The good old days

A Wrangell boys basketball player puts up a shot just before halftime of the 2004 Region V Class 3A fifth-sixth place game against Haines at B.J. McGillis Gymnasium on the Mount Edgecumbe High School campus in Sitka, Alaska. The shot was good. (Andrew Krueger / Juneau Empire)

It's been only five years since I covered this tournament, but it seems like an eternity - for me, for technology, for the newspaper industry.

The Region V tournament was - and is - one of the biggest regional events of the year in Southeast Alaska. In addition to basketball, there is competition in cheerleading and dance, bands perform, etc. Hundreds of kids from cities, towns and villages, all in one place.

I got to cover the tournament three times - once each in Ketchikan (2003), Sitka (2004) and Juneau (2005). The first time, I was still shooting film; the third time, we were at home, so the Empire's photographers handled most of the photos. But in Sitka, I was armed with my digital SLR camera. I covered all the games in print and with photos.

Times were still pretty good for newspapers, but budgets were in place and I took cost-saving steps to make sure I could make the trip. I took an hours-long (possibly overnight - I can't remember) ferry trip from Juneau to Sitka. I slept on the floor of a friend's house for four or five nights. I walked more than a mile one-way back and forth across a big bridge from the main part of Sitka to the island where the gym was. And for my return trip to Juneau, I latched on to the Juneau students' chartered ferry and slept amid instrument cases and gym bags.

I covered all the teams - not just Juneau - and filed reports and photos for print and Web via my Mac laptop and balky dial-up modem. I'm afraid that the coverage area has diminished since I left. It's really too bad, because there were always great stories from the little outlying villages. It was fun being the "big-city paper," if only for a brief time.

I alternated between the press box and the sidelines, writing and taking photos. The gym was a converted World War II-era aircraft hangar, and it was LOUD for the big games. I'd have to concentrate amid the noise; once I got smacked by a T-shirt blasted from a cannon on the court during halftime (I still have the shirt). My last story, after the Saturday night games, was filed as the lights were turned off and the basketball court turned into a dance floor for a big end-of-tournament party.

Out of all the photos I took, I like the one above; it seems kind of Norman Rockwell-ish to me. I have better action shots, closer to the action, but that one just seems to offer more of the scene.

I've gone on to other papers, done cool stories, taken thousands more photos and still enjoy what I do. But I always have a bit of nostalgia for that particular tournament. It just seems like things were a lot simpler and more fun back then. It was exciting being the lone correspondent, sending back photos and game stories, rushing to meet deadlines. The good old days.

World fame?

Musher Hans Gatt speaks to the media in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, before dawn on February 25, 2004, after winning his third consecutive Yukon Quest sled-dog race.

I took this photo within a few weeks of getting my first (and, to date, my only) good digital camera. As I did a number of other times while in Alaska, I melded together a work/vacation trip - this time, to cover a high school basketball story in Skagway while also venturing north into the Yukon to catch the end of the Yukon Quest sled-dog race.

My paper didn't generally cover sled-dog races beyond what the AP sent us, because there wasn't much connection to Juneau (little level land = little room for sled-dog events). But, this particular year a musher with a Juneau connection was involved in the race (as a dog handler, not a competitor), and I wanted to see a sled-dog race. And, the Yukon Quest - arguably the second-biggest sled-dog race in the world behind the Iditarod - which switches directions each year, happened to be finishing at the end closest to Juneau - Whitehorse - instead of the other possible ending, in Fairbanks.

So, I headed up into the Yukon in my Saturn sedan in the dead of winter, caught up with the local handler at a checkpoint called Braeburn Lodge, north of Whitehorse, and then headed back to the territorial capital to catch the winner crossing the finish line - Hans Gatt, a well-known musher who that year won the race for the third consecutive time. Because the work I had to do - covering that local connection - was done, I was free to roam around and play "paparazzi" at the finish line, jostling in the crowd to get a good shot of the winner.

I had sent photos to the AP wire before, but I had been using film cameras. So, I'd have to wait a few hours to get the shots developed, and then try to find a place to scan in film or negatives, tone them, and then post them. This time was my first experience with digital - I uploaded the photos to my laptop, worked them up and sent them to AP in a fraction of the time.

The photo above was one of the first - if not the first - finish photos on the wire, and as such got picked up by the Anchorage paper and one of the big papers in Vancouver (the Province, the tabloid-y one, which used my photo big with the headline "Praise be to Gatt").

The experience really drove home the possibilities that digital photos opened up - and was doubly cool because I got to see my photo used in other papers. It wasn't the New York Times, but ... a paper in the U.S., a paper in Canada - I guess I can say that my photo was seen by an international audience.

Giant raven? Small dog? Whatever the case, odd.

This photo is one of those times where you don't really notice how odd a scene looks as it happens - it's only later, when you look at the photo, that you realize that, hey, that bird looks as big as that dog!

I took this photo in September 2004 in the village of Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, Canada. After covering the Klondike Road Relay race from Skagway, Alaska, to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, for my paper (an awesome event that I'll have to do another post about), I took about 10 days off to drive north on the Dempster Highway.

The Dempster Highway is a gravel road from Dawson, Yukon Territory, to Inuvik, Northwest Territories. It traverses beautiful country and is one of only two roads in North America to cross the Arctic Circle.

Aside from a lodge at the midway point, Fort McPherson is the first town you reach on the highway - 340 miles from the starting point. In Canadian terminology, it is a First Nations village, where the modern world mixes with a subsistence lifestyle. There is a factory there - Fort McPherson Tent and Canvas - that makes tents and bags; I bought a duffel bag.

On the north side of town, I noticed some sled dogs out in a yard, with a hungry raven hanging around, waiting for scraps. I took a few photos - including the one above - and watched as the raven waited until the dog was done, and then chowed down on whatever was left in the bowl. Then I went on my way. 

Only later did I notice how huge that bird looks next to the dog. It is standing behind the dog, so it isn't just a perspective issue. The dog must have been a puppy, and the raven must have been a big raven, and the photo above was the result.

The rest of the trip went fine - a couple flat tires, a couple cold nights sleeping in the back of my Saturn sedan, some unexpected snow. Just what I was hoping for when I set out. (No, really, that all made for a great trip in my book.)

Things missing, Vol. 1

My old black hat, pressed back into service upon the disappearance of my new black hat.

Missing:

My can opener (I have looked at the cans of Spaghetti-Os at lunchtime for a week now, with no way to open them)

My new black fleece hat

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I'm about ready to give up on the can opener and buy a new one. I had the old one since college; it has opened cans of Spaghetti-Os in three dorm rooms, eight apartments in three states, and now my house. I find it hard to give up on something that's been around so long, even if it is a can opener. I guess that's why I'm a packrat.

I've reverted back to my old black fleece hat. It's OK - I've had it for years - but it has lost its fleeciness. I finally replaced it a month ago with its identical (but new) twin, and enjoyed its fleecy comfort for a few weeks before it went missing over the weekend.

My old black hat and I have been through a lot, so we'll be fine. I bought it at a sports store in Tacoma, Wash., in 2003 or 2004. It - like the new one - is a plain black Columbia hat. One winter in Juneau, I lost it. I thought I had maybe dropped it in the parking lot at work, but I wasn't sure. I mourned for it. Then, a few months later, I was walking out to my car after work, past the massive mound of melting snow that had been plowed over the winter, and I saw it - encased in gray snow and ice, bedraggled, wet and forlorn. Apparently it had been picked up by the snowplow. I washed it a few times, and - though never quite as soft as before - it was put back into service.

Then, a few weeks ago, I happened to be back in Washington state on vacation. I was driving from Seattle to Portland, Ore., and as I was going through Tacoma I recognized the sports store where I bought my old hat. It was a different chain now. I was ready for a new hat, so I pulled off the highway, went in and found a rack with new Columbia hats, identical to my old one. I bought one. I kind of like the coincidence. It's also a souvenir of sorts - a useful souvenir.

Now, if only I could find it.

I like "the"

When I think of places I've been, or places I'd like to go, some have a quality that makes them stand out in my mind: having a "the" in front of their name.

When I lived in Alaska, I could take a weekend trip up to the Yukon; drive the Alaska Highway, or the Dempster Highway, or the Klondike Highway, or any number of other "the" roads; go for a hike near the Mendenhall Glacier; etc.

I still get nostalgic when I occasionally look at weather forecasts for places I've been in Alaska, and see the National Weather Service's regional forecast for the Upper Tanana Valley and the Fortymile Country. "The Fortymile Country"... that sounds so awesome to me.

Here in Duluth, as I've noted before, "the" is overused on everyday places and roads that don't merit the designation. But that doesn't mean there aren't legitimate "the" places - the Iron Range, the Gunflint Trail, the Arrowhead, the Porcupine Mountains. Again, all places that call to me.

Then I think back to the year I spent in Manitowoc, Wis. - a year that just wasn't all that good for me, for a whole lot of reasons. I have great affection for pretty much every place I've ever lived, but I'm indifferent to "Manty." It just never got to me. Could it be, in part, the complete lack of "the" places? I can't think of a single one in the immediate vicinity. The closest might be the Kettle Moraine, but that's a stretch - it's closer to my hometown than it is to Manitowoc.

So I'm happy to be in a place within a day's drive of so many "the" places. And maybe someday I'll be able to visit the Fortymile Country once again.

Prudhoe Bay, 2005

Wading in the Arctic Ocean, Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, June 2005.

In spring and summer 2005, after leaving my job in Juneau and before heading back to the Midwest, I took about four months off to travel around Alaska and the Yukon. I had anxiety about it at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I've ever made.

One of my big trips that summer was a roughly three-week odyssey driving up to Prudhoe Bay and back. I have TONS of photos from that trip that, by themselves, could sustain this blog for a year. I'll focus on the end of the road in this post.

Only part of the Prudhoe Bay / Deadhorse complex is accessible to the public - an area of maintenance bases, a handful of hotels, a general store and a few other services. The rest of the area - including most of the oil drilling and processing facilities, and access to the Arctic Ocean - is closed off. To get out there, you have to go on an arranged tour - which is how I got out to the ocean to take the photo above. I think there were about 20 people on my tour - most had flown up as part of a package trip. I was one of maybe four or five who dared wade into the water; one guy took the full plunge (wading was good enough for me).

There were two hotels operating when I was visiting. On a tip from a friendly older couple staffing a visitor info booth about 1,000 miles back, I went to this place, the Arctic Oilfield Hotel:

It, like pretty much every other building in the camp, is a prefab structure built on pilings. At the time I was there, I think it was run by VECO - the oil services company involved in the Alaska political bribery scandal.

The couple had recommended it because it serves oil field workers, while the other hotel was overpriced and "touristy." They were right. I was the only non-oil field worker staying there. The rooms were like dorm rooms, and there was one super-awesome feature: A 24-hour, all-you-can-eat, included-in-the-room price cafeteria:

I still think about this cafeteria. Because oil workers come back at all hours, they have to keep food available. There was a hot food line open most of the time, and even when it was closed, there were refrigerated cases full of sandwiches, salads, cakes and other desserts, etc. As someone who loved college dorm food, this was like culinary heaven.

When work crews came back in their Carhartts, boots and helmets, I did kind of stand out a bit. But everyone was nice and, as I said, the food was great. I've never been to a tropical resort, but I think this was the kind of "all-inclusive" accommodations I'd prefer.

There were a few things to look out for while staying at the hotel:

I never saw polar bears while I was there, but the hotel office had a wall of photos of polar bears hanging around the camp. I DID see some caribou grazing a field behind the hotel.

One other detail - they posted a daily room roster for workers to know who was staying where. My name was at the top of the list:

I don't know that I have a greater appreciation of our nation's energy situation from having visited Prudhoe Bay, but it was an awesome trip - one that I'd like to do again in the future.

Sea lions at rest, July 2005

Sea lions resting on Poundstone Rock buoy on a sunny summer day, north of Juneau, Alaska, July 2005.

This photo was taken while out on a fishing trip with my friend Brian, a photographer at my former paper, the Juneau Empire. He has a boat and is a remarkable fisherman who has taught me more than I ever imagined I'd know about halibut and salmon, and where to find them (but, of course, in fisherman tradition I can't share that information). If I remember correctly, on this day we launched from Amalga Harbor, had just finished up trying for halibut in the vicinity of South Benjamin Island, and were heading to North Pass or Hand Trollers Cove to troll for salmon. En route we spotted this buoy and circled a few times to get photos. It was a rare warm, sunny day in Southeast Alaska, and the sea lions were enjoying it as much as we were.

I don't remember what we caught that day fish-wise, but pretty much every time we headed out on the water we came away with some pretty great shots of scenes like this. Then there was the time a humpback whale almost surfaced right beneath the boat... I'll get to that some other time.