April 23, 2009

The volcano continues to threaten and disrupt, although Kris made it in and out of town on a quick business trip to Atlanta and we made it to Las Vegas for a week. My company is faced with a challenge. The Drift River terminal is shut down. No oil is flowing out of our facilities in Cook Inlet.

The volcano has been relatively quiet for a few weeks as it builds a massive lava dome that is probably due to collapse. When the dome collapses, the hot rocks will fall onto the glacier below and rapidly convert ice to steam in another explosive event. The rapid melting of the glacier will send more muddy floods down the Drift River valley. The volcano isn’t really showing much sign of settling down, but at least it is not continuously disruptive. Well, the air quality is suffering with sulfur dioxide and particulate matter hanging around the inlet, ruining visibility and interrupting helicopter operations. We finally had a couple days of clear weather this week.

Spring continues to approach with warm days melting the snow cover. The clear nights refreeze the melted snow. The snow piles shrunk significantly while we were in Las Vegas, but there is still plenty of snow hiding in shadowy locations. Another sign of spring is the dramatic increase in daylight. We are now going to bed and waking up in daylight. We are beginning to miss the darkness. The sun is already setting after 9:30. The birds are returning. The sea gulls, ducks, and geese are showing up. As a final sign of spring, I changed my tires. It is nice to lose the tap shoes, the clicking studs on the hard surfaces. I still need to change Kris’.

Ski season has been winding down. The trip to Las Vegas cost us a few opportunities, but Kris is still suffering some back pain so that is probably a good thing. I did ski the Friday before our trip. It was heavy wet snow with poor visibility. I fell once on South Face when I misread the terrain and couldn’t get my skis to come around in the heavy snow. It was a minor fall on the steep terrain, but I reached out to catch myself and the snow pushed my sleeve up, exposing my arm. My arm punched through the layers of snow as my momentum continued me sliding. One of the layers was a good coating of volcanic ash which left me with a oddly scraped and irritated forearm.

The conditions on that Saturday before our trip sounded so bad that we didn’t even bother. To get some exercise, we went for a walk along the greenbelt. It was actually a nice day in town. We had a bit of a moose encounter on our walk. A young moose joined us on the trail. He appeared to be on his way somewhere as he passed through the neighborhood fence and headed up the trail just in front of us. We continued walking along behind the moose, but he kept stopping to give us looks. Clearly he didn’t want us following him. I took some pictures, but was getting a little irritated with this moose blocking our way. At one point he left the trail only to return, trotting out ahead of us after feeling a little cornered between the trail and the creek.

Kris suggested that we try getting around the moose through the woods. I began picking our way through the woods while the moose paused to watch us. I paused to take another picture and the moose began moving up the trail again. We played cat and mouse with this moose, trying to get ahead of him. We made some progress and began to get ahead, expecting the moose to slow down or turn back to put more distance between us. Instead, the moose sped up and began trotting up the trail. Frustrated, I tried to hold my lead by trotting through the woods along the trail. The moose sped up. I sped up. Soon we were going about as fast as I was able to run through the woods in the snow and I was still holding on to a slim lead. I found the situation so hysterical that I just began laughing. The moose did not like laughing. In typical moose fashion, he did the unpredictable and darted off the trail into the woods in my direction. I don’t know if he was thinking of charging me (I had plenty of trees to hide behind) or if he was just stupid. I stopped while the moose continued on, finally crossing back over the trail and into the woods on the other side.

We spent a week in Vegas. We met my family for the first half of the trip. It was a nice opportunity to have us all together again at a time close to my parents’ major wedding anniversary. The time flew by and soon we were driving to the airport to change out people, dropping my parents off and picking up Kris’ sister and her husband. While much has happened in all of our lives since our last visit, it was a comfortable return to comfortable relationships. All too quickly, our visits ended and since no one hit it big, we were all on our way back to real life.

Vegas was interesting for me this time. I took the time to really look around and there wasn’t much for me to like. It is crowded and I hate people. It is fake with artificial facades attempting to substitute for architecture. Gambling has changed with the elimination of coins. I miss the foreign workers wandering about with change carts, the buckets of coins associated with a big win, and the ability to control the rate of gambling by the speed in which you can put the money in. It has now become a video game. Oddly, my risk tolerance has also changed. I used to have no problem walking up to a dollar machine and taking a chance. Now I can’t stand to risk more than about 25 cents on a single spin. In spite of all this, I still enjoyed it. It is still a mental distraction that brings me into the present, keeps me from any concerns of the future beyond the next spin. It distracts me from the stresses in life. It makes for a good escape.

I rode my bike to work yesterday. It was earth day, not that I really care. I don’t believe much in deciding how to act or what to do based on the calendar. It was a decent sunny day with tolerable temperatures for riding. I have been meaning to get started on riding to work. The trails were a little challenging with dust, dirt, snow, water, and ice. The deeper puddles were covered with a thin layer of ice in the morning. We actually got out for a quick ride on Tuesday evening to kick off the biking season. I still haven’t ridden my new bike as it really isn’t skinny tire season yet.