The Berries are in!

All year long not only to residents of Western Alaska wait for summer to come so that they can fish and goto camp….but the berries come out in late summer as well! Blueberries that grown on the low tundra ground start showing up around August and will continue on in spots until mid-September. We’ve been out picking a few times now and are looking forward to a freezer full of berries!

This past weekend Lydia and I took a two hour drive, followed by a 30 minute boat ride and went to a fish camp. Now, as the name might suggest this was a camp where lots of fishing was done! Most of the Native Alaskans in area villages leave their home each summer and go to a cabin or camp to fish…even many of the non-natives in Nome have camps outside of town that they will retreat to on a regular basis. We went to the camp of Tom & BJ Grey, each summer they invite the christian community to their camp (which also doubles as Tom’s Lodge for tourist hunting guides). Their camp is nicer than most peoples, but it was still nice to get a tiny taste of regular life in Western Alaska.

On the way to and from camp we made a few stops….These included berry picking and taking a quick tour of a 100 year old gold mine that has just recently begin digging again.

(click here) for Fish Camp Pictures
(click here) for the trip to Fish Camp

Well, here it is….a photo of the 1.5 TON transmitter being moved out of its old building and in being taken to its new home on melted, solid ground. This photo was taken last week and since then we’ve gotten the transmitter installed and we are back on the air! Work is still being done, but things are going smoothly.

Lydia & I are going to fish camp in just about 20 minutes and we’ll be out there for the weekend. Look for lots of pictures early next week!

What a great week here in Nome. Its starting to get beautiful outside again and it looks like we will be having temperatures back up in the 70s again starting tomorrow. I guess the big news is the flood of people we’ve got running through our house right now. We have some two KICY volunteers staying in our upstairs spare room while they are working on the transmitter site, and as of Monday we have a couple who is part of the work team up from Georgia to work on Nome Covenant Church’s kitchen. The couple arrived Monday afternoon and because of their schedules and our schedules it took about 3 days for Lydia to meet them…it was pretty funny the sometimes sitcom like circumstances that would go on in our house that made it so they never met Lydia. One night Lydia went to bed and I decided to stay up a little longer before hitting the hay. They came in about 10 minutes later, we talked about the day they had in Nome, and then they went to bed….about 5 minutes later, Lydia got called back into work and had to leave.

Its been pretty interesting being on the receiving side of a missions trip, especially with church. Having a group come up and put on a VBS and remodel the kitchen is something that we would have grown up doing at our home church. Its really great to see everyone who is willing to take the time and money to come to Nome and help out in the community.

Last night Lydia & I got to have dinner and visit with Dave & Mitzi Shinen. This was a special treat, the Shinens have been working for Wycliffe Bible Translators for over 30 years on St. Lawrence Island which is about an hour plane ride (towards Russia) over the Bering sea. Its amazing how God has used these amazing people over the years and how they have been able to live in literally one of the most remote places on earth. They were telling us that when they moved there no one in the village had running water…well now, a few decades later 80% of the village has water, but for the Shinens as Dave put it “the only running that we get is me running outside to get it”. The Shinens lived in Nome for about 15 years in the middle of the translation project so they didn’t have to raise their kids on the island. My parents were living in Nome at the same time and the Shinens where sponsors when I was dedicated to the church as an infant. We had a great time talking with these amazing folks.

The AM station went on the air Wednesday afternoon a few days earlier than expected and things continue to go well with the project. I’m still fishing, although this week I haven’t been able to go out nearly as much. It will be nice to have all this Alaskan food back home in Seattle!!

We’re been getting ready to move the KICY transmitter all week long, in the photo above we are putting conduit over our 400 foot transmission line which runs from the old building near the tower, to the new one a few hundred feet away. We had a crew come out from the Seaside Center, a local halfway house to help us with this monster project.

This transmitter is being moved this afternoon and we will be back on the air late next week.. Now is your chance to listen to our FM station on our internet stream (click here)

Its only Thursday morning but I’m already ready for the weekend to begin on Friday afternoon. Its been a busy time here at KICY for the past few days as we have had a few large projects that relate to moving our transmitter. You might have picked up on whats going on from various call letter articles and blog entries, but I thought I’d break it down for you.

Currently our 1.5 ton transmitter is sitting in a building at the base of our main tower, it was built and placed there about four years ago when we went to 50,000 watts. Since that time the RF radiation from the antenna has been so strong that its been melting the frozen tundra under the transmitter building. Half of the transmitter building has been falling into the ground and has required frequent piles of gravel. Its been estimated that we’ve lost over 6 feet of ground over the past few years. This problem can only be solved by moving the transmitter from its current location to a spot a few hundred feet away. The new spot has a 45 year old foundation that was originally used for a KICY fuel tank that kept the old generators going. Once the transmitter is moved to its new location the ground will still melt, however without the weight of the 3,000 piece of equipment it shouldn’t be a problem like it was before.

In May a team came up from Arizona to build the building, a team came up from Florida a few weeks later and installed the electricity, and a group of high schoolers from California painted the building. This past week we rolled out the transmission line that will go from the tower, back to the new building. This extremely thick coax cable runs at about $16 a foot. After we got that all laid out we then had a crew of guys from a nearby social service facility help us put the thick, long cable in 6 inch conduit. Because of all this work I’ve been pulling almost 11 hour days getting to work at 6:45 for the morning show, and then going out to the work site. We’ve been returning around 3 or 4 and I still have my regular evening shift to prepare for. I’ve been heading home around 6:20 or so after recording “The Edge”. Whew!….. good thing its not always like this. I’ve also been continuing to fish every night for a few hours, normally coming home with about 8 or 9 pink salmon.

We will be moving the transmitter tomorrow morning around 10:00am and will most likely be off the air for a week or so as we move it and all the electrical equipment over and get it all hooked back up.

I’ll post a photo or two tomorrow of what we’ve accomplished so far.

Its been April since we last were able to send out an update newsletter…hopefully the blog and website have quenched your thirst for updates from this Alaska duo. But with the summer comes another newsletter telling you all you need to know about the Rogers’ in Nome.

(click here) to download the Current – July 2005 Edition (1 mb)

ARCHIVES

(click here) to download April 2005
(click here) to download February 2005
(click here) to download December 2004

Wednesday night and Thursday night I went about 60 miles out of town up the Kougarok Rd with Jamie and Lloyd and watched them subsistence net fish for red (Sockeye) salmon. As a non-resident I was not legally allowed to participate, but just watch. After two nights of being out from 8pm to 2am and expecting to possibly catch up to 80 salmon, we only came away with one! It was delicious but after continuing to wake up for work at 6:30am each morning, I’ll be sleeping a lot this weekend.

I just added photos from our fourth of July celebration in Nome. It was quite different that what Lydia & I have been used to in the past, but very fun. Activities included a parade, foot, bike, three leg and potato sack races along with a pie eating contest. We had a blast all day long….check out the pictures.

(click here) for fourth of July pictures