Ok, so last night when I went to bed, I made sure that I had one of those annoying wind-up alarm clocks sitting next to my bed. The city was going to shut off the power for two hours at 6:00am, because of the storm last week they needed to re-route some down power lines.

I wanted to make sure that I would get up on time, so I set the alarm for 6:20. I woke up to the terrible sound of a metal bell alarm clock. It was the kind of wake-up that almost makes your heart stop it was so surprising. I got out of bed, and on my way to brush my teeth, I was surprised to see the power on. A few minutes later as I was starting to get dressed, the phone rang. It was Lon over at the station letting me know that the power was back on, however the FM automation system needed to be re-started. I told him that I would be over in a few minutes. During the process of getting dressed, I glanced at my watch….and it said 7:25, not 6:25 like I was expecting.

I ran next door to find that it was in fact 7:25, and because of the power outage no one was around to turn on the FM computers! It was pretty crazy. Then, about an hour later we had three men walk into the lobby, I asked them if they needed some help and I learned that it was Don Young, the Alaska representative in the US House. He said that he had come here to be interviewed…however the person who he had discussed the interview with was not here! We were able to call them up and get them in the studio to do a on air interview in a pretty good amount of time, and the Congressman was able to get out to his Alaska Air flight on time. It was fun to meet Don Young, he as been in the US House for quite a long time serving Alaska, and my Aunt Chris has worked for him back in DC for almost as long as he has been in office. He was excited to meet me once I told him our connection.

THEN, the morning kept getting crazier. Lydia was heading out to Unkakleet for her first village trip in her new job. She called me from the Airport to say hi while she was waiting for the flight. She then also mentioned that as she and others from her office were stopping at the store to buy a lunch, she saw Coke2 and it was on sale $1.99 for an eight pack.

I want to stop and tell you how incredible this is. First off, since becoming a fan of Coke2 this summer, I’ve yet to see it here in Nome. Secondly, a six pack of coke sells here for $4.99. I need to say no more. I ran to the store and bought the last two cases, and walked home an extremely happy man.

Hey Folks!

Things have been going well over the past several days. Its been pretty busy, and our internet was down for a number of days! The weekend was pretty crazy with a live broadcast of “The Edge” Friday evening, and having to run over to the station every 30 minutes on Saturday to go to our live updates from the region’s high school volleyball tournament here in Nome. Neil was there ALL day long covering the event. Its just a preview into basketball season which I’m sure will include countless hours sitting at the mixer board while the game is broadcast. Sunday Lydia got to attend church here in Nome for the first time; she has been out of town on previous Sundays. Nome Covenant Church is pretty cool. Its a nice mix of traditional style worship and enthusiastic biblically based preaching. Sunday Evening we attempted to watch the extended edition of the Lord of the Rings, two Towers…. it didn’t work out so well, and we got distracted with all the special features and pretty much just ended up watching a 45 minute documentary on the creation of Gollum.

Yesterday morning started out on the radio plugging our week long “Share-a-thon”. Its basically a pledge drive PBS style. We only do it once a year on the air, and are attempting to raise $15,000 for station operations. Its been interesting to break in and ask for money, totally doing the “if this type of programming is important to you, call in now” thing.

I went to the city council meeting last night while Lydia had a basketball game. It was pretty fun; I took notes the entire time and was able to use a lot of it on the air this morning during my “Alaska News” report. Normally I use Alaska features off of the AP wire, sometimes being forced to report things that don’t matter to the people of this area, only because there is nothing else to tell. I enjoy the times I get to write my own news pieces.

Hopefully our internet will last for a while longer, KICY’s cable modem wasn’t getting a signal and the cable company hadn’t been able to make it out…and all of a sudden it started working again! We realized how much show material for both The Edge and the morning shows that we get off the internet!

I took a break from the salmon smoking over the weekend, but think I might have another go at it tomorrow (which means I’ve got to put the fish out to thaw very soon). Its 8 hours to thaw, 12 hours to brine, and 12 hours to smoke.

ALSO added: Pictures of The Fall Storm 2004!

Yesterday, here in Nome we had quite a doozy of a storm! With gusts of wind up to 60 miles per hour, and the Bering Sea coming up over the seawall and flooding downtown it was quite the adventure! It was a storm that Nome hasn’t seen the likes of in nearly 40 years! Along with the flooding came other exciting wind & rain activites such as power loss. It was pretty exciting.

See eyewitness pictures by (clicking here)

I just posted about the past week, it was a lot of writting! I decided to seperate the posts so it wouldn’t be one HUGE post. To start from the begining, scroll down to “Anchorage Pt. 2″.

Tuesday I was happy to see that my alarm clock was still operating, and that the power had not gone out again. I headed over to the station around 6:30, and right as we were getting ready to go on the air at 7, the power shut off. The next few hours would be insane with people calling in with cancelled school reports and other various closures. We were also out of power, so at times (after our battery backups died) we would be off air.
Once the sun came out (around 10:30) Jerry, Neil and I decided to go check out all the damage around town. We found out that the ocean was coming over the seawall, and that most of downtown was flooding. We saw some pretty amazing things and luckily had our cameras with us. One of the most amazing things was a cargo container being pushed up into a building, and seeing the waves break upon it. Over at the station, power came back on but it was still out at the transmitter site, it had been turned off because there was a propane leak on front street and they wanted to make sure nothing was going to spark it off. It was pretty insane outside, with 40-45mph winds and gusts up to 60mph. We found out that it is not uncommon to have strong winds like this in Nome; however it usually happens during the winter when the sea is frozen, so there isn’t as much effect on the city. They said this storm rivaled only a storm from 1974 that changed the face of downtown Nome. Luckily things didn’t get quite that damaged this time, however I’m excited to go down soon and see what happened. When we were walking around yesterday they weren’t letting anyone in the area because of the risk of explosion. We recorded our show with the Sommermans again Tuesday evening, I still was smoking another set of salmon, and again, we played spades while listening to “the edge”. See pictures of the storm by (clicking here)

It was great to have the Sommermans here for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. They were able to spend lots of time with us, seeing everything in our routine here. And it was really fun to have them on the air with us for two nights!

Monday I got up at 6:15 to get over to the station for the morning shows. Jerry came over around 8 and had fun watching everything happen. Everyone had a nice relaxing day, both Lydia and I had some work to do at the station so we didn’t get out to much, it was also raining quite hard. Monday I was able to start my new hobby, meat smoking! The Sommermans brought up my parents old meat smoker with them from Kent, and I was stoaked about putting some of the 100 pink salmon KICY’ers had caught this summer to use. It probably wasn’t the best day to start this venture with the 30mph winds, and pouring rain…but I wasn’t going to let some stinkin’ weather get in between me and my smoked salmon. We saw some more of the city, and we able to get the Sommermans into the studio with us for “The Edge” (listen to Monday’s edition of the edge). We all had a blast recording, then went home and listened to it while we played spades. Right around 10:30 the power went out because of the high winds and rain. We all decided it had been a sign, and that it was bedtime. The lights came back on around Midnight, and I headed over to the station to get things back up and running.

Saturday we went out for coffee again and drove the Sommermans to the airport. Lydia & I then drove back to the hotel and tried to pack everything up into boxes. We found we were short a box or two, and also had to make a few trips to the postoffice, but we were out of the hotel, ready to go not very long after our 1:00 check out time. We took my share of the luggage and checked me into the Hotel I would be spending the night in (with my free coupon that I won a few weeks ago in Nome!!). We went and tried to wind down after a flury of activity and had dinner at a nearby ‘Fridays’. Then it was time for Lydia to check-in for her flight home, so we drove to the airport…..forgetting to pickup Lydia’s luggage from the hotel! We went back and got it without losing to much time. She got off on her flight just fine. I took a shuttle back to my hotel and watched TV for the rest of the evening.

Sunday morning came pretty early for me, the wakeup call was set for 6:00. Meanwhile, up in Fairbanks the Sommermans we getting up at 4:00am to catch a flight back to Anchorage after watching SU’s second Alaska game. All three of us were at gate C-8 at 8:00 to catch the flight up to Nome. Lydia picked us up from the airport once we got in, and the Sommermans got the ‘grand Nome tour’ before heading home. We took a detour from the normal tour, and drove up to Anvil Mountain to see the old Soviet alert system. Once we finally got to our house, everyone unpacked for a while before taking another tour of the city.. this time getting a closer up view, on foot.

Anchorage was great. When I got there, Lydia had already been there for over a week and a half when I arrived. We had a nice evening shopping and spending time together after I arrived on Wednesday evening. Thursday during the day Lydia had class, and I had a few more errands to run. We called Budget rent-a-car to see if it would be possible to add me to her contract, so I could use the car while she was in class. They said it would be fine, so we decided to head out before her class started, then I would drop her off. When we got to the airport, they said that because she was in under the state, I couldn’t be added unless I also was a state employee. She dropped me off at the hotel and headed to class. I did some research on the bus routes, but I also found a $16/day rental through dollar rent-a-car. This looked to be a great option, so I headed out on the hotel shuttle and got my car.

Thursday evening Sarah came in with the Seattle U Volleyball team, so we went downtown and met her and then went out to dinner.

Friday I ran some more errands, and tried to figure my way out around Anchorage. I dropped my rental off at 5:00, and Lydia & I headed back downtown to meet her parents that just got in that afternoon. We went to a starbucks downtown for coffee. Then, all four of us drove to University of Alaska, Anchorage to watch the volleyball game. It was a fun game, and Seattle U won for the first time ever in Alaska.