Google Street View

Waiting for daylight...

We started into work this morning. The temps were
in the 40s and the roads were wet but clear of ice.
About half way there a phone call alerted us to the
schools, buses and what have you still being closed.
My brother called his work and discovered his building
wasn't open either, so we turned around and returned
home. Once home, I called my work and found out my
facility was open. I'll probably go to work later this
morning after the traffic dies down.

Meanwhile I got the idea to look at my workplace from
Google Street view. Here it is...














The fire truck parked in front told me that the
Google probably drove by when we were having
a fire drill. If so my coworkers and I would
be standing in our parking lot. I negotiated around
to the back of the building and there we all were.
I'm in the group marked with the arrow, immortalized
by Google Street View.

That Was One Scary Commute

And a weather update...

A 1500 mile Pineapple express warm front slammed into the Alaska mainland yesterday. It blasted the Arctic cold front off the Alaska map, pushing it off to the east where it has begun sinking into the midwest, (sorry Minnesota!)

The temperatures rose around 50 degrees with high winds. Last night it was freezing rain on top of the ice and snow packed roads. For some reason my brother and I came to work anyway. We lost count of the number of vehicles in the ditch on the way to Anchorage but the radio says more than 150 in the area. All the schools, people-mover buses and military bases are closed. My company sent us an e-mail telling us that the office wouldn't be open until 10 am. Of course you'd have to be at work to get the email and I had already been at my desk for 2 hours.

The roads were obviously horrible all the way in. But when we got to Anchorage itself they became scary. Inches of wet black ice completely covered the pavement. All along the road the semi-trucks were pulled off to the side of the road putting on chains. Any paved road with a hill was impassible.

We're going to head out and try to make it home in one piece in a couple of hours. Hopefully the rain and traffic has worn down the ice a bit. There is a good chance I'll be staying home tomorrow.

A Jeep on the Way Home

A sign in the back window of a Jeep 4X4 with oversized tires and a snorkle exhaust pipe...

Hold on, I saw this done in a movie once.

I'm Trying not to...

I'm trying not to write about the weather. So I'll not mention the +40 degree temperatures last week nor the -8 degree temperatures earlier this week. However this mornings commute was, I believe, noteworthy. The temperature is a moderate +12 and it snowed 8 to 10 inches last night. Leaving my unplowed driveway, the snow came over the nose of the Subaru, coating the windshield and blocking the headlights. I had to stop and clear the front of the car when I got to the plowed street. So traffic was a nightware. Slick snow packed roads and 30,000 commuters bumper to bumper and an average speed of 30 mph. We come in early, leaving Wasilla at 5:30 am. Consequently, we are ahead of the heaviest traffic. Usual commute, in the winter is 45 minutes. This morning 1 hour and 25 minutes. Several early ditch divers. I'm still trying to get the tension out of my shoulders.

Turn Indicators

I couldn't find anything wrong with the turn indicators. The emergency flasher button was sticky but I couldn't figure out how to get into the dash to clean it without taking the whole dashboard off. So I just sprayed some WD40 into it and let that soften up the caked on remains of splashed coffee. The roads and weather have been so bad that I decided to take the Subaru to a Wasilla shop this coming Friday instead of juggling cars to and from Anchorage. So I drove the Subaru to and from work yesterday, carefully planning my route to include actual turn lanes whenever possible so that my fellow drivers would know I planned on turning in spite of my lack of signalling ability. I negotiated to work in the morning and all the way back to my girlfriend/carpool partner Kate's house without incident. At the last left hand turn into her driveway my hand automaticly flipped the turn indicator lever down. The indicator came on. Surprised, after I pulled into the driveway I flipped back and forth form right to left, everything worked. Since all I actually did was pull and install perfectly good fuses and spray some WD40 I didn't figure out until this morning that it was the WD40 that did the trick. It was just a sticky coffee encrusted button.
Weather update ...+13 with wind. Chill factor -3.

Weather

-8 degrees again this Saturday morning. This follows five work days of Hellish commuting. It snowed everyday this week. Not a lot, 8" total in Anchorage, half of that in Wasilla. But the roads were "slicker than greased ape shit," as my adolescent friends and I would say when I was an adolescent. That lead to ten, 50 mile commutes at an average speed of 25 mpg this week. I heard on the radio that in Anchorage, by Thursday morning, there had been over a hundred fender benders and cars sliding off the road for the week. My 12 year old Subaru, with 235, 000 miles is showing it's age. Last weekend I lost a headlight, the one I didn't break on the moose ass the winter before last. This weekend I have to try to fix my turn indicators. They quit working Thursday morning. I've checked the fuses, they're good. This morning I'll try to wedge my considerable self under the dashboard and try to find the flasher. If it's not the flasher it's a trip to the Subaru clinic next week. If I hadn't bought a motorhome and hearing aids lately I might be car shopping. Just as well, my plan is to drive this Subaru until I retire, in 4 years and 10 months, but who's counting.

Sunset at Trippingover Moose Ranch

Been a long quiet week. Five days of work after being off for a 5 day Thanksgiving mini-vacation. Get up and drive to in the dark. Spend the day in the office and drive home in the dark. Watch some TV, go to bed, get up the next day and do the same. Twenty one more days of decreasing daylight before we turn the corner. Seasonal Affective Disorder is in full bloom.

Winter Wonderland II

I didn't take any pictures of the stupid snow. First because I had a long tiring week and slept in until 9 a.m instead of my work day 4:30 am. Then I lazed around the house until noon when I finally got out and fired up the snow thrower. Three and a half hours and a sore back later I was in no mood to take pictures of the frakkin snow. Besides in was a gloomy overcast day with no shadows so the pictures would have been damn near monochromatic anyway. Today I went to Anchorage with my girlfriend Kate and her brother to work on a property problem. That was a nightmare but I'll spare you the details. The trip home was similar to my October 24th post. It was snowing - freezing raining all day turning the highway into a skating rink. Predictably there were cars upside down in the ditch and bouncing off each other and the guard rails all the way home. It was another 3 plus hour ride home. It's Alaska! You'd think people would know how to drive in these conditions.

I finally dropped off Kate and her brother and headed home down the twisty country road that leads to TrippingOverMoose Ranch. About a mile from home I watched a Mini-van approach from a side road a couple hundred yards ahead of me. He caught my eye because he was going too fast to stop at the intersection he was headed for. I was right. When he touched his brakes the mini-van turned into a sled did a 200 degree rotation across in front of me and slid backwards off into the ditch across the road coming to rest with the drivers door firmly jammed into a tree. I carefully slowed and pulled into the next driveway about 35 yards beyond the street he had come from. I made my way back to the accident scene on foot to lend assistance. I arrived at the scene no more than 1 minute after the car impacted the tree. There was already another car stopped on the road right at the scene already. That car must have successfully pulled out from the same side road just after I went by. A woman was standing between the 2 cars directing a large group of small children as they climbed out of the car in the ditch and into the car on the road. The ditch diving driver, a man, was still in the drivers seat. I asked, " Is everyone alright?"
The woman, with a Russian accent answered, "Yes, Yes, " and then said something to the driver in Russian.
I said, " I just wanted to make sure everyone was OK!"
She said "Yes, Yes," spoke to the driver motioning to a bag on the front passenger seat. He clambered up and over the passenger seat grabbing the bag and getting into the backseat of the upright car with all of the children. She then got into the front passenger seat, slammed the door and they all drove away, leaving the car, headlights still on, leaning rejectedly into the tree and me standing on the side of the road in the falling snow. I figured they were late for a potluck or he had no drivers license, insurance nor english and damn well did not want to be there when an Alaskan State Trooper Arrived.

I finished my ride home, fixed something for dinner and fell asleep on the couch for awhile. When I woke I stood up and glanced out the front window just in time to see something move in the darkness just to the left of the porch. I quickly killed the interior lights and moved to the kitchen window in time to see a big healthy moose calf stop at the corner of my shed just on the thin edge of the light from the porch light. As I watched her twin stepped out from behind the shed and the two touched noses. Then their mama followed the first one out of the light and the three of them slowly walked down my driveway into the dark.

It's still snowing. Tomorrow more snow removal.

A 4 Hour and 45 Minute Commute

This afternoon a 18 wheeler jackknifed just past the Ft Richardson overpass, blocking the one and only road between Anchorage where I work and Wasilla where I live. No one was injured. We left work at 4 pm for what is usually a 1 hour commute. I got home at 8:45 pm. For those who know the area, we had an errand to run on Muldoon Road across from the Fred Meyers. After the errand we attempted to return to the Glenn Hwy via Muldoon. It took 2 and a half hours to move the 3/4 mile back to the Glenn. Then the 3 lanes of five miles an hour traffic crept along to Ft Ricahrdson. That stretch took 45 minutes. At Ft Richardson, right where the wrecked 18 wheeler lay in the ditch the traffic suddenly spead up to normal speed. It turns out the accident had been cleaned up 3 to 4 hours before. We were just experiencing the backlog, it took 6 hours for the traffic to return to normal. We really need another route to Wasilla, but thanks to the press and "The Bridge To Nowhere" the chance of the Knik Arm bridge being bult in my lifetime is nonexistent.