5th season - here we go!

 Getting lots of training time on the Kress. 103 ft. long, 100,000 pounds (going over just 1.5 meters of ice during the early season), 66 passenger capacity, double articulated. I love driving it but it is also an awesome responsibility. Luckily I have a patient and knowledgeable trainer. It is fairly easy to drive but backing up is super challenging. My goal is to try not to every have to. One interesting thing is that you make decisions based on the back end of the trailer over a hundred feet behind you but those decisions don't play themselves out for a minute or more and by then you are planning around another obstacle. It takes complete concentration and I find myself talking outloud, working through it. When you back up, you do the exact opposite of what you do in a car. If someone told me when I was a kid pushing our old yellow Tonka trucks in the dirt that some day I would be driving a giant red truck on the bottom of the Earth, I would have never believed them. Pretty cool. I love planes and big machinery!

 This pic shows my annual first week blues/ambivalence about being back, but it always dissipates rapidly as things get busy at work, I get unpacked and in a routine, and jetlag fades. I also miss fresh healthy foods tremendously. Thank goodness Elizabeth and Kevin are eating all those hundreds of pounds of tomatoes still left in the garden. Speaking of whom, it is very sad to not see E and K down here this year. Everyone asks after them. I wish they could both be here. But it is wonderful to catch up with everyone and get lots of hugs from the big ice family! People do such interesting things with their lives off-season....traveling the world, rangering in the back country, leading expeditions in the Brooks Range of Alaska, etc. Inspiring!

 We make ourselves get out on the trails from the very start of the season, even when it is well below zero. I think I have on at least 5 layers in the pic below.

There are many changes and challenges this season with the change of contractors, but over time we have realized that things manage to move forward here regardless of the seemingly impossible obstacles. Fretting and getting disgruntled are futile. Going with the flow and not getting attached to outcomes are key to contentment down here.