Another blog to check out

(or should I call it Amazing Ramblings and Run-on Sentences)

So I was checking out some of the Alaska Bloggers and found a fellow Anchoragian...Anchorager...Anchoraganee...he works on Fort Richardson and has really captured some of the feel of things around here. He has some of the very same pictures that I have tried to (un)successfully capture. Check it out. Not just this once, but every once-n-awhile and see what he's got.

As a continued sell...we have had this crazy thaw the last week and a lot of the snow has disappeared. Wait, let me back track and tell you about the road maintenance here.

The snow falls...and falls...and falls...everybody has killer SUV's with killer tires to get them thru the falling snow without batting an eyelash. Seems to me, no matter how much snow is falling, the city keeps going. But the snow removal-the same kind of trucks you see in KY, VA, shoot, even Germany-those big trucks you see sitting on the side of the highway just waiting for the first snowflake...well they come out a day or so later. Later, after we have all driven on it over and over and packed it down to a nice thick layer of ???. It's really not that scary to drive on...it's like nothing you've really driven on before. But you learn, and you adjust and you take your time changing lanes because each lane has formed its own groove so you have to thunk-thunk your way between. The main highways get almost cleared completly, but neighborhood roads hardly at all. And they don't use salt. They use gravel. I don't know about you all but I recall most idiot teenagers flipped their cars on gravel roads...so tell me how gravel and snow and ice mix?!?!?!

Now the thaw. The main road get scrapped and scrapped (is that scrape or scrap?-you know what I mean)and have come out with nearly dry roads. The side roads however, not so good. With 3 inches of snow/ice on roads that don't ever get direct sunlight (a whole other post)nothing short of a ton of SALT will clear it. So the temps melt all the nice easy going grooves we've all worked to hard to create and leaves us with a literal ice rink in the mornings. I can go to the "access road" in front of my house and count the layers of gravel suspended in the ice. All I can say is, it's crazy...just put a little salt down...the enviroment and the eagles be damnmed, I have a new Pilot that I don't want dented!!!!!

Anyway, the gigantic tractor machines that they use to "scrape" the ice off are incredible steel monsters that look like some farmers science experiment. The dog goes bezerk when they (rarely) pass by and even my "guk" boy gets a little freaked out, which all brings me back to my fellow Alaskan Blogger who captured the monsters, along with so much of the beauty that surrounds me everyday. It's pleasant to look at...and since I seem to be lacking in the picture department lately...