Snow Machine

Hello All,

A lot has been hapening in the past couple weeks so this may be a two or three or four part message.

First of all, Molly made it here safely on Sunday and has plenty to write about. . .You should be hearing from her soon.

Part I
Snow Machine, Snow-Go, Snowmobile!
About a week ago I ordered my very own snow machine! It's amazing what you can do from home with the internet. I talked to a sales guy once about what I wanted, faxed in some paperwork, and my machine was to be freighted in three days later from Anchorage! I was told that I need to bring gas and oil with me to pick it up from the airport so I had to rush around to figure out how to get gas. To get gas, I have to call a guy at his house and he will meet me at the pump to pump my gas. Gas is five bucks a gallon! Anyway, I was at school when it came in and Nick (he plows the runway) stopped by my classroom to ask if he could move it off the runway... They just pushed it off the back of the plane and left. With permission from my principal, I left school to go get it! Now I am free to roam the open tundra!!

It just so happens that the day I got my machine, it was 30 below zero. Not caring too much about the weather, Ron and I decided to go set traps. I now have a couple of fox sets out and am comtinuing to set more, hopefully I will start catching something eventually. Needless to say, 2 hours of 30 below while driving around on a snow machine, I got my first frost bite! I had my face completely covered with only a hole for my nose to breathe through. That hole was enough and I frost bit the inside and bottom of my nose. Ouch!! Basically a couple days of pain, then it scabbed and healed.

Trapping has been rough this week becasue of all the snow. We spend more time digging snow machines out of snow than setting traps. The traps we have set have been getting buried in blowing snow rendering them useless. After the one day cold snap, it has been warming up so I think the traps will finally survive a night and we might start catching things. Did I tell about the wolverine we caught on my first trapping adventure?

School has been going well and I will probably add Part II later today.