February 6, 2006

I am starting to get a feel for the old pattern of life, work 5 days a week and play hard on the weekends. There is a lot of time available during the week, but I don’t think I have yet figured out how to make the best of it. I really should be taking more advantage of leaving work at 4:00.

The weekend was really nice. Saturday was a nice day. We skied hard for several hours. They were providing free ski demo’s so I tried 4 different pairs. It is neat to see what a difference ski design makes in different conditions. We took two runs on each pair and skied some easy bumps, some groomed snow, and some steep bumps. The snow was nice and soft so there wasn’t much opportunity to ski on ice, but it was obvious that some skis are better on the harder surfaces than any of my existing skis. I really would like to find a more versatile ski for my next pair which I might need as early as next year. The compromise always comes down to better hard snow performance sacrifices soft snow performance and vice versa. Some of the designs have a broader range of versatility, but there is no perfect ski. The primary difference, at least for the way I ski, is that an easier flexing ski works better in soft snow and a stiffer ski works better for hard snow.

Sunday was fun, too. We met one of Kris’ co-workers at the ski resort. Her daughter forgot her ski pants, but I was able to borrow some for her from a former co-worker. Girdwood is a strange town. My former co-worker told me to just go to her house. She even told me where the ski pants were. Luckily, her husband was still there when I got there so I didn’t have to feel like I was ransacking someone’s house. I can’t imagine someone in Ohio telling me to just go on in and take what I need. It is kind of cool to still see people leaving their houses open and their cars unlocked with the keys in them. In some parts of Alaska, it is considered beyond rude to lock your house. If someone has an emergency in bad weather, they will need shelter. It is not nice to lock them out.

Sunday was very windy and very snowy. The upper lift on the mountain was closed, but that wasn’t a big deal since the snow was pretty deep on the lower part of the mountain. We had fun bouncing around in the cut up snow. The worst part was the slow lift that serves the lower mountain. The snow really accumulated on us every ride up and we ended up getting pretty wet. It wasn’t too bad since the termperature was pretty warm.

About midday, they closed one of the runs on the lower mountain due to avalanche concerns. The steep slopes above were getting loaded due to the wind and heavy snow fall and there was concern that it could slide. This reduced the available space for skiing, but since it was Super Bowl Sunday, it still wasn’t crowded. We skied until they closed the main lift, presumably due to other avalanche concerns. This left the intermediate area as the only area left to ski. The lift there only goes up a few hundred feet. By Midwestern standards, it is an impressive ski area, but it is just a small portion of the mountain and the terrain is not very challenging. We skied a couple laps, but there was a bit of a lift line and we decided we didn’t need to wait in line for this terrain.

We got home in time to see the second half of the game and see my long time team win another Super Bowl.

My job is going well. I have prepared a revised permit for the electric utility in Kotzebue. Most of these small communities are using large diesel powered generators for their electricity. This one had replaced one of their diesel generators with a new larger unit. It took some effort to update the permit to include all the details of the new generator. It is also challenging to work with such a large document and keep the formatting correct. Someone did quite a bit of good work creating a Microsoft Word template for the permits, but there were the inevitable improper insertions. Many of the sections refer to other sections and when I inserted new sections, the references should update automatically. Unfortunately, the formatting was lost in a few places and a few of the references weren’t set up as references and were just text. This left me with two section 13’s and cross references pointing to the wrong places. A good deal of the work was just cleaning up the document to correct these problems.

Now I am working on a permit renewal for the electric utility in Nome. They also use diesel generators so I am beginning to get a better idea of the regulatory implications for these facilities. It is interesting that diesel is the primary energy source for the non-road portions of the state. I suspect that it is a real compromise on pollution and efficiency, but it is the practical way to meet the needs of small communities, especially those along the coast where large tankers can unload massive amounts of fuel. It is also good that many of these big diesel engines are Caterpillars since we are still stockholders from Kris’ days with them early in her career.