Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Kaya never saved Timmy

Note: This is kind of long, but there are a lot of pictures. It also could be triggering if you've ever suffered the loss of a loved dog or cat.

Kaya was a great dog. She never rescued a baby from a burning building, she never warned us that Timmy had fallen in a well*, and she had never learned to pick up her own poop.

No, her superpower was that she could eat. And weirdly, in addition to the normal things dogs eat, she loved to eat broccoli stems, asparagus ends, and bananas.

Her second superpower was being exuberantly adorable.

OK - this may be her being a bit too adorable.

Back in October of 2011, we were finally ready to adopt a new big dog, following the loss of our previous big dog, Teddy. You can read about him here. 

We found Kaya from a post on Craig's List. She was a one-year-old black lab/boxer mix - the family that she was with was having to move to a place that didn't allow pets, so she desperately had to find a new home. We loved her from that first meeting - she was definitely a full grown puppy with a ton of energy.

Mrs Notthat on Kaya's gotcha day, being a bit surprised by the length of her tongue!

The grandkids really liked playing with her.

A very young second-born grandkid losing at tug-of-war.

We were pretty active with trail races and hiking/running, and that fit right into Kaya's wheelhouse - she was a pretty good trail runner.

Mrs Notthat trying to keep up with Kaya.

Kaya's kryptonite was the sun though. All that black fur made direct sunshine her mortal enemy.

Kaya had had enough on this hike.

She ran a number of 5Ks with us. I tried to run a sunny 10K with her once that involved two loops (one of the races at the Brazen Dirty Dozen event in 2016). As we were finishing the first loop, she was excited and practically sprinting to the finish, where she knew there was food. A LOT of food. When I turned and started heading back away from the finish for the second loop, she put an end to that nonsense.

Kaya finding some shade and being perfectly content with a 5K. "Bring me some BBQ!"

About a year and a half after Kaya joined our family, we added Princess - an obnoxious little fur ball that easily matched Kaya's energy, but with about a quarter of the brains. They got along great together, with Princess absolutely convinced that she was Kaya's big sister.

Kaya and Princess sensing that there is food somewhere in the house.

One of Kaya's favorite things to do was splash in water.

Mrs Notthat and granddog Dove avoiding the puddle. Kaya wondering why it's not a bigger puddle.

She loved going for walks after a rain when the curbs were filled with water - she would just splash along in them as happy as a fish.

Kaya never understood why some water tasted so salty. This was with the grandkids, Mrs Notthat, and Princess, who would go through a lot of trouble to avoid touching water.

Kaya did really well around other dogs, although as she got older, she could get a bit cranky around high energy dogs, especially once she started to lose her hearing - she didn't like getting surprised.

Kaya with the old arrow-through-the-neck gag.

One fun thing was that she mostly tolerated the cats that we added in 2017.

Kaya sharing her bed with, believe it or not, our cat named Kaya! We didn't name either of them, but were astonished how this worked out.

Back in July of 2023, a little sore spot appeared on Kaya's belly that we didn't think too much of. At first we had her wear a shirt to discourage her from licking it, then finally switched to a cone once it became apparent that she was still licking it too much and it wasn't healing as fast as we thought it should.

Kaya trying to be a Giants fan, but man, where was their offense?

At first, the spot seemed to be healing, although maybe that was wishful thinking on our part. In the end, the spot kept slowly growing. Kaya did not seem the least bit bothered by it, other than wanting to lick it. She was still her normal active self - it was amazing how puppy-like she would act for a dog that was around fourteen years old!

Me bravely walking our two dogs and our granddog, Jax.

Kaya found a puddle!

Somewhere around this time, her vet started her on some medications and an ointment for the spot.

Kaya, Princess, and Mango all coexisting on the deck at the end of summer.

 
Kaya in a shirt and cone. She did not enjoy the cone, but it seemed to bother her a lot less than it would have bothered me.
By December, it became clear that the spot wasn't going to heal, and arrangements were made to get it removed, which happened in January. That's when we learned that it was cancerous, and that likely more would be appearing over time. But also, it appeared that it was pretty isolated just to that area, so maybe we would get a break for a bit.

Kaya generally refused to lay completely on her bed - for reasons that only made sense to her, she generally liked to lay half on/half off of it. 

We didn't get much of a break.

Within a couple of weeks a new spot started up. Unlike the last one, this one grew fairly fast, and its location made it a bit uncomfortable for Kaya to do one of the things she loved most that didn't involve food - walks around the block. So we set up another appointment to get it removed. The weekend before the second surgery, Kaya was acting very normal until Sunday evening, when it was like a switch had been flipped.

She suddenly found it difficult to stand or walk. She wasn't hungry. Even laying down, it seemed to be a struggle to get comfortable. I took her to the vet on Monday morning and a quick check revealed that the cancer had spread internally. A lot. 

Kaya resting her head on my hand while at the vet. She was so ready to be done.

I was glad I got to be with her at the end. I had to carry her from the house to the car, and once we got there, lift her out of the car, but surprisingly, she was able to walk into a little grassy area and pee a bit. Then, even more surprisingly, she walked into the office - it was like she was determined to be dignified while out in public, and getting carried by me was very not dignified.

Once it was all over and I left the room, the first thing I noticed were the candles at the front desk. I had noticed them on previous visits but had never seen them lit - there was a sign explaining that if they were lit, someone was having a very bad day and to please be respectful. 

Seeing them lit as I left nearly broke me. If people were wondering who was having a very bad day, they certainly were able to figure it out at that point. 

Then, a final funny thing (at least to me) happened. When I left the vet office, I saw a trail of poop balls from the little grassy area to the curb by the front door. I thought that was odd, and then it dawned on me that those were a last gift from Kaya, left as she walked, with her dignity, from the grassy area to the office. I grabbed a bag and picked them up, knowing that it was weird that this was making things a bit better.

The grand old girl Kaya saying goodbye. But she still wanted to know who Timmy was. And what a well was, for that matter.

It's so hard when a loved four-legged family member leaves. There is a huge hole left in the house. 

Princess knows something has happened, but seems OK. She is also getting up there in years (twelve or thirteen - nobody really knows), but being a little dog, and a mutt, she is still very healthy and active. She will get a lot more walks now (I couldn't bring myself to take her out for a walk while leaving Kaya at home once Kaya got to the point where walks weren't possible). She is still fine with longer distances - I'm going to try her out in a 5K on Saturday and see how she does (we can easily stop at the halfway point, but I doubt that will be an issue).

Heavy sigh…

Hug your fur babies. A lot.

That's it - move along…

* For you kids, this is a reference to an old trope that Lassie, a collie on a TV show named after her, often would come dashing into the house, letting the parents know that their idiot son, Timmy, had fallen into a well. Apparently there never was an episode where that happened, although Lassie letting the parents know that Timmy was in trouble really did happen remarkably often.

Thursday, January 4, 2024

A 2023 Notthatlucas running wrap-up

Mrs Notthat and I basically stayed the course in 2023, with our running resumé looking very much like 2022. We did take a few trips (some planned, some not so planned) that cost us a few weekends, but still managed to be around a lot running events.

Let's start with some fairly boring details.

Mrs Notthat

  • Total events participated in (running or volunteering): 39
  • Total Byxbee parkrun events: 34
  • Total Brazen events: 3 (Coyote Hills, Rocky Ridge, and Quarry Turkey)
  • Total other events: 2 (Wharf to Wharf and Xterra Lake Tahoe)
  • Total miles run: 120.8

With regards the Byxbee parkrun events, Mrs Notthat ran 33 of them - for one she only volunteered. For seven of those she ran, she also got a volunteer credit (parking marshal, first timer's briefing, or tail walker).

Me

  • Total events participated in (running or volunteering): 47
  • Total Byxbee parkrun events: 39
  • Total Brazen events: 4 (Coyote Hills, Bear Creek, Rocky Ridge, and Quarry Turkey)
  • Total other events: 4 (Schoolhouse Rock, Western States 100 [volunteer], Wharf to Wharf, and Xterra Lake Tahoe)
  • Total miles run: 99.1 (Seriously? I couldn't find another 0.9 miles to run somewhere?)

With regards the Byxbee parkrun events, I ran 23 of them - for 16 I only volunteered (course marshal, time keeper, and RD [eight times!]). 

The event that wasn't

One race that's left out of all of this was the Brazen NYD event, which is the one Brazen event that I've never missed since it's first one in 2010. Sadly, the ridiculously wild winter weather forced that event to be cancelled due to mudslides, flooding, and extensive trail damage. The Brazen NYE event was allowed to happen the day before, but the rangers quickly regretted that as the weather rapidly got out of hand.

Picture by Nywdlab (not his real name) from the Brazen 2022 New Year's Eve event. That is not supposed to be a creek crossing.
Picture by Nywdlab (not his real name) from the Brazen 2022 New Year's Eve event. At least the trail (if you can find it) is paved at this point. That bench got little use that day.

So it was wise to cancel the race set for the next day.

Some Byxbee parkrun stuff

Byxbee parkrun continued to be our primary running event. (Click here to read my thing all about parkrun.)

In 2022, they had 52 events and averaged 61.1 runners per event (3175 total) - two events had over 90 participants. 

That changed a lot in 2023 - there were 53 events and an average of 100.1 runners in each (5305 total) - one soggy event only had 27, but there were a stunning 39 events with over 90 runners and 31 over 100, with two topping 140! 

This increase meant the event had to add a few more volunteers to keep things flowing - there are now 14 to 15 volunteers for each event. Fortunately, the parkrun community has stepped up and managed to fill those spots.

From July 22 - "two two" day where we are encouraged to wear tutus!

I finally reached my 50 run parkrun milestone in April (Mrs Notthat had hit it in November 2022, and will likely hit 100 in 2024). I likely won't get to 100 until 2025.

The other milestone we hit was the 25 volunteering one. We take different approaches to volunteering, with all of mine being with no run credit, while nearly all of MrsNotthat's were done so that she could get both a run and volunteer credit (as mentioned earlier). I'm currently more focussed on hitting the 50 volunteer milestone (I'm currently at 41) than the 100 run one.

Me as the far course marshal, with the Duck of Turnaround.

One of our goals is to run a few other parkrun events around the country. While Byxbee is the only parkrun in California, there are 64 others scattered around the country. And MANY more around the world. It would be fun to see how some others do it.

Some Brazen Racing stuff

One afteraffect of the pandemic is that Mrs Notthat and I have gotten a bit lazy when it comes to trail races. Many require us to get up very early to drive an hour or so to get to them - the pandemic eliminated that requirement and we really got used to not having to get up absurdly early on weekends. 

But, man - there is nothing like the atmosphere of a reasonably large trail race, with the stresses and anticipation of longer distances and challenging terrain. Byxbee also has a great atmosphere, but it's much more casual and low key. And sometimes it's nice to stretch out to a 10K or fight through some hills.

Fortunately, Brazen has several events that are reasonably close to us, which still means getting up a bit early, but not that much earlier than Byxbee. And we are able to get our large trail race fix. 

It was weird how that cranberry smelled like mayonnaise.

In addition to going to a few of their closer races, we drove to the legendary Rocky Ridge event - home of one of the toughest Half Marathons around (we ran the 5K, which is also pretty tough) - since it was Brazen's 300th event!

Mrs Notthat, our daughter Weird Haired Mom, her boyfriend Nhoj (not his real name) and his Oscar the wiener dog, and me. And we even spelled "300" correctly!

Brazen doesn't (at least publicly that I know of) track milestones. 

But I have a spreadsheet.

When I heard that The Canadian (Enirehtak, not her real name) had managed to finish her 300th Brazen event, I decided to go see how many Mrs Notthat and I had done. Counting the 2024 New Year's Day event, I've been at (either running or volunteering) 194 events (17 as a volunteer), and I have a reasonable chance to get to 200 in 2024. (This is out of 307 events they have put on. Mrs Notthat is up to 168.)

The other runs

As always, volunteering at the Last Chance aid station at the Western States Endurance Run was one of the highlights of the year. 

Eidnam, not her real name, getting the Last Chance Car Wash experience.

A surprise event was what we will always think of as the Ringo Starr 5K. We drove up to Lake Tahoe to see Ringo and his All Starr Band for a Friday night concert. Because I can't help myself, I poked around a bit to see if there were any running events going on, and indeed, there was the Xterra Lake Tahoe 5K on Sunday!

Mrs Notthat and I both won age group awards (the pint glasses). I am not going to mention that, as it turned out, everyone that ran the 5K ended up winning an age group award. 

And for the first time in several years, we ran the Wharf to Wharf race in Santa Cruz. Mrs Notthat manage to talk Anrapa and Immas (not their real names) into joining us!

The four of us along with nearly 16,000 others playing at the Capitola Beach!

And lastly, The Canadian talked me into running the Schoolhouse Rock 5K on the Sunday after having run Byxbee parkrun. This was hard for me, but really fun since we got to see several Byxbee regulars there as well!

The Canadian and I before we started at Schoolhouse Rock 5K.

Wrapping up (finally)

All of our runs were 5Ks, except two 10Ks for me and one for Mrs Notthat (I will always consider Wharf to Wharf to be a 10K, even if it is slightly short). My hope for 2024 is to add a few more 10Ks, and maybe even a Half Marathon or two, to the mix. I'd love to recover some of my lost "speed" as well. Those kinds of goals require more training than I've been doing, and now that I'm retired, I'm hoping to be able to do that necessary training.

Although sitting in a recliner and watching game shows is pretty attractive…

That's it - move along…

Sunday, December 10, 2023

CH- CH- CH- CHAAAANGES! Probably a good thing. But I really don't like changes.

[Note: This is going to be long and boring with very few interesting pictures. Honestly, there are much better ways to spend your time than reading this.] [Although there might be a few interesting bits here and there.] [Probably not though.]

Back in June of 1977, I graduated from the San Juan Basin Vocational-Technical School's two-year Electronics program. We spent as much time learning about vacuum tubes as transistors, and a very small amount of time learning about those newfangled integrated circuits. And no time learning about microprocessors since, for the most part, they didn't exist. 

I studied and got my First Class FCC license, which meant I could legally work at any broadcast station. But mostly I learned to fix TVs and other electronic things. I loved (and still love) having that as a super power, although it makes me sad that many things are no longer repairable.

Our class of '77 that went to Denver for FCC certification tests. (I'm in the center back row.) We made the local newspaper!!!

When I graduated, I went to Colorado Springs where my buddy Kcir (not his real name) was already working. I looked in the help wanted section of the newspaper and saw an ad for an employment agency. I went there and they set up two interviews for me: A long shot one with a company that was really picky and another with a store that needed someone to install car audio bits and CB radios.

I still have a CB radio (collecting dust in the garage). I was "The Cosmic Cowboy" in southwest Colorado. I once talked to the Rubber Duck - CW McCall!

The long shot worked out (much to the surprise of the employment agency), and the rest is some odd definition of history.

It has always boggled my mind that I managed to convert my vo-tech education, that included absolutely no writing classes, into a job as a technical writer for Apple Inc. Granted, this didn't happen overnight, but this is not how you envision career arcs to work.

I'll get into that career arc in a bit, but the main news is that I'm now retired. After a bit over 46 years working various jobs in the tech industry, I'm now able to just sit in a recliner and watch game shows all day. My initial goal was to wait until I turned 65 and could get Medicare, but then I realized that a more practical goal was to wait until Mrs. Notthat turned 65 (yes, I robbed the cradle a tiny bit - I'm nearly a year older than her). That happened this spring, and I finally took the leap at the end of November.

This wasn't a slam dunk of a decision - I had a pretty sweet setup, getting to work full-time from home on things that were mostly interesting and challenging. But I was noticing that I didn't attack new challenges with as much zeal as I used to. It was becoming harder for me to do some of the more boring and tedious bits of the job. 

But it's done. I flipped the table and walked out on November 30. 

There was a cake. A REALLY nice cake. It was not on the flipped table.

OK, let's get to that career arc thing.

June 1977: Ampex Corporation (Colorado Springs)

This was that long-shot job. There is an excellent chance you've never heard of Ampex Corporation. There is an even better chance that you have benefited in one way or the other from the things they invented. 

The area they hired me to work in was as an electronic technician on their new one-inch video tape recorders. (Up to this point, broadcasters had to rely on video tape recorders the size of a Ford Pinto that used two-inch wide tape - these were reel-to-reel machines where an hour of tape could weigh 30 pounds.)

Ampex VPR 1 one-inch video tape recorder - my introduction to professional video!

This was well before VHS or Betamax. 

After a year or so, I started getting opportunities to travel a bit for work - I spent several month-long stints in the Bay Area (where the Ampex headquarters was) helping to bring up new products. I even spent a month in Rome, Italy as a try out for being a field service engineer there (I bailed on that after realizing I wasn't as much of a hotshot as I thought I was). 

Finally, in…

August 1980: Ampex Corporation (Bethesda Maryland)

… I took the leap and became a field service engineer for the Mid-Atlantic region. This was an awesome job (for a while). I quickly knew where all the TV stations were in the area (Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and DC), as well as all the government facilities that had Ampex equipment (there were a LOT). There are many stories I could tell from this period, from having my company car stolen on April 1 (it made the news), being quickly ushered into a safe room due to an "issue" at the US Chamber of Commerce, spending enough time at the CIA headquarters that they got me a badge, spending enough time at the Pentagon to be able to find my way around proficiently (and standing in the center area while a newly elected Reagan gave a speech) - this was not a dull place to work.

It has always amazed me how often name gets spelled incorrectly.

Better than all of that though, is that this is where I met the soon-to-be Mrs Notthat - she worked in the same field office. Soon enough, our daughter (destined to be Weird Haired Mom) was born (oh man - another story) and the erratic-ness of the job got to be a challenge.

So in…

November 1984: Ampex Corporation (Redwood City California)

… I became an instructor, teaching one or two week classes to people that bought our stuff, showing them how to use and repair it. This position involved a fair amount of travel, often for two or three weeks at a time, but it was almost never spur of the moment type travel - it was planned and manageable. Occasionally Mrs Notthat and WHM got to come along on the international trips.

The sign along 101 that had been there forever, which is sadly now gone.

This was a pretty awesome job, but Ampex started to flounder a bit (they had totally missed the boat on consumer video recording, even though they held many critical patents on the process, and were missing the boat on the new digital TV boom that was just starting). So in…

September 1987: Abekas Video Systems (Redwood City California)

… I was lured away to an upstart competitor that was formed by three previous Ampex people - a company that there is even less of a chance you have heard of - Abekas. 

A fun thing was that, in addition to teaching classes much as I had at Ampex, I actually got a computer, and for the first time, started writing user manuals. (Ventura Publisher ring any bells for any of you? This was pre-Windows.) I still did a lot of travel, but the writing bit was a nice change. I had no real background in writing at all, but there was a great editor there that was able to point out how bad I was at this, but even better, point out ways I could get better.

One thing that happened after a few years was that I became a manager over a few people. Any of you that have successfully managed people, especially while doing a real job at the same time, are heroes. That was a rough time for me - I really didn't enjoy writing reviews and such and I didn't enjoy working with budgets. 

But I got better at it. I learned some survival skills. And then in…

December 1998: Accom Inc. (Menlo Park California)

… Abekas was bought by Accom, which was interesting since Accom was largely founded by the same people that founded Abekas (but had been bought out of Abekas by another company a few years previously). 

Many at Abekas were laid off at this point, and I was actually hoping to be one of them. But I was retained. I told the owner of Accom that I would likely quit rather than join them doing the same thing I was doing at Abekas, and he assured me that he had other plans for me.

Abekas had previously bought a Polish company that was in the cutting edge of virtual studios, ELSET. The idea was you could have a set with a green screen as the background and maybe a desk for the people to sit at, but then use a computer to generate a virtual background. This was all very clever and VERY complicated, but I enjoyed jumping into it and learning all of its peculiarities. 

This person is standing on a plain, green stage - SGI computers are providing the background. The trick is having the background track any camera moves and setting objects to be in front of or behind the person.

This was a tough job though - many long nights and weekends spent working through all of this, plus a LOT of travel. By now, our son had been born, WHM was getting older, and travel, even planned travel, became hard. This was an amazing experience - working with the Polish engineers was a highlight of my working life - but it took a pretty huge toll.

In December of 1999, Abekas sold ELSET to a competitor based out of Israel, ORAD. That would guarantee an even heavier travel load, so I bowed out, and in…

January 2000: Spruce Technologies

… I became a tech writer (almost no travel!) for Spruce Technologies, a small company that made DVD authoring software for professionals. DVDs were a hot new thing - at the time I started there, I did not own and had never even watched a DVD. I had no idea about how you could do all kinds of clever things with them using menus and other tricks to create some pretty wild experiences. 

One of the user manuals I worked on for Spruce.

This was a great job - it was a fairly small company so I ended up doing a lot more than just writing user manuals and online help. It was a blast. 

In 2001 rumors started that we were up for sale. People were nervous. Some ambitious plans had not born the fruit that had been expected. There was serious competition. There was a layoff. (I survived it, and gained the office plant that I still have.)

Our authoring software was based on Windows NT, so it felt likely that we would logically end up with a Windows-based company. So naturally, in…

July 2001: Apple Incorporated

… we found out that Apple, who had their headquarters just down the street from us (I did not know that at the time - I was seriously into Windows at the time), had bought us. This was a massive surprise, but Apple's current DVD authoring software, DVD Studio Pro, was based on their OS 9 operating system. The new OS X operating system was going to require a complete rewrite, so it wasn't that big of a deal to start with a bunch of Windows engineers.

A lot of people were not kept as part of the acquisition, and I had large doubts that I would be kept, but I was - I think a few people said nice things about me, although I joke that there was an accounting error involved. 

Starting at Apple was really something:

  • It was the first time since Ampex that I was at a company with several thousand employees. It took some adjusting to get used to that.
  • It was the first time I was working at a company most people had heard of. I started getting contacted by people I hadn't talked to in years, asking about employee discounts.
  • I had to learn to use a new operating system. Ever since Abekas, where I first started using a computer, I worked with Microsoft DOS and, later, Windows. My home computers had all been (and were still) Windows. We had an iMac at Spruce for testing our authored DVDs, but that was the extent of what I knew about them. 

I started in the help writing team for the Pro Apps - Final Cut Pro, Compressor, Motion, Cinema Tools, and mostly, DVD Studio Pro. After a few years, I moved over to the tech writing part of the Productivity team, which started with the iWork apps then slowly grew to include several other apps.

My first, and most obscure, Apple user manual.

I loved working at Apple - there were normal challenges like long days and weekends, and office politics like at any large company, but there was also the huge satisfaction of working on applications that were used by millions of enthusiastic people. (Granted, that also means that millions of people are going over the help and user manuals, and will eagerly point out any issues they find.)

All of that makes it amazing I got away with my proudest accomplishment at Apple:


My primary editor at the time ("Hi Nitsirk, not your real name") would not shut up about two things: The Giants (which was OK by me), and lemurs. All lemurs. Anything that had anything to do with lemurs. 

(Fun disturbing fact: A bit after this manual was out in the wild, I had a dream that the Lemur Preservation Society sued Apple over this since it was spreading wildly false information. When I talked to them, they said that they actually thought the text was funny, but they had to make a point, and were sorry that I was likely to get fired over this. It was not a great dream.)

And that's about it. A bit over 46 years of working in technology (I left out all the jobs I had in high school and before that. Many of those are worth their own posts.)

The obvious question is what am I going to do now. I don't really know. There are lots of projects around the house that will keep me plenty busy. It will be a period of adjustment, and I'm confident I will adapt.

But for now, there are game shows to watch.

That's it - move along…

Tuesday, August 22, 2023

Alaska is cold, but there is the aurora…

[Note: This is really long and really late. But there are pictures!]

Anniversaries that have a round number need to be roundly celebrated. Our 40th wedding anniversary was in February, so we decided to splurge a bit and try to see the Aurora Borealis (northern lights), and one of the best places to do that is Alaska. 

A real challenge with Alaska in winter is, well, it's cold. Really cold. And probably snowy. So we decided to make it as easy as possible for us, and joined a tour specifically organized for seeing the aurora. I had never been on an organized tour like this before, so it was going to be interesting. Mrs Notthat found a suitable tour by Melita Trips - a big selling point was that they had a guest speaker that would give multiple lectures during the trip, astronomer Dennis Mammana, who had been highly recommended by friends.

Rick and Eileen, our tour guides, posing in front of a huge bear. They were amazing at dealing with all the issues that randomly popped up during the trip. (Rick and Eileen. Not the bear.)


The trip started with a flight from Seattle to Fairbanks. (Well, it really started the day before with us flying to Seattle, but that wasn't officially part of the tour.) All of this flying was my first time on a plane since early 2020 (and all that that implies). 

The first surprise was that there was a water line break in the kitchen at our Fairbanks hotel - our rooms were fine, but there was no way we were going to get to have our first dinner together as a group there. So we ended up eating at Big Daddy's BBQ ("Northern Most Southern BBQ") (it was really good). After that, we checked in then got together for our first Dennis lecture. (These lectures were really good and helped so much with the rest of the week.)

We then got on the bus and headed for the World Ice Art Championships. The sculptures were astonishing.

How is it possible to get that kind of detail?

Such great imagination!

Seriously - everywhere you looked you saw astonishing sculptures.

After that, we all got back on the bus and drove out to a dark area for our first shot at seeing the aurora. 

Auroras are a bit flaky. They are not tied to a precise schedule. Or a loose schedule. They laugh at the word "schedule." You never really know if they are going to appear or not. The best you can do is put yourself in a good position to be ready if they show up. There are websites that give you an idea of your chances of seeing anything, and those websites were not very encouraging that first night. 

And they were right.

But, we all got a chance to try our hands at taking night shots, and there were many stars to look at.

A number of people on the tour brought really nice equipment to take pictures. Red lights were used when light was needed just to avoid blinding people whose eyes had adjusted to the dark.

This is just me holding my phone and taking a shot of the stars. I was a bit astonished it came out this well.

The thing to keep in mind, this is our first day! We flew to Fairbanks, ate BBQ (!), checked into our plumbing-challenged hotel, had our first lecture, saw amazing ice sculptures, and got to stand around in the dark waiting for the aurora. At about midnight we loaded back onto the bus and headed back to the hotel. (A few determined people stayed up once we got to the hotel and managed to see a mild display of auroras at around 3 AM. I was not yet that desperate.) (But I could be later.) (Man I was hoping it didn't come to that.)

On day two, we first went to the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska (go Nanooks!), where that picture of Rick and Eileen with the photo-bombing bear was taken. Next, we went to one of the most unexpectedly fascinating places - the Poker Flat Research Range. They do a variety of things here, but the real star is that they shoot rockets into the auroras to study them. These are not huge rockets with people on them, but small rockets based on missiles that they are able to load up with experiments.

First a lecture by Dave about what this facility is about. I loved this! (Picture by Rick.)

Next, we got to go inside a launch pad. A bit oddly, we were not allowed to take pictures in there. (Picture by Rick.)


Tours are not a normal thing done at this facility, so this was definitely a big tour-related bonus.

After that, we headed to the Chatanika Lodge for dinner and to wait for it to get dark for our second attempt at seeing the aurora. The lodge is normally closed on Mondays, but, just for us, they opened for dinner and to provide a nice warm place to hang out while waiting for aurora excitement to break out.

Chatanika Lodge. There was a large area in back where we could watch for the auroras. And a bar for when we needed a break from watching for the auroras.

So many dollar bills! They were on almost every bit of ceiling and wall!

We hung out there until a bit after midnight. By 10:30 or 11:00, it was feeling like we were getting skunked again. 

And then, there they were!

This was so cool! The went like this for about an hour. No way I expected a photo like this from just my phone.


A bit after midnight we headed back to the hotel. We were all thrilled - as I said, there is no guarantee that you will see an aurora on a trip like this, and after the first night, the possibility that we might not see any felt a bit too real. 

But we saw them! The rest of the trip was just gravy! (Spoiler alert: It was going to be REALLY good gravy.)

For the third day, we checked out of the hotel, got on the bus, and headed to the Chena Hot Springs Resort. Along the way we stopped at the Great Alaskan Bowl Company, then a stop to see the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

Mrs Notthat and I in front of the pipeline, waiting our turn at hopscotch (see the person in the background). (Picture by Rick.)

It amuses me that they have to put radiators to dissipate heat on the pipeline.

The Chena Hot Springs Resort is really something. It's in the boonies. (Granted, Alaska is 99% boonies.) There is no cell service and erratic WiFi, so it feels even more remote than it is. The resort has a lot to do beyond soaking the hot springs, but the main thing we were all there for was the aurora. After another Dennis lecture, we prepared for another cold night of trying to see them.

There is a nice dark field you can walk to where you can watch the aurora, or there is a snow coach tour to the top of Charlie Dome Mountain.

Our waiting snow coaches. These things sounded like they would be fun! Ha!

Each snow coach had a main unit with seats for three and the driver, and a trailer with benches along the sides to seat eight. Mrs Notthat and I got to sit in the front with the driver. 

This picture does not remotely capture how rough this trail was. Or how these snow coaches were so completely lacking in any kind of ride-smoothing suspension.

It was a rough, slow, noisy ride up to the top of Charlie Dome. It turned out to be worth it though. There were a couple yurts that you could sit in to warm up, but the real show was having a great view of the dark skies.

The only lights were the arriving and departing snow coaches. But even that didn't affect the aurora.

The aurora got started before we got up there. And they were way better than what we had seen the night before.

Again, this is just me holding my phone. Astonishing!

The aurora went on like this for quite a while. The auroras were lighting up the horizon. I remember wondering to Mrs. Notthat what it would be like to actually be under the aurora. We took several breaks in the warming huts, and finally went out for one last look before catching a snow coach back down. 

You'll never guess what happened next.

The aurora went right over the top of us!

It was spectacular. People were gasping. Shutters were furiously clicking. I took this video, starting at one horizon and panning straight overhead to the other horizon.

The people with proper cameras got amazing shots, but what I managed with my phone were only a small bit short of amazing. After half an hour or so, the aurora calmed down and suddenly the wind was REALLY cold and it was REALLY late and we managed to catch a snow coach back down. I thought it would be nice to ride in the back this time and let someone else get to sit up front. 

I was an idiot.

The ride in the back going down the mountain was remarkably uncomfortable. We were all sliding on the seats towards the front, squishing the people at the front. I spent the ride down desperately trying to brace myself so I didn't completely flatten the poor person to my left. That ride took forever (these things are not fast, and even if they were, they couldn't go very fast due to the roughness of the trail). We were so happy to finally make it back to the resort.

The next morning, during our next Dennis lecture, he said that on a scale of 1-10, what we had seen two nights ago he would rate at about a two. What we had seen last night though, was an easy nine. It was truly remarkable that we were in the right place in the right conditions. We would see some aurora on other nights, but nothing would match what we had seen that night. 

The rest of our stay there was spent catching up on sleep and doing some other activities. The resort uses the hot springs not just for recreational swimming, but to generate their electricity, heat all the buildings, and heat the enclosed gardens where they grow most of the fresh produce served in the restaurant. 

The plants all grow using hydroponics - no dirt is involved!

Next we toured their Ice Castle.

More astonishing ice sculptures.

The ice bar. What would an ice bar use to serve their drinks in?


One of the coolest things was that they made martini glasses out of ice. Here is a link to a video showing one being made.

The ice martini glasses are not proper souvenirs since they, well, are just ice. So the tradition is to smash them out front.

It was so weird to see all these shattered ice martini glasses from previous shatterings. It really looked like bits of glass all over the place.

The highlight of the next day was a ride in a dog sled.

This was not nearly as comfortable as it looks. Still, pretty cool!


The ride itself was a lot rougher than I had expected, and it was a bit wild how we would slide around corners. All in all, I'm glad I can say I did that but I did not feel like I wanted to take a second lap. After we had all gotten our rides, we got to go pet the dogs. 

It was a lot of fun wandering around and petting all these dogs!

Mrs Notthat petting a couple of our sled dogs.

And that's about it. The next day we took a bus back to the hotel in Fairbanks, then the next day we got up wildly early to fly back to Seattle. 


This was a once in a lifetime trip. We were so fortunate to have such a spectacular aurora display - it's not uncommon to have trips like this only see minor displays. It made things so much better to be part of a group - not having to deal with rental cars and getting the lectures and tours were such huge bonuses.

At Chena - the owner likes to collect aircraft and fire engines.

Of course there were issues that came up (Alaska Airlines did remarkably poorly at handling a group, there were some minor bus issues, and a few other things that happened), but Rick was great at keeping everything on an even keel. I would not hesitate to recommend Melita Trips for this tour.

A huge thanks to him and Eileen for making this all fun, and Dennis for the education!

That's it - move along…

PS: One interesting thing - it only snowed on us once, and it was pretty light and on the next to last day there. We did have an abundance of cold though.

PPS: I just assumed that Alaska in general was mostly a fairly high elevation. It turns out that Fairbanks sits a bit below 500 feet. MUCH lower than I would have expected.