NBC on the ice with the gray whales; Don Oliver interviews Van Edwardsen as son Vernon prepares himself for his political career; Billy Adams and Johnny Aiken help out

I hate like heck to do this, but I can tell - I have hit the wall for tonight. As far as this day is concerned, I am done for. So I am not going to put up the more extensive post that I had planned for tonight, but I am just going to keep it very simple. If I had a hard print deadline, I would just guzzle a bunch of caffeine and push myself through it even if it meant I had stay up all night, but I don't. I would describe the process that I went through today that ended up with me hitting this wall, but having hit the wall, I don't have the energy to explain it.

I right a little mistake that I made in yesterday's post. I wrote that, as Arnold Brower Jr., Geoff Carrol, Craig George, Ron Morris and the others set out to ascertain the condition of the whales and to enlarge their holes, no one from the national media had yet arrived, but NBC was on its way.

In fact, as I was able to figure out this morning, NBC had arrived that morning - they just did not make it out to the ice at the time the scouting - hole enlargement mission was happening.

Here is the NBC crew with correspondent Don Oliver, on the ice with the whales. 

Don Oliver interviews Van Edwardsen, who, along with his young son Vernon, had come out to see how the whales were doing. Vernon is not only all grown up now, but is an elected member of the North Slope Borough Assembly, a fact that his mother, Dorothy "Doe-Doe" Edwardsen is very proud of.

Among those who came out that same day after Arnold and crew to help out was Billy Adams and Johnny Lee Aiken. It was Billy, readers will recall, who first led me by snowmachine to the gray whale site, when it was still slush. And if you go back to my first post of this series, you will see Johnny embracing Claybo in celebration of the bowhead his father, Kunuk, had just harpooned.

What really strikes me when I look at this picture is... how young these guys look!

Really? Were you that young back then, Billy and Johnny? How young was I, then?

Billy feels the scraped-bare nose bone of the smallest whale - nicknamed "Bone."

I now have all the pictures "scanned" for my next post, the more extensive one I had planned for tonight, plus a bunch of extras. So I plan to put the post I had planned to put tonight by fairly early tomorrow.

Does this make any sense?

Perhaps I can get two posts up tomorrow and make up for lost time.

Perhaps not. Perhaps I should not even suggest such a possibility.

p> 

Complete series index:

Part 1: Context bowhead hunt

Part 2: Roy finds the whales; Malik

Part 3: Scouting trip

Part 4: NBC on the ice

Part 5: To rescue or euthanize

Part 6: Governor Cowper, ice punch, chainsaw holes

Part 7: Malik provides caribou for dinner

Part 8: CNN learns home is sacred place

Part 9: World's largest jet; Screw Tractor

Part 10: Think like a whale

Part 11: Portrait: Billy Adams and Malik

Part 12: Onboard Soviet icebreakers

Part 13: Malik walks with whales, says goodbye

Part 14: Rescue concludes

Part 15: Epilogue