Raildudes dad

5 years ago this past June our daughter took my wife snd I to Alaska for 2 weeks - 40th wedding anniversary gift (This years is 45, was supposed to go to Europe this time). Flew to Anchorage, a couple of my daughters college class mates work in Anchorage. So we ended up in Fairbanks for a few days. Driving one friends Suzuki Tracker . He is an out doors guy so the windshield had the requisite cracks LOL So we had been watching Ice Road truckers and I said I have to drive on the Dalton as long as I'm this close. So I venture out a couple miles past the end of the blacktop. I swear they surface the road with 1 inch minus rocks. I say I've gone far enough and do a y turn and head back. I look in my mirror and there's a fuel tanker closing in fast. I speed up to 50+ IIRC, faster than I travel on gravel roads here in MI. Wife and daughter both say why are you driving so fast? Ah because there's a fuel tanker closing in fast. He's getting real close by the time I get to the end of the blacktop. I get on the blacktop, hit the brakes and dive for the shoulder. Woosh he goes past, I don't think he ever took his foot off the throttle. So we go to the Carlise Trucking yard in Fairbanks. My wife takes a photo of us on the steps. Beautiful day, they had the doors open and I can hear employees talking. We walk in and introduce ourselves. Told them we watch the show and the Office Manager says you just missed Lisa, she just left for Anchorage. Turns out the Office Manager and her husband the terminal manager are from Muskegon MI 45 miles from Grand Rapids MI. I had my photo taken with a Carlise vest sitting in a dispatchers chair / desk for my memory book. You live in a beautiful area / state, we had a great time and only saw a little part. Oh by the way, we went to Too Good AK. Very interesting place LOL

Is this an engineered design? Curious question from a civil engineer. Looks impressive.

That's looks like my daughter and her dog (I thought it was her and the dog at first except they don't have a wood fence.). The dog hasn't figured out she can make it over their fence ..............yet. Her husband has a GPS collar on the dog just in case. The dog has figured out how to open up a jar of peanut butter using her paws. The little (not really so little LOL) stinker uses her paws like we do our hands

I was on the phone with a lady one day standing at the window watching a contractor putting in a new catch basin. The city was rebuilding our street. The operator of the excavator was digging the hole. I saw him "pounding" the bottom of the excavation. It wasn't totally out of character since we have a few outcrops of river ledge rock that show up from time to time. I keep talking and he keeps pounding. As I watched a big brown geyser erupts. He pounded an 18 inch long by 8 inch wide hole in the top of an 16 inch cast iron watermain. The water shot about 50-60 feet in the air until the hole filled to keep the guyser down. By the time the city isolated the break, the business across the street had their basement filled (via the sanitary line under reconstruction). The storm sewers were both over loaded and both our parking lots filled to the rocker panels of the cars. I was friends with the risk manager of the contractor. I asked him how much that little fountain cost them and their insurance company. All he would say, "you don't want to know". They were still settling claims a year later. The scary thing was he was about 5 feet from a 42" water transmission line. Both were marked properly by MISS DIG Watched a contractor clip an abandoned fire hydrant tap of a live 8 inch water main in a small town with a single water tower. The foreman tried several times unsuccessfully to pound a wooden plug into the corp. By the time the city got that isolated, the tower was almost empty. (There's a good reason to exercise your water main valves regularly)

My oldest, a girl didn't even say "by mom, see you later". The school bus door opened and she was on like a shot. My wife told her to stand on the steps for a picture, nope, that didn't happen lol. She did wave to mom as the bus drove off. Yes time fly's, it was 31 years ago, sure doesn't seem like it. She got married 2 months ago. Posted a picture on FB of me walking down the aisle with her. The caption said "I may now be a married woman, but I'll always be dad's little girl" and that she will be.

My mother's cousin and her husband moved there back in 1959 with the "59 ers" from Michigan that moved there and homesteaded. Probably lived there 30+ years until they retire to - get this - to Hawaii :). So I have 2nd cousins in the Anchorage area.