Moose and stuff
1 - 4 August, Ian
We've settled right into the house here, which is
wonderful. We always thought that our ideal home would either be a very old one
(such as the one we have) or a very new and modern one, with big open spaces,
architectural wood and plenty of light. So this month we're living in a decent
approximation to our alternative dream home. I love the huge logs that define
the structure and the wide veranda with solid wooden chairs, which are sheltered
against rain by the projecting eaves.
I have a good running circuit around here, too. I discovered it almost accidentally the day after we arrived after I set out for a run based on the city map. The map, it transpires, is atrocious, with streets missing or misnamed or simply not running as shown all over town. I guess we're spoilt by the Ordnance Survey and derived maps at home. On my run this became evident fairly quickly. Out of habit, I looked to the position of the sun to give me an indication of where I was heading and then realised that since the sun isn't kept as busy as usual here with rising and setting I probably couldn't read too much from it. It reminded me of when we were in southern Africa and I noticed that the sun, as you know it must, was moving across the north of the sky through the day. Anyhow, I wasn't too worried about getting back too soon and the run was sweetened by a fragrance that hangs along most of the roads - it's closer to pine sap - like Christmas trees - than anything else I can think of.
Matching the virtue of the running, we also seem to be falling into a good routine for the girls' home schooling. This month - for one month only - Paula and I have switched, so that Paula's doing the maths and I'm doing literacy. I'm happy to be away from the Dark Arts for a while, and, perhaps surprisingly, I seem to be better at teaching the literacy. At any rate, I'm enjoying it more. Paula has also got the girls knitting jumpers.
As well as the house, we like Fairbanks, too. It's not a pretty town. Actually, it has the grey grimness of a place that spends most of the year buried in snow, and ugly hoardings, railway sidings, power lines and miscellaneous industrial eyesores are everywhere. But there seems to be plenty to do and we don't mind the urban detritus. This is the difference between being away for a fortnight and being away for a year: if this was just a regular vacation we'd be down in Delani park where it's beautiful, but on our gig we want to get a sense of what other lives might be like.
A couple of days ago we went to North Pole, which isn't the North Pole but is a little community a few miles from Fairbanks. Predictably, it has a large Christmas store that's open all year round. I also checked out internet access in Fairbanks. There aren't any internet cafes around here and many of the people I spoke to had never heard of Wifi or hotspots. To post the girls' newsletters I used the free Wifi that I did manage to track down at a Kinko office supplies centre. This, though, wont draw me in every day. More appealing is the local library, which I've since found also offers wired and wireless internet access, and has a nice buzz - and a large children's section.
Again, we're not very connected here. T-mobile has no reception at all in Fairbanks so our phones will be off for all of this month (and next month too). We do, however, have a postal address, so if any of you want to send Zoe a birthday card for Monday week you can actually mail it to us c/o Norman Shelburne at:
1025 Ridge Pointe Drive
Fairbanks
AK 99709
We also have a phone here: 907-4744353.
I'm hoping the mail works because I ordered a couple of Gb of RAM for my mac. When we passed through Boston I went into the Apple store and asked the guy why Apple's RAM is 4 times as expensive as I can find it on the web: his response, which was admirable, was to show me another web site where it's $10 cheaper still. If and when this fire-sale RAM comes I guess there's a risk that my home installation could trigger an abrupt end to this blog.
We have also been looking for the animals. Yesterday we had a great tour round the Large Animal Research Station, which is affiliated to the University here. The particular large animals that they study are Muskox, Caribou and Reindeer. Muskoxen are apparently related to goats but are shaggy and look like mini-mammoths; they usually hang out in the Arctic Circle. They're about half a million years old (though I guess the Creationist half of the population here must dispute that) and have that ancient look to them, like sharks. Caribou and reindeer look totally different from muskoxen but similar to each other and are actually the same species. They really suffer with the insects. Bot flies hang out as larvae up their noses, from where they can crawl up and suffocate the animals. A caribou can also lose a pint of blood every day to mosquitos. And then there are other bugs that hatch inside them and burrow their way out through their backs, leaving holes like wasps in an apple. Apparently the native American tribes who live largely on caribou relish these bugs as they liven up the meat with a nutty tang.
The reindeer are farmed (though not by the research centre) partly for meat but also for the highly lucrative Asian market in reindeer antlers. The horns are cut off when they're velvety, as they were yesterday, which is precisely the time that they're well vascularised, and the blood, we were told, spurts out about six feet before it's staunched. The horns grow back and are farmed from the head of the reindeer every year. Gross! As a commercial product the horns are sliced thinly are stewed in tea as an aphrodisiac. Here's the rack:
The LARS can't keep moose for research because they need too much free territory. So we got up early this morning and headed off on a moose spotting drive. We'd been told that moose were occasionally seen along the road to Chena Hot Springs, where we wanted to go anyway, so that was the plan. We had no idea how many trips we'd have to make before we saw a moose - we didn't see any all month in Maine - but on the way out we saw two pairs and another two solitary ones. They look great and hang out in very scenic lake settings - all of those we saw were wading and drinking. I'll maybe stick a photo in next time.
Chena Hot Springs itself was a disappointment. It's billed as a multi-activity resort, which maybe it is, but it looks like a WW2 POW camp. The place was largely deserted, apart from a group of Japanese in the slightly tacky outdoor spring-fed pool. The menus were all in Japanese too, and the woman who served me gas and the guy who came to help her get the pump to operate and also to speak English were both Japanese. On the way back it was getting late for moose viewing but we did spot a couple of solitaries. Each time we saw one we stopped and got out of the car to look at them properly, and both times on the return journey we were joined by another car; both times I got the impression that the drivers had been relying on the moose actually crossing the road for a sighting.
Back in town we picked up the latest (2005) edition of the official US Scrabble dictionary. I'd read in Word Freaks that last century an executive at Hasbro had taken it upon himself to remove certain unsavoury words. I idly checked this out just now and even the current version is still Bowdlerised! (I also find that they have guiltily omitted the word "bowdlerize", covering their tracks.) Can you believe it: they expunge the words they don't like from the dictionary! Land of the Free, my ass!
I have a good running circuit around here, too. I discovered it almost accidentally the day after we arrived after I set out for a run based on the city map. The map, it transpires, is atrocious, with streets missing or misnamed or simply not running as shown all over town. I guess we're spoilt by the Ordnance Survey and derived maps at home. On my run this became evident fairly quickly. Out of habit, I looked to the position of the sun to give me an indication of where I was heading and then realised that since the sun isn't kept as busy as usual here with rising and setting I probably couldn't read too much from it. It reminded me of when we were in southern Africa and I noticed that the sun, as you know it must, was moving across the north of the sky through the day. Anyhow, I wasn't too worried about getting back too soon and the run was sweetened by a fragrance that hangs along most of the roads - it's closer to pine sap - like Christmas trees - than anything else I can think of.
Matching the virtue of the running, we also seem to be falling into a good routine for the girls' home schooling. This month - for one month only - Paula and I have switched, so that Paula's doing the maths and I'm doing literacy. I'm happy to be away from the Dark Arts for a while, and, perhaps surprisingly, I seem to be better at teaching the literacy. At any rate, I'm enjoying it more. Paula has also got the girls knitting jumpers.
As well as the house, we like Fairbanks, too. It's not a pretty town. Actually, it has the grey grimness of a place that spends most of the year buried in snow, and ugly hoardings, railway sidings, power lines and miscellaneous industrial eyesores are everywhere. But there seems to be plenty to do and we don't mind the urban detritus. This is the difference between being away for a fortnight and being away for a year: if this was just a regular vacation we'd be down in Delani park where it's beautiful, but on our gig we want to get a sense of what other lives might be like.
A couple of days ago we went to North Pole, which isn't the North Pole but is a little community a few miles from Fairbanks. Predictably, it has a large Christmas store that's open all year round. I also checked out internet access in Fairbanks. There aren't any internet cafes around here and many of the people I spoke to had never heard of Wifi or hotspots. To post the girls' newsletters I used the free Wifi that I did manage to track down at a Kinko office supplies centre. This, though, wont draw me in every day. More appealing is the local library, which I've since found also offers wired and wireless internet access, and has a nice buzz - and a large children's section.
Again, we're not very connected here. T-mobile has no reception at all in Fairbanks so our phones will be off for all of this month (and next month too). We do, however, have a postal address, so if any of you want to send Zoe a birthday card for Monday week you can actually mail it to us c/o Norman Shelburne at:
1025 Ridge Pointe Drive
Fairbanks
AK 99709
We also have a phone here: 907-4744353.
I'm hoping the mail works because I ordered a couple of Gb of RAM for my mac. When we passed through Boston I went into the Apple store and asked the guy why Apple's RAM is 4 times as expensive as I can find it on the web: his response, which was admirable, was to show me another web site where it's $10 cheaper still. If and when this fire-sale RAM comes I guess there's a risk that my home installation could trigger an abrupt end to this blog.
We have also been looking for the animals. Yesterday we had a great tour round the Large Animal Research Station, which is affiliated to the University here. The particular large animals that they study are Muskox, Caribou and Reindeer. Muskoxen are apparently related to goats but are shaggy and look like mini-mammoths; they usually hang out in the Arctic Circle. They're about half a million years old (though I guess the Creationist half of the population here must dispute that) and have that ancient look to them, like sharks. Caribou and reindeer look totally different from muskoxen but similar to each other and are actually the same species. They really suffer with the insects. Bot flies hang out as larvae up their noses, from where they can crawl up and suffocate the animals. A caribou can also lose a pint of blood every day to mosquitos. And then there are other bugs that hatch inside them and burrow their way out through their backs, leaving holes like wasps in an apple. Apparently the native American tribes who live largely on caribou relish these bugs as they liven up the meat with a nutty tang.
The reindeer are farmed (though not by the research centre) partly for meat but also for the highly lucrative Asian market in reindeer antlers. The horns are cut off when they're velvety, as they were yesterday, which is precisely the time that they're well vascularised, and the blood, we were told, spurts out about six feet before it's staunched. The horns grow back and are farmed from the head of the reindeer every year. Gross! As a commercial product the horns are sliced thinly are stewed in tea as an aphrodisiac. Here's the rack:
The LARS can't keep moose for research because they need too much free territory. So we got up early this morning and headed off on a moose spotting drive. We'd been told that moose were occasionally seen along the road to Chena Hot Springs, where we wanted to go anyway, so that was the plan. We had no idea how many trips we'd have to make before we saw a moose - we didn't see any all month in Maine - but on the way out we saw two pairs and another two solitary ones. They look great and hang out in very scenic lake settings - all of those we saw were wading and drinking. I'll maybe stick a photo in next time.
Chena Hot Springs itself was a disappointment. It's billed as a multi-activity resort, which maybe it is, but it looks like a WW2 POW camp. The place was largely deserted, apart from a group of Japanese in the slightly tacky outdoor spring-fed pool. The menus were all in Japanese too, and the woman who served me gas and the guy who came to help her get the pump to operate and also to speak English were both Japanese. On the way back it was getting late for moose viewing but we did spot a couple of solitaries. Each time we saw one we stopped and got out of the car to look at them properly, and both times on the return journey we were joined by another car; both times I got the impression that the drivers had been relying on the moose actually crossing the road for a sighting.
Back in town we picked up the latest (2005) edition of the official US Scrabble dictionary. I'd read in Word Freaks that last century an executive at Hasbro had taken it upon himself to remove certain unsavoury words. I idly checked this out just now and even the current version is still Bowdlerised! (I also find that they have guiltily omitted the word "bowdlerize", covering their tracks.) Can you believe it: they expunge the words they don't like from the dictionary! Land of the Free, my ass!
Posted: Fri - August 5, 2005 at 06:04 AM
Quick Links
Links
Archives
XML/RSS Feed
Calendar
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
Categories
Comments powered by
Statistics
Total entries in this blog:
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Feb 08, 2006 06:20 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Feb 08, 2006 06:20 PM