diomede, photography

halfway break
sea grass (or maybe sea flower?)
sky’s big when you’re up top (look hard, right in the middle of the sunbeam, those little bumps, that’s mainland Russia)
of course, once you’re up to the top of little diomede island, there’s a wall to climb.
it’s a long way to the top, if you wanna rock and roll. mr. moses knows how to rock and roll.
climb to top, climb the wall, enjoy the wind and the air clean as a whistle and the view of the USA and Russia, and the wild. and the microwave tower.
“I love smiles.” ~The Dalai Lama. I think ‘ol Dalai and Catherine would get along.
lets go home
other

Well, I survived the first week of school. Thousands have done the same, some haven’t. Lots of hard work and a few small victories, and one big victory.

Ring Theory was the hardest class I took in college, and up till now it’s been the toughest work I ever did. Dethronement happened: lesson planning has taken first place, and we’re not talking winning by a millisecond, this is an all-out Usain Bolt style annihilation. The competition wasn’t beat…there was no competition.

Head down, keep your legs moving, and don’t forget to breathe, dave.

ganbatte.

photography, stories

This is what it’s like to show up at Diomede as a new teacher at the start of the school year.

:)

weaving through construction stuff. photo courtesy Janice H.
other

You know that feeling two thirds of the way through a great movie or book when you feel the story coming together, the pieces find their places, the characters find their strides, the story picks up, things start to get good..yeah, that feeling.

I’ve got it burnin’ in my bones and man oh man does it feel good.

home sweet home

Editors note: the last post, albeit true, was a wee bit deceitful. My actual commute is a long staircase down a rocky hillside, at the very far side of the picture above, which was taken from the helicopter that dropped us five teachers at Diomede yesterday.

funny, stories

Two things here, in order of importance:

1. Robert G. is a person awesome past words. Kinda like Darla G. Well, when I say ‘kinda,’ I mean ‘exactly.’

2. I did my first stall today, under Robert G’s perfect tutelage.

‘Stall’ is flying jargon for what happens when the plane’s wings stop generating lift. Stalling on purpose is a great training maneuver for tons of reasons, while an unintentional stall is a sign of either a poor pilot or equipment failure (really bad situation: both). So, when the wings stop generating lift, the magic of flying goes away really quickly, but not as quickly as the altitude needle spins around on its dial.

The wings stop generating lift when you don’t have enough airspeed, so to do a training stall you bring the 2000lb plane to a complete stop. Zero airspeed. How do you bring an airplane to a complete and perfect stop in the middle of the air? You pull up..the plane starts to climb, and you pull up a lot more, and next thing you know the plane is pointed straight up and right around when you realize you’re pointed straight up, the plane has run out of speed.

We stopped. In the air. Three thousand five hundred feet in the air. Over the Bering Sea. DEAD STILL..for a moment. This dead stillness lasts for an incredibly short moment*. Then that moment was gone, the plane wheeled over through the sky, the sky and the ocean have switched places and now we’re falling straight down out of the sky at 100mph. Spinning, too. No bad words nor good words nor any words passed though my head, as it was too full of mindblowing dumbfounding stupefying terrifying…umm..well, all those words added up then doubled up, that’s just about right.

Robert had told me to step on the rudder away from the spin direction to straighten the plane, so I mashed the rudder pedal, and we stopped spinning. Although there’s still the falling straight down thing going on, and we’re up to 150mph.

‘So, Dave, now what you do, sometime soon here you’ll want to pull up  a bit, get ‘er back to level’ says Robert.

I pulled up a little bit, and Robert repeated himself with the addition of the word ‘more.’ I pull the yoke (airplane steering wheel), the plane levels out, I feel like my body was just squashed then turned upside down and inside out then back outside in then wrung out and plopped back into the seat, and then I realized I was grinning my face off like a one legged man who just won a butt kicking competition.

‘So, Dave, now what you do, is you do that again.’

So I did it again…

stall #2 at the "we've stopped in the middle of the air, 3500" above the bering sea' moment

*calc buffs, here’s the idea: the moment lasts for about as long as d/dx(x^2) = 0

other

Keep Your Heart Young, by Brandi Carlile

So take a picture of the one you love and put it in a locket
Go dig up your time capsule and the blueprints for your rocket
Keep in touch on a fake CB,  that same old tic-tac box
Pack your snowballs a little less tight
but in the middle still put rocks

And keep your heart young
Don’t go growing old before your time has come
You can’t take back what you have done
You gotta keep your heart young

You gotta keep your heart young
Sometimes you don’t die quick
Just like you wished you’d done
‘Though love is a loaded gun
You’ve gotta keep your heart young
You can’t take back what you have done
You gotta keep your heart young