Our Cat: Otis

Otis takes a break from watching the birds to figure out what I'm doing climbing up the tree by the window. His lip is usually caught on his tooth.

Otis is a special little guy. He sits in our gigantic window and chirps at the birds until his frustration gets the best of him and he goes to sleep through the day in his little kitty cube. Priorities are: eat, sleep, snuggle, play.

Alaska has been rough on him. He knows that dinner time (wet food) happens when it gets dark. Well, over the winter that was a little after 2pm. That was fun. Now it gets dark around 10pm, and changes fast every day. It's so confusing he now just stands at the fridge and screams at us if he's not sleeping or at the window.

His personality might be top notch, but his wits fall a little short. Recently Kate had to save him from a panic situation involving claws and the window screen during a botched attempt to get at the birds/squirrels/mice that run and fly around tormenting him all day. He's absolutely sure that he can get outside by way of the top of the fridge. He also posits that he is an outdoor cat.

This is false. He is not an outdoor cat. He is an indoor cat, mostly for lack of skills and instinct. He's not what I would call "observant". His probable autism makes him hyper-focus and miss out on all the things that might actually try to get him. His primary defense mechanism from danger and fear is: fall over, play 'heavy-cat'. He went outside in New Hampshire, with supervision. Alaska is different. So, we must jump on any chance we get we try to instill the fear of God into this little man so he's not tempted:



He is, in fact afraid of the front door, so what more could we ask for? He knows that the outside is full of monsters that all want to eat him and he gives us occasional looks that say, "where the hell have you taken me". Otis is really a trooper for making the 4600 mile drive out here, even seeing other monsters on the way!

Back Yard Wanderers

Back Yard Wanderers, a photo by Lee Petersen on Flickr.

Kate looked out the window last night and let out a little yell. These guys were wandering around just outside the window!

Climate Change: It's Confusing Business

No clouds last month. Wow, the average low in Fairbanks in March was -11° F!

March was warmer, and colder, than normal in Fairbanks: "FAIRBANKS — March was both warmer and colder than normal, and that contrast set a new record, according to the National Weather Service.
The sunny month brought mild days with an average high temp..."

Chickadee Icicle

I took this one back in February, but wanted to add it here so that it can go into my birding log (blog ha!). Just a common chickadee hanging out, getting a drink.

Gray Jay

Another bird to add to our tick list. This one was seen on the McKay Creek Trail, off the Steese Highway a little past Chatanika.

Take off your jacket folks, it's warming up!

That's right, we are welcoming high temps in the mid-forties! Sure, it still gets cold at night, but it's nice to go out and do stuff in the day and not need the heavy Primaloft or down jackets. Even Kate, notorious for being unavoidably and eternally cold took off the hat and the jacket during a walk today on the campus trails!


My lovely wife waits for me, the slow husband, who just spent 15 minutes trying to take a picture of a bird. I got the picture though, it's below.

While out on the trails I think I may have managed to get a little sunburn on my face, something I have not thought about at all for the last 7 months. We had a really nice, 2 hour walk back on the trails, and explored a little bit of the boreal forest too.

I love the trees here. They are a bit smaller and spaced much further apart than trees in the lower 48. We're in the taiga, and there is plenty of permafrost so it's harder for the trees to get real big. Since the roots are constrained to the top layer of soil, they can't be as tightly packed.

The forests here are mostly made up of and black spruce, tons and tons of birch, aspen, and I guess you can count alders too. I've never seen birch forests like the ones we have here. You go walking through the woods and it's all white bark everywhere! And in the fall the yellows are unbelievable. When we were hiking up the Healy trail in Denali the valley floor was a river of yellow! It's so cool to see moose trolling around the forest, snowshoe hares and red foxes too. I've shared lots of moose pics, but haven't been fortunate to have my camera on me for a fox encounter, and I have no idea how to take a picture of a snowshoe hare in the snow.

Anyway, I've uploaded quite a few new photos to flickr in the last week. Here's a link to the lightbox that starts at the last recent upload (just scroll through with the right arrow key). That's all for tonight. . . except for the red poll:

I'm not fortunate enough to have a big telephoto lens right now. So when I get photos of animals, you can be pretty sure that I'm as close as I can get. With moose this can be scary, but red polls just take patience. If they don't immediately fly away, they slowly become comfortable with me so I can get close enough to get some good shots. I'm going to have to find a bigger lens for bear season, wildlife is just so cool!

To Do in Fairbanks 3: (Day) Go See a Dogsled Race, (Night) Watch the Aurora

I think a lot of people are put-off by the idea of visiting Fairbanks in the winter because of the cold temperatures. Ok, I won't lie, it's freaking cold here. How cold? Well, I managed to get minor frostbite twice while opening doors with metal handles. I'm a little concerned that they still have door handles made of metal, but, ok. Oh, and its dark too. Really dark. At the worst, the Sun will rise at 11am and set at 2:40pm. I bet you're ready to buy those tickets to Fairbanks in January right now, eh?



Seriously, I knew that mushing was popular here, but I had no idea the extent. If you visit Fairbanks in the winter (which includes most of fall and spring), chances are pretty good that there's a race happening. There are small races almost any weekend it's warm enough at the ADMA. Lot's of them are short sprints, you know, 12-20 miles. But, there are some big races too. Next year the Yukon Quest will be starting in Fairbanks (en route to Whithorse, YT). It's a grueling 1000 mile race across some of the craziest, coldest terrain in the world.



Every March the Open North American Championship is held here. This is a great race over three days. The first two days are twenty mile races, and the last day is a thirty mile sprint. It's awesome to see the dogs, they love to run more than anything! The cool thing about this race is that it goes over the river and through the woods and then right through downtown Fairbanks!







And if there's no race, don't worry you'll almost definitely have some kind of an experience like Kate and I had shortly after the first serious full snowfall (back in the beginning of October). We see them running alongside the roads all the time!

The fact that it's night here most of the time in winter does have one great benefit:


We see a lot of Aurora. If you haven't seen the aurora above 60° latitude, you haven't seen the aurora. It is a reason to come here in the winter all by itself.



A number of places offer 'tours' where you can go out to 'viewing' spots to see the northern lights. Chena Hot Springs does it (we didn't pay the money for it though, we see them all the time). There are a number of other outfits that will get you away from the city lights where the viewing is superb. Or, just drive north.

Calling All Friends. . .

Come on up to


Well, not today though. It was 10 below this morning and I have homework due this afternoon. Tomorrow might be good though. Denali this weekend?

After the late night Quantum and E&M homework session last night I came home to find this view waiting at our porch:



And all you poor New Hampshirites just got snow!
Love you!

Campus Walk

(Click any photo to go to flicker/make bigger)

Needing to take a break from grading, Jason and I took off to walk around campus yesterday and took some pictures. The first thing we stumbled upon was the ground-breaking ceremony for the new life-sciences building.

Dressed for digging.

From there we headed off to the UAF trails; in the general direction of Smith Lake. When we started there were cool breaks in the clouds that made shooting fun, but the clouds kept building until there wasn't any contrast in the sky anymore. All the lakes are still very frozen, despite the fact that it's been warming up a bit. We still have at least half a month before the rivers and lakes start to break up, maybe longer.

The ski hut at one of the many trailheads.

Large receiving dish just a little ways off the campus roads back on the trails.

Jason taking shots at Smith Lake. The clouds are really getting dark.

One last shot for the road.

The Days are Getting Longer

The nice thing is that we are now waking up to the light. It's been weird with the Sun rising after 8 am for the last (almost) six months.

I've already started noticing the physical effects of the light. Not only because of the amount of time the Sun is up (13hrs 22 minutes today), but even after living here almost 8 months I'm still not used to the fast rate of change in daylight. The difference between light on Monday, and then the following Sunday is a whole 45 minutes! Sleep is getting to be more difficult. I guess this is better than winter when I only wanted to sleep, you know, because the Sun doesn't rise until lunch time.

Of course, more Sun on us means that the temperatures are starting to warm up. There is still about a foot of snow on the ground at home, but every day it melts a little more since the high temperatures have been going above freezing for a week now.

Not only is it getting warmer, but we're seeing signs that Spring is here!
Kate noticed them first and then she sent me out to take some pictures. The birch trees in the yard all have buds on them! Spring is here! Fairbanks, Alaska: March 27th, 2011. It also snowed today.

I'm excited for the melt (especially the break-up on the rivers) and the entrance into summer. Hopefully I'll be able to get some nice photos to share.

The Brightest I've seen yet

Tuesday night, or actually early Wednesday morning I walked out to see bands streaking across the entire sky. The bands ran the usual east to west, but there were so many they covered the entire sky from north to south, even drowning out the normal Fairbanks city light to the south. It was incredible!

By the time I got the camera it was already starting to fade, but still managed to grab a few shots while it was super bright:

Our car reflects the strong Aurora early in the morning. Really cool show.

I took this as the bands were retreating to the north and dimming. You can still see some of the brightest bands in the bottom left through the trees. Then, just like that, as mysteriously as they appeared, they were gone

A Really Awesome Saturday in Fairbanks

We had Thai House for lunch, which is awesome. We went home and had reindeer dogs for dinner; the good ones that we got from the farmer's market last fall.

We also went to the GCI Open North American Championship sled dog race that takes place in downtown Fairbanks. Second Ave is shut down since that is where the mushers and their dogs start and stop. Yesterday (Friday) and today are just 20 mile races, Sunday is the 30 mile race. Kate and I watched the first few teams come in downtown, and then walked down to the Chena River to see some of the later teams come in from there.

Musher Jason Dunlap of Salcha, AK almost at the finish line at the GCI Open North American Championship.

I took a lot of photos today, but I am only posting a few of my favorites here. If you haven't already seen them, you should check out my photostream starting here: March 19, 2011

It was a fun day of taking pictures. I saw a lot of non-dog related things like these:

Window watching



As we got further down the road, we got to see better views of the mushers. The dogs (and mushers) looked tired after 70 minutes of sprinting.

Musher Carolyn Johnson from Fergus Falls, MN sprinting to the finish of the GCI Open North American Championship in Fairbanks, Alaska.

A while after the race we walked around near the Chena and into Pioneer Park. The power plant in downtown Fairbanks keeps the water warm here and it stays mostly open year round. Kate spotted a beaver on the ice and we had to run down to a bridge to watch him swim under us.

Beaver swims under the walking bridge.

Pioneer Park

It's a mad winter I tell you. . . Mad

March 21st and the first day of Spring is approaching fast. The temperature here has yet to go above freezing. Well, I guess there was that day in January, but that was just weird. Then there was that time it rained over Thanksgiving leaving us with a mess of ice that is still on the road today. Let's see. . . November, December, January, February, March. . . about four months with no significant melting. The snow kind of packs down over time, so the couple feet we got a few weeks ago has been smashed into maybe 1 foot. A little over a week ago I was out shooting aurora, walking down a little hill where I guess the snow had drifted and I fell down into the snow to my shoulders. There's still a lot of snow here


The snow hasn't really started melting yet, but high winds a few weeks back knocked it all off the trees.

Kate went cross country skiing in the backyard yesterday. There's something like 27 miles of trails out there. I followed her on foot and took pictures. The day-time here for 2 weeks straight has been absolutely gorgeous. Nights are still freezing cold. The month of March has been -20° F almost every night, but then the daytime temps are +15-20° F so you can go outside and do stuff. . . when you're not bedridden with the flu.


Kate goes skiing on the trails behind our house.

There are a ton of things I like about the winter here. The plowing, or lack of plowing makes driving pretty, and sometimes pretty challenging. In the northern lower 48 when the snow starts to fall the plows go out immediately, and run all night and day plowing the snow and dropping salt and sand. That sand gets thrown up onto the side of the road and you're left with a dirty winter wonderland. Here, they wait until it stops snowing (or maybe a week later) before bringing out the plows. They push it to the side of the road. That's it. Everything stays white and pretty.

There are moose everywhere. There are moose at our house, there are moose at school, Kate even had moose at her school in downtown Fairbanks. More of them come into and near town because they're starting to starve this time of year. They need all the bark and sticks they can eat, and the stuff in people's yards gets eaten last. I think the female outside our house the other day was pregnant.


Bull moose hanging out on our road.

There is a plethora of winter activities to do here. Cross-country skiing is huge and there are miles, and miles of trails everywhere. Snowmachining is really big too, and they pack down all the trails so it's really easy to go out and walk. The rivers are frozen for skiing or snowshoeing or walking or snowmachining or driving, since a lot of the rivers legally become roads, and runways in the winter. They say that winter officially ends here when the first car falls through the Chena; last year it was a plane. There are lots of hot springs around and cabins you can ski to and rent in the White Mountains for $30 a night.

The aurora has been un-freaking-believable. The aurora is usually best around the equinox, an effect that's not fully understood. It most likely has something to do with the direction of the Earth's magnetic field in relation to the Interstellar Magnetic Field. The Sun threw off a lot of material during a coronal mass ejection (CME) about a week ago that made the aurora really active here.

Our house on the night of March 9th, the result of a CME from a few days earlier.

The 2011 World Ice Art Championship started late last month. Kate and I bought season passes and just went again last night. I went with a bunch of friends from school the night before to play on the "death" slides. Only in Alaska will people make giant slides out of ice, with ice railings and let anyone and everyone go crazy on them with no rules or lifeguards. Past injuries of physics students include shoulder dislocations and split chins. I guess some kid broke his arm last year. There's a huge potential for injury on these things, but so much fun to go down on a sled.


Patrick bombs down the ice slides on his dirty sled. Fun to watch, funner to do.

It's not just the kid's park though, the ice sculptures are awesome! They do the single block competition during the first week, and then the multi-block sculptures the second week. Some of these are huge. Although, I was mostly unimpressed with the multi-blocks. Some of the veterans said that this year was really not as good as they have been. That being said, the few that were good, were really good. I was sick during the first week they were up, and in that time the first place sculpture collapsed, so I never got to see it. But, the second place sculpture was still standing and it was beautiful. Here it is:

The second place multi-block sculpture and Governor's Choice. The tail had fallen off the second night when Kate and I went. But for the most part it's still standing and still pretty awesome. I'm loading more pictures onto a set on flickr every day. You can see them here: 2011 World Ice Art Championship: a set of flickr

I'm still looking forward to warmer temperatures and green grass. Winter here is long and its weird to look back on pictures of summer because I don't really remember it. But, while we wait there's still plenty of fun to be had. Soon a lot of big cross-country ski races start up, and a few running races when the temperatures start to warm up a bit. Time to get ready for 5k's!

The Horror

Last week Thursday I felt a little ill. Nothing horrible, I was a little weak and sniffly. Friday morning I felt the same, but went to work anyway. I started feeling a little worse so I skipped my last class and just sat at my desk and kind of stared at a little spot on my wall. My body started to stiffen up and hurt. I did not like it.

Kate picked me up at 5 and we went home. I fell down on the couch, curled up into a ball and went to sleep. And I didn't get back up again until late Sunday morning. I was in pain the whole time, my body aching something fierce. It kind of felt the way I did after and ABS style comp where you spend a day climbing on hundreds of new boulder problems until motion is no longer an option. It was just like that, without all the fun climbing. Oh yeah, it was mostly terrible.

Of course this meant that my weekend was ruined and no classwork or prep work was done for my labs last week. No, that's how I spent Monday through Thursday. Math Physics homework due Tuesday, E&M due Wednesday, labs Tuesday night 7-10 and Thursday afternoon. All week dealing with recovery and a hacking cough that doesn't want to go away and work and more work and then, oh yeah, Quantum midterm on Friday. What an awful little more than a week. It left Alex feeling like he wanted to be a fireman/squid fisherman. I haven't decided what my alternative is yet.

I did manage through all of this to get my one picture a day, so I'm still on the way to getting my 365 day set. The aurora has been unbelievable the last few nights, so I'll keep posting new pictures as I get to them. It is spring break now. I'm going out to play.

Good Thing This Place is so Pretty

Because, man it's cold. Last night I stood outside for a little over an hour just to get a few aurora shots as the temperature dropped to -30° F. I thought to myself as the clocked crossed over the midnight mark and it became March of 2011, 'this can't keep up much longer, right?' Of course, this week is not going to change much. The temperature forecast is -20° F for the lows and 0 to +10° daytime highs for the next week. At least I get to see this stuff from our front yard:



I'm a little torn because I like the cold, I just don't feel like I like it this much. We've had 20 below temperatures in November, December, January, February, and now March. When I moved to Minnesota I thought things couldn't get much colder than that. I was wrong, oh man, I was so wrong. I'm originally from Ohio where it drops below zero once every few years and school is canceled; here kids don't have to stay in for recess until it drops below -20° F.

Pretty soon this gorgeous aurora is going to be replaced by the midnight Sun. Already the Sun is rising almost due west! In about three weeks it will be due west as we pass over the equinox, and then shortly after we will have more daylight than you! (Unless you happen to live in Barrow or other points north of Fairbanks).



I'm looking forward to skiing over spring break and I definitely have a renewed love of winter, but it would also be nice to see some green grass again. It's cool that we are out of the -40° range, unless something crazy happens and we set some records, but it's still more than a month before things really start to thaw and the rivers break up. Which reminds me, I think I'll be headed to the tripod raising at Nenana this weekend. More on that later.