Above: The Kodiak Small Boat Harbor on Kodiak Island, AK.

I thought people deserved a sort of “update” on how our stay in Alaska is going. The last post I wrote was some drivel about cars and didn’t really include anything meaningful. So I’ll attempt to keep this post strictly emotional and sentimentally driven.

You may assume that each day in Alaska is spent riding dog sleds, building igloos, hiking, hunting, fishing, wrestling moose, and narrowly escaping Grizzly bears. You’d be wrong for several reasons.

It’s very hard to build an igloo out of precipitation that isn’t frozen, which is the only kind we’ve seen for days and weeks.

We’ve only seen four moose to date. Although we do have moose footprints all over our backyard, the huge 1,400 pound animals are surprisingly stealthy and I haven’t been able to catch one in the act of trespassing just yet.

The one thing I did do was go on a fishing trip. Several times. We didn’t catch much, although I enjoyed it anyway.

And the only animal that’s done any damage is a squirrel. It found Oliver’s car seat on the front porch and chewed a hole in it just to spite us. It’s not so bad that you notice it really. It quickly become covered by graham cracker crumbs, half eaten apples, and other unrecognizable goo.

The first thing I did in Alaska was regret my fashion choices. We flew over beautiful snow capped mountains as far as the eye could see, descended over the Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet, and kissed the runway in Anchorage. I stepped off the plane and realized my shaved head may not be comfortable this far north. So I’m letting the hair sprout once again because it keeps my head warm. It’s been in the high fifties and constantly raining since we got here. I think we had four full days of nice weather. Janice isn’t surprised. “It always rains in Alaska. Everyone here tries to tell me otherwise but every time I come it’s raining. Alaska is depressing. Alaska is cold. Cold and depressing and full of mosquitoes. Humph. Did I mention it’s not very warm?”

Since we’ve been having such crummy weather, it’s fortunate we’re staying in a nice cabin. I’m worried it’s a little too nice. It’s so nice that Janice interrupted her rant about the weather to gush over the big kitchen, the spacious countertops, and the stainless steel gas stove featuring technology like working burners and a digital touch display. I can’t remember the last time she’s gushed over her kitchen at home. Now when we go back to Ohio she’ll walk into the kitchen and immediately imply that she needs a new stove and such things when in reality the old stuff works just fine. Her needing stuff always causes stress in our marriage because we need all our money to buy stuff I need. I’ll say something like, “Why do you need a stove? You don’t need to heat up hotdogs before you eat them. Besides, I need the money to buy some shiny tidbits from the local tool store.” Janice will make some unnecessary comments about airplanes, mechanics in general, and me specifically to which I’ll reply, “You’re right, Honey” and then go buy a new stove. Who am I kidding? After one day of eating cold hotdogs I’d give up all my tools to get Janice an oven. Plus, Janice’s new hobby has made me a little more attentive to her needs.

Janice has taken up knitting. Or crocheting. Something involving needles and a ball of string, anyway. She’s been turning balls of yarn into washcloths. The first couple were a little rectangular-ly challenged but they’ve learned to behave, much like anything does when Janice begins angrily poking it with needles. She seems to do it more when she’s stressed. If her ball of yarn is violently bouncing around the floor and unwinding at a frightening rate, I know I had better seek forgiveness for any offenses I may have committed, whether real or imaginary. As Janice says, “You should know what I mean, not what I say.” I’m still learning to do that so naturally sometimes I think she means what she doesn’t mean and sometimes I think she means what she isn’t saying and sometimes she actually means what she says. It’s very confusing for a man who statistically says what he means far more than he doesn’t.

Speaking of men and women, I’ve been finding boys and girls are different despite what society seems to think. Anyone who tells you differently is trying to sell you something. Take, for example, a hypothetical situation which may very well be happening in my house right now, for all I know. Janice claims I don’t pay attention to these things when I’m writing. Anyway, Adi and Elliot will wrestle with each other. Adi is very worried about the societal ramifications of what’s going on.

“Elliot, you be the naughty boy and I’ll be the mommy. You need to be spanked.” Then Adi pretends to spank Elliot.

Elliot doesn’t care about what role he plays as long as it’s the role with superior firepower. Inevitably the naughty boy will overpower the mommy and hit her with a hefty toy, thus conquering the known universe. Adi is upset because that’s not how mommies should be treated. Also her head hurts. So she appeals to a higher power: mommy or daddy. Adi understands that mommy and daddy are King and Queen in this kingdom. Elliot understands that the King has superior firepower. There are very rare occasions, hardly worth mentioning really, where the King and Queen are tired and don’t feel like trying to deal with the drama so they whip out a bag of marshmallows or something.

The other day it was marshmallows. Janice whipped out a bag of marshmallows she had found in the cabin’s cupboard, left there by the previous tenants of the cabin, and began browning it over the blue flames flickering around the stove burner. “It’s like an indoor campfire,” she said. I admit it was easier than building a campfire in the backyard what with all the explosions and burn ointments involved. Just then Janice’s marshmallow burst into flames like it was made from petroleum byproducts. Maybe it was, who knows? The whole family began passionately blowing in its direction. An onslaught of spittle doused the flames. Janice plopped the gooey charred mess in front of Elliot.

“Here ya go!”

He politely declined the offer. “It’s burnt! WAAAAHA-HA-HA” he cried, wailing like a newborn hyena. Not wanting to wait for another toasted marshmallow, he reached into the bag, plucked an unsuspecting puff from its perch, and stuffed the entire thing into his mouth. He soon spit it out, wailing and clawing his tongue like a bear ripping apart a rotten log looking for grubs. “It’s hot! It’s hot! WAAAAAAHA-HA-HA.”

We all laughed at him. “Hahaha. Silly boy! That marshmallow can’t be hot!” Despite our reasoning, Elliot continued clawing his tongue while we chuckled at his antics. We weren’t going to fall for this hysteria. Then Janice picked up the bag to grab another marshmallow and emitted a surprised yelp, much like a smoke detector does when it has a low battery. “It says these are spicy marshmallows!” She held up the bag with surprised eyes. Sure enough, right there on the package it said, “Sweet and Spicy Marshmallows.” I taste tested one.

“Idonethingderdathot,” I said.

“What?” Janice said, “I can’t understand you. You really shouldn’t talk while clawing your tongue like that.”

Excuse us for not taking Elliot seriously since we have a history with him crying “Wolf!” over matters much more serious than spicy marshmallows.

A part of growing up is learning to decipher messages that your body is sending you, whether they’re emotional or physiological. Elliot is still learning to decipher whether his intestines are telling him he only has gas or something much more urgent. To him the need is always urgent. This leads to many false alarms while we’re driving, usually in areas without adequate equipment to perform such activities. We’ll rush around in a frenzied panic, disregarding all kinds of civil laws and cultural customs, in an effort to find the required equipment, only to realize that the impending doom was averted by merely flatulating, which meant the problem could have been dealt with anywhere, really, other than in church because that’s kind of embarrassing. Still, it’s a dangerous gamble to assume Elliot only has to pass gas whenever he proclaims an urgent need to poop. Panic is, unfortunately, the only reasonable response.

So it’s good then, that the cabin we’re staying in has three bathrooms. Even though they’re close at hand, it still interrupts playtime to use them. Elliot, himself, gets annoyed at his frequent false alarms. We keep close tabs on Elliot’s bathroom usage because he’s demonstrated that he still needs a few lessons in how to properly apply toilet paper. The other day he left the bathroom and reported that he did not poop and so there was no need to double check anything. Five minutes later he rushes back to the bathroom and so we began hovering around the door, ready to continue the lessons on toilet paper procedures. He sighs heavily, leans forward so he can play with his toes while sitting on the toilet, and complains out loud to himself, “I have to poop more. And more. I just have to poop all day.”

Pooping is a necessary indiscretion. Fishing, however, seems to be voluntary one. My brother Matt has willfully succumbed to the philosophy of “bigger and better” and has acquired a new boat to fish with, a nice 28′ Raider with an all aluminum hull and twin outboards. He was determined to catch fish with it and needed an unsuspecting person to join him – a person who didn’t care whether they caught fish or not, as long as they saw some nice scenery! I was the perfect companion.

My brother Matt has this theory that he’s been working out over the last few years and I think he’s on to something. Matt’s theory states that if a boat full of people determined to catch fish enters a large body of water, the fish immediately leave. All they catch is kelp and pneumonia. However, if a boat full of people who care very little about fish and who just want to see some scenery happen to drop some hooks in the water, the fish are caught unaware and the boat is soon overflowing with flopping fish. This concept is even displayed in the Bible. A bunch of determined fisherman finally give up and start rowing to shore. Jesus tells them to try again. They throw up their hands in hopelessness. FINE! It won’t make a difference. BAM! Boat full of fish!

This phenomenon has led some people, who previously only cared about boat rides and nice scenery, to take up the sport of fishing since it’s obviously such a fun and fruitful hobby – only to never catch a fish ever again! They spend the rest of their lives chasing the success they had on their first fishing trip in Alaska, nervously staring at a bobber (real or imaginary) and trying to set the hook every time the wind rustles the water. Surely they’ll hit it big this time! They just need to fish one more time and then they’ll quit. Matt’s boat trips into Cook Inlet have made seasoned fisherman go completely insane and have suckered new victims into dipping their toes in the shallow waters of madness. My mother has warned me against hanging out with people who encourage bad behavior. I suspect she never thought her own son would become a fisherman.

Of course, Matt isn’t an idiot. Being the researcher who first formulated this theory, Matt is well aware of the failures that come from being a determined fisherman. So he has developed a technique to disguise his determination to catch fish. He’ll fumble around with the jigs, he’ll forget bait, he’ll pretend to know nothing about tides, he’ll ram the boat through waves like a greenhorn captain just out for a cruise, all in a ruse to convince aquatic life he’s in no mood to catch fish. He can only do so much though. If fourteen hooks baited with five pounds of herring plop into the water the moment the engines have stopped, the fish know something is up.

I witnessed this firsthand. I was going along on a fishing trip with Matt and another guy named Jerry. Jerry was a nice guy and so I hated to see him come along. I hate it when nice guys get all caught up in bad behavior and eventually go mad sitting around staring at poles and bobbers and twitching every time the wind rustles the water. What a waste. Anyway, Jerry was out with Matt once before, earlier in the week, and, since this was his first time in Alaska waters (and the fish never suspected Matt was a determined fisherman), they had experienced a windfall of Halibut. He was so excited about going again that we caught him several times just running on top of the water without the boat.

Matt did his best to counteract this determination. He cleverly seesawed the boat trailer the whole way down the ramp at the Homer Small Boat Harbor. He pretended he couldn’t find some important equipment. I even got into the act by stumbling around the boat and crashing into things every time a small wave lapped at the bow. Once we hit a big wave while I was eating a snack stick and I pretended to miss my mouth and shoved the snack stick halfway up my nose. This was all comically unrealistic but hey, fish are stupid.

We made it out to the Barren Islands. Matt and Jerry assured me that they had found a spot where Halibut would save you the effort of reeling them in and instead voluntarily leap into the boat for you. We fished all day in driving drizzle and heavy fog and it soon became clear that Jerry was more determined than we thought to catch Halibut. All we were catching was kelp and a slight, persistent cough.

Eventually we did catch two juvenile Halibut, about 20 and 40 lbs, who hadn’t yet learned to sniff out a determined fisherman. It’s quite chaotic when an unwilling 40 lb fish is thrown into the back of boat. Immediately bait buckets, lead weights, and sharp hooks fly through the air while full grown men throw themselves on something that’s slicker than a greased pig. Since Halibut can easily reach 200 pounds it’s not uncommon to actually shoot the fish in the head before bringing them onto the boat. Smaller Halibuts are simply gaffed, or beat on the brains with a blunt stick so they lose any will to survive. These were relatively small, and in a ploy to act like undetermined novice sight-seerers, we chose to gaff the Halibut after it was loose on the boat floor. As chaos gripped the deck, Jerry grabbed a blunt stick, or “gaff,” and attempted to pummel the halibut in submission. After he beat the sense out of a size 12 boot, a bait bucket full of dead herring, and his own knee, the halibut died from laughter and we put the halibut in the live well of the boat. His next destination? A frying pan!

Am I mad that we only caught two halibut? No because I’m sure if I go again, I’ll have better luck. Probably just one more trip is all I need. Matt agrees. This next trip we’ll do better because I’ll be less distracted by sight-seeing and more determined to catch a lot of big fish. I mean, sure, we have gone to Kodiak, Seldovia, Halibut Bay, and the Barren Islands since the Jerry trip, but they all produced less than satisfactory results. I’m sure next time we’ll hit it big.

One of the more redeemable actives I’m involved in is working on mission airplanes at MARC, which is actually the point to all this Alaska madness. That’s going pretty well. Granted, it’s a little frustrating working in a new shop because all the equipment is different, you don’t know where anything is, and you’re not sure who to ask. But it’s been getting better and I’ve been learning a lot. It’s amazing how each shop has a different way of doing things, whether it’s painting, sheet metal fabrication, or cleaning spark plugs. Everyone has their different tricks of the trade and so it’s been educational to work with these Alaskans. I’ve been involved with doing inspections on a Piper Apache and a Piper Cherokee Six. I also got to see the “rope trick” pulled off by a mechanic who is also somewhat of a magician. The “rope trick” is where you feed a rope into a cylinder through a spark plug hole so you can lap the valves while they remain in the cylinder. The engine had low compression because the valves were so leaded up they wouldn’t seal properly. The “rope trip” worked and the Cessna 182 was sent back into service with very little downtime or cost. We’re also rebuilding a bush pastor’s Cessna 185 when we aren’t busy with regularly scheduled maintenance.

We also visited Kingdom Air Corps up in Sutton, Alaska, just north of Palmer. We knew Matt and Jeanine Condon, a pilot family moving to Papua New Guinea in October to serve with Samaritan Aviation, were going to be there and we wanted to hang out with them. Matt had received most of his training at Kingdom Air Corps and so their family was there to say goodbye to so many people they knew so well. Sutton is only about four hours away from where we’re staying in Soldotna and so we borrowed Matt’s 18 passenger 4×4 van and pointed it north. It was a great trip and made a lot of cool connections. I met the Aviation Director of Free Burma Rangers, I met the founder of Mercy Air who also served with one of my supervisors at MMS Aviation, I met several other people who knew other people I knew. Plus, Janice and I got to fly over a glacier with Matt as he demonstrated his skill as pilot.

All in all, the trip is going well, although I think the thing the whole family misses the most is our minivan.

From a small town in Alaska… until next time…

Josh