Chaos Leaves Town

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.

Well, the International ice carving event is winding down and if you’ve been following it you’ve seen some pretty spectacular carvings at Ice Alaska Link. Some were 25 feet tall and 25 feet wide. I have worked at the ice park every day for the last two months and I’m tired. That’s why I haven’t been posting allot because I’d come home exhausted and not interested in working on the computer. Today, I took some time off and left early. Oh, b-t-w, it’s a labor of love, I’m not getting paid, I just like the art and the work (computer stuff) I get to do. The whole thing lasts until March 23rd and then I can take a whole month or two off. I might run another consulting ad and make a few bucks but we’ll see.

Meanwhile, here are a few pictures from late February before the competition was opened to the public. The Chinese sculptors had been here for weeks doing exhibitions around town and creating giant slides for kids. They even drove down to Anchorage (6 hour drive) and took a few days to set up a demo down there that over 10,000 people attended.

I’ll start with a few pictures from inside the building where I work, showing the Webcam room and all, this is where we check on the webcams and configured the computers to upload the webcam pictures to the web site, which is hosted by iPower:

And the new flat panel display that shows ads and sculptures in a loop all day and nite:

Here’s where the general public comes in for snacks and to warm up. Everything is nearly empty right now since the event hadn’t started:

And a shot of the road down the side of the building looking west:

One of the first presentation pieces the Chinese sculptors finished, it’s a throne to be used in a later event in front of the building:

The local news showed up and did 2-3 days of interviews, they didn’t get to me:

This is the work the Chinese did at the front entrance where you buy tickets. It’s massive:

Before I wandered into that castle, I took a shot looking north to show you how blue the sky was that day:

There here’s one of the amazing sculptures inside the castle, and note that it’s just the entrance to the park, the ice weighs tons:

Then here is another entrance arch, this time to the Kid’s Park:

A octopus carving that is for kids to crawl around in:

I can’t remember what this was, except it has stairs so another slide probably:

Oh, yeah, a giant bird slide:

One of the neatest sculptures inside the Kid’s Park area. It was such a realistic looking cabin:

And another shot of the ice cabin:

Then a shot from inside the ice cabin looking at the steps to the slide:

Here’s a look at the ice maze front gate:

Hmmmm…:

Outside the maze:

Inside the maze:

Then we move out of the maze and to another huge ice slide that you can see from the road:

And a view from the back:

Oh, a giant bear. You can see this one over the fence from the hiway that runs alongside the fence:

Quite the slide, looks like fun:

A giant bowl that kids jump in, slide around until they puke…not designed by kids:

And a tiny slide for little munchkins:

That’s all for tonight, I’ll try to get some more pictures up tomorrow or so, enjoy. Oh, if you’re down there in the South West or in Mexico, Florida or the South, enjoy your winter. Up here in Alaska it’s very comfortable…meaning, you get use to the cold!

The last two weeks have been hectic as I have been working at the Ice Park every day. They feed me so I’m saving money but I don’t get out much. I’m in the webcam room when I’m not out in the park moving or adjusting cameras. We had some wind the last couple days and several cameras got swung around and off their subjects.

A few days ago, Wa asked me to help her clean up Kevin’s room. He’s the idiot that ‘borrowed’ Stacie’s jeep 4 times but the first 3 times was able to get out of being punished for it with some fast talk. This last time, he felt he could keep it most of the night and on into the morning. At 10AM, Stacie and Wa head on down to the police station to sign a grand theft complaint and mentioned that they thought they knew where he was, telling them the name of the apartments, when they finished the paper work and left they drove by the apartments and there was the jeep in the parking lot. Just as they pulled into the lot, 3 cop cars arrived. Kevin comes running out trying to get off the hook but only ended up making a fool of himself with ridiculous excuses. He gets arrested, the cops find out he’s on probation and isn’t allowed to drive to begin with, and he’s thrown into jail for 5 months for violating parole. Then a couple days later Stacie goes before the grand jury with her complaint. So he’s probably looking at a felony charge and a year or two in prison. I worked with him for months there at the Ice Park and he was kind of a friend, a friend you never really trust.

Anyway, he’s in jail and we were in his room upstairs cleaning it up and I leave my camera there. I get busy downstairs, forgetting it for an hour or so, someone finds it and runs off with it. Several days later, and after several checks around the building because I couldn’t quite remember where I left it, I check again and there it is hanging on that nail in Kevin’s room. But the memory stick is gone! All those great pictures I had of the park, gone. So I have retraced my steps around the park and taken 85 new pictures. Unfortunately, I am swamped with work with the Ice competition. I’ll get to it as soon as I can…

Sorry…

I thought I’d show you folks a few pictures of the Ice Park as it prepares for the upcoming Ice Carnival. I’m busy getting all the web cams up and running with new firmware and repairs here and there. We’ve already sold advertising for the entire lot of cams so we’ll have 31 cams installed in a couple weeks when the event starts.

Go here Ice Alaska to check us out. There are going to be some big sculptures near the road this year to attract visitors. I’ll get out there soon (work permitting) to get pictures. It’s been really cold here for the last week so I didn’t get out yet to take pictures and the big sculptures are over near the road…quite the hike through deep snow and -40F weather. I’ll get some pictures from over there soon.

I wandered down to the ice pond as they were setting up for ice harvest:

You can make out the grid there in the ice:

Here are some of the smaller sculptures for the kids being worked on:

These tripods hold the cameras and will be set out around the park. Off in the distance are big 7,000 pound blocks of ice for the sculptures:

A few pictures to give you a taste of the flavor of the park during -50F weather:

This is the ice skating rink: