Last night I saw the northern lights for the second time since I arrived in October.  I started exploring night photography with my digial camera on March 4 and got a couple shots of Orion.  The first time I saw the norther lights was a few days later on the 9th of March.  The display was very dim but active.  I had only seen still photos and time-lapse films before so I was not sure what to expect.  The display moved quite quickly and the sky changed in the time it took to reset the f-stop on my camera.  The lights were low on the norther horizon above the mountains.  The lights were a greenish-white, more white than green and undulated like Christmas ribbon candy.  It was fascinating.

 

Last night the display was quite different in activity.  The color was the same but it moved very slowly.  The light was a 'narrow' band across the entire sky.  I went out to check about 11:30 and watched for about an hour.  More later.

 

Check out the new pictures in Night Sky.  They are seen best in a darkened room.

It has been a buy week.  I can't seem to remember anything of import from Monday, but Tuesday thru Friday I started learning about drilling water wells.  I started working for Arnie and Arliss drilling a well for Loren and Carmen.  We set up the drilling rig on Tuesday.  The rig sits on a WWII era truck and weighs about a ga-zillion pounds.  There are some pictures in the Matanuska Area album.  The first day we drilled down about 11 feet.  The work was hard for this desk jockey but very satisfying.  On Wednesday we got down to about 15' and the cast iron well casing hit a rock and deflected sideways.  We could not drill past it so we had to pull the casing up about 5'.  It was quite a task but we got it done.  On Thursday we drilled some more and then drove the casing pipe back down into the hole.  It hit the rock again and deflected again.  We had to extract the pipe and start over.  We (actually Arliss) cut and welded the pipe and an extraction cap multiple times, as it kept breaking loose, We finally got the pipe out by lunch time on Friday.  We started packing up the rig to move it to a new location.  The derrick on the rig is about 40' feet tall and had to be lowered to move the rig (we didn't want a roll-over like the Hicks Creek crane last week).  Arnie came by to get the rig set up.  The called me out of the warm cabin where we were having lunch to help him.  It turns out the derrick is raised with the massive winches but lowered using hydraulics.  The only problem id the hydraulics heed help to start the process.  Mr. Universe himself, me, was told to pull on a 3/8" steel cable to start lowering the derrick.  I pulled one way then another and nothing happened.  I finally climbed up on the front bumper and leaned back at at least a 45 degree angle, pulling on the cable for all I was worth, and then some.  The derrick finally moved a bit but tipped back.  I then gave another Herculean pull and this mega-ton steel derrick started falling right at me.  I managed to scramble off the bumper before I killed myself and the wonderful hydraulics brought the massive derrick down gently and in control.  Thank God!  The rig was backed up three feet and we set it up again.  The casings were re-welded and by the end of the day/week we had a hole about 6' deep and 3' of casing in the ground.  Hallelujah!

 

Thursday night I had some trouble getting up the S. Keith's Rd. hill to the highway for a small group Bible study.  I had talked to Arnie about tires earlier, so I asked him on Friday to get me 2 studded snow tires.  At lunch he told me he got the tires but didn't do what I wanted.  I had heard several people discuss the need for 4 snow tires up here and as usual my will was crossed and I now had 4 studded snow tires.  I thank God for this now.  Friday night I thought about parking my car partly down the hill and walking to Danny's house but didn't.  I should have.  I got up about 8:00 Saturday morning and got out early to get my tires mounted.  Oh look, it snowed about three inched last night.  I cleaned off my car and made it up about 1/3 of the hill.  I backed up and made it a little higher before I stopped.  I then back up down the hill and around the corner.  The car started slipping and by the time the ABS stopped the car it was at the edge of a 20' drop off.  Garry was out plowing and motioned for me to stay put!  He checked out the situation and then plowed the road some more so I would have a place to go.  He then decided it would be better to pull me down the hill instead of up it.  Oops, no chain in his truck.  He then had to plow back to his cabin and get a chain.  When he was all set the truck ran out of gas.  That's OK, he had 5 gallons in the cab, only the wrong spout was on the can and it wouldn't stay on.  We ended up using electrical tape to tape the spout onto a cracked funnel and fill the tank.  He got in his truck and I in my car and he started to pull the rear end back towards the middle of the road.  It worked fine, the front end only looked like it was going over the edge for a short time as I backed the car to follow the truck, while Garry was making sure he didn't drive off the opposite side into an 15' drop off.  When we were settled I got a running start on the newly plowed area and made it up half way before I got stuck.  Garry to the rescue again, he hooked the chain up again and made sure I got up to the highway.  Thank God!  One on the many amazing things about this whole adventure was that I felt the most inappropriate peace throughout the whole process.  I should have been terrified of loosing my last asset and my only transportation, but I was not.  I was able to enjoy the beauty of the awesome surroundings and not worry about getting the car out.  The car belongs to God, he has entrusted it to me and I have taken care of it as best I can.  He was in control of this mess and I trusted Him to get me and His car out of it.  AND HE DID!  I got my tires installed and the 'Cat'illac has had no trouble getting up and down that hill with it's new set of claws.  I also have an offer for a set of tire chains that I will probably take advantage of soon.

 

One other blessing occurred today at church.  I had been invited by my cousin's to spend Thanksgiving in Las Vegas.  I was also invited to come to Cheyenne to spend it with my brother.  With my lack of a permanent job the thought of holiday travel seemed pretty absurd.  I had decided to stay here for Thanksgiving and trust that there would be an opportunity to share it with a family up here.  One of the announcements was for a community Thanksgiving meal on Thanksgiving at the church.  God had already seen my need and provided for it. 

 

It is hard to believe that it has been almost three weeks since I updated this blog and almost four weeks since I arrived in Alaska.  I still can't get enough of the scenery of this beautiful place.  Every day it is a little, or a lot, different.  The most pressing matter right now is work so I will bring you up to speed on this matter first.  The job I interviewed for in WA finally fell through after three and a half weeks, spelling it out helps convey 'the agony of de'-wait.  I kept calling the recruiter for an update and kept hearing 'I don't know, I'll call you....' which usually didn't happen.  At the three week mark , a Friday, I was told that I was in the top two of the four candidates!  "I'll call you Monday at 8:00 AM Alaska time."  NOT, I finally gou in touch with him late Monday and was again delayed.  Finally on Tuesday I was told the client rejected all four candidates because we didn't meet the requirements.  The only problem was, the client was not upfront with what their real needs were.  I think the client was UniData Computer Corp in Waldorf, MD, so if anyone wants to drive by and throw trash or something, You didn't hear it from me.  :-)  After about two days of disappointed depression, I realized I really wanted that job, I got both my head and my heart in Alaska and started looking here for real.  I currently have three resumes in for jobs in Kuparak, AK (Google that one!) and one in Anchorage.  Tomorrow I have been hired to assist a neighbor drill a water well.  This will be interesting and a chance to learn something new.

 

I have been attending Glacier View Bible Church www.glacierviewbc.com  since I arrived.  They are a great group of people and I have enjoyed the worship and small group meetings.  It will be interesting to see how the Lord wants me to plug in there.  I have also been helping Garry get the forms for the foundation of his new cabin ready.  When I first got here I was driven down a buldozed road that would have earned big bucks as a thrill ride at an amusement park.  He showed me where his 36' x 36' log cabin was going to be built.  It will have another great view of the glacier valley.  Several days later Danny Allen came out and dug the footings with his 'backhoe'.  Next I helped Garry with day 2 of setting the forms for the concrete foundation footers.  As we were working we noticed that the excavation was not exactly right, on the right side and we were thinking about how to dig it out in the frozen ground.  Then one of us had the bright idea to make the cabin bigger by 2' instead of digging a new trench.  Since the plans for the cabin were drawn on an 8.5" x11" yellow pad, increasing the size was not a big issue.  I later mused to Garry that it was a good thing he had not spent $400 for a set of drawings for the original design.  We both laughed.  We worked off and on for several days and finished it up on Saturday.  What I first thought of as an impossibility and a disaster turned out to be a very solid and impressive set of foundation forms.  Concrete has been ordered for Friday!  I'll try to get some pictures before that and on the day of the pour.

 

Life up here is very simple and enjoyable.  The nearest grocery store is about 60 miles away in Palmer.  There is a Carr's-Safeway and they have Herring!  Wal-Mart is in Wasilla, anither 10 miles away and in between is a Costco subsidiary (?) called Three Bears, although for some things Wally World is still cheaper.  Wasilla is a growing city/town with a Home Depot, Lowe's, Pizza Hut, McD's, etc.  Anchorage is another 40 miles south and they do have at least on of everything there.  Ah civilization!

 

My biggest problem so far, not counting being unemployed, has been watching too much TV.  The house where I am staying does have basic Dish and Danny, the owner, and a renter both worked nights on a road construction project just down the road.  I say worked because Friday night the crane operator probably totaled a $5,000,000 (that's five million dollar) crane truck when he drove it down a sloping, incline with the 120' boom fully extended.  The crane tipped over onto its side and someone figured the boom hit planet Earth going about 70 MPH.  (How much is that in km/h?)  The site was immediately closed and the workers sent home.  Thank God no one was badly hurt in the accident.  There are no pictures of this great event because the company righted the crane the same evening, thanks to Danny's efforts on a D9 Caterpiller 'dozer, and parts of the boom were trucked out over the weekend.  What accident?  Needless to say there will be more company at night and TV should be less of a temptation.

 

That's all for now from the great state of Alaska.

 

At 1:05 PM PDT I received a call from a recruiter I had sent an application to.  He asked about my availability and some other questions.  I have another interview set up with him on Monday at 1:00 PM PDT to prepare for the interview with the client, UniData in Waldorf, MD.  Please pray for God's favor and will to be done.