Comments

Just to be completely clear with you, we like feedback. There is a comment button at the bottom of each entry for you to tell us if we are particularly funny, articulate, and/or wildly intelligent. Or, that you just like the photos. Whatever...

Like most volunteers, we don't make any money from this endeavor... indeed, we do it to keep you, our family and friends, close to what we are doing and experiencing. We do our part, Julie and I, by writing and showing you a sample of the pictures we capture, and y'all need to reciprocate. So tell us what you think.

If you are mindful about having your comments published for God and everyone to see, then just write that into your comment and I will honor your request. I have to approve them all before they publish, and I don't put them all out there.

Thanks in advance,

Ken and Julie

Flying Red Tail Air

I hadn't been in the back of a Coast Guard C130 since my first summer cruise at the Academy, back in 1981. They stuffed a third of our class in the back for a couple hours' trip from New London to Charleston. There we boarded the EAGLE, for a week-long cruise (and my first seasick experience).

The intervening quarter-century hasn't changed the Hercules a bit...

This last week I had to go up to Anchorage to give a 90-minute presentation to the District's annual Coast Guard Auxiliary Winter Training Conference, and since some 60 Auxiliarists were already being picked up all over the State of Alaska by this dinosaur, I was expected to save the taxpayer's expense and tag along as well. So, the noisy pterosaur pulls up to the Air National Guard hangar at the airport in Juneau (home of former Gov. Frank Murkowski's jet, the one for sale on eBay) in the cold, driving rain. Pretty much the same description for my seat inside the plane, also.

Another blog I have started reading (www.coconutcommando.blogspot.com) describes riding into Bagdad in the rear of a C130 as being strapped into a sewer pipe... loud, dark, round, windowless, cold. My experience can add "dripping fluids onto your head" to that mix.

I do not like moving within a structure when I can't see some external frame of reference... like a window. Two hours airborne, which except for a short stint out of my seat to go up forward, I had no idea if we were about to land, turn, dive, crash, whatever... My seat was below the center wing box structure, so I could watch a quadrant arm that connected two long rods that went out each wing, presumably tying the ailerons together. When the turbo-prop noise decreased, I reckoned that we were descending, and when the hydraulic pumps were screaming more than they already were, I took it to be either the flaps or the landing gear. No announcements, no freindly banter from the flight crew, just a young flight-suited Petty Officer with large headphones on, watching like a hawk to make sure none of the elderly Auxiliarists stepped out of line on his watch.

As uncomfortable as the seat was, I did get to go up front for a few minutes to see the light...

Fortunately, we left the rain in Juneau and it was clear towards Prince William Sound...

Not as plush as sitting in the front of Alaska Air (muchas gracias, MVP de oro), but it got us there...

KML

Work Travel

In those years "Before Julie," Ken was a traveling son-of-a-gun. I lived to travel, and I was happy. I put thousands of miles on my government-vehicle Suburban, and it was good. Trips to Brookings, Coos Bay, Newport, Garibaldi near Tillamook, Astoria, Westport, Seattle... it read like an I-5 and/or HWY101 tourist brochure. Mostly one or two overnight-ers, then back home, but the odd longer trip offshore aboard a cutter or to teach or sit in a class. I had the wanderlust, big time, and a job position that encouraged and enabled that running around.
I knew the roads, where the construction was, where the delays would be. I knew the best hotels at the govt. rate (usually on the beach with an awesome view), where to get the best pizza, the best chowder, where to buy fresh salmon or albacore tuna off the boats, the movie theaters with the best screens, when and where to pee before headed south of Bandon... I was the guy on the coast.
It was an indication of my expertise that I was the only person at the Marine Safety Office that was approached to take the newly-arrived Commanding Officer, XO, or Chief, Inspection Dept out to the coast for AreaFam trips. These were good trips, because the new-guy had to see it all in as short a timespan as I could arrange. But one destination was a constant... we had to go to Crater Lake to see the National Park Service's charter concession. Yep, drivin' to Crater Lake during the summer, hiking down to the water to tour the boats and take the trip out to Wizard Island. Then over to Gold Beach to meet n' greet the guys who run the Mailboats on the Rogue River, and so on. This trip usually ended up being that officer's only trip out to southern Oregon, so I figured that it was my duty to be inclusive and complete.
The gentle reader will please forgive me if they know where I am headed in this rambling discourse. It is, I fear, one of the common themes of my life.
Travel takes me to new places, and this change of scenery satisfies some ancient, genetic need. Travel takes me to new places, and in the process, distances me from the ones I love. Life was certainly easier when I traveled without a second thought, but would I really want it that way now?
Life requires balance, balance requires energy and thought and compromise. I have to think that this is a more examined existence than simply following blind wanderlust...
So I guess I should be happy for my difficult choices, although I still drive Julie crazy. Maybe it is my duty to show her the world and ignite in her the same travelin' jones that still drives me...
Of course, I am writing this in the Anchorage airport, having started it in Petersburg and added to it again in Sitka, all within a three week span.
The following is a comment Julie added during the composition of this blog:
And now that you have a wife, your life is boring and all you get is grief when you leave town.
To which I have to tell you, my dearest Julie, best friend and partner, my life is about as far from "boring" as I can go, and I would not choose to do this adventure with you any differently. And your "grief" at my leaving is music to my ears. Think about the fortune cookie epistle pinned to the office blackboard... you know what I mean. Lastly BTW, I am so honored and blessed to have you walk this path with me. Thank you, BooBoo.
KML

Winter Fire on Auke Bay

After our magnificent walk across the frozen Mendenhall Lake to the terminal end of the glacier, we were tired and hungry, but not ready to quit for the day. We had thrown the bucket of firewood, kindling, newspaper and hand axes in the car with us, so we found a spot above a snow-covered beach at the Auke Rec to have a sandwich and campfire.

While I chopped, Julie deftly arranged the newspaper and kindling, and she started a two-match fire... I am so proud of my BooBoo!!

Despite the welcome flame and associated heat, Julie stayed bundled up tight, only her eyes showing...

We sat by the fire and watched the sun slip down behind the Chilkat Mountains. The stars came out... Orion, Casseopeia, the Dippers. It was beautiful, quiet, peaceful. A wonderful way to end the weekend.

Another reminder of how blessed we are to be on this adventure...

KML

We're Walkin' On a Lake!!

I lost a friend, Mark Webber, in the 3rd grade back in Newtown, Connecticut, growing up. One winter Monday, he didn't come back to school. The only thing the adults told our class (I suppose to protect us, somehow) was that he had died in an accident. No one told us that he fell thru the pond ice in the hills up above his house, so it took me a while to piece it together. In retrospect, we were deprived of a useful life lesson from his drowning...

It would be another 30 years before I would venture out onto frozen water, and then only high up near Mount Hood, at about 3500 feet. I explored out a short ways on the lake that we were circling on snowshoes during a Scout outting. Remembering that the adult leadership role is to "model perfect outdoor behavior," I didn't go far because I didn't do any of the requisite preps for ice adventure and I didn't want to get myself in trouble. I got off the ice almost as quickly as I strayed onto it.

So, at age 44, I am finally in a position to explore solid ice. Juneau has Mendenhall Lake, and during the winter, it gets cold here (go figure). Last Sunday, Julie and I took a little walk on the lake. Seems that the temperature hadn't been above freezing for about 5 days, and when I chopped a hole in the ice with my ice axe, I stopped chipping at four inches depth of solid ice with no end in sight (remembering from my old Boy Scout Fieldbook that 4 inches of ice was enough to engage in any activity short of driving an SUV on it...).

Besides, the general population of Juneau was already out on the ice on one of those rare winter afternoons where the blue, cloudless skies and glacier-glasses bright sun belie the fact that the air is about 25 degrees. It was glorious. A couple hundred folks were out on all manner of foot contrivance... cross country skis, ski skates, ice skates, hiking boots, mountain bikes, tykes being towed on sleds behind skiing moms. There were locals out for exercise with their dogs, tourists walking in jeans, sneakers and thin jackets, kids out playing, a small group of folks flying a noisy RC airplane out over the wide expanse.

Our plan was to dress warm, take a light lunch, and walk from Skater's Cabin on the SW shore of the lake out to the Mendenhall Glacier. The map showed a distance of about 2-1/2 miles to the foot of the glacier. There was about 2 inches of powdery snow from one of the previous nights on the surface of the ice, so there was no treacherous slipperiness. Even so, Julie threw her Yaktrax on her boots, or rather, she held up her booted feet so that I could secure them and she wouldn't have to bend...

By the way, Julie is soooo wicked cool for doin' stuff like this with me... (shameless pre-Valentines Day suck-up)

It was about as fine a winter hike as I have ever taken, and the prize was the terminal end of the Mendenhall...

KML