This is why a moose looks like that...

I didn't have time to include the story behind my moose picture the other day, so here it is now:

I was out for a skate ski on the afternoon of President's Day. It was actually my second ski of the day since I'm in full training mode for the Tour of Anchorage (also see these old posts: 1 2) and I thought it would be better to break the long ski I had planned into 2 parts so I could bring the dog along for part 1 without killing her. This turned out to be important because Bella does not react calmly to moose.

Anyway, near the end of the ski I rounded a corner to see a moose at the other end of a short straightaway. It was a safe distance away, but was completely blocking the trail. It also looked like a juvenile and since I know some calves end up staying with their mothers an extra year, I figured (correctly, it turned out) that momma moose may have been just around the corner.

The moose was just browsing at the side of the trail and not really going anywhere. I could hear people on the other side of the moose, also waiting for the trail to be clear. The weather was plenty warm and I was steaming from coming up a big hill just moments before, so waiting was no problem for me and I took out my phone and snapped a few pictures.

Young moose just hanging on the trail

 

Young moose noshing on some shrubs



Mom makes an appearance



Still a safe distance away...

It was apparent that the moose were moving in my direction, and I started to get worried that the people on the other side of the moose would get impatient and end up chasing them off the trail and straight towards me. So I backed up a bit to a point where there were no snowbanks at the side of the trail, in case I had to get out of the way. As the moose kept coming, get out of the way I did!

First I just sidestepped off the trail itself, but then as they got closer I was reminded of the fact that moose are freaking huge. I took off my skis and stepped into a dense clump of spruce trees where I would be safe and the moose wouldn't feel threatened. I was so non-threatening that the juvenile started eating birch branches just 10 feet away, where I snapped the last couple pictures, including the one I posted last week.

nom nom nom birch nom nom

Moose: It's Algonquin for "twig-eater."*

A few seconds after I took those pictures, another skier came zipping around the corner from behind me. He was being towed by a dog, which as loyal readers know is a good way to go really fast. I shouted "MOOOSE!!!," which I think may mostly have been a distraction since his first thought appeared to be "why are those spruce trees shouting at me?" when it should have been "AAAAAAHHHHH!!!! Hide the twigs!!!" (Moose = twig eater, get it?)

The skier hit the brakes as best he could, but by the time he stopped he had clearly invaded the moose's personal space and things were threatening to get really stompy. Momma moose laid her ears back flat on her head and charged as the skier backpedaled while shouting and banging his poles together. Fortunately poocho had the right reaction and tried to run back the way they had come, but in the confusion of stopping, backpedaling, shouting and swinging the ended up falling down in the middle of the trail.

I was actually just beginning to run to the skier's aid when the moose broke off her charge, just past my stand of trees. She quickly turned around, trotted back to junior and they headed off the trail. In the end, the skier had broken a pole but nothing else and quickly left the scene. A sizeable group of skiers who had been waiting on the other side came by as I was putting my skis back on. One of them stopped directly parallel to where the moose were still lurking about 20 feet off the trail to adjust one of his dog's booties and I was like "are you {bleeping} kidding me?!?!?" But I guess this group hadn't been in view of the charge and didn't know where the moose had gone, and fortunately this didn't trigger a repeat of the situation.

Here's a GPS track of my route. The straight line is from the beginning of my ski. The zig-zag on the way back is from when I hit the brakes and hid in the trees.



I almost had a repeat of this situation the next time I went skiing, too. I was in a different area much closer to home and went down the #1 local combination of "steep downhill followed by a sharp turn" to find two moose lying down in the middle of the trail just ahead. I stopped waaay faster than I would have thought possible and detoured around that section of trail while the moose, fortunately, barely stirred.

Do you like my cartographic symbol for "moose?"



* This is my personal #1 favorite random fact and it amuses me to throw it into everyday conversations, so to be able to use it in an appropriate context is really a treat. I'm glad you could be a part of this.

Tuckered and Tucked

Dogs can sleep pretty much anywhere, and Bella is no exception. But when she's really tired she'll tuck her feet al the way together and totally conk out. Its adorable, so I thought I'd share...

Not quite there... still the one leg hanging back.

Thats more like it. A classic tuck!

Awwww

Close-up awwww

Must've been really tired here, if she's got her tail and nose tucked, too.

 

Car seat? No problem... TUCKED!

Suspicious that someone's taking another picture, but still tucked.

Down for the count.

This is what a moose looks like...

...when you're hiding in the trees

Snow in Airport Heights

Up until a few weeks ago this had been a winter of constant storms. A few times it got really warm and the snow changed to rain, but still by the middle of this month Anchorage was on pace for its snowiest winter ever. We might be a bit off of that pace now, but we've still gotten almost 100" here in town and its been piled up pretty high for awhile now.

Here's our house with a couple feet of snow on the roof and a cheery fire in the fireplace... I feel like there should be a tour guide to take you through these pictures.

Another shot of our house... not sure what's different... where's that guide?

There she is, struggling over the snow bank at the edge of the street.

I would say that the snow is 1 dog deep in front of our house.

Out back now... you can see above the door where I had to scramble through the snow onto the roof to make sure that our furnace, water heater and laundry vents weren't blocked.

Bella's snow mound is an annual tradition. But this year the hole keeps getting buried, so she can't go through the middle of it as much.

 

This is our Christmas tree, about 36 hours after we took it outside and planted it in the snow.

Our tour guide is sitting in the path I had to carve out so we can get into the alley.

Now our guide is just playing in the snow.

I think she wants to show us something up here...

 

Nope. Too deep. Turning back.

Tree branches loaded with snow

Moonshot: enjoy.

Alpenglow on the Chugach, taken through the front window as the skies clear just before sunset.

After the skies cleared was when it got cold. But blue skies and frosted trees are a pretty combination!

Aren't they?

AREN'T THEY!?!?!

Thank you. I agree.

Brrrr

A post for my sister to read while she's in the Caribbean...

A year ago on MLK Day our thermometer hit a then-record -22 degrees. It was the only time before last weekend that the temperature dropped as low as -20, but since then we have hit -20 for 5 straight days with an absolute minimum of -27.5*.



Sometime around noon last Saturday



* - a disclaimer about my home thermometer: somewhere around 0 degrees it freaks out a bit and drops the temperature by about 5 extra degrees. So its important to note that when I talk about the temperature at my house, I’m talking about it in “thermometer units,” as opposed to “degrees Fahrenheit.” There’s a strong correlation between the two, but they’re not equal.

This is one of two things that drive me crazy during the Alaskan winter (the other is waiting for all the snow to finally melt in the spring, once its already warm enough to turn the snow into a sloppy mess). It’s too cold for cross-country skiing - and I don’t just mean that in the sense that you wouldn’t want to. I mean that when the snow is this cold it stops being slippery, so your skis stop gliding and you practically would be better off just walking. It’s way too cold to bike to work (our threshold is -5). It’s too cold to take the dog for a walk because by the time we’re rounding the corner she’ll already be lifting her paws off the ground and trying to get around by a 3-footed hop. It’s too cold for the air to hold much water, so we frequently get ice fogs that block out the sun and frost over everything. It’s even too cold to start a fire normally in the fireplace. The air in the chimney gets so cold that when the flue is opened frigid (and therefore dense) air falls down through the chimney into the house, filling the house with smoke in seconds, unless you preheat the fireplace and chimney. I do this with an electric charcoal starter, which is essentially a big metal heating element (similar in principle to the burner of an electric stove) that I plug in and leave in the fireplace for up to an hour before I can try to build a fire.

All the way up to -17, so Beth decides to head outside with Bella to play in the backyard. I held down the fort... from the inside.

In Beth and my opinion, the way to deal with this weather is to keep a fire going, get the fridge stocked with food and beer, and catch up on our reading. This works for awhile, but at this point I think I can safely say we’re getting a bit stir-crazy. Our long-range forecast says that this pattern might break by next Tuesday, and we can always hope that temperatures might rise just a bit even before then (I mean, even having lows of -10 and highs above zero would be nice). In the meantime, we’ve got a scuba class on Thursday night and a visit from Chris Hein (in town all week for a conference and staying with us for the weekend) to keep us sane distracted.

I'll try to put up some pictures of all our snow sometime in the near future, instead of just whining about the cold, but for now this is all you get!



Okay, you get one other picture. Clearly inspired by our adventures from last November, a local ice sculptor carved this lizard downtown at Town Square Park.



Brigit said I need to write a new post...

...but I didn't have anything to write about. Well now I do, so I will blame Brigit for causeing this story to happen so I could have something to say.

Beth and I biked to work this morning for the first time in a month. Unfortunately, our hot water heater has been failing for the past day or so, and when I called a plumber from my office they said they could send someone right away, so it was right back on the bike to head home and meet the plumber. He fixed the problem ($15 for a part, $33 for labor, $99 for showing up) so it was back on the bike to get back to the office.

So thanks, Brigit, for voodoo-breaking our hot water heater and making me into a sweaty sweaty mess.

Sister visit

Brigit is on her way - currently somewhere over South Dakota if you believe Continental Airlines - hooray!!! Considering that it was -15 at our house this morning and -17 at the nearest "official" temperature guage, I hope she's got thick socks packed!