Chaos Leaves Town

The weather was kinda coolish with threatened rain, but I sucked it up and headed up to the fairgrounds here in Fairbanks to visit the local farm fair. As I walked up to the ticket booth, I decided to swallow my pride and ask about senior discount. I’m not 65 yet so I didn’t know what the fair staff considered senior. To my surprise the ticket taker just waved me in. I didn’t quite hear him so asked him, ‘how much?’, and he said ‘Nothing’. Not wanting to argue, I got my hand stamp and headed into the fair. So instead of the $8 usually charged seniors, or $12 for youngsters like me, it was free.

First thing I noticed inside was a rock & roll concert by some band who’s name you would recognize but I can’t remember now. Since they sucked, I didn’t hang around there. Then I passed a HUGE sling shot ride. I’ve been on smaller slingers but this one looked like it would shot you 60-70 feet into the air, if not further. Guess the technology is getting better and better.

The bungee throw...or a People Sling.

Walking around the fair...

Hey, there's some fun over there!

Some prize winning artwork.

Ink and oil...

A couple winners...

A few more winners. Now that I think about it, seems everyone was a winner. Nah, not really.

A spectacular hand drawn eagle, pen & ink...

Another winner! What are the odds?

Pen & ink...

A cool one-person helicopter for sale there at the fair...

Just people...

Now there's a ride. Just what I want to do...twirl around in a big contraption until I puke!

Frying Bob's

Then I wandered into the stinky barns and visited with the prize chickens and geese and cows and pigs and all. These folks left the doors closed too long so the barns were nice and warm, but stinky’er then I’d like. Anyway, a good time was had by me, and after a not-so-good raindeer burger for dinner and some shopping, I headed home. Just a note, I was looking for something for Jackie, my friend that was coming up in a week to visit and I wandered into a tent where the owners were both artists and live 15 miles north of the Arctic circle. I thought that was cool so looked at some of her bead work. I settled on a beaded wolf barrette. The price was $60 and I thought that was high, but she said it took her 10 hours to make so I didn’t object to much. And she threw in a pair of hand made earrings free. Later on, I found much nicer beadwork on the paddle wheel trip Jackie and I took which only cost $28 so yes, I got ripped. Damn. But it’s the thought that counts I suppose.

In which we enjoy Third Eye Blind in concert!

Stacy had a couple tickets to the 3EB concert yesterday and invited me to go along with her. No problem with that except I was her 2nd choice of escort. The venue was at a bar with a large chunk of land around it. They had a fenced off ‘dry’ area and a ‘wet’ area so kids could come to the concert.

As we left our car, there were two guys standing on either side of one of the parking lot entrance roads holding large signs. As I passed them I called out, “Hey, guys, what’s up with the signs”? They whipped them around and they were these large Jesus freak signs. So the guys yell at me to take a brochure, to which I replied, “I’m not into medieval myths guys, don’t you realize it’s the 21st century?”. That made them more aggressive and they keep yelling at me and trying to get me to take a damn brochure…which I repeatedly refused. There were around 10-12 of those guys running around bothering people. To bad they are so misguided.

As we entered, EVERYONE was frisked. Couldn’t sneak in a damn thing even if we’d wanted to.

Anyway, I got several phone pictures, it’s like you’re there yourself! Enjoy.

Here’s Stacy all settled in and looking cute:

This shot is of the ‘dry’ area. Just showing you how many people were there:

The stage is over there under that half-pipe:

That’s the name of the venue there on that building…thought I’d give them some exposure:

More of those people on the hill:

See that white building/truck over there, that’s where the beer is…I’m in line, each time we got a beer it took 30 minutes of standing in line:

See that blond? While I was glancing her way, this guy, looked military & 20-25, came up behind her and grabbed her butt. I figured it was a friend or something based on her reaction so no big deal…but then this other guy about the same age came by, spotted her, came up behind, and slid a plastic zip tie into her crotch then pulled it back. Now that was different. She spins around, sees who it is and they talk amicably awhile. I figured that she might be an exotic dancer with that sort of stuff going on with her. Not the kind of familiarity you normally see at a concert or anywhere in public for that matter. Not that I’m a prude or anything, it’s just that I spent so damn much time in line that I got bored so I noticed the goings on with her. She wasn’t bad to look at either:

Here’s a couple close shots of the band:

After the concert was over, Stacy and I went on down to the Big I and got soundly drunk…danced up a storm and staggered home around 3AM (I had sobered up and was doing quite well, so I drove).

The band at the Big I, they played every song Stacy and I requested:

The snow has all melted and the days are much warmer here in Fairbanks but we’re still getting down to the mid forties at night occasionally…usually it’s in the 50’s. But I’m still wearing a long sleeve shirt most of the day. Around noon it’s warm enough to take it off but then a cloud rolls by and back on it goes. I’m enjoying this because if you remember, I don’t care for the heat. You get up to 80°F and I’m looking for AC. Last week we had hail! Can you believe it people? Especially you folks down in Las Vegas – where it’s 85°F right now, soon to be 115°F. Don’t envy you people.

A few days ago we had a big ass moose wander through the park, I didn’t have my camera so I couldn’t get any shots…Stacy got a couple with her camera phone but they didn’t turn out well enough to put up on the web. One of these days…

We’ve been working at getting the park spruced up, like putting new campsite number signs up, cleaning up the scrub brush, got the water turned on, started installing 30A outlets for big rigs, fixed a few things, & started the garden. With the high price of vegi’s here and the short growing season, a garden is a must. Actually, we’re a couple weeks behind.

I have moved my RV over here to the park and it is giving me a new problem, if you have been reading my blog, you’ll remember that I had trouble getting winterized on time last winter, so I wasn’t sure I had all the water out of the plumbing system before I buttoned it all up. That means I needed to worry about a busted pipe spraying water all over when I charged it up this spring. While I haven’t found any broken or leaking pipes so far, for some reason, when I turn on the water pump (there is no park water at my site so I use the on-board pump), it keeps running instead of coming up to pressure and stopping. If there is a water leak, I can’t find it. Perhaps it’s sucking air from somewhere…but where?

I found the problem…there is a pump bypass that I had opened last winter, once I closed that, my system is working fine with no leaks! Yeah!

If you remember, I’ve been living in a cabin a couple miles from Ice Park. Sometime in the next week I’ll be moving back to that campground while someone else gets to live in the cabin for a few months. I’ve been slowly, really slowly, moving my stuff back into the RV. If I could get a day off from getting the campground ready for the season, I’d be done by now. Anyway, soon.

Today I struck a blow for those that hate junk mail. One of the worst offenders on earth is Good Sam club…started by that Walton guy (Walmart) years ago. For every one piece of junk mail I get, I get 3 from them. Even on stuff I CAN’T BUY from them and they know it! Idiots! They have several programs going so I get insurance pitches for the car, another for the RV, Emergency Road service pitch, their magazine, etc., etc. They never stop. I’ve even sent them a bogus address change…they checked and found it didn’t exist so didn’t stop sending junk mail. Talking to them on the phone does no good, nothing does.

So, today, I gathered all their junk mail, opened it, crossed out anything that required my signature with a big NO! written over the top, stuffed all their junk mail material back into the free to me envelopes until they were all bulging, and mailed it all back to them. Let’s see how they like getting junk mail. Their costs will be $2 or so per envelope, I hope. The only way they will stop is if it’s costing them money. Yes, I am aware of that junk mail stopping service but that takes a year…

Meanwhile, back at the campground, we’ve been getting ready to officially open today (May 15th), so we’ve gotten the water turned back on, the trash dumped, the junk picked up, yard work done, etc. We’ve made a bit of money so far and have several month to month guests. One gal came on April 14th in her truck camper. There was still a foot of snow on the ground.

There’s still a lot to be done, we want to add several 30A outlets for RV’s this year and that will take a while, then we could add water to one of the rows. And we don’t even have the space signs up yet.

Weekend before last, I headed downtown around 6:30pm with the foolish thought that I could get into the theater and see Shakespeare’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Wandered up to the theater about 40 minutes early to find they are sold out. Waited around for 30 minutes to see if anyone would bail, when nobody did, I bought a ticket for the Sunday matinée. Oh, well, gave me some time to hang around the bar and have a couple nice beers and conversation with a drunk girl.

So Sunday rolls around and I head over to the theater around 1:30. Glad I got there early because they were sold out again so it was going to be crowded, and I scored a nice aisle seat about three rows back from the stage floor. It’s a small theater and costs $18 a ticket. Cheap enough. I hoped it might be good enough to make a couple hours whiz by in Fairbanks instead of dragging by.

They took an extra 30 minutes to let all the ticket holders show up so when the house lights finally went down, I was overheated from all the body heat in the place and getting a little antsy. But, this was Shakespeare, worth the wait, and an excellent ensemble at that. In this small town, (36,000 in the winter), it’s a surprise that they have this much talent. Puck was well done (Oh, what fools these mortals be!), Bottom did an excellent job as the half man half donkey love interest of Fairie queen Titania who falls in love with him thanks to a trick of Oberon’s…in this case played by an actor with the costume and hair of a ’70s Big Hair band.

Then there were what seemed like hundreds of fairies prancing around all the time causing trouble for the main characters.

All in all, the 2 & 1/2 hours whizzed by. Well worth it.

Here are some pictures of the cast at the end of the play. They won’t mean much to you, but they will help me remember it years from now:

As the weather improved, I took a few trips around town and got a few pictures of the Chena river, always frozen solid for much of the year. It’s slowly melting, as you would expect. Usually, it’s mostly free flowing by mid-April. Here it is near the end of April and it’s just now opening up. But the 12″ of snow I had in my front yard is now nearly all gone. It’s hovering around 40-50°F these days with it flirting up to 60°F some days. Won’t be long now and it will stay above freezing all night too.

Anyway, here are a few pictures around the cabin two weeks ago and then just a couple days ago…

A couple days ago we got another dusting of snow. Here’s my front yard:

This avalanche of snow hanging from the cabin roof has been creeping to the ground for a month now. It’s almost a foot and a half long but doesn’t seem ready to let go yet:

Today I went downtown to get a few winter shots. This is the small park at the visitors center:

Here’s the Chena River all frozen, note the tire tracks in the snow:

Then here is a shot looking west, down the river. This is where they stage the start of one of the many dog sled races that happen in Alaska. The last race started here was a couple weeks ago and I was to busy to get downtown to watch it. I didn’t know at the time how fun it would be either. I learned all about it the next morning in the local paper. Damn.

A couple weeks later and here’s a shot of the cabin roof without the snow beard. I wasn’t around when it let go, I wanted to watch it. Maybe next year:

Here is the set of pictures of the melting river just a few days ago…you can see that it’s still nearly all ice with some surface water but it’s hanging in there. It’s late April too. You can see that jeeps and trucks get down there and drive off somewhere. You could probably drive all the way up to Chena Hot Springs…60 miles up river. The dog sleds do that:

Down at the Ice Park:

But even then, we’ve had a camper drive in and get settled, and this week another two campers showed up.

I’m really surprised that spring has not yet sprung here in Fairbanks. With the 5 days of beautiful and warm weather we had a couple weeks ago, this 20°F we’ve had lately, and the 14″ of snow, really brings you down. Last night it snowed at least 5″.

And another thing, because the air is so dry, I had the nose bleed from hell last week. Twice a day for two days, then after a sneeze, a 16 hour bleed out. At 4AM I was still thinking about heading for the emergency room, even without insurance. But I finally fell asleep and at noon when I awoke, the bleeding had stopped for the moment. Then all was well for the rest of the day. The next day was fine and the day after I had an appointment with an ENT doctor…just a coincidence by the way…and he used a scope to check everything out. It all looked OK to him so it MUST have been the dry air. But the longer I stay here, the stronger those blood vessels will become. I hope.

I am looking forward to the temps to get up to the 40’s where they belong for this time of year. But we’ll see how long this cold snap lasts. I want to go to Chena Hot Springs before it gets to warm though. The best time to go hang out in their soaking pool is when it’s around 20°F.

But snow is way better then rain…

While we worked our tails off making sure the cameras were all working, I would also handle the ‘panning’ camera. I designed a panning system that would rotate one of our webcam cameras over a 180° field. Then I interfaced it to the camera so, with a script, I could command the camera to rotate while I was sitting in the comfort of the webcam office. The first couple weeks it was mounted next to the stage and dance floor so I could sweep from a dance over to the ice phone booth, then to the stage. The camera also had Zoom so I could zoom in and out of a scene. Here’s a couple pictures of the camera and it’s associated parts:

That box wrapped in white is the control circuitry for the panning motor, inside is my interface circuit that tells the control circuit where to turn to, that green box is the panning motor, and the device on top is the camera:

This camera was taken down yesterday (to prevent theft) so I can’t give you a link to it and since it existed on the web as a server, we didn’t capture any shots from it during the event. It was pointed at the large ice slides we had and also covered the ice cannon competition during the last couple weeks of the event. I was happy it worked so well, even when it was down to -20° F it rotated nicely. It did have a little problem when we had snow fall and because it’s warm inside the box, some water got into the circuitry and it acted strangely for a while but after it was dried out and a new wrapper added it finished the event without problems.

Here’s a few shots of some of the ice carvings, one has collapsed:

The Ice Competition event normally would have been over last Sunday but it was decided to remain open another week because the weather was cooperating, there was some more income to be had, and other factors. So I’m still here every day making sure the cameras are operating. Go check us out at Ice Alaska. I don’t have much to say here but I can show you the web site I’m creating for the RV park. We’ll open May 15th…IceParkCampground.

I’ll get some more pictures up when I get a minute. Probably this weekend sometime.