. Mazatlan is one of my favorite places. And it’s only a 1 & 1/2 day drive down from the border. There I can get the rig all spruced up and repaired prior to selling it in 2012. Got my fingers and toes crossed that all goes well and I don’t have any breakdowns before I get there. If my finances won’t allow that, I’ll probably spend the winter at my brothers place in Rosamond, California…if he’ll allow it. Unfortunely, he lives on a steep hill…and I don’t have a working parking brake now. But I’ve parked it a block away for a couple months at a time before without neighbors complaining so I might be able to do that again. That would take the financial pressure off. Fuel is so expensive these days that I have to be careful about all my expenses. If all goes well, I should get to Feb. with nothing more then a depleted savings account and a large VISA card balance.

Anyway, right now, Sept. 26th, (oh, it’s my friend Annie’s birthday today! Happy B’day Annie! I left you a surprise B’day present at the Big I. Ask Brenna.), I’m at an RV park in Walla Walla enjoying the sunshine and visits with relatives. Got to visit with the sister and BIL yesterday as well as watch the Seahawks win their game, then watch the season openers of my favorite cartoons on Fox too. Life is good.

Talk to you all soon. I hope to have pictures for the next post.

but I don’t have a regular DSL connection now so my posts will be delayed. I’m planning on getting back on the road at the end of August or mid-Sept. Plan is to head on down stateside and hang around, maybe go to Portland, OR, to visit friends or to Idaho and a little town I went through before that I liked.

Here in Fairbanks, I’ve been busy helping to tear down the Ice Alaska installation on our leased property and moving it to a new property that Ice Alaska bought. The RR really wanted us off the old property for some reason. But they have been very kind since we have a new property to move to. They are providing Conex’s (big metal boxes that look like RR boxcars without wheels) for our use free and I think they are paying for the movers to move our buildings…not sure about that though.

Since we’re moving the buildings, the DSL was shut off and they haven’t got it installed at the new site yet. I am living there on-site as the site guard and manager but there’s not much for me to do. I do have electric and a nice cement pad to park on but there’s no water or sewer. I just had to dump and fill yesterday and it’s a hassle. I even got a sewage shower a little at the public dump. It was just coming out so forcefully, the connector jumped out of the hole. Yes, I should have been using the rubber ring…but I’ve never had to before. And there was no big rock to put on top like at most dumps.

I have to go to my favorite bar, the Big I, to get online, and my new-to-me laptop is slowwwwww. I’ve ordered more memory for it and I hope that will help but it’s a crappy Intel Celeron CPU so that’s doubtful.  Going from 256MB RAM to 1GB should do something to help speed things up but even then the Celeron will be a bottleneck.

Meanwhile, I’ve done a little work on the RV, like fixing a couple window shades that are falling apart, getting the faucets tightened (winter temps loosened them up), trashed a bunch of stuff I hadn’t used in years, etc. Now I have to more projects to finish and I’ll be ready to roll. I’ve got to replace or fix my bad oil pressure sending unit, then I have the vacuum pump problem. It runs my cruise control and dash heater assembly and being without it is a big problem. I really depend on cruise control to make the trip less dull since I can spend more time gawking at the view along the way with it. And having dash heat, other then just defrost, makes it more comfortable. I believe that the pump is back in the engine compartment, but at this point I have no idea where it is. I’m on RV.net and I’ve posted the question of where it might be in my rig a couple times but so far no one can tell me exactly. It’ll be a treasure hunt. Then have to figure out how to fix it or replace it with something I can find locally as there’s probably not enough time to have a new one shipped up before I leave.

Then I did a bunch of work on my Subaru. It’s not towable so I wanted to find someone to drive it down to the states for me but before that, I had to fix the bad shaking I was getting from it. Turned out that the CV joints were bad. Found a guy to replace them for me for $70 so I was pleased with that. Now I have AWD again. While I was working on it, I checked the AC. The belt had been removed before I bought it in ’07 so I went and bought a new belt. Started to put it on and found that the idler pulley was bad. A quick trip to the junk yard and $15 bucks later it’s working fine. I could have had AC since the summer of ’08 if I’d bothered to check the damn thing earlier. The car isn’t that important to me but it would be a fun project car. So I’ve been thinking of getting it down to my brothers house in Rosamond, CA for work. It really need struts but I think it’ll make it down there…if I can find someone to drive it for me. If I don’t, I’ll either sell it or have a friend store it for me.

In other news, I did go down to Seattle for a family reunion a couple weeks ago and got allot of pictures of the trip but I’m not ready to upload anything yet because of the lack of available WiFi at my RV site.

Talk to you all soon! Thanks for hanging around.

Moved back into my RV two or three weeks ago as it had warmed up sufficiently to make it comfortable. I was able to park it in my regular spot over the winter and then stayed in one of the rooms here in the building at Ice Park Campground. Getting everything up and running was an adventure to say the least.

First problem was minor. The tires had been sitting on the same spot on the ground (well drained aggregate) for months so I had to start up the engine and move it around a bit. Since I’d let the insurance lapse and the registration expire, I only drove around the park. Engine started right up and sounded great. Just a little white smoke during start up. Good sign. I’d put anti-gel and some injector cleaner in it last October and it appears it worked. But diesels are pretty reliable starters anyway. While I was running around the park, I filled up the water tank and brought it back to my spot. Then I used the levers to level up but found a little ATF on one of the pads a couple hours later as the rig settled to one side. Since then I’ve jacked it back up level once, and the leak has stopped. I’ll put some tranni leak stop in the system soon.

Then I reconnected my water pump and turned it on. It started right up but I noticed a leak under the sink right away. And it was draining into my converter cubby hole which is right under the sink area. There’s a small 6″ hole in the side wall of the basement compartment right next to the converter where you can access the 120V plug-in. But I haven’t figured out how they got the converter in there. Built the RV around it? Anyway I found that the leak was spilling water into that compartment and quickly turned off the pump, and unplugged the converter from AC. Let it dry out for 24 hours and since it’s nice and dry here this time of year, it didn’t take long. When I plugged it back into 120V, it worked fine. Whew.

Back to the kitchen leak. First I found that the copper pipe from the $80 faucet I’d installed in ’09 had split. When I took it out, I found out why. There are one way valves in the pipe connectors. I hadn’t considered that when I’d installed it. The tiny amount of water that didn’t drain out when I winterized froze and split the pipe and blew out one of the one way valves. I removed the other one since they’re not really needed in such a small plumbing system.

After squishing the split pipe back together and soldering the crack, turned the water back on and found another leak under the floor of the cabinet. Then it took several hours trying to rip out the carpet and removing the plywood floor under it. Most of the time was in trying to figure out how they had fastened it all down. Beneath the cabinet floor was a long split in the PEX pipe caused by the one way valve not letting the water drain out like I wanted it to.  The suction kept the water in the pipe instead of draining out. If I’d realized the valves were there it would have been simple to just loosen the plastic nuts and break the vacuum.

So a run to Lowe’s was in order and there I found they don’t make my kind of PEX pipe anymore because it wasn’t very good. Now they have a replacement pipe that is white instead of grey, can be cut with a pipe cutter instead of having to use a hack saw or a plastic pipe cutter (which I don’t have yet) like with the old type PEX, and can be bent 90° around a plastic radius device that snaps onto it. And it’s resistant to splitting if frozen. Using the new type PEX,  and some nice plastic couplers, I didn’t need a copper 90° and those metal band clamps (or the tools to install them). All in all a much better product. After removing and replacing a couple feet of busted pipe, I was back in business.  Turned on the water and no more leaks, except the damn faucet drips incessantly. Something else ruined because it had those one way valves. I’ll get to that some other day.

Then I was out and about the other day and stopped into a used stuff store. Found a brand new 800W inverter for $45. Brought that back and tested it on a computer and monitor and it works great. So now I’ll have to wire it in somewhere. Probably in the drivers area under the dash on the passengers side.

Finally got warm enough that I felt like some AC was necessary. Rotated the switch and it blows warm air only. Ran it for a couple hours that day and an hour the next. I was thinking that the really cold winters we get here, like down to -40°F for long periods of time, had shrunk a fitting enough for the freon to bleed off. Wasn’t looking forward to hiring a guy to recharge my AC. But then I noticed the switch position was one click short. I was on fan, not cool. Once I figured that out, I’m getting nice cool air.

Then there was the bottom drawer in the kitchen. Opened it up to find a mouse or vole nest in there. Started to pull it out and there were two large babies in the nest. Dumped them out on the ground outside for any foxes that might be around and they were gone in a few hours. There was quite a bit of fluffy paper in the nest and I didn’t figure out what that was or where it came from (worried that they had pulled apart something important) until later that day when I went into the bedroom and found the tissues in the tissue box had been gnawed on. Had to toss that and then found poop on the bed. No urine stains though. So had to wash all the bedding. Needed it anyway.

Then I figured it was time to register the RV but this time I checked the Alaska web site and found that it was only $100 here instead of the $352 Oregon would have charged me. And you don’t get a pro-rated registration in Oregon either. If I’d renewed through Oregon, the six months I did not drive the rig would have been charged anyway. So I go down to the DMV and sign up the rig here in Alaska and find that they have a one time senior discount. My total registration fee for a two year tag was $15. Not bad. Saved enough to pay for the repairs and more.

Then I decided to work on the genset. It has trouble starting sometimes and the dash ‘Start’ & ‘Stop’ switches had stopped functioning as well. Sometimes when I’d bang on the control box with a rubber mallet it would start right up. So I disconnected the battery cable, pulled out the control board and measured all the passive components like diodes and resistors. Didn’t find anything there but I was able to find a source for the three relays on the board. The symptoms kind of resembled a poor contact and a bum relay can certainly develop those. The relays are on the way so I don’t know if that’s going to solve my problem genset starts yet.

Update: I finally got the new relays and installed them. Same problem of not starting from the dash. Pulled the board again and found that the connector had that particular pin corroded though. Repaired that and all is well. Starts and stops from the dash. It still is a little balky when trying to start when the weather is cool and damp but that should be just a new filter.

Finally, I wanted to test my refer on gas. It was working well on electric, but would go to ‘Check’ after a few seconds on gas. Still haven’t got that figured out yet but it’s beginning to look like a bad thermocouple or something on the control board which I just replaced in Aug. of ’09 (they should last for several years).

Lots of fun working on these things. At least the engine sounds nice, the tires are in good shape, the water is working fine, the levelers work, etc.

I’m probably going to be leaving Fairbanks and heading to Seattle soon for a family reunion and I still have to find someone to drive my car down for me. That’ll be an adventure in itself.

A couple weeks ago a moose was wandering around the park munching on new buds on the low trees. These animals are huge! The one that’s hanging around this year looks like a two year old that was hanging around with it’s mom last year. Every year someone up here in Fairbanks gets attacked by a mother moose protecting her calf. And running doesn’t always help…they get mad and chase people all over, even attacking buildings to get inside or vehicles. But the vast majority of attacks end with the mom moose losing interest and wandering off as if nothing happened. While the intended victim of a brutal stomping needs to change their underwear.

Because of that, I don’t rush out with my camera and try to get up close because they’re too unpredictable. Better to hang at the building for some protection while I use my telephoto.

First shot without telephoto...you can see the moose standing there in the road in the center of the picture.

This was on April 13th and we still had lots of snow and ice left. Still freezing at night but the days were relatively warm.

Now the telephoto shot. He/she turned when I whistled.

Continue reading →

The BP World Ice Carving event has come and gone and it’s time for me to post some pictures of the ice carvings. It was quite the event with 10’s of thousands of visitors this year but since it’s likely we’ll loose the land the event is hosted on, kind of subdued for the hundreds of volunteers like myself that know the situation. The railroad has rights to the land we sit on and have been trying to push us off for 5-6 years, but to their credit have given us breaks on the rental, keep pushing the drop dead date into the future, and try to work with us. They have a mandate to maximize income from any lands they control (they don’t own it, the people do) but have been asking twice what it’s worth, based on assessments, for 3 years now. Anyway, the CEO told me 15 minutes ago that he’s made an offer of $2.25 million for the land. That’s what the RR is asking, though that is $1 million over one of two assessments. I recommended he get 5 assessments (I was a licensed real estate broker in Oregon), toss out the high & low, average the other three and offer that amount. Don’t think he’s going to do that, but it’s his money.

Anyway, here’s some pictures of the Ice Art we had this year. If you’ve been wishing that you could visit them in person, it’s possible there won’t be a world class ice carving event here next year, or the year after so you may have missed your chance. But then again, if the RR does sell the property to the CEO, we’ll be open again next February.

A couple weeks ago, I wandered around the park and took these pictures for your enjoyment. You can see them and more complete bio’s of the artists at http://www.icealaska.com

Continue reading →

It’s a nice sunny day…so I thought I’d get some pictures of what’s right outside the building. But first, some other stuff. The gal in this picture is a heavy equipment operator here during the Ice Carving event every year. Her career is as an archeologist. She wrote the book about Alaska’s now famous ‘Mesa’ site which pushed back paleoindian habitation of interior Alaska to 12,000BP. Google her name for several links like http://www.ele.net/arctic_artifacts/arctic_artifacts.htm The people that occupied this site preceded the Eskimo by thousands of year. Being an amateur interested in archeology, I enjoy getting to talk to her about the Mesa site and other archeological questions that interest me. Like pre-clovis sites, Kennewick man (who’s grave I probably walked over as a kid because I grew up in Kennewick and played on the beach where he was discovered), the Monte Verde site (which is pre-clovis but was discovered in almost pristine condition), etc.  She’s also the one I go to to borrow books. I’m grateful she had so many of David Weber’s books and I’ve been greatly enjoying them through 5 volumes so far. She also loaned me her Christmas present, ‘First Peoples in a New World’ by David Meltzer. Scholarly to be sure, but written in a lay style so that even I can enjoy wading through it. She’s planning on reading it when she goes on a field trip this summer, probably to that cave above the arctic circle that has all the dinosaur bones. I’m thankful she loaned it to me. I’m half through it all ready after just 5 days of reading during my spare time here at the park. This link will download the PDF of her book: http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/ak/aktest/ofr.Par.6519.File.dat/ofr86.pdf

Connie Adkins B'day party.

If you read through that PDF, note how primitive the points look. Few have the typical clovis features.

Across the street from the building, the ice maze.

I seem to have forgotten to turn off the date stamp on the pictures. Oh well.

The train station.

Some of the incidental artwork for the crowds.

Ross and Ralph working on an ice lens.

Heather out there taking pictures & getting background info for the web site.

I got curious so I wandered over and check out their work.

One of the incidental peices.

OK, enough for now, I’ll put up more soon.

Here’s a few pictures of the ice park in January 2011. We do get sunshine but you can see from the snow not every day.

My little Subaru...outside my room.

Inside the building. This is where I do most of the computer repair and configuration. See that stack of computers against the wall? I get to return those to usable shape.

We were given a bunch of used but newer to us Dell computers around this time so I spend many days installing parts and WinXP so they’d be ready for the crowds of volunteers that use computers during the event. Then at one of the meetings we gave away all the old 750MHz machines.

Continue reading →

After Whitehorse, the roads turned really nice. Light traffic and most of the frost heaves I had to contend with in ’07 were fixed. The big construction project was almost done so it didn’t take anytime at all to get to Tok. In fact, I was there by 3:30pm the afternoon I’d left Whitehorse. I still had some travel left in me so I headed on to Fairbanks. About 5 miles out of Tok, I picked up a hitchhiker from the side of the road. He’d been working at a gold mine outside of Chicken, AK, had a fight with the owner and late the night before had just picked up what he could carry of his stuff and walked into Chicken. Found a floor to sleep on that night, and got a ride the next day into Tok. He was trying to walk to Fairbanks when I picked him up. Him waving that $5 bill helped me decide to stop for him. Tho I thought it was a $20. Anyway, I got into Fairbanks around 7:30pm and stopped at my favorite bar to say hi to everyone. Got to the Ice Park Campground around 10pm on May 21st.

After I arrived I was invited to be the camp host again so I settled in and took over that job. 2010 was a slow tourist time in Fairbanks for every business us included, so the work was light and I spent most of my time just hanging around the office and checking people in and out occasionally. Got my bike out and rode around town 3-4 times a week to keep fit. We had a beautiful and serene summer without overly hot days. Seldom got above 75°F.

A friend that I’d met here at Ice Park (Dorthy) was staying in one of the upstairs rooms and she had taken a couple shots of moose along the road up…something I’d failed to do this trip…so I got copies from her. Thought you might like to see them. They were taken around 50 miles outside of Tok along side the Richardson highway.

Moose! Come here little moosie!

Same moose, different angle.

A long lazy summer took all of my time. Saving money was a necessity this year since I’m getting low on funds but I’m now doing computer consulting so that is helping take the edge off. I’ve got 10.5 months to wait before I officially retire and my 401K kicks in so I’m looking forward to that. I’ve gotten my expenses down to around $600 per month and if I can keep that up for several more months, I’ll make it to retirement in good shape. Then it’ll be time to buy a newer RV and spend more time on the road touring the country. I’ve never been to much of the east coast except on quick day runs so I’d like to do that. I’d also like to find someone with a ocean cruiser and sign on as a deck hand for some ocean touring. Ya only get one trip through this life and I’d like to do as much as I can before the grim reaper appears at my door. After several uneventful months at the Ice Park, it finally got cold and snowed. I was out of my RV by this time living in one of the rooms in the parks main building. It’s small, but it’s free and the I get free food all the time. Many businesses around town are in the habit of donating food to us for the Ice Carving event in Feb. – Mar. and they don’t stop after the event. And to turn them down could mean that the channels would dry up so we continue to take food all year ’round. Not as much as we do in Feb. – Mar. but enough to feed the few people that are here as volunteers all year ’round.

Moon over Fairbanks, Nov. 2010

Then in late Nov. the Chinese carvers start showing up to do ice sculptures around town for various businesses and they do most of the cooking. One thing about this particular group of Chinese is that they use far to many sweeteners in their cooking for my liking. I saw one of them pouring around a half cup of sugar into a traditional Chinese soup! I don’t care for sweetened entrees so all that sugar in the food helped me avoid eating to often or to much. I did do some of my own cooking but it’s easy to fall into a routine of eating what’s offered when other people cook and clean up.

Continue reading →

Finally, I’m approaching Whitehorse. It’s May 20th, 2010 in this travel saga, and I spend the day not thinking about much of anything. Didn’t bother to get around to taking any pictures since I was getting road weary. I get to the Hi Country RV park in Whitehorse around 5pm. It’s a little chilly, down in the low 50’s F. The weather had been clear most of the day. The RV park is only 3 miles to town, but being so tired, I decided to stay in again. It’s great having your own food and drinks aboard. And a place to pee. Spent a little time zoning out in front of the boob tube, since they had cable and all, and even wandered over to the common room and played a little pool against myself (park wasn’t that crowded). Checked out the facilities, very nice, and bought myself a candy bar for desert at the store.

Parked at the Hi Country RV park in Whitehorse.

That evening, I got on-line and checked the diesel prices around Whitehorse. When I’d arrived, I’d gotten a 1/4 tank of diesel because I thought I’d get a better price up the road 2-3 miles, as I’d done in the past. This was a RV park after all. But when I checked the internet, turned out they had the best price in town. The price was even better then in Tok, Alaska, which I expected to be my next overnight stop.  I’d gotten up at around 5:30am, very early for me, but the picture above was taken at 5:42am, so it’s proof I do occasionally get up early. Had to wait for the office to open at 8 so I could get fuel, but I had time to have a nice breakfast and lounge around for a while, and time for checking RV stuff like the tire pressures and oil level. Then with re-fueling out of the way after 8, I was back on the road by 8:30am.

Continue reading →