The Daily School Bus: Working on the ice roads

Here's that little school bus again. It just might be the last time you see it or another on this blog for awhile, for a few different reasons. The most important reason is because my internet connection here is very slow and, couple this with Squarespace problems,* my posts take more time to put up than I can afford to give them. So, for the remainder of my time here in Nuiqsut, my goal will be to put up just one post a day, at the end of the day. I can't have the rest of my posts all on one little school bus. Second, while this is a school bus, it is not being used as a school bus. For the moment, there are no roads that reach beyond the village but every winter a series of ice roads are built to link the Alpine oil field and its satellites to Prudhoe Bay and the haul road and Nuiqsut gets linked into the network. That process is under way right now but is behind schedule due to the prolonged period of unusually warm weather. That, I am sure, is why the fellow yesterday was complaining about how "too damned hot" the -1F temperature was. They want cold weather to build the ice roads. This little bus carries workers staying in the hotel to the places where ice road construction is under way from here. There is a separate school bus to serve the school but it is not being used right now.

*Well, you can see one of the Squarespace problems I refer to - all that gray. This has been happening to almost every post I have put up since I arrived in Nuiqsut and to several in Barrow, occassionally in Wasilla. To correct it, I must email a picture from my iPhone to my computer and then upload and place it in the old-fashioned way. I just don't have the time for this. I'm going to leave it now as an example of the kind of headache Squarespace has been for so long. Hopefully, their new platform will be as good as it is touted to be and these problems will disappear. If not, then I will disappear from Squarespace.

On airplanes and shooting iPhones in cold weather without gloves

Airplane coming in to land early this afternoon. From yesterday afternoon's balmy -1, the temperature had dropped to -16. Not frigid for this time of year, but still I could note a marked difference from yesterday. Now that I have gotten into using the iPhone to essentially keep a daily diary and I know of no way to shoot pictures with an iPhone with gloves, I have been wondering how I would manage it when I finally get into deep cold.

I don't think I will be able to do it for more than a frame or two. This afternoon, I kept my gloves off for several periods of several minutes each and I did okay, but my hands did get pretty cold a couple of times. They warmed right up when I put them back in my gloves but at -40 or even -30 this could become a dangerous exercise. Assuming the iPhone 5s will keep shooting at such temperatures, I could get a few frames off all right but the question is knowing when to stop before it becomes too late and uou have frostbitten yourself.

The breeze is seven mph and the humidity is 87 percent. Still, the air is dry. In subzero weather even air with a high percentage of humidity is dry. Truly cold air cannot hold moisture. Moisture freezes right out of it.

The indispensable knife: how it came to me

At the end of August, as the EMN crew gathered in the home of whaling captain Edward Nukapigak to eat before boating to Cross Island, Isaiah handed this knife to me. He said I could use it through the whole trip. If you want to eat with the Iñupiat a good knife is essential. That flimsy thing they call a steak knife in mainstream America? It just won't cut it up here - literally. Try it on a piece of frozen maktak or caribou - it just won't cut it.

I used to always carry a good knife, but after 9/11 I kept losing them to airport security. I quit carrying. Before 9/11, I was in New York City and I ordered a pretzel from a street vendor. To get to my wallet I had to pull my knife out of my pocket. The vendor's eyes went big and he let out a fearful gasp. Not everybody looks at knives the way folks up here do.

Anyway, Isaiah's knife served me well all the way from Nuiqsut to Cross Island and back - and then - I lost it! I looked every place I thought it could possibly be but could not find it. I felt terrible. I told Isaiah I would replace it. "It's ok. Don't worry about it," he said. "I've got lots of knives."

Just before I left Wasilla this time, Margie found it in one of the extra pockets of the heavy-duty overpants I wore. Yesterday afternoon, I dropped in to visit his parents. Isaiah woke up and came out. I pulled out the knife and returned it to him. He handed it back. "You keep it," he said. In Iñupiat culture, you cannot turn down a gift. I accepted it back but first took this picture. Isaiah's niece, Caitlyn, suddenly decided she wanted to be in the picture, too.

Now I must be certain to always pack it away and never let airport security get it.

The Daily School Bus: it turned before it got to me

Actually, I don't think I'm going to see a school bus today. I have walked all through and around the village of Nuiqsut and not one showed itself. I don't think one will. I've got a number of left-over school bus images from Barrow and maybe tomorrow I will have to fall back on one of those, but for now I will fall back only to yesterday, when, from a distance, I saw this one turning into the parking lot of the Kuukpik Hotel shortly after noon. Yes, it is the very same bus I snapped yesterday, after it had parked at the hotel.

Logbook: Barrow to Nuiqsut, entry 3: The Daily School Bus - nap

We land in Nuiqsut where I find the The Daily School Bus parked at the Kuukpik Hotel. I am exhausted. I take a long nap. I was going to end the Logbook entry with some very cold looking pictures but to decided I would include The Daily School Bus instead. I do have some more pictures from Barrow to post yet, including a small series I shot last night that will be perfect to commemorate the personally important anniversaries of this day, ranging from as sad and tragic as sad and tragic can be to as happy and joyful as happy and joyful can be.