June 4 2016: Oksanna makes three!

After yesterday's lesson with the tram, I doubled down on the decision not to try anything even a little risky to get the rangers down to the sites. That was about when Mark called about bringing down the one he worked on this winter (the New Ranger). I decided that we needed it on the beach as a back up to go out and rescue the other one if the tide was lapping at its stuck tracts. It would have to be a dire situation because just putting a ranger into that mud even once gives the mud a chance to work its dark magic on the go-around bits in the wheels of the ranger, creating corrosion havoc. It's a difficult (and expensive) job to vanquish that dark magic, so we try not to incur that expense for more than one machine per season.

When Mark called to let me know that he was bringing down the New Ranger, I asked him to make a second trip to bring down the Friendly Ranger as well. He gave me some important news about the New Ranger. If it runs out of gas, it is very hard to get started again. So hard that it requires some compressed air. A garden hose with a cloth on the end that you blow through will be enough to both get it started and to keep the gas out of the blower's mouth. My mental note went: Don't Run the New Ranger Out of Gas.

Oksanna's flight wasn't scheduled to come in until 6:20 PM. Inku was sick enough that he didn't go work for Phil for the day with Matt as he had planned. Matt learned to swab the deck and scrub the hull; Inku laid low and tried to get better. We pulled out the Tang to hasten that recovery process. Jean and I spent the day sorting out the crew cabin, putting away the 4 BIG BARRELS of food that critters or condensation might have ruined over the winter. I do hope we get through more of the canned food - and frozen food - than we did last year. We also made the first batch of survival bread, from the Cornell University recipe, reputed to be a complete protein. This activity, of course, requires the production of survival cinnamon rolls. Mmmmm.

Here is how Jean got kind of a raw deal. I do know about her that if something is dirty or disorderly, she just can't help herself. She has to fix it. When she has come up in the past, it's been at the end of the season. Our primary interaction with the crew cabin has been to get the food off the shelves, turning over any empty containers (not wanting to find a colony of dead lemmings in them the next spring), emptying out any water (not wanting to find any floating drowned lemmings), and adding rice to containers of canned goods to prevent rusting due to condensation over the winter. She hasn't had to think about people eating off plates that are resting on those shelves. She did have to think about that in my cabin... and she did something about it. But over there, why change the paper and clean the shelves so the mice and lemmings would have a nice, clean surface to dirty? (Probably assuming that we would do that ourselves in the spring. Ahem.) It's a different story at the beginning of the season. She put a few things away on the shelves... and then she saw their condition. Then she looked over at the shelves to the left. You could almost see the horror building in her mind. And so the cleaning fury started, and continued for a couple of days.

She tore herself away at about 4 pm so we would have time to take the four-wheeler to the truck at the top of the Beach Access Road (keeping it safe from the tide), get to AGS, and get the Friendly Ranger started and into an obvious location for Mark to pick up and bring down to the end of the Beach Access Road. We would then borrow Phil's car and go collect Oksanna. Starting the ranger wasn't as easy as I'd hoped. And we had it running just the other day! Grind, grind, grind... nothing. Grind, grind, grind... nothing. Finally, we gave up with a plan to ask Mark to come and figure out what was wrong and then bring it down. As we walked away, Jean commented that the light was on. The light was on? The light shouldn't be on. There are two separate switches: one for the light, one for the ignition. Could it be? Did I do that? Let's check. Oh. Yeah. Ranger starts! Yay! Sigh.

The sky was so beautiful and dramatic as we drove to King Salmon, though we did wonder how that translated into the quality of Oksanna's flight.

I don't think I've been giving credit, but I want to make it clear that Jean has been the photographer for most if not all of the photos so far this year. This one is on the way to King Salmon as we are passing the city dock. It was beautiful, clear, and sunny behind us; dark and ominous in front. The colorful container vans stacked up on the left side of the road were vibrant with the sun striking them on one side, set against the dark clouds behind them. To the right is the dock itself which unloads the big container ships that make it up the Naknek river after spring break-up. (Though this year, they didn't have to wait for break-up because the river didn't freeze.)

This shot is just a little beyond the city dock, as we're approaching Leader Creek, where Silver Bay and Phil's car live. To the left is the Shire, a sandwich shop with very limited hours and delicious sub sandwiches. Jean and I both loved the way the sun reflected off the wires running across the road, again, set off against the dark sky behind.

Something must be going around that got both Inku and Phil. He felt so sick he just left the keys in his fun-mobile to make the swap easy without having to get out of bed. But we were running late anyway. Luckily, Oksanna's flight was even later so we were there to meet her when she arrived. And we still had a chance to be tourists in King Salmon.

Oksanna arrived with her luggage. There are now three new crew members! We bundled into the Tercel and headed back to Phil's to swap for ol' Red. When we were at AGS prior to the trip to King Salmon, dinner had just started. I was a little self-conscious making the loud ranger noises during dinner. It took me several years to understand the meaning of lunch and dinner for the people who work at the processing plants. They work 7 days a week from 8 am to 9 pm from the end of April to the end of July. That's a long pull. How do they manage? That's where lunch and dinner come in: they get one hour for each meal. They spend the first 5 minutes inhaling their meal and then go lie down and power nap for 20 to 30 minutes. Then they take up their position for another few hours before getting another break. Those power naps are very important for their well-being and the reason everything stops at meal time and the reason it's rude to make much noise during those hours. We had brought the tram into AGS to see if Roy and his crew could repair it. Roy was in Egegik dealing with a propane emergency, but Jerry, Joe, and Landon were there. They were willing to try. They were very kind about it, which was a good thing because I was still pretty bruised about such a potentially disastrous event.

One of the things we shipped up on the March barge (which, by the way, was one of the ships to offload at the city dock in the earlier photos) was a new tire and two new rims for the Suzuki Carry. One of the old rims was ruined last year, putting the Carry out of business for the season. I dropped the tires and rims off at Roy's shop and they quickly assembled them. So at the same time we dropped off the tram, we picked up the ready tires. We decided to stop by at the Carry to see if we could get the new tire on, but we couldn't find a jack. Walk down to the shop and borrow a jack? Or drive the Carry down to do it there. Sold! But... the battery was dead. Aha! I have a portable battery in the net locker. Remember when I suspected that we did have power in the net locker because I could see a green light? It was on that portable battery. Hauled it over and ta daaa, the Carry started up. Jean stayed with the dogs in the truck while Oksanna and I took the Carry down to get the tire changed. The jack was the easy part. Landon tried to mount the new tire and although the bolt pattern was right, the holes for the bolts to go through were too small. So he and Joe set to making those holes larger, first drilling a piece of scrap aluminum to be sure that the resulting hole would work. Smart idea. They got it to fit... and they also worked on the new spare so if we did need it, we would be able to use it.

Through the whole extended process of getting the Carry into service, Jean kept the dogs in the truck. It had started to rain... well, pour... and Oksanna began to worry about her backpack in the back of the truck. So she joined the group in ol' Red. While waiting, Jean snapped these photos of the patient dogs.

I think they are getting quite a workout here. When they aren't running around, climbing the cliffs, or begging for food, they sleep.

While the dogs slept and Jean and Oksanna waited, I took advantage of Landon's expertise as an autobody guy to ask about the tailgate. He and Joe came up to look at it and without any hesitation pronounced "Toast."

Then he started thinking about it a bit more and wondered if he might be able to take that big dent out of it by running over it with a truck. Yeah, my tailgate - the best part of ol' Red's body - was so bad the only way to improve it that we could think of was to run over it with a truck. Sigh.

Oksanna drove ol' Red down the Beach Access Road and I followed in the fully functioning Carry! After parking the Carry, we all piled into ol' Red for the final leg of the journey to the cabin. After settling Oksanna in, Jean and I, joined by the dogs, took ol' Red back to the turn around at the end of the Beach Access Road to keep it safe from the increasingly high tides. Ollie is an adventurer.

I kind of think his self-image is part wolf/ part dolphin/ part Greyhound. When he is near the water, he can't seem to resist wandering in and swimming around. It's a little scary sometimes. I even heard myself warn him, "Don't make me come in and get you..." Jean and I were on the four-wheeler on the way back. We didn't drive fast and the dogs were keeping up. But Ollie kept running in front of us until we finally got the hint. We stopped and Jean scooped him up, holding him between us. She said that he didn't move a muscle.

He was cold, tired, and shivering by the time we got home. Time for bed!