Friends of Alaska Travelers   ---

I usually start with something about the weather.  Well, this past week we had a weather event like most people here cannot remember ever happening.  We had wind, rain, ice, and snow all from the same storm.  Last Wednesday the temperature was around 18 degrees most of the day.  Around supper time it was 28, and by the time we went to bed it was in the upper thirties.  And there was wind with it.  There were sustained winds around 40 mph with gusts near 60.  The less wind there normally is, the more susceptible everything is to wind.  Many trees went down.  They took many power lines with them.  The storm left over 10,000 customers without power.  (Those were not all in the Fairbanks area.)  Six hundred still are without electricity nearly a week later.  We were without electricity for only about 7 hours.  There has been a run on generators.  As the daily paper said, some want generators to keep their house from freezing and others want them to keep their freezers from thawing!

School was even canceled Wed, Thu, and Friday last week.  That is something else that long-timers say never happens.  So last week Elva and I each had one day of volunteering at school instead of two.

The rain froze on sidewalks and roads.  So it is quite slick.  Salt does no good when it is real cold.  At 20 degrees salt starts to loose its effectiveness.  Also, as ice or packed snow gets colder it becomes less slick so they don't put salt on the roads.  They put pea gravel on the intersections.

Thursday we went to a curling tournament.  It is called curling because they can curl or curve the stone around other stones.  This allows them to have the stone knock other stones away or stop near the center of the house.  (I would call it the bulls eye, but they call it the house.)  There were some very nice people near where we were sitting and they were happy to explain what was happening.  Curling is roughly like shuffleboard.

Play starts with one player signaling where the stone should go.  Then the

one at the other end who is to push the stone aims for that spot.

 The "pusher" must release the stone before crossing the line.  But they slide on past the line after releasing it.  They usually put a spin to get it to curl to the correct spot.

 Two players walk along with the stone.  What they are doing is rubbing the ice so that the surface melts.  That lowers the friction and the stone goes further.  Or, if they only rub the ice ahead of one side of the stone it will curl more or less, depending on how much curve they need.

If the stone is going where they want it to go they just walk with it down toward the other end.

Where the stones stop at the end of an inning (or end) determines the score.  There are no different points for being in circles closer to the center.  Only one team scores in any end.  All stones of the team with stones nearer the center get one point for each.  Here the blue team is ahead by two stones.  

Scoring is simple enough but how they show it on the scoreboard is confusing.  The black numbers in the middle row are the scores.  The red numbers for each of the yellow and blue teams show the end in which that team reached that score.  If the blue team scored one point in the next end they would have a 5 under the 3, because they reached a total of 3 points in the 5th end.

We enjoyed watching curling.  It is probably another thing that we are glad to have done but have no burning desire to see it again.  Though if it is on TV sometime we will understand much better what is happening.

We have been asked how the short days feel to us.  It is somewhat strange.  For me, the mornings don't make any difference.  It is just dark outside and we have light inside.  The afternoons seem strange.  We usually walk for about an hour during the afternoon.  But if we finish our walk at 3:30, that is when the sun sets.  It seems that supper should be about ready.  But it is still 2 or 3 hours away.  Then the time after supper seem slow.  As I am writing this it is about 8:00 pm and the sun has already been down for over four hours.  Elva says it seems strange with the late sunup and early sunset.  However, the city is well lit.  She tries to not think about the long nights.  We have put in some "daylight" light bulbs.  Elva is glad that in about one more month the daylight will start to get longer.  To resist sleeping too long in the mornings we keep a rigid time schedule.  We keep regular bed time and regular getting up time.

We have also heard comments about depression during the winter.  We have heard that the suicide rate is high in Alaska.  It is interesting, however, the highest rates are not December and January when it is dark and cold.  The highest suicide rates are in May and June.  The report in the paper said they did not know why it is that way.

The river has frozen over at some places.  We have seen cross country skiers going by.  At 8:35 pm our thermometer says -11.4.  Officially, according to the Weather Channel, it is -22.  That would be at the airport about six miles away.

God's blessings to all.

Elva and Larry