Christoffer

This is Christoffer with his new sled. He has been "breaking it in" this past week.

Last hockey game of the season

Sunday night a hockey puck did this. We were all sitting on the bench between periods 1 & 2. I took off my helmet because it was hot. The goalie was standing by the boards and another player was on the ice shooting some puck toward the goalie. One shot went over the boards and i stopped it with my forehead. The cut was superglued at the emergency room.

Start-up of Plant 2

Here are a few photos for my friends at the ISLAND up north. Some of you may remember that plant 2 was shut down. These photos prove that urea is going to the #2 warehouse. Since the ice incident earlier this winter the coastgaurd has not allowed as many ships up the inlet, so we are now storing some product in the old warehouse too.

The conveyor belt came from a north road gravel pit. A dumpster is sitting on top of it. Scaffolding supports the corners. Some slanted plywood inside the dumpster directs the granules toward the middle. Quite the operation!

Tournament Time

We had a great time in Fairbanks for the Bantam tournament. The boys did very good, coming in 2nd place out of nine teams. You can see the score before the start of the 3rd period to the right of the top photo. Unfortunately, the score was the same at the end of the period. This is the Big Dipper rink in Fairbanks and it is great place for a championship game. The ceiling is mirrors. Above each goalie on each end, you can stand at the glass windows and see the game. There are trophy cases on the top floor with trophies and photos going back to the early 1900's. My favourite picture is one of some ladies on the ice with long dresses and hockey sticks in their hands and ice skates on their feet.

Chena Hot Springs

We took a 50 mile trip to the hot springs after the friday game. It was windy and below zero at the time of the photos. You can see the icicles hanging from Ian's hair.


In the bottom picture we are all in the big pool. I wish i had not missed an earlier photo op. There were about 5 middle aged women with hair that was white from the frost. They looked much older.

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.

Couch Photos

Here are a few family couch potatoes, i mean couch photos you might want to see.

The Quick Apartment

Augustine Volcanoe

Here are a couple of articles from ADN.com (Anchorage Daily News) and a photo that was taken recently of Augustine Volcanoe.
How ready is the peninsula to deal with a major eruption?

section : alaska wire
last updated : January 1‚ 2006
Augustine will erupt soon, experts say

Christmas in Washington

Here are some photos especially for Holly in Perth. We spent Christmas with the Quicks at Sun Mountain Lodge in the Cascade Mountains of Washington. Also some pictures in Seattle.

St. Augustine Volcanoe

St. Augustine is showing a little more activity recently. You can see the steam and smoke plume in this satellite photo. In 1976 it left a coating of tan ash over all the snow. The colors seemed like sunrise or sunset outside. Maybe someday i will find an old photo to add to this.
Here is a link to a live webcam that is set up near Homer. You can see the Homer spit if you are familiar with the Kenai Peninsula. Nikiski where we live is near the top middle of the photo.

Dinner with a Perfect Stranger

This is a clever little book about what it would be like to have dinner with Jesus. It only took a few nights the read thru 100 pages. Here is the website with discussion questions.
Below is a little synopsis of the story.

What Would You Discuss. . .
Over Dinner with Jesus?

That’s the dilemma facing cynical but successful businessman Nick Cominsky when he accepts an invitation to join Jesus of Nazareth for dinner at a local restaurant. Nick is convinced that his friends at work are pulling a prank. But the man sitting across from him appears to be quite serious, introducing Himself as “Jesus. My family called me Yeshua.”

Nick accepts his dinner companion’s suggestion to suspend his disbelief and “proceed as if I am Jesus.” What follows is a fascinating conversation that covers family relationships, world religions, and the afterlife, among other topics. Along the way, Nick confronts his own unfulfilled longings, spiritual uncertainties, and anger with God and he begins to wonder if the man across from him holds the answers to his deepest questions.

Merry Christmas 2005

Dear Family and Friends, MERRY CHRISTMAS 2005

Lois Ann has finished all of the cards and paper and she has been telling me to get busy and finish this annual letter. Tonight kids hockey practice was cancelled due to unseasonably warm weather and also Wednesday bible study was cancelled because the rain has turned the backroads into ice rinks. So we have some free time tonight.

We are thankful once again for another very good year. It started out looking like my job would be ending about now because of a lack of gas to run the ammonia and urea plants. Now they are getting gas supplied for a year at a time from many companies, and recently they announced they are looking for partners to possibly build a coal gasification plant to supply feedstock to us and generate electricity for the peninsula and Anchorage. I worked tons of overtime this year just in case the job was ending.

Lois Ann even worked this summer with some friends in the office of Ocean Beauty, a local wild salmon processing plant. (Wild Salmon are better than farmed salmon.) She had a lot of fun. Now she is back at the elementary school as a secretary again.

Heidi and John Quick came up to Alaska for the summer. John finished college with some online courses as well as both of them working. It was nice to have them around. Johns dad Chuck was able to come up for about a week near the end of summer and we showed him part of Alaska. In August we went to Minnesota and Iowa for a little over a week. It was a quick but fun trip. John is on staff with Young Life and Heidi is working at a Montessori school and helps with Young Life.

Christoffer was up in Anchorage helping to electrify Elmendorf Air Base for the first half of the year. He joined us on some hikes and golfing several times. Recently he worked for a month in Kotzebue up in NW Alaska, had a couple of days off, and worked for 6 straight weeks at Pogo Mine east of Fairbanks and Delta Junction. He was here for a week at Thanksgiving time. Now he is back at Pogo until we go together to visit Heidi and John for Christmas.

Holly was here for a little over half the year. Lois and Holly went to see Heidi and John in Seattle in the spring. In August she went to live in Perth, Australia. She is working in a coffee shop that is run by YWAM (Youth With A Mission). She is happy and enjoying summer very much. Also Amy her cousin just arrived there about a week ago.

We hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year. God Bless You

The Stynsbergs

PS. Please see photos and leave some comments on the blogs:

www.marksalaska.blogspot.com and www.theeroundrobin.blogspot.com

Jack Frost