Unbelieveing

That's a word my French speaking friend Jacque Lizin made up to describe the wonders of Alaska. So this morning that was about the best word I could find to describe how bright the Northern Lights were. It's by far the best I've seen on the Peninsula and rivaled the night Chrisco and I drove our Snow Machines home from the Petersville Roadhouse at 2 a.m. without our headlights on. Something strangely humbling about seeing the sky move....

I love this pocket camera I have. It's actually my second Lumix dmc-fh25, I dropped one in the sand a couple years back so I have a replacement as well as a new waterproof Lumix that I can't wait to use in Mexico. I always have the camera set at " Intelligent Automatic'...that kinda describes my life. But this morning with the Aurora just a burning up the sky I found the pre set features and settled into the 'Starry Night" mode . I set the camera on the tripod and hit the 1 minute choice and Walla....I think I not only hit homer but maybe a grand slam.

The Camera has a Leica lens and I think for a pocket camera that makes the deal. I'll put these two pics onto my picture program and do some manipulating and should be able to enhance them some.

It's been cold and crisp here at Mile 14, 11 degrees when we went to the gym yesterday morning. So it's perfect weather to frame the beauty of Alaska. My old friend Jimmy Taylor is a camera expert and these are the kind of sunsets he captures for all his friends.

Once again as hard as I try it looks like I won't make my goal of 185 pounds before Mazatlan. Right now I'm at exactly 190 with ten days to go....I know the way. I've been walking 2 hours everyday for a total of at least 5 miles. I'm keeping my calories down to about 2000, give or take a cocktail or two....But ya know the deal with goals is this, ya gotta have em, ya can't hit without swinging. Here's pic of me this morning at our new gym.

It's called  the River City Wellness Center and boy howdy did the owners spend some lettuce on equipment. It's as nice as any gym we find in our travels. It really illustrates how it's going in our town as it matures into a city...It's long ways from the dirt road's of  Soldotna I found 45 years ago.

I don't want to bore you with big long drawn out opinion piece about our recent Alaska Board of Fisheries meeting here in Soldotna, I'll let Craig Medred do that for me, here's a link to his on-line newspaper. He has two articles of interest for us sport fishing folks . One is 'Disorderly and Safe' and the other ' Counting Big Salmon'.....https://craigmedred.news/  I especially like the remarks, they say a lot. You see Craig Medred was fired from the Alaska Dispatch News for shining the light on a Board of  Fisheries appointee who was / is  a cheat claiming residency in two states so he could kill more stuff cheaper than a non-resident. The owner of the paper didn't want Craig to run the story and embarrass the new Governor by pointing how crooked the B,O,F. process looks sometimes....well guess who I sat next to at this meeting ? Yup, same guy, still peddling influence, still grappling to hold onto the past like all commercial fishermen.

In the Medred article you'll see that the board  entertained an agenda change request and then debated their own proposal to limit boat size in the dip net fishery, out of  'safety' concerns. But when you give it the old sniff test you see that it's just a left handed way to limit harvest by the people of Alaska so the the salmon can be harvested commercially, by a minority.  Good work Craig !

This came across the Internet and I got a hardy chuckle. I tell people that when I was in elementary school that I was actually educated by the janitors because they moved my desk out into the hall so often. So please come back to Mile 14....where I'm going soon there's gonna be plenty of interesting people to talk to and I  talk to em all, it's the way I am.