Rain. Yeah, that wet stuff from the sky. I think I would get sick of it if I lived up here year round. I discovered a small leak in one of the translucent panels in my apartment. This was not good news to Andy, who had earlier today discovered a septic drainage issue. Apparently the septic system is leaching above ground a bit, especially with all the recent rain. Bizarrely, the septic tank is up the hill from the house. This makes little sense except for the fact that the well is located in what would normally be the prime spot down the hill from the house.

Matt only had to work an hour or so today, so after that he took me for a tour of his Coast Guard base. Matt is on the CG Cutter Storis, the oldest ship in the CG fleet I believe. It’s old but it has a nice feel to it, quite a bit smaller than his previous ship the Alex Haley. As I mentioned previously, they are both a marine port as well as an airbase. They fly a number of C-130 cargo planes out from here, as well as a bunch of HH-60s and HH-65s (my absolute favorite) helicoptors. Matt knew a 60 (the Jay Hawk) pilot who he was also on the Haley with many years ago.

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Matt let me use his truck today, so I could get out and explore a bit while he worked a longer day. So I dropped him off on the Coast Guard base and headed back into town. Took a look and some nick-knack shops and picked up a few souvenirs and then headed to the recently built Alutiiq Museum. The Alutiiqs are the natives of this island, somewhat related to the Aleuts, Eyaks, and other regional natives. It was a small but interesting little museum with displays on their 7,500 year existence and the various hardships they’ve faced. Having a predominently orally based tradition with imperialism intermittently oppressing their customs has required them to use archelogy to discover their true roots.

Then I grabbed some lunch and headed to the Baranov Museum. The Baranovs were the family of the chief of the Russia-American Company, the settlement mangement agency that ran the Russian “occuption” of all of Alaska. It is located in the building that originally housed the fur and goods warehouse for the RAC, and is the oldest Russian building still standing in the US. It was pretty cool, I’m pretty sure Matt would love it.

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The clouds rolled in today, not of the rain variety fortunately. I spent the morning blogging, catching up on email, and attempting to do some music before discovering that my copy of Reason has deauthorized itself.  *grrr*  Matt had to work so I met up with him at about 2 pm. With the kayaks still on the roof rack, we headed to the other of the island with the intention of throwing a frisbee around. But as the day progressed, the temperature dropped and by the time we reached our first stop, a nice black beach, the wind / windchill made it fairly impractical.

So it pretty much became a driving tour. We did get out at one place and expore a bit. We only barely missed being chased off a hill by some buffalo. Then we traveled to another beach located next to a Missile Defense site and headed back. On the way back it started to drizzle, and it has been raining off and on ever since. Andy and Betsy had their own dinner plans, so we ordered pizza and watched the Bourne Identity. Sort of a chill day.

Forced myself to sleep in today. My body is attempting to get up at a reasonably late time for itself, about 8 am local which is noon at home. But in an attempt to adjust my body’s clock I’m trying to sleep in. Unfortunately, once I sleep beyond what my body “recommends” then I sleep for another 4 hours or so, so I got up around 12:30 today. But that was alright because Matt was working today until about 2 pm. So I just hung out at the house, posting to my blog and watched a really fantastic David Attenborough ocean documentary called The Blue Planet.

Once Matt got home we started planning to go kayaking. There were short lived plans to play Ultimate Frisbee instead, but not enough participants materialized. So off we went with Matt’s two very nice sea kayaks. We put them in the water at a fairly secluded little beach, and started paddling around the shoreline. We saw a large congregation of seabirds out in the middle of the bay which Matt thought could indicate a whale’s presence. So we headed for that but saw nothing once we arrived, just a lot of gulls, puffins, and other birds that weren’t too excited to see us.

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Slept in a bit today, until around 11 local time. The apartment/room I’m staying in over the garage is pretty nice. Andy’s house is flush with skylights, including my room which has two large fiberglass panels in the roof for natural lighting. It’s pretty cool, they even let some star/moonlight in at night, although they do make a bit of noise when it rains. Fortunately for today though, the rain had subsided and sunshine was able to break through. The island looks markedly different in sunlight.

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