Tim and Kaitlyn at the Gull
Kaitlyn and I were very excited for the weekend this week. This past week at school we worked extra hard, staying late (between 8-9pm) trying to get ahead in lesson plans. Staying late at school has it’s ups and downs. On one side, if you can stay focused, you can get a lot planned and your week is a little easier. However, on the other side, staying late always drains you of their energy. Ironically, I never really felt prepared this past week. I guess we stayed late for nothing. To spare you the boring details of daily work, I’ll just comment about our fun weekend.
On a happy note, the parts to fix our big Can-Am 4-wheeler came in. For those who don’t know the story let me give you the Reader’s Digest version. We bought a really cool 4-wheeler and, because of unforeseen shipping complications, had to wait five weeks to get it. After only three weeks of using it both of our keys broke within the same week. That’s a story in itself. Anyway, also because of some more unforeseen complications, we had to wait a few months to get more keys made. Luckily, after 2+ months of waiting for a replacement key, we are back in business. I just have to say that sometimes living in the bush is hard. Most people in the world just don’t understand that one’s options are limited because of where we live. I was probably in the shop within minutes of receiving my keys to see if they worked. It was really exciting. While there I installed a few other things to help both of our 4-wheelers run better out here (e.g. air filter & battery tender). It’s nice to have two rides again.
On a happy note, the parts to fix our big Can-Am 4-wheeler came in. For those who don’t know the story let me give you the Reader’s Digest version. We bought a really cool 4-wheeler and, because of unforeseen shipping complications, had to wait five weeks to get it. After only three weeks of using it both of our keys broke within the same week. That’s a story in itself. Anyway, also because of some more unforeseen complications, we had to wait a few months to get more keys made. Luckily, after 2+ months of waiting for a replacement key, we are back in business. I just have to say that sometimes living in the bush is hard. Most people in the world just don’t understand that one’s options are limited because of where we live. I was probably in the shop within minutes of receiving my keys to see if they worked. It was really exciting. While there I installed a few other things to help both of our 4-wheelers run better out here (e.g. air filter & battery tender). It’s nice to have two rides again.
The Gull
Saturday was a beautiful day, blue skies and a temperature in the positives, so a group of teachers got together and decided to go for a ride out to see “The Gull”. The Gull is an old fishing vessel that washed ashore during a flood/tsunami from years ago. When the water receded, the boat laid stranded up on the tundra. It’s been there ever since. It lies about half way between Togiak and Twin Hills (a smaller village on the other side of the bay). Our convoy consisted of three snowgo’s (village term for snow mobile) and four 4-wheelers. It’s been really really cold for a really long time. Temperatures that cold mean that the snow gets really hard, hard enough to drive on with a 4-wheeler. Our little convoy did rather well until we got about ¼ mile from the Gull. The snow was dry yet soft. We’d forgotten, or rather ignored, that wind picks up dry snow and tosses it to and fro just like sand in a desert. Once our heavy 4-wheelers hit the soft snow drifts we sank in and got stuck. Luckily, however, none of the 4-wheelers got too stuck and were all easily dug out. To be quite honest, the Can-Am two-seater, which we’ve nicknamed “The Beast”, didn’t actually get stuck on the way out. It blazed a trail for everyone else and made it all the way to the Gull without too much of a problem. While at the Gull, we all reverted back to our younger selves and began to climb on the Gull, try to get inside, and drive our machines really fast around it. Kaitlyn and another teacher, Mike Tozzo, were able to make it up on the ship and explore inside, while the rest of us simply looked up and said, “I’m not climbing up on that; you’re crazy!” We were only at the Gull for about 30 minutes when the wind started to pick up. Unfortunately, the wind picked up rather quickly and began blowing the soft dry snow over our newly created trails. Within 15 minutes or so, the wind picked up in speed so drastically that the blown snow was thick enough to obstruct our view of town (only two or so miles over flat terrain) away. We decided to “go for it” and started to make a convoy back to town. We were met with multiple situations where we had to get off of our 4-wheelers and push each 4-wheeler out of the snow. After about an hour inching our way across the tundra (and frozen ocean) we made it back to town.
This is how much clothing Kaitlyn puts on to go play outside.
Saturday night we hosted a pizza party at the Phillips with our downstairs neighbor Mike. We invited a bunch of teachers over and some came. Any excuse to make pizzas and to have a party. Anyway, we stayed up way too late and ended up sleeping in and missing part of church. Actually, only I (Tim) missed church because Priesthood Meeting is first on the phone on Sunday’s. We woke up 6 minutes before Sacrament meeting. This is one of those situations where it’s very nice to have your chapel in your living room. Within minutes we were dressed and attending church in plenty of time for role call. After attending church for 4 hours and talking to my parents, Kaitlyn and I decided to go for a walk. In the fall we used to go for a Sunday afternoon walk every week, but haven’t done so for a while. So, we got all suited up and went for a walk. As we went out we realized that the storm we were trying to escape the day before on the tundra blew big drift on the road in front of our house. One of the drifts of blown snow was six feet tall. We were both quite impressed. After returning home we made chicken fajitas for dinner and strawberry milkshakes for desert. We may be in the bush, but we still have a fun time!
