January 18, 2009

What a difference a week makes. The weather turned 180 degrees around, well at least 70 degrees around. The temperatures soared into the upper forties. It rained. The wind kicked up. The snow melted. The streets flooded. I think we are having an average winter in 2009, but we have yet to have an average day.

The weather made a mess of the ski resort. They were unable to open for three days. They finally reopened on Saturday afternoon. The lower mountain is soft slushy spring like conditions. The upper mountain is heavy wet snow. Over four feet of new snow fell in just a couple days. The wet snow is probably a good thing since the brutal cold had left a dangerous layer of frost that will hopefully be absorbed into the new snow. We skied both days this weekend. It was a real workout.

Our friends from Fairbanks were down skiing this weekend so we skied with them most of the time. We stopped for dinner at the condo they were staying at last night. We also skied several runs today with my former coworker who skis really fast.

I missed most of the dramatic weather, with rain turning snow covered roads into a skating rink. I spent the week in Houston. It was a painful trip, spending two days traveling and two and a half days in meetings from early morning until late at night. The three hour time difference had me waking up effectively at 4:00 AM every morning. The flights were at odd hours. I am surprised that I don’t feel more screwed up. At least my company has a policy of first class tickets for any trip greater than six hours total flying time. It helped reduce the stresses induced by flying.

The return flight was a little irritating. After being delayed for an extra hour and a half in Seattle, we finally arrived in Anchorage around 2:00 AM on Friday. As we began descending on the Anchorage side of the mountains, the incredible winds began tossing the plane around. It wasn’t horrible, but it was enough to make it uncomfortable. I watched out the window as we circled out over Cook Inlet and began approaching the airport. I could see Fire Island, then the water. Having come in that way many times, it seemed pretty normal as the bluff came up under the plane. I began looking for the runway to appear as we dropped lower and lower, down to within 50 feet of the ground. I was a little surprised when the plane powered back up and aborted the landing attempt. We took another long circle in the turbulent air before landing on a different runway. They never bothered to explain the situation, although it was pretty apparent that there was quite a bit of cross wind on the first approach.

My company had a bit of a dramatic event this week. The operator of the delivery service for our platforms lost their boat in Cook Inlet. The boat was pushed up against one of our platforms by ice flowing in the tide and the boat tipped over, eventually sinking. The crew was able to get off the boat and onto the platform before the boat went over. The 166 foot boat is now submerged in the strong currents. The Coast Guard has been unable to locate it. The boat could cause serious damage to other boats or even oil infrastructure if it doesn’t just settle to the bottom somewhere. Salvage companies are out looking for it. I suspect we will be scrambling to get someone to bring another boat to our part of Alaska to keep our platforms supplied. Helicopters are not the best way to deliver supplies.

I bought a new GPS. I wanted to get a bike computer to track my bicycling this year, but I decided to go the GPS route instead. I bought a Garmin that is set up for runners. I won’t call it a watch since it is a bit clunky, but it does have a wrist strap. It is a simple unit that only provides basic information, but it records your activity. It comes with some pretty simple software that allows you to download the data into the computer. I decided to try it out downhill skiing. It worked surprisingly well, recording quite accurately the elevation and speed throughout the day. When I downloaded the data, I was surprised to see the software effectively draw a trail map of the resort based on the trails we had skied that day. I could scroll through the data and see how fast I was traveling at each point along the way. It turns out that we ski typically around 20 mph with a maximum in the low 30’s. This is a far cry from the 60 to 70 typically seen on the downhill course. It puts some perspective to our skiing.