Winter Fun

It's been very cold this last week. It dropped to -60 twice leading to school cancellations. The trucks survived the cold but they were challenged. I usually started the truck 20 minutes before leaving and was very careful not to pop the power steering hoses. The tires square off when it drops to -50 and it takes a while to warm them up and get rid of the flat spot. Imagine driving to work drinking coffee while riding in a bouncing car. In LA you have to pay a lot of money to make your car bounce in AK it's free.


Recently I traveled North towards Paxon, AK to ride sleds in the powder. This is the location that they hold the annual Artic Man competition. Dave, Mike and myself rode snow machines for about 5 hours. It was not bad at first riding the trails through the mountains. However, when we reached the powder the fun really began. The snow was about shoulder deep. This is a soft powder and when you jumped off the sled you sank like it was jello. I had never been in powder this deep and I had to re-learn how to ride the sled. Turning normally is impossible and within seconds I flipped off the side head first into the snow. It took 15 minutes to dig out and to get sled the oriented again. I took off went 20 yards and got stuck again. I'm thinking "what am I doing out here". So I sat on the sled and watched the others ride like it was nothing. After a couple of minutes I realized that you had to ride the sled like a seadoo in the water. Steering is done by placing both legs on one of the side rails and pulling with all of your weight. After a while I started laying down on the side using my body for drag for rapid turning. We rode for a long time and it was probably the greatest workout of my life. We got stuck 8 times and you have to lift the sled back on top of the snow.



The moose you see was in our yard the other day at -60. He was lying on his front knees eating grass when I came home. I walked out to take a photo and he had moved into the woods. He was enjoying some twigs and bark during an afternoon snack.