Iditarod Ceremonial Start

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold....

The Cremation of Sam McGee

Robert Service

Esteemed Readers,

Today, (Mar 7th, 2009) was the ceremonial start of the 37th Iditarod in beautiful downtown Anchorage, Alaska. There is more on the Iditarod here. A friend here from Ilona's Bed and Breakfast and I drove downtown to immerse ourselves in the pageantry. There had been a lot of snow recently and the temperatures were in the mid 20F range. We dressed warmly and took off to see what there was to see.

There is no real narrative to accompany this travelog - I'm going to show you some pictures and videos that I took pretty much in the order they occurred. As a side note - I take some pride in the pictures I post here but I bow to your judgment whether I succeed in taking good pictures. However, these are not up to my normal standards and I apologize. As is normally the case at media events, the crowd is roped off from the Iditarod and I could not get close enough or get good angles to take good pictures.

Please note that there videos intermixed in this post, so don't miss clicking the start arrow to the see the short clips.

We parked on the outskirts of downtown and started to trek to the starting line in the middle of the downtown tourist area. That's when I noted that the high thin clouds were producing a Sundog over the downtown skyline.

The Iditarod race start line is on 4th Ave which runs east/west. The north/south grid of connecting streets behind the start lines are where the teams setup their sleds. Evidently they haul their sleds and dogs around in some very nicely set up trucks like this one.

We walked through these side street areas as we made our way to the start line. As you neared these staging areas you could hear the dogs whining and howling to one another - they set up quite a cacophony.

There was one dog still in the truck. I don't know if he was a reserve dog for later in the race, a second stringer or what. But he wasn't participating in the howling chaos.

The closer we got to the start line, the more prepared the dogs teams, sleds and mushers were. Here they are laying out the traces.....

Hooking up the dogs....

.....and loading the ceremonial passengers and mushers.

Evidently, selected celebrities get to ride the sled through Anchorage and out of town. Then once the ceremonial start is done, they stop, load the dogs in the trucks and run out to Willow, AK, where the real race begins.

Finally, here they are turning onto 4th Ave to get in the final start line queue.

As we walked up 4th Ave towards the starting line, there were sights to see.

Somewhere during this trek, my buddy tells me I walked past Gov Palin. Amazingly enough, I did not notice her. Neither did she run up screaming: "Geoff! Is that you!?" I cannot imagine how this could happen.

Finally we arrived at the start line. There is a bronze statue of Balto to mark the spot. I took these snaps a year ago. Click the first picture and red the inscription.

.

The ugly yellow building is a fur store that has staked out the high rent property across from the start line and does a booming business. In this next picture, I am standing across the street from the statue which is just to the right of the Exxon advertisment.

The sun was still producing a sundog and I tried to image it and got this miserable result.

We watched several teams start......

I called home and let my daughter, Katie listen to a start through my cell phone. She was less excited than I had hoped for....

It had not warmed any and there is only so many times you can watch a race start before the shine begins to wear off the penny, so we started back to the car.

There is evidently a great Iditarod tradition - the grilled Reindeer Dog.

Since we were there for the total experience, we stopped and ordered one. Our Reindeer Dog chef was not your normally outgoing and enthusiastic hawker of sidewalk fare - he in fact displayed a sarcastic attitude toward life in general and his customers in detail. After he had cooked our dog, I took this picture of the dog and asked him to smile. He refused to smile stating: "That's extra."

Mike and his dogs are becoming famous.

On that note, the cold killed the battery in my camera and we returned home.

I remain,

Dad / Geoff

More Memes

"Fashion is nothing more than an induced epidemic."

Oscar Wilde

Esteemed Reader,

Several weeks ago, I promised to discuss another ‘Meme’ that bugs me: “We sat on the runway for hours.” I have two theses to cover here: first, how the government led to this meme’s growth and second, why you have never, ever ‘sat on the runway.’

Sometime in the ‘90s, our wonderful government decided that the poor performance of the airlines had to stop and therefore they would track the on-time performance of all the people carriers and publish the data, giving you - the airline consumer - the information you need to make informed decisions. As is usual, your fine government experts ‘screwed the pooch.’ “We’re from the Government and we are here to help you!”

To document this I give you this linky-link. From that fine document, I quote this paragraph:

"A flight is counted as "on time" if it operated less than 15 minutes after the scheduled time shown in the carriers' Computerized Reservations Systems (CRS). All tables in this report except Table 4 are based on gate arrival times."

When you climb on an airplane to go somewhere, I would submit that – while moderately important – the actual departure time of the jet is not your foremost concern. What you really desire is that the airline delivers you where you are going on time. Some gummitup bureaucrat decided that if the airplane pushes on time, it will arrive on time and gave the airlines a loophole big enough to drive a 747 through. With the definition above, they can push back on time, get credit for an on-time push, and then leave you sitting for hours.

At risk of turning this blog into a political one, Esteemed Reader, you should reflect on the implications of this story as applied to National Health Care.

Moving on.....

No matter what you might think, you have never ‘sat on the runway for hours.’ The runway is a very special stretch of concrete specifically dedicated for take-offs and landings. Any pilot who parked the jet on a runway for hours would be professionally brain-dead, totally unsafe and guilty of criminal negligence. ‘Sitting on the runway for hours’ is just plain dangerous. Sooner, rather than later, there would be a loud explosion that you may or may not hear…..

Airplanes do not sit on the runway for hours. I am not saying that you have not been the captive of the airline - stuck in an aluminum tube for hours – I have too. You just didn’t do it on the runway.

So where were you? When you stand there in the terminal, gazing out over the airport proper, you are looking at three distinct categories of concrete on what is amateurishly called the ‘tarmac.’ (No professional aviator ever allows the word ‘tarmac’ to pass their lips.)

The categories are: runways, taxiways and the ramp.

Let’s take the ramp first. The ramp is where the airplanes get parked. Don’t ask me why it is called the ramp – I don’t know why - it just is. (Why do sailors call ropes, sheets and potties, heads?) The ramp is connected to the runways by the taxiways. It is just this simple: airplanes are parked on the ramp, taxi on the taxiways and takeoff on the runway.

So, next time the miserable waiting game happens to you, impress your friends and acquaintances and say: “We sat on the ramp for hours!”

I remain,

Dad/Geoff

Osekkai!

Howdy, Esteemed Readers,

Yesterday, in Osaka, Japan, I had an interesting cultural experience.

Japan is not a tiny island, but it is heavily populated and very mountainous. The population is concentrated on the coastal plains and the teeming millions of Japanese live ‘cheek by jowl’ if you will excuse my southernism. They don’t get to have a lot of actual privacy, so they tend to give each other a sort of mental privacy. They have a social contract – Osekkai - to politely ignore one another and they tend to live in their own little worlds when out in public. This value is taught from an early age. I have heard stories of young children asking their parents – like any growing kid would – ‘Mom, what is that funny man doing?” and being answered: “That is not something we pay attention to.”

This is one of the things that is very off-putting to westerners who grew up socialized in another culture and is often mistaken for haughtiness.

In Osaka, we stay at a very nice hotel; the Swissotel Nankai. Yesterday, my copilot and I met for an early lunch. On the way back to the room, we noticed that the huge lobby area was being set up for a wedding. It looked pretty much like a standard Western Wedding but with a Japanese twist. There was the standard altar and wedding decorations. There were rows of your standard hotel chairs, but they had been covered with blinding white cloth seat covers which are very Japanese. Again, this is in the middle of the hotel lobby area. The reception desk, entryway, bar and café are all in relatively close proximity to this central wedding area. I have no pictures to show you of this and I think when you finish this tale, you will see why.

Not thinking much more about it, I went upstairs to pack and get ready to leave for the next leg of this trip. When I came downstairs to check-out of the hotel the wedding was in process. It was obviously a Christian wedding as the preacher was using the same stentorian tones and cadences that you would hear in any US Church. As I took my place in line to check out it began to dawn on me that all around the wedding the other hotel guests were showing .....

Osekkai! Mind your own business!

The wedding party was ignoring them and they were ignoring the wedding – everything was in its little Japanese privacy box.

It occurred to me that no American Girl would put up with having her wedding in such a public and crowded venue. I took my place in line for the check-out counter. As my turn came, the preacher began to pray the benediction over the couple soon to be united in Holy Matrimony. Suddenly, my acculturation and values are overwhelming me. There is a little voice in my head screaming: “Hey! All you guys shut up! It’s a wedding! The preacher is praying! Show a little respect!'

Raised in the Southern Baptist Church, if I hear a prayer, even in Japanese, my habits and cultural norms kick in and I turned to the preacher and started to bow my head. The nice check out clerk was having nothing to do with that. “Sir, you are next. Please step up to the counter.” We were going to settle my bill right now. Ignore that service over there, Gaijin - it has nothing to do with us.

I was torn between two value systems and quite distracted. It just didn’t seem right to be talking and signing a bill during a wedding benediction. My body kept wanting to automatically turn and bow my head devoutly. I was very physically disoriented.

As I signed my bill, the preacher pronounced them Man and Wife, the applause started and I walked to the cab and got in.

Just thought I’d share this observation from the Mysterious Orient.

I remain,

Dad / Geoff

Memes

Eagles may soar, but weasles aren't sucked into jets.

Gentle Readers,

There are many “Memes” in the English language that are bone-crushingly ignorant and cause your humble correspondent to worry for the long term health and survival of the Republic. These memes often drive me more than a little buggy, but since I have never wanted this blog to be of the political variety, I choose not to discuss the popular phrase “Economic Stimulus Package”.

No, instead I wish to continue with the aviation theme I have established here and to discuss the phrase: “the birds got sucked into the engines!” The reporting of what I am coming to call the ‘Hudson Glider’ has caused me to attempt to use my humble blog to attempt to set the record straight.

The physics involved in the impact of one of our avian cousins upon the intake of a modern day jet are highly complicated and – I think – fascinating. If you stick with me through this discussion, I hope you will agree.

First, let’s discuss the design and layout of a ‘gas turbine engine’. As you can see from the link, a turbofan jet engine has 5 sections: the inlet, compressor, combustion, turbine and exhaust nozzle section.

( ‘Suck, Squeeze, Burn, Blow and Go’ as Air Force student pilots are encourage to memorize…..)

The important section for our discussion is the inlet and compressor section where the air is sucked in and squeezed down to be efficiently combusted. These are the sections that bear the brunt of an avian impact.

The compressor section is a massive construct of whirling metal blades spinning at an awe-inspiring rotation rate. For comparison, you only infrequently exceed 5000 revolutions per minute (RPM) on your car’s engine. If you have an electric fan blowing a refreshing breeze around your home, I doubt seriously it ever exceeds 2000 RPM. Now compare this to a jet engine operating up in the range of 20,000 RPM.

Back to your car, please consider your tires. Your tires are spinning nowhere near the rate at which a jet engines spins but if you do not have your tires carefully balanced, they will vibrate your car in annoying and often unsafe ways. The compressor section of a jet engine is hundreds of times more massive than your tires and spinning at a much faster rate. If the compressor is not perfectly balanced it will vibrate excessively and dangerously.

Let’s consider for a moment what would happen if one of these compressor blades were to come loose - bad things happen quickly. The blade initially flies outward and backward due to centrifugal forces and the airflow. If it is ‘contained’ inside the engine it probably knocks loose more compressor blades aft of it which knock loose more blades and you have a runaway chain reaction that in a blink of the eye ‘shells out’ the engine. Some of the blades not knocked loose come loose anyway because of the awe-inspiring out-of-balance vibrations. Pieces of hot smoking metal exit the aft of the engine and you no longer have a jet engine producing thrust but a mere smoking hulk of metal hanging below the wing.

(Let’s not discuss what happens if the blade is not contained and some shrapnel escapes and flies outward from the engine….)

Put that notion at the back of your mind now and let’s turn to the physics of impacts.

What we wish to discuss is ‘inelastic’ impact physics where the total mass and energy of the flying object is totally absorbed by the body impacted. It will be instructive to turn our attention to artillery, specifically the cannon balls of the sailing ship era. A common cannon ball size was the ten pounder which is roughly the same weight as a Canadian Goose.

Consider what would happen if you fired one of these cannon balls at a jet airliner.

(An empty jet, of course. No imaginary passengers were harmed during this thought experiment.)

The cannon ball leaves the muzzle of the cannon at a subsonic speed. I have not researched the exact speed but I assume it is in the range of 300 to 600 mph. The ball would probably penetrate the thin aluminum skin of the aircraft then travel through the fuselage and exit the other side, its speed not much diminished. Very little of the kinetic energy of the ball would be transferred to the aircraft. Now consider if the ball were designed to shatter upon impact causing the ball to remain contained in the jet and to ricochet around the interior. All of the kinetic energy of the cannon ball would be transferred into destructive work on the interior of the jet.

A bird’s fragile body is much like this effect. When the bird impacts upon the jet engine, all of the kinetic energy is totally transferred into destructive work upon the inner workings and hidden mechanisms of the engine.

Next, let’s consider a Canadian Goose, flying along at the leisurely speed of 20 mph or so. If one of these things were to hit you it would be much like being hit by a ten pound bean bag thrown by your 10 year old niece. Not much damage would occur.

The destructive kinetic energy of a bird / airplane impact comes from the speed of the airplane. It is much more accurate to say the airplane hits the bird. At the point our Heroes of the Hudson hit their birds they were up in the vicinity of 250-300 mph – the maximum speed we are allowed to fly below 10,000 feet altitude. This is low order cannon ball speed.

Back to my thesis statement as I began this discussion: there was very little ‘sucking’ going on during these impacts. The only sucking that occurred was after the bird entered the intake of the jet - which is less than 5’ long. The bird traveled this last leg of his final journey in a split second and impacted the compressor blades. If the birds hand been 10 feet away in any direction, they would have hit the airplane somewhere other than the engines - or missed completely. The engines most emphatically do not reach out and suck things into them while you are in the air.

(On the ground is a different kettle of cliches....Jets will most definitely suck things up on the ground.)

No, what really happened was that fate fired a cannon ball at their engines. At this point, the bird was basically a 300 mile per hour frangible cannon ball and the runaway chain reaction damage I described above occurred.

The rest of the story we already know.

At some later date, esteemed readers, we will turn our attention to the meme: “We sat on the runway for hours!”.

I remain,

Dad / Geoff

A Mystery

Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of
America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. FDR

Esteemed Reader,

This is a travelog wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. There are several strands in the saga and I will essay to use my meager skills to wrap them together into a skein of a story. I present them roughly in the chronological order that they occurred to me.

The first strand starts with yours truly in 1979. I am a 1Lt in the USAF and on vacation in Honolulu. It is Dec 7^th and we decided that it would be a good day to see the Arizona Memorial. Since I had my AF uniform with me, I chose to wear it in respect for the occasion. The brain cells that contain this memory are now 30 years old, but I remember feeling properly somber as I walked through the memorial. You can look down into the water and see the tendrils of oil that still seep up to the surface. Through the oil and water you can see the outline of the ship; especially the round mounts that used to contain the huge guns.

Towards the end of my time on the memorial I stopped to look at the marble wall that contains over a thousand names of the dead. The names of the Marine Contingent are etched over in the bottom right hand corner of the wall. I was – quite literally – shocked to discover the name PFC GH Whisler on the list. I remember getting goose bumps and chills.

Here is the next strand in the story. It is accepted wisdom in my family that the two branches of the family tree containing the Whistler’s and the Whisler’s were once all one happy family sharing the missing ‘t’. Somewhere in American History, an Nth Great Grandfather had a falling out with a Granduncle, heated words were exchanged and the ‘t’ was dropped from our branch of the family tree. Now we are Whislers – no ‘t’.

So, seeing a G Whisler as one of the dead on the Arizona has always fascinated me with a morbid sense of pride. But, before last December, I’ve never really bothered to try to learn more about this and our saga remains fallow for almost 30 years.

Now for another strand in the story: My son, George, is a captain in the AF and visited Hawaii on vacation this last December. Like me, he made a trip to the Arizona Memorial and noted the chilling name etched in the marble. I don't know that I had ever told him about it. When he got back from his vacation he emailed me a copy of the picture he took which I insert here.

This triggered a flurry of research on my part attempting to discover more information about PFC Whisler. I fired up Google and got many hits. I found this link which gave me his full name and reinforced his rank as Private First Class.Then I found this link which contains several puzzling facts.

First, PFC Whisler was born in 1911, which makes him a 30 year old Private First Class at his death in 1941. I engaged in some deductive logic as I tried to build an image of PFC Whisler. In today’s military, a 30 year old Marine PFC either just recently enlisted and is progressing in rank at a normal pace or he enlisted as a young man and is incapable of holding and maintaining rank. But, in the pre-WWII military, promotions were slow and based on the retirement of those senior to you. Further, soldiers and Marines were allowed to stay in the military well past middle age – it could take literally decades to make rank as you waited for those above you to age and retire. This aging military was poorly prepared to fight WWII and the present day “Up or Out” Policy of the US Military is a direct result of that demographic. I remain curious of about when PFC Whisler enlisted in the Marines and exactly what being a 30 year old PFC means.

The next curious fact in this latest link is that PFC Whisler rests in a grave plot in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. (NMCotP) But the Arizona Memorial specifically states that the vast preponderance of the dead are entombed in the ship. At this point in our saga, I did not know what to make of this new fact. I did note that the NMCotP was established in 1949 and I surmised that the Arizona’s dead were given the individual respect of a memorial in that cemetery even though their remains were entombed on the Arizona.

At this point, I have two mysteries worrying me. First, when did PFC Whisler enlist? Second – and more morbidly grisly - where are his mortal remains? ….and in all honesty, I wonder if he and I are related in some more direct way than merely sharing a name that thousands of us share. Not soon after all this, I get my schedule for Jan 2009 and learn that I will have a trip to Honolulu that entails a 24 hour layover.

At this point, I must introduce a new strand to our story. I spend a significant portion of my life in a hotel room in a far-away lands bored out of my skull. I have always been intrigued with the game of poker but fearful of the loss of money that lack of skill would entail. Several years ago, I found a computer program called “Poker Academy” (PA) that was heralded as a having the best and most challenging artificial intelligence engines written. So, I bought the program and whiled away some hours learning the game against the ‘bots’. Then I discovered that PA had an online game where you could play for fake money against real humans and that intrigued me. I discovered that the online players of PA had two things going for them. 1) They play poker very well given that real money is not involved and 2) they have a very friendly chat atmosphere.

So, I’ve made some ‘online friends’ over the last several years. One – Bricks - happens to live in Honolulu. I mentioned in passing that I was going to Honolulu and suddenly found myself offered a tour of the island. One of the tours Bricks enjoys giving is a drive up Tantalus Drive to a place that overlooks Pearl Harbor, Waikiki, Diamond Head and Honolulu proper. On the way down we would get to look at the NMCotP which sits in the ‘Punchbowl’ – an extinct volcanic crater. I hoped to get a deeper insight into PFC Whisler.

Bricks is a newspaper journalist and has access to genealogical information. Before the trip to the Punchbowl – as I learned the locals call the NMCotP – Bricks did some genealogical research about PFC Whisler. I learned that in the 1930 Census, he was 18 and still living at home in Cleveland, Iowa. Cleveland is evidently a very small farm community near the town of Bloomfield, just above the Iowa/Missouri state line.

His father – James T Whisler was 53 and died in 1948. (Before PFC Whisler’s gravesite was established in the Punchbowl). His mother – Edith F Whisler was 43 and lived until 1977. Her name at death was Edith Francis Cox, so I assume she re-married. His brother – John T Whisler was 20. I assume the brothers were still living at home since the census placed them there. The census also said Ellen Shields who was 75 lived in the family. I assume she was the maternal grandmother.

The Punchbowl is a lovely if somber place. I took many pictures.

We located PFC Whisler’s grave fairly quickly.

As we turned away from the gravesite to look at the rest of the punchbowl something fairly mystical happened. At this point in my research of this riddle, I knew that PFC Whisler’s father died before this gravesite was established so he never had a chance to see it. I know that PFC Whisler’s family hails from a very small town in Iowa and were probably depression era poor. I am deducing that there is a very large probability that I am one of the few if not the first Whisler ever to visit this grave.

As I look up, one of the frequent light airy rainstorms that Hawaiian’s call ‘Liquid Sunsine” hits us.

We are not getting significantly wet and the sprinkles are not unpleasant to stand in. More importantly, the liquid sunshine is producing the most beautiful full rainbow I have seen in a long time. I got goose bumps and chills again.

Still, I am wondering if PFC Whisler’s mortal remains are in the grave or is it a memorial duplicating the Arizona Memorial? I got my answer quickly. Up the hill from PFC Whisler’s grave site is the “Honolulu Memorial” which is a huge edifice of many white marble walls that contain the names of the Missing in Action in Pacific Operations.

There is a marker that says quite specifically that if the military had recovered remains they were buried out in the punchbowl – even if the identity of the remains where unknown. As one walks through the punchbowl, one notices headstones marked simply “Unknown”.

The Missing in Action are memorialized on the walls of the Honolulu Memorial. So that clears up that mystery. PFC Whisler’s remains were recovered from the Arizona and given burial in the Punchbowl. The new mystery is this: the vast majority of the Arizona dead remain entombed. How did PFC Whisler’s come to be recovered?

As an aside to this story – I also visited the final resting spot of Ernie Pyle.

As this saga is getting long, I won’t detail his story; except this: my first assignment in the Air Force was on Okinawa and Ernie was killed on a small island offshore from Okinawa named Ie Shima. We used to go SCUBA diving on Ie Shima and you passed the spot where Ernie was killed on the way to the dive site. There is a small memorial to him there. I had to complete the circle on this one and find his grave in the Punchbowl.

Back to PFC Whisler – there are not many stories of heroism that came out of the Arizona. Not, I imagine because there weren’t any acts of heroism but because so few survived to relate them. At this point, rebuilding the story gets somewhat gruesome and I choose not to detail it except this: the few remains that were recovered from the Arizona seem to fall into two categories: those who made it to shore and then died of their injuries and the few that were discovered as the Navy started to salvage the ship. They quickly decided that salvage was a waste of time and the memorial was established. I choose to believe that PFC Whisler was in the party that attempted to rally and defend the ship under the leadership of Lt Simonson.

At this point, I leave my enigma to you and remain,

Dad / Geoff

More tales from “The Little Cabin in the North Woods.”

Esteemed Reader,

Last Monday, Ann and I loaded the car and took off for an overnight trip to the cabin. There was fresh falling snow and the forecast was for cold weather and more snow. The clubs that maintain the system of trails groom those trails each Tuesday morning and we looked forward to a couple of pleasant rides in search of the perfect $100 hamburger.

We had a very nice ride Monday and a pleasant lazy evening in the cabin that night. We arose late Tuesday to a very cold day. It was in fact less than -10º F but bright and sunny and after some discussion we decided to ride despite the cold. Web Lake, WI is a snowmobile Mecca and there are several very nice places to eat and warm up. In a moment of serendipity, we met the pleasant fellow we have contracted with to keep our cabin’s driveway snow-plowed and had a nice conversation with him.

Around 1 O’clock, we started up and began the ride back to the cabin to store the sleds, clean up and go back home. In less than 10 minutes, we were cruising down the wonderfully groomed trails, deep in the Wisconsin woods, far from civilization. I was leading and occasionally looking back to make sure my gorgeous mate was following me.

Suddenly she wasn’t there. So I found a straight-away and stopped to wait for her to catch up. I was not alarmed as she is much more conservative in her riding aggressiveness than I….but then she didn’t show up behind me in a reasonable time. I got off the sled, removed my helmet and listened for her engine sounds. Hearing nothing, I remounted the sled, found a place in the tight wooded area to turn around and started back to look for her. I grew increasingly worried as I did not come across her.

Then I made a sharp turn in the trail and was presented with this tableau: Ann was off the sled and standing some distance away from it. She had her helmet off but her balaclava was still on and only her gorgeous but haunted blue eyes were visible.

The reason for the haunted eyes was immediately obvious. The sled she was riding – the beloved ten-year old Skidoo touring sled owned by her brother – was stopped in the trail, perfectly centered in her lane, ugly orange flames rising several feet from a growing hole in the fiberglass ‘hood’, oily black smoke billowing into the cold, clear, crystalline blue sky.

The fire is growing rapidly and it is obvious that the fuel tank – the tank that we had just topped off with over 7 gallons of 92 octane high test fuel - was feeding the fire. We did not have a fire extinguisher and even if we had, I doubt we could have successfully fought the fire. All we can do is remain a safe distance away and watch.

I had heard in the past that helplessness in an emergency situation can lead to hysteria and inappropriate laughter. I am here to confirm that it does as both Ann and I, not knowing what else to do, just stood there in the snow and giggled. Finally, I thought of the cell phone hidden somewhere in my parka and began spelunking for it. Finally located, the cell phone proved itself useless as there was no service in the wilderness – not even ‘one bar.’ So, Ann and I quickly decided that I was the best choice to ride the remaining serviceable sled back into Webb Lake to locate a phone and alert the ‘First Responders.’ The closest place I knew of in Webb Lake wound up being “The Cabaret Club” that we had just left. I walked through the door, asked for a phone and a map and dialed 911.

This quickly devolved into a Keystone Cops situation as I did not really know exactly where the conflagration was in the trackless wilderness. After a minute or so of fruitless, “It’s on the snowmobile trail southwest of Webb Lake” type discussions, my new met snowplow friend and I decided that we would drive to the place where the trail last crossed a known road and he would wait there to direct the fire truck while I returned to the conflagration.

As I retraced my path back to my beloved, I noted that it should be fairly easy to find the burning sled – in all the vast wilderness, there was only one thick trail of oily black smoke rising into the sky. As I finally arrived at the scene, the fire was still going but it was obvious that it would not remain ablaze for long. The only things remaining intact were the metal parts of the sled – even the thick rubber track that propelled the sled had been consumed. I have never seen Mrs. Whisler looking as dejected as she stood some distance away from the blackened skeleton of the once beloved sled. She tells me that at one point, the flames were rising 30 feet in the air and there were occasional blue flares of flame that explosively blew to the side. By this time, she had withdrawn far away from the blaze.

We can hear the sirens some distance away through the cold air and I try to call the dispatcher on my cell one more time and to my surprise I connect with them. However, this was not a “Can you hear me now?”……“Good!” situation and I soon hung up, defeated.

Not long after this, a party of four fellow snowmobilers comes around the curve and make an emergency stop. After the mandatory, “Everyone ok?” greeting, we all stood looking at the wreck and agree that “We have never seen anything like this!” I ask them if they will continue their ride to the nearest road and see if they can help direct the emergency crews to us. Off they go.

Now that the fire has burned down, it becomes increasingly apparent to Ann and I that we are standing alone in the Wisconsin wilderness on a day where the temperature is near 0º F. It is cold.

Finally, a bright red, 4-Wheel-Drive utility truck comes down the trail and stops. The firefighters exit the truck, grab a small bottle of Halon and squirt out the pitiful few flames remaining. (Tshut, Tshut!...and the fire is out. How anticlimactic) Not soon after that, a police SUV arrives on the scene and we all stand around looking at the carcass discussing how we are going to recover the wreckage and return the trail to a safe sledding condition. They have called the local Polaris Snowmobile store that is responsible for recovering disabled sleds and the owner of that operation arrives soon after with a towing cable. One look at the carcass and he realizes that he is not going to able to attach the cable to the sled as it is now a loose jumble of disconnected and burned parts. We all agree – somewhat repetitively – that ‘We ain’t never seen nuthin’ like this before.”

Off goes the recovery expert and he returns in a bit with a wooden pallet. The firefighters use their heavy firefighter gloves to put the large and small pieces of the hot sled on the pallet and off he goes.

The firefighters rake some of the snow from the woods into the burned and scarred ground that used to be a beautifully groomed trail. We determine that Ann will ride with the police back to Webb Lake and I will ride back to the cabin and get the car. Then I will return to Webb Lake and retrieve my bride. In the meantime, she will fill out the volume of paperwork required by the police in these incidents and pay the snowmobile store for the ‘wrecker’ services.

This is the point where Ann realizes that there is not room in the Police Cruiser in the front seat and she will have to ride back behind the 'chicken wire' in the perp seat.

I end this saga with that scene of bathos and pathos.

I remain,

Dad / Geoff

Wilderness Survival

Esteemed Readers,

It has been some time since last I wrote. This is because nothing of interest has happened in my life. Because of vacation and scheduling issues, I haven’t been on a trip since mid December and I got to spend the holidays with Ann and the kids.

Recently, a saga occurred that has nothing to do with FedEx or flying. I thought you might enjoy the story.

One element of the American Dream is to own a second home. My brothers’ in law – both of whom are regular readers of my dribbling here – own such a cabin up in NW Wisconsin, near the small sleepy burg of Webster on Ham Lake. This summer the third owner in the cabin expressed an interest in selling their share to Ann and I. As both of us have long coveted this we lunged at the opportunity. It took 6 months to go through the credit nightmares that our present economy has engendered and we signed the loan mid-December.

The land around Webster, WI is a sportsman’s paradise. The land was formed by the retreat of the massive glaciations of 10 thousand years ago. The glaciers scoured out hollows that filled with ice-melt. This resulted in hundreds of lakes for fishing and boating. In between the lakes are rolling low wooded hills also left by the ice. Local businesses and clubs have laid out hundreds of miles of bicycle trails for the summer that become snowmobile trails in the winter. About every 5 miles along this web of trails there is a bed and breakfast or bar and grille making a living off of the trail riders.

Last Friday, Jaybo, (Middle son) and one of his good friends Sean and I drove up there to ride the trails snowmobiling. Jaybo is a Mechanical Engineering student at Iowa State and Sean, his friend is a Physics/Math major at the U of Wisconsin in Madison. We loaded up and started the two hour drive up to the cabin. We soon re-discovered that we all shared a geekish, technological and scientific outlook on life and we had a great time on the drive up discussing various things in a way that would bore most of you to tears.

Maintaining a cabin in the frozen Wisconsin woods during winter requires some engineering pre-planning. At this point, please recall that the weather here in the frozen north lands has been sub 0º F for the last week or so. It is cold. The most important issue is that one cannot just turn off the furnace, lock the doors and leave. The pipes will most assuredly freeze and rupture if one does that and a flooding catastrophe will follow when the cabin temperature rises above freezing. The cabin is heated by a Liquid Propane (LP) supplied furnace. The LP tank sits outside; a regulated safe distance from the abode.

The cabin is fitted with a motion detecting security system with remotes to the security company. It has two features that apply here. First, as you leave the cabin, you can set the furnace to a ‘Energy Saver’ setting that runs the furnace 10 degrees cooler than when the cabin is occupied. Second, when the security system senses a cabin temperature nearing freezing, it will announce to the occupants of the cabin, the security company and the owner supplied phone number that a freezing condition is drawing dangerously near. Keep these facts in the back of your head; they will apply later in the story.

We arrived at the cabin, turned off the security system and the energy saver option and checked the thermostat to ensure operation. The cabin seemed cool, but we thought that was just the energy saver option. We then proceeded to unload the car, don our warm snowmobiling clothing and hit the trails. We left around 2 o’clock in the afternoon, rode until after dark and had a great time. We returned to the cabin, looking forward to a warm environment, a hot shower, hot food and starting a fire in the fireplace.

Little did we know we were about to be cast into a survival situation in the howling winter. The first thing we noticed as we entered the cabin was that it was not only not warm; it was appreciably colder than earlier in the day.

Yes, esteemed reader, we had ‘Furnile Disfunction.’

At this point, I must admit that despite being employed in an occupation that one would think would require considerable technical expertise that I am somewhat challenged by most household maintenance tasks. The genes that confer this expertise skipped over me from my father to my son. It was good that Jaybo was there.

We began trouble shooting the problem. The cabin’s hot water heater is electrical, so we have hot water. On the other hand, the clothes dryer and the furnace are both LP powered. We soon discover that the dryer is not warming and removing the cover from the furnace that the burners are not lighting.

At this point, the obvious thing to check is the LP gas supply. Re-donning our warm clothing, we re-enter the freezing wilderness, trek to the gas tank, break loose the ice surrounding the cover and try to read the gauge. This is where I discovered one needs a flashlight to do this. Back inside. Once back out again, the flashlight reveals a gauge calibrated in Klingon – The needle is pointing straight down - but from the way the scale is printed, the tank is either full or empty. It is a mystery which is the case.

I know…..those of you reading this are applying deductive logic and shouting: “The two gas appliances in the structure are not working. Of course you are looking a gauge reading empty, you freezing doofus!”

Not so fast…we had been assured by the previous owners that the tank had been recently filled. So, we began calling Ann's brothers to find out the name of the local LP gas supplier in the hopes of gaining a deeper understanding of our problem.

I would like insert an aside of fatherly delight: I am very proud of my son’s conduct during this portion of the saga. I remember when he was a wee lad and somewhat shy. He would never have considered taking charge and calling adults in service industries and grilling them like he did this night. It was a pleasure to delegate this to him and watch him operate.

We got the LP gas phone number and called them. Of course, on a Friday night, after dark, there was no answer. There was; however, an emergency voice mail option that we utilized, leaving the cabin number and various cell phone numbers in the vain hope for contact.

Next, we turned to the yellow pages for companies providing emergency furnace repair services. Here we were more successful and had a nice chat with a service professional. He pointed out the obvious conclusion that if the tank is empty the solution is trivial and can only be solved by contact with the LP Company. On the other hand, if the tank is full, then we have a self-help interim solution available to us.

He reasoned thus: LP gas is not refined pure. For economic reasons, there is a measurable quantity of water vapor mixed in with it. There are pressure regulators at the tank that convert the high pressure liquid gas into a low pressure gas that the furnace can burn. Ice crystals from the water vapor can foul the pressure regulating device and cause it to become blocked. Normally, the LP suppliers mix in an anti-icing compound to prevent this problem but sometimes a batch of gas can slip through without it.

So, we fill containers with hot water from the tap and re-enter the howling wilderness to trek to the gas tank. We pour hot water on the regulators, run back inside, remove our snow laden boots, dash down the stairs and recycle the furnace. Low and behold! It sputters to life only to die again. Misery.

We re-don our warm gear and we repeat the hot water exercise. The furnace sputters and then roars into life and begins warming the cabin. Jubilation!

The jubilation was short lived – the furnace burned for a short 15 minute period and then went out. We reapplied the hot water and the furnace dutifully relit and ran another 15 minute period and then died again. Emotional whiplash!

At this point, our trail of logic tells us we have a full tank of non-anti-iced LP gas. Unfreezing the regulator causes the gas to begin flowing and the furnace to light. The furnace then runs through a duty cycle and turns off. The lack of flow of gas to the regulator causes the regulator to refreeze and we have to go out and re-warm it.

By this time, Sean had the fireplace going strongly and we decided that an evening of schlepping hot water out to the regulator every 30 minutes or so was a bad idea. So we let the furnace go back to slumber and we settled down for a long cold evening waiting for the LP supplier to call. We donned several layers of warm clothing, located all the blankets in the house and began to fitfully sleep. It was cold, but it was not freezing cold and I was not yet worried for the water pipes.

At this point, recall what I said earlier about the low temperature alarm. At 0430 in the morning, the security system sensed penetration of a temperature threshold and a verbal pre-recorded alarm began: “Warning! Danger! Cold Temperatures Will Robinson!”

We stumbled out of our bedclothes, noted that the cabin was – in fact – very cold and somehow managed to silence the alarm through our cold and sleep addled stupor. The operative question became: “Now what do we do?” We were in fact worried about the pipes now. I briefly considered braving the wilderness carrying warm water to thaw the regulators but when I opened the door it was too cold to face that.

So, we decided to turn on all the taps in the cabin with the notion that flowing water was less likely to freeze and hope for the best. Wrapping up in the blankets yet again, I realized that the supply pipes to the hot water heater were not being exercised, so I got back up, and went around to all the hot water faucets and showers and turned them on a trickle too. That either did the trick or I was just lucky because the pipes did not freeze and the cabin did not flood.

The LP Company called when they opened for weekend business the next morning. They said they would send the truck out in the early afternoon. This occurred around 0900 local. At that point, we were bone chilled and decided to crank up the car and drive to a local grill for breakfast and some hot coffee.

We stayed there an hour or so and had a pleasantly warm breakfast. We returned to the cabin to wait out the arrival of the LP truck. When we got to the cabin door, we discovered a brown envelope hung from the door knob. It contained a receipt for the dispensation of 850 gallons of LP gas totaling over $1000 American and they would be pleased to be paid within 25 days…thank you so much.

A phone call back to the LP Company reveals that the tank had not been filled 'recently'. It had been filled back in Oct and much colder than normal season so far had depleted the tank.

So much for deductive reasoning…..we now know what an empty tank gauge looks like. We also know that the LP supplier understands that gas in frozen Wisconsin requires an anti-ice additive because the furnace started right up and the cabin was pleasantly warm for the remainder of our stay.

As they taught me in Air Force survival training – your most important possession when you are cast into a survival situation is your “Will to Survive!”

Dad / Geoff