Letter to Family and Friends

Dear Family and Friends,

Thought it would be good to keep in touch and hope you are all doing fine. We really had a great Christmas in Washington with John and Heidi and Johns family. We all went to Sun Mountain Lodge in the Cascade mountains for several days. The weather was a little on the warm side but we did manage to do some cross-country skiing, and eating, and sliding, and hot tubbing, and eating. and played pool and ping-pong. John was a good Santa and Heidi was his reindear for the opening of the Christmas presents. Some little kids at the lodge were giving John some strange looks. I guess he did not fit their vision of Santa Claus.

Of course vacations come to an end and we had to come back to work. We had a real cold snap down in the -20 range and had to shut down the plant due to a lack of gas. (Why do people need their houses so warm?) We lost the cooling water for about an hour, then later the steam tracing for a while. When we came back up a week later we spent days thawing out lines and instruments. It was cold hard dirty work, but amazingly nothing major was destroyed and start-up went OK considering the obstacles in the pipes.

We have had some wild weather swings for the month. From -20 to the mid 30's. A few days ago it rained, then dropped down to zero, and today it is raining again. Also Augustine volcanoe has been erupting from time to time! It has been interesting to follow on the internet at
http://www.avo.alaska.edu/activity/Augustine.php It last erupted in 1976 and 1986. It often erupts off and on for many months.

About a week ago a large chunk of ice in the inlet ripped a 500' tanker off the dock at Tesoro and pushed it to shore. The tides were very high. Thankfully the ship was about a third full and they were able to get it free from the mucky shore a day later.

The kids are doing fine. I guess they are not kids anymore, but we feel young enough to call them kids. Holly will be in Australia for another 4 or 5 months with YWAM. John and Heidi are working with Young Life, and Heidi is also working at a Montesorri pre-school. Christoffer is working up in Anchorage for a while until bigger jobs come up. He is about ready to get his journeyman electrician card. Lois is at the elementary school and those kids gave us both a cold. Hopefully i will be OK for a hockey tournament we have this weekend. I hope you all have a good valentines day and a good February. Check out the blogs to see photos if you want.

God Bless You all.

Mark and Lois Ann

Jack Frost, Jackson Pollack, Mother Nature

Finally getting a few days off, so trying to catch up on some blogging. Happened to catch a film about Jackson Pollack on the DISH. I like modern art, and especially the abstract patterns that he painted. His paintings look a lot like the woods with fresh snow sticking on all the branches. It was quite cold and the frost makes nice designs on our garage door.

Super Start-Up

After a tough couple of weeks of being out in the freezing cold and thawing all of the ice everywhere, we are on the start-up heater. It takes several hours of gradually heating up the Ammonia Converter. So, we are taking a well deserved rest at the end of the day.

It just keeps on pumping

After many days of thawing and starting up the plant we did not want to go back down and start all over again. The spare pump was down for maybe 36 hours with a bad shaft, and this one had no more packing. Maintenance is tightening the packing as much as they can. Thankfully they were able to fix the other pump in a little over 12 hours. This is just water.

reasons to retire

These photos are a reminder to me of how chillingly cold work can become, especially when the plant is shutdown and frozen. Yet there is a kind of beauty in all the stalagtites and stalagmites all over the quiet equipment.