Road Trip

We are in a whirlwind of activity, getting ready to leave Alaska for three months. And so I am doing the logical thing. I am sitting down to write. Actually, I have to take a few minutes break, or I will break. And writing is calming for me. Relaxing. Therapeutic. It’s also an avoidance tactic—a great way to procrastinate the unpleasant. Basically, there is so much to do, I don’t know what to do next. And I have a strategy that I firmly stand by. Apparently it’s a popular strategy, because it is used by people the world over—especially politicians. It goes something like this: When you don’t know what to do, do nothing. So I am writing instead.

Keri went on a road trip. Yup. A road trip in an area where there are no roads. Go figure that one out.

He and two of the teachers took their snow machines 215 miles—just for fun. And they had a blast.

They first went to Nunam Iqua, a village about 12 miles southwest. It was so clear, that they could see all the way to the mountains at Scammon Bay, about 60 miles away. They didn’t even have to use the GPS—they just headed straight for the mountains. There was fresh powder on the ground, and Keri said it was like traveling over a field of diamonds. Once they hit Scammon, they headed over the pass, and on to Hooper Bay, about another 45 miles south.

In the Bush, there are no hotels or anything of the kind, so the local schools serve as the accommodation place. And that is where they stayed. They picked up the keys, and ended up sitting around visiting with the principal until after midnight. And once at the school, the three of them stayed up and yakked until almost 3:00 AM.

The next day, they went to Chevak, a village about 20 miles east, then headed north back to Scammon Bay, and then home to Alakanuk. Keri had a blast. He slalomed over open terrain, and even got airborne a couple of times. (I was annoyed about the airborne part—that snow machine costs a fortune—but he said there was so much powder, that it just settled in and kept on going).

When they finally got home, Keri looked like a popsicle—a popsicle that had just come in from playing and having a blast. I’m glad he went.

The downside of the trip was that he made the house reek like gasoline. We couldn’t figure it out. I walked around sniffing everything—his coat, his pack, his boots. I must not be part bloodhound, because I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. By the next day, we had headaches from the gas smell. We left the windows and outside door open for two days trying to get rid of the stench. (Snow was blowing into the entry, but we were desperate.) We finally found the source. The spare gas can had leaked some gas into a plastic bag that he had put away, and the bag had leaked onto the floor of the entryway. After a lot of scrubbing, the stench finally dissipated.

Thank goodness for Pine Sol.

United in Poor Customer Service

I have done a lot of travelling in my time, and had some frustrating experiences along the way. (My trip to the Philippines was an insane story, but that’s for another time.)

My travel back and forth from Alaska so far has been tiring and adventurous, but positive. When I had to get back to Utah in December, Delta was golden. They went above and beyond to be helpful in getting me home at a moment’s notice. They were accommodating, they were caring, and they were sensitive. They are solidly set on having great customer service.

Then there is the other end of the spectrum. And that is where United Airlines hangs by their fingernails—about as uncooperative and uncaring as a company can get.

When planning our return trip for the boys and myself, I made the mistake of trying to save a few dollars by flying on United. Big mistake! And one that I won’t make again.

I planned our return trip to coincide with Rachelle’s arrival home. Monday morning, we were to take a snow mobile from Alakanuk to Emmonak, and then fly by bush plane to St. Marys and on to Anchorage. Monday night at midnight, we would catch the United flight from Anchorage and eventually end up in Salt Lake, arriving at the Salt Lake airport about 3 hours before Rachelle flew in from France. (We would have been in a total of six airports by the time we arrived.)

Rachelle ended up changing her return trip for six weeks later, so I called to see if I could change our tickets and stay here longer with Keri. Apparently, United outsources their “customer service” (a term used very loosely here) to India. I could hardly understand a word the guy said when he told me that it would cost a total of $450 to change ($150 per ticket). Well, forget that. We’ll just go ahead with our original plans.

Since the trip home is so expensive (you total three tickets, and it really adds up—we are paying for Keri’s in May), I got it in two parts. I paid for the Anchorage to SLC in March, and then went to book the bush part in April. (The bush part is as expensive, or more so than the Anchorage to SLC part.) But when I went to book the bush part of the trip and pulled up our confirmation, I realized to my horror that the flight didn’t leave at midnight on Monday night—it left a few minutes after midnight on Monday morning. That wouldn’t be such a big deal, except that there are no “direct” flights from our part of the bush to Anchorage over the weekend.

So we were left with three alternatives:
1. Take the long way to Anchorage, increasing the total fare by $300
2. Fly into Anchorage on Friday, and pay for a hotel and food for two days, and then “hang out” at the airport all day Sunday
3. Change our flight out of Anchorage for a total penalty fee of $450

I tried a fourth alternative: phone United and plead our case. See if they will work with us. Again, I reached India.

I knew it would take some doing, so I asked for a supervisor right off the bat. When I explained our situation and what I had mistakenly done, the guy actually laughed before he said, “Well, you can change it for $150 fee per ticket.”

Yup. I have definitely learned my lesson. I will NEVER fly United again.

Conference

Wasn’t conference wonderful?!

We were able to listen to all the sessions on the phone. We just called in on our regular line (the one we call in on for church each Sunday). They had us hooked up that way. I even listened to Priesthood Session, since it was on speaker phone in the living room.

The only problem was with the final session. For some reason, we didn’t get hooked up. Ten minutes into the session, it was pretty obvious that something was wrong, not just delayed. So I phoned the Branch President at home. (He lives in Anchorage and was watching conference with his family.) He tried to figure out what was wrong, but finally he just laid his phone in front of his television and we heard it that way. So we missed the first twenty minutes or so. And then it also cut out a few times later, so missed some other stuff—including part of the cow story (the lost calves). We’ll have to read them in the Ensign.

I am SO grateful for modern technology! It allows us to hear and see things going on around the world. I am so glad there are smart people who know how to make it happen.

My Son, the Dork

I am a fraud. I talk tough, but haven’t followed through very well.

Since I was a new mom, I always said that when my kids get into the “marriage” realm, that I won’t try to influence them to marry someone, and I will stay completely neutral until after the wedding. I guess this was an “overboard” reaction to some unhappy marriages I saw around me. There were just too many friends who I heard say something to the effect of, “I knew I was making a mistake, but I figured I had to marry him/her because…” the invitations had been sent out…the money had been spent…(and my favorite doozie)…my family really liked him/her. So I decided early that I wasn’t going to let my kids feel pressure to marry someone. I’ve always reserved the right to try to talk them OUT of something if I thought they were making a mistake—and I have interfered in that area more than once. But I would never try to talk them INTO something. I would be totally neutral through the entire event—right up until the “I do”s were said.

Yup. I talk big.

My oldest son, Chris, recently got engaged to Erin. She is an adorable girl who I only met once last summer during one of his baseball games. They were just dating as friends and there was no indication that they might get married a year later, but she made quite an impression on me. She had her younger sisters there with her simply because they like Chris and had wanted to come along. And she was great with them. She is an open person who is confident enough in herself that she doesn’t have the need to put on a show for others. She is well grounded and has a good head on her shoulders. And what I’ve learned since then is that she has an incredible family. I’m crazy about her mom. How often does that happen? The mother-in-laws well on their way to becoming best friends!

Well, this morning, I missed a call from Chris. He left a monotone voice mail which said, “Mom, call me back. Erin and I just broke up.”

I was stunned! My first thought was, “I wonder if it can be salvaged.”

I couldn’t for the life of me think what would have happened to break up over. They seemed to adore each other. They never argued—Erin wouldn’t put up with it. They seemed to communicate well. And I knew Chris must be devastated. Every day he tells me how much he loves her, how wonderful she is, how cute she looks in pigtails, how he wishes they could just get married NOW.....

I figured whatever the problem, it must be able to be saved. So I called him back to find out what had happened before I phoned Erin’s mom, Carole. Between Carole and me, I was sure we could help our kids through the problem. So much for not wanting to get involved.

When Chris answered, all I could say in my still-shocked emotional state was, “WHAT HAPPENED?!” He sounded devastated, and said, “It was the date.” I couldn’t even think straight. Did they get in a fight on their date last night? Was it a difficult day for Erin and they got in a fight about it? I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying, so I just repeated, “WHAT HAPPENED?!”

That’s when he started to laugh and said, “It’s the date. It’s April first.” Good grief—I’d been April fooled.

Yup. I raised a dork. Now Erin is getting him, so she can deal with it. And I claim no responsibility for his dorkiness.

Rachelle's Mission

As many of you know, our daughter, Rachelle, is serving a church mission in the France, Toulouse mission. Guys who are worthy and able serve for two years; girls who are worthy and want to serve for eighteen months. Rachelle has wanted to serve a mission since she was a very little girl. Her whole life, she has had that as her primary goal.

Rachelle was originally scheduled to come home near the beginning of March. But she requested an extension. Actually, citing injustice to girls, she requested a six-month extension. She was given six-weeks more. So her new return date was April 13th. But she learned that the mission wasn’t going to get another sister missionary until the end of May, which meant they would have to pull the missionaries out in one of the towns and form a threesome. So Rachelle convinced her mission president that it was a “silly” thing to do, when she was more than happy to stay another six weeks. This would allow the “ville” to stay open, and everyone would be much happier. He cleared it with us, and then took it to the Area Presidency for approval. (Missionaries are not permitted more than a single transfer extension, and she would be onto her second transfer.)

I just got an e-mail from him—and she got clearance to stay another six weeks. So she will have served for twenty-one months by the time she is finished—and she is quite happy about that. She cracks me up.

Rabbit Update

I wanted to give everyone a short update on the rabbit situation:

Rabbits like peanut butter! I thought they might.

We didn’t actually catch any with the peanut butter, but they sure ate it up. They just outsmarted the traps. But our hunting crowd (Keri and Larry) figured out a way to outsmart the rabbits. We have now caught a grand total of four. This is a very good thing, because we were quickly running out of meat. And as I think I’ve mentioned, produce is even scarcer. So the rabbit is very much appreciated. (And it’s fun eating with Leigh and Larry. They are a hoot. I cook it up, and they come on over. I’ve tried a new recipe each time. So far, we all have the same favorite.)

Tips for future rabbit connoisseurs:
1. Let the meat simmer for a couple of hours, or it will be tough as leather.
2. Watch out for the bones. They are very small and it’s almost impossible to get them all—and they are sharp.

Bowled Over

I have learned a valuable lesson:

When dropped just right, a corelle bowl can shatter into approximately 2,854 tiny pieces—shards which can propel themselves across a space the size of a football field.

I’ll be sweeping and vacuuming the stuff up for months. And that’s just what doesn’t get embedded in the soles of my feet first.

This wouldn’t be such a big deal, except for the fact that we only had one bowl per person. No spares. Coming to this place with no extra bowls makes as much sense as heading out on a cross country trip through a desolate land with no spare tire. Yup—not exactly a brainiac move.

We’ve given new meaning to the phrase “family togetherness” at meal time. Just think—sitting down together, talking together, and eating together—from the same bowl. It can be very romantic; but it’s usually just really, really irritating.

But one advantage of having so few kitchen items to worry about is that every dish and pot and pan and utensil in the house could be dirty, and it will only take half an hour to wash them all. So the cozy mealtime scenario does have its advantages.

"Fun and Games"

One challenge of living in a village of Alaska is that there are very few healthy activities for us to do. There are no theaters, malls, museums, school activities, or anything else that most people do. So our family makes our own fun.

This afternoon, Tanner and Taco were messing with their poppers that they’d won at the arcade while on the temple trip. One thing led to another, and before long, they had a “battle of the poppers” going. They sat at opposite sides of the living room and shot the things at each other. Even Keri got involved. That game entertained them for quite a while.

Last night, Keri and I went out with a few of the other teachers, and we actually bought a pizza at the newly-opened one and only restaurant in town. It is a tiny place with two tables. They have pizza and hamburgers. Pizzas cost about $30, and hamburgers run from $10 to $15. And they are pretty regular fare. But we figure we haven’t been on a date in about a year, so we splurged.

Tonight we are having a movie night at our house. Tanner bought the movie 2012 (also while in Anchorage at the youth temple trip). All of the teachers are invited to come over, and we are popping popcorn and showing the movie on a white wall with a projector. Next year, I think I will make Saturday movie night a weekly event.

Survival in the Bush

Apparently, the bush of Alaska has more Search & Rescue incidents than the rest of the country combined. A guy comes to the school every year to talk to the kids about survival. The boys and I heard him, and he was full of survival tips and funny stories.

He told the kids to always carry a VHF radio with them (a kind of radio/walkie-talkie). The radios only have a 10-15 mile working radius, so the kids were taught what frequency the airplanes use that fly overhead. He said you can always get help if you get through to one of them.

Incidentally, a VHF radio is the one thing we don’t have—maybe next year. Around here, they are used like telephones, and they have multiple purposes. One day, someone got on the school frequency and called out for Keri, asking him to phone her dad. So Keri took down the number and called the guy. When the guy answered, he said, “Thanks! I couldn’t find my cell phone!” and then promptly hung up.

One safety tip the speaker passed on, is that while traveling over a frozen river, always carry a big stick, holding it sideways with both hands as you walk. That way, if you fall through the ice, it will stop you from going all the way under because it will hopefully be longer than the hole is wide, and you can pull yourself out. He’s done that for years. But when he actually fell through, it was such a shock that the first thing he did was throw the stick down so he could grab for the ice. That reflex reaction almost got him killed.

One time, search and rescue were out looking for a family that had disappeared. They were riding around on snowmobiles looking, and it was dark, so they all had their lights on. Well, a snowmobile went flying past, but they just figured it was one of the search party so they kept right on looking. Turns out later, that it was the people they were looking for. They were so frozen and disoriented that they hadn’t even seen the other snow machines. Fortunately, they made it into town (kind of bumped into it). But they couldn’t remember where they had come from, and the sled full of kids and one adult was still out there. So the search party went looking in the direction that the people had come from when they had whizzed by. They finally found the rest of the family, huddled in the sled under a tarp, half frozen. I’m still not sure what the rational was for disconnecting the sled. Maybe speed and gas consumption? Or maybe it was a frozen brain not quite working right.

He told of a friend of his who got caught in a terrible storm. He kept trying to find his way home, but just couldn’t. Finally, he was forced to stop and build a snow cave and just ride out the storm. He almost froze to death that night, but somehow managed to stay just warm enough to survive. The next morning, he heard noises outside his snow cave—an animal sniffing around. He listened carefully, and decided it was a dog—not a wolf or bear—so he carefully crawled out of his cave. He was shocked to see his own dog, but was even more shocked when his wife came walking up to see what all the barking was about. She said, “What are you doing out here?! I’ve got breakfast ready, and it’s getting cold.” The storm had been so bad that he’d spent the night in his own backyard without even realizing it.

Most high schools have “Don’t drink and drive” or “Say No to Drugs” assemblies. We have “How to survive the bush” speakers. I guess a frozen body is seen as being more problematic than a fried brain.

Traveling Tales

Some of us are having a “girls’ night” of talking and games, and it is a blast—a much-needed diversion. Well, tonight, we got talking about some of the traveling “adventures” that have happened to us flying around the bush. They are just too good to not pass along.

This past December, I needed to fly home. All I wanted to do was get to Anchorage so I could head off to Utah. Simple, right? Apparently not.

I arranged to get picked up at Alakanuk (I had to get to Emmonak to catch a flight to St. Marys and on to Anchorage). But they didn’t give me a time—they just said the pilot would radio when he was on his way. And he did—about 20 minutes before I was supposed to catch my connecting flight. Some guy came and picked me up with a snow machine and we raced out to the airstrip, which is exactly that—no building, just a strip where planes land. The bush plane had just landed, so I helped unload the postage and a pile of packages, which the snow machine driver was going to deliver in the village.

I then jumped in the copilot seat, and we took off—headed the wrong direction. I hollered to the pilot that I needed to go to Emmonak, and he said, “Ya, I know. But we need to drop some stuff off in Nunam.” “But I need to catch a flight!” “Don’t worry—they’ll wait.” So we headed to Nunam. But not before he practiced his stunt flying—buzzing the tundra to show me a close-up of a moose and her calf, flying low over ice fishermen so I could get an eyeball-to-eyeball view.

Somehow we made it to Nunam. As we were unloading the rest of the boxes, a guy drove up in a snow machine dragging a sled with two old people who must have been pushing a hundred. He yelled, “They need a ride to Emmo. Can you take them?” So the pilot pulled two collapsible chairs out of the tail of the plane; he ran them along metal tracks on the floor and clicked them into place. The old people climbed on in.

When we finally got to Emmonak half an hour late, there was no sign of the plane. Turns out I had plenty of time to sit and visit, because the thing was almost two hours behind schedule. (Emmonak does have a shack on their airstrip, which makes waiting much nicer.) But checking in was dumb. Not because there was anything wrong with my luggage, but everyone flying had to toss their luggage onto the scale, and GET ON WITH IT! I felt like the prize steer at a cattle auction. All I can say is that my luggage has got to lose some weight.

The rest of the flight was uneventful. Of course, I came prepared. I’d learned from experience that the planes aren’t heated. You combine an Alaska winter with high altitude flying, and things get a bit frosty. But not to worry. I was layered. Long johns (top and bottom), sweats and jeans; T-shirt, sweat shirt, and jacket. So I was only cold—not frozen.

All in all, it was a pretty average flight for up here. But of course, there is the condition of the planes.

One teacher was on a small bush plane when it blew a tire on landing. The pilot was yelling, “MAYDAY ON THE RUNWAY! MAYDAY ON THE RUNWAY!” as the plane careened down the landing strip and finally tipped on its side, bending the propeller. Fortunately those things aren’t really going very fast, so no one was hurt.

Another teacher rode a plane with a broken seatbelt. It kept coming undone from the floor.

And then there is the duct tape. A teacher commented on being on a plane where a window was duct taped in. Someone else piped up, “I challenge you to find a bush plane that hasn’t been duct taped together.”

But tonight, the prize for most adventurous flight went to Theresa—hands down.

This poor girl was called and offered a job taking over a class where the teacher had just up and quit. (But that is another story of its own.) She was told that they needed her within a couple of days. So she had precious little time to prepare for the trip. She’d never been to Alaska, wasn’t sure what to expect, and it was her first year of teaching. But she was determined to do it.

Well, her flight schedule was insane! So to facilitate things, she wore flip flops so she wouldn’t have to take her shoes off and on at security checkpoints. She managed to survive the tight transfers and plane changes. She was sitting at the Bethel (Alaska) air shack waiting for the final leg of her flight, when she was approached by a native girl. The girl asked her if she was the new teacher going to Alakanuk. Theresa said she was, so the girl asked her if she could help take her baby to the baby’s father in Alakanuk. Thinking that the girl needed help carrying her stuff, she said, “Sure.” The girl handed her the child, and started to walk off.
Theresa hollered, “Wait! Where are you going?!”
“Oh, it’s OK. Just give her to her father.”
Theresa protested, but the girl insisted that the baby needed to get to Alakanuk. The father was expecting her.
“What’s the father’s name?” Theresa asked.
The girl told her.
“Don’t you want to know my name?” Theresa asked.
“Why?” the girl asked, and she walked off.
So Theresa boarded the plane carrying a stranger’s baby. When she got to Alakanuk, no one was there to pick her up, and the father wasn’t there for the baby. Apparently, no one told the father she was coming.

She eventually got to her house, and she got the baby to the father. (One of the locals saw the guy riding by on an ATV, and flagged him down. He was headed out hunting--but went home with a baby instead.) Unfortunately, what Theresa didn’t get was her luggage. It had been lost. So for three weeks, the poor girl had to walk around in flip flops and the same change of clothes; other teachers helped out best they could. Her luggage eventually showed up. It had been sitting in Emmonak the whole time—about 15 miles up river.