Fairbanks

Training, Tests, Tours and Trips. Things are finally really picking up. After a few training sessions, Travis and I became familiar with the motor coaches in Fairbanks. All the other guys have come up from Utah as well and we have moved into our apartment.

The first step for Travis and I was to get road tested by our division so that they knew for sure that we could drive a bus and hadn't just gotten our licenses on a fluke. After passing our road tests they gave us keys to the coaches. One key opens all the Princess coaches and another for all the Holland America coaches.

On Monday we took a familiarization trip to the Chena Hot Springs, a tourist destination for many, that we will be taking our guests to in the evenings. The Chena Hot Springs gets its power from a small geothermal power generator and uses its power for their restaurant, hotel facilities, ice museum, and green house. The also have an out-doors hot spring that is supplied by water from the hot spring.

In their green house they grow all the vegetables and herbs they need for their restaurant. During the winter they use a variety of special colored lights to help the plants grow since the sun could on shine for a couple hours of the day. They built the green house because vegetables are so expensive to import from the lower 48. However, even with vegetable cost cutting measures, they still charge an insane amount for a salad in the restaurant, so I decided I wasn't really that hungry since they didn't volunteer to feed us while we were there.

The Ice museum they have is year round. They keep it at 20 degrees but the ice still manages to shrink due to sublimation (the conversion of solid straight to gas). In the ice museum, a husband and wife, world class ice sculpting team, works full time constantly refurbishing their sculptures and making new exhibits. When they aren't working on the museum they are making martini glasses of ice for guests to use to sip their alcohol. In the museum they have a life size sculpture of two knights on horseback jousting, a samurai, venus, an igloo, and a xylophone. The xylophone is located in side of he igloo which provides for some very interesting acoustics when played. The xylophone is made completely of ice and is tuned perfectly to key. Also in the museum, are a couple of themed rooms where guest can spend the night in exchange for the deed to their house. The museum also has a bar and bar stools that are topped with caribou hide (the most insulating fur, with more hairs per square inch than any other animal). After a long hard day in -40 degree weather someone could come into the ice museum to warm up and kick back with a couple of hard ones, anything virgin would just freeze to your glass.

The Chena Hot Springs gets the majority of their guests durning the summer and dead of winter. Only the Japanese tourists come for the winter. The hot springs during the winter produce so much steam that you can only see a couple of feet in front of you, a perfect set up for playing hide-and-go-seek. Girls like to play with their wet hair in the hot springs too, when they lift it out of the water it freezes quickly in the 40 below air and becomes hard instantly. The Japanese tourists love to come during the winter because they believe it good luck to conceive under the northern lights, you don't want to run into a pair of them while playing hide-and-go-seek.

We have also become familiarized with the city tours. We take people downtown and tell the story of Fairbanks and point out and explain historical sites. Around town we take people to the trans-Alaska pipe line, the riverboat discovery, the El Dorado gold mine and the no. 8 gold dredge. We pick up and drop off people at the airport, train station and a variety of hotels around town.

I have to go now but I will try to continue this in the evening.
Stay tuned.
    

Fairbanks Alaska

Friday

As I flew into Fairbanks, I could see the frozen rivers and dead vegetation that covered the flat land. It looked so cold. South of Fairbanks there is 100 miles of marsh and bog that stretches down to the Alaska Mountain range. Most of it is still frozen, but it is beginning to melt. After I got out of the plane, I caught the shuttle to the company hotel. Travis had already checked in that morning and left his stuff to go exploring. The weather really isn’t that cold, it was about 45 degrees and I was able to get away with a light jacket. Travis later showed up with food from Fred Myer, a local grocery store, so we didn’t have to eat at the super expensive hotel restaurant.

Saturday

Travis and I began walking into town, our hotel is on the outskirt of town and we are not very near to many places. We visited UAF, University of Alaska, Fairbanks. It is the oldest largest university in Alaska, I think anyone educated wants to get out of Alaska. We tried finding used bikes for sale on campus but we could hardly find anyone, since they all sleep until 2pm on Saturdays.

We headed to an outdoors store and looked at their bikes but they were super expensive, we also caught the bus to Play it Again Sports, but their bikes were pretty expensive too. We ended up buying bikes at Wal-Mart; they had the best bike for our buck. Now armed with bicycles we were armed for some real adventure, and Travis was no longer subject to my super strong mission walking legs, but I was now at the mercy of Travis’ merciless biking legs.

We putted around town and found the stake center. The missionaries were there, getting ready for a baptism and they told us were to find the institute and what time singles ward met. 

We headed home and picked up our backpacks and rode down to the Fred Myer so we could stock up on non-perishable food that we could eat without heating, mostly sandwich stuff. We keep a little refrigerator going with the hotel ice machine, it’s great, ice is unlimited.

People in Alaska are mostly the trucker type that you would see in the mid west. Most are white and many have tattoos. We often see Indian type people who look like Samoans or Asians.

The snow is still melting and since the ground is still quite frozen, the water doesn’t go into the ground very easily and there are lots of little lakes and ponds and puddles. Only about the top 6 feet of permafrost ground melts, which also inhibits the trees from sinking roots very deep, so non of the trees are as big as they could be like in south east Alaska and Washington.

Sunday

We rode our bikes to church; it was only about 15 minutes away. Elder Gledhill from the Placentia Stake is in the singles branch as a missionary. He was very happy to see me, he says he hasn’t seen anyone from Orange County during his entire mission. The singles branch is relatively small; there were only about 50 people. Guys already out number girls and as more drivers show up for the summer, the problem will only worsen. 

The First Counselor’s daughter, Kiana, invited us to her house for Easter Dinner. We were very glad we had a place to eat real food, instead of hotel sandwiches for Easter Dinner. The Maines family is way cool, the are related to like half the stake and in their family they have many cousins and friends that are single and our age, so it was fun getting to know everyone and socializing.

Monday

We rode to work to check the place out and get a little tour of where we will be working. The seasonal training is starting off slow and doesn’t really pick up until next week so we will have plenty of time to study manuals and books about Alaska and it’s history. Travis and I visited the information center and went through the museum and its informational kiosks and booths that talked about the history of Fairbanks, the gold rush and the Indian that occupy the area.

We also visited the start/finish line for the Yukon Quest dog sled race in downtown Fairbanks. We talked to the lady at the counter in the gift shop and pestered her with all our dog sled questions. She being a musher herself, with no other customers to attend gladly entertained our queries, and told us all she knew about being a musher and building a dog sled team. Travis related everything she would tell us about training her dogs to his triathlon experience and she fed off his sports enthusiasm and went on to tell us more and more about the proper feeding and training of sled dogs.

After Travis quenched his sports/exercise passion, we visited Pioneer Park where many of the original pioneer cabins have been relocated to create a little tourist park with activities to do in each cabin. Each cabin has a little gift shop or restaurant to sell their overpriced tourist nick knacks that the golden generation loves to spend their 401K plans on. One of the cabins has a 40 degree below freezer where people can dress up in Eskimo pants and jackets and go into and have their picture taken. The old people just love stuff like that.

After our full day of tourism, we went to FHE with some of the people in the ward. Our FHE activity was a picture scavenger hunt at UAF. After FHE we had root beer floats and talked. One of the girls at FHE is from Nome, Alaska, and she was telling us how it never gets above 50 or 60 degrees in the summer and their houses are built on stilts so that they don’t melt the permafrost and destroy the foundation for their own homes.

(For economists only)

I was trying to ask about what they export to be able to be able to pay for all their imported food. She didn’t know much about economics and was convinced that they all make money for food by working at the gas station, hospital and things like that. I was trying to help her understand that you could just all work serving each other and still import food without getting money from exports to pay for the imports. She wasn’t really getting what I was talking about, but after a bit more of talking about her city Nome, it became clear that they got all their money from the government to pay for the food. The Indians in the near by villages have their allotment of money and they quickly spend it on food and alcohol, thus propelling the little economy of Nome. Other Government facilities, the hospital, jail and safe house also pump government money into the population’s pockets so that they can continue servicing the drunk Indians and buy their food. (All quite interesting from my view point)    

Tuesday

Today we went into work, visited with some more people, and found out our schedule for team driving to get to know some of the different coaches we will be driving here in Fairbanks. Also to day we spent a good amount of time going over tour material and reading up on Alaska history. Tonight we have a guest speaker that will be talking on the Alaska pipeline. It should be lots of fun.

I’ll keep you all posted on our going-ons here in Fairbanks. If you have any questions about Alaska and such, feel free to ask and I will address them in my next update. 

The Adventure Begins

This semester has been rough, I had some econ classes that kicked my trash but they are over now and I have learned my lesson to avoid an econ major. My real estate development class, however, was very fun. We had final presentations on Tuesday night. Our group of four, doing an evaluation on The Edgemont Plaza, (Canyon road, a couple blocks from where the Shumways live) was voted the best project and presentation. Our teacher concurred and openly admitted to the class that we not only blew them all out of the water but we did better than any group to do an evaluation on the Edgemont Plaza in the last five years.

Travis and I packed our things and finished finals on Wednesday in order to leave that evening at six O’clock. We got a ride from the ride board to Seattle where we will be flying to Fairbanks, Alaska for the summer. We rode with Lindsay and Adam in her Mazda Tribute, a crossover. They are dating and are in the same major and all the same classes so they know each other very well and talked and listened to music the entire way while Travis and I tried to make ourselves somewhat comfortable and sleep a little. We drove through the night and arrived in Seattle at about 8 AM Pacific time.

During the entire ride it rained, and through the Snoqualmie Pass and the Blue Mountains it snowed, and for a bit in the Blue Mountains we hit some very thick fog.

They dropped us off at the airport and from there we got a shuttle to a near-by inn and dropped our things of and then we caught the light rail to downtown Seattle to go exploring. We went to the Klondike Gold Rush Museum, visited Pioneer Square, and walked along the wharf on the harbor. We walked through pikes market where we got a sample of smoked salmon, and saw many other exciting shops. We passed by Nordstrom’s, where Mr. Nordstrom started his company as a shoe business. We visited the Space Needle and saw the International fountain and the key arena where Seattle’s basketball team used to play.  Basically, we ran all around downtown trying to see any thing interesting or cool.

For lunch, we were passing a restaurant that said Chinese buffet $8, so we decided to check it out. The buffet hours were almost over so there was not much left so they said they would charge us half price and it was a done deal. Travis and I cleaned out the rest of the buffet until we were stuffed and not even we could finish it all off. Their sweet and sour sauce was supper good, it was totally natural, not the nasty orange-red stuff that comes with Panda Express. We could actually taste the honey that they put in their sauce to make it sweet - it was so good.

 The Skyline of Seattle from the light rail

Travis and I riding in the light rail to downtown from the airport

The Klondike Gold Rush Museum we visited 

Pioneer Square, and the entrance to the underground city of Seattle 

One of the sea food stores at Pike's Market

One of the glass blowers at work

The international fountain and a bunch of kids playing in it even

though it is 45 degrees out side. But hey, it's sunny so they are happy.

The Seattle space needle

The Seattle space needle

Travis and I had fun running all over Seattle and now we are headed to Fairbanks to day. Travis flew out this morning at 6 and I am flying out at 1:50 pm today. 

My Semester < Poke in Eye with Sharp Stick

This semester is really getting crazy now, group projects, essays, midterms, homework, mock interviews, job training, snowboarding and social life are all keeping me very busy. On the bright side I can't say my life is boring.

Classes

• Real Estate Development - very fun, no textbook, no tests, killer group projects and insanely educational. Right now we are working on an apartment complex acquisition seeing if it could be profitable and how much we could theoretically make on the deal. The class is very financially oriented and touches on a lot of the due diligence aspects and the creative options we have in real estate. 
• Macro Econ - The class lectures are fun, but I'm not looking forward to the midterm this weekend, I've heard it's a killer. There are only three questions so it'll be kind of like The Mouse who Roared. 
• Micro Econ - The lectures are death on a stick, I copy down all the math that our teacher puts up on the board and hope to make sense out of it later. The midterm I took last weekend for the class didn't seem too bad, but of course that's probably because I haven't gotten my score back yet.
• Management Communications (business english on steroids)  - Class is all right, the essays are a pain, especially because I still haven't gotten any back yet so I don't know how to improve yet. Today we had mock interviews so that made sure my day would be a tad more stressful than usual, but I don't think I did too bad. 
• Entrepreneur lecture series - It's pretty fun but the assignments are small and I often for get about them till the last minute so they become, not hard to do but hard to keep track of.
• Career Preparation - Same problem with the assignment as the lecture series class except the lectures really are boring.
• Mentor Program - "What? Oh man! I almost forgot I was signed up for that class." We never have class, there is an assignment to do once a month and I have to meet with my mentor periodically to talk to him and find out more about the industry he works in. My mentor is Jim Hill, he graduated in econ, got a MBA and works with East West Partners doing real estate development projects in Park City, Utah for the ski resorts. 
• New Testament - It isn't really not bad, I just have to keep up with the reading in the scriptures and the manual. The midterm was small potatoes, and the teacher does a good job teaching, he is a bit dry but he makes an effort at being funny and the effort is funnier than his humor.  

Job

• Cody, Travis, and I will be working in Fairbanks, Ak from April 25 to August 25. 
• Two weeks ago we had an all day training session to start things off and since then we have one on one trainings with our trainers and the busses at 7 Peaks parking lot.
• By this week I will need to have gotten my CDL permit so I can continue the training. That translates into another test I need to study for and take. 
• The bus training is pretty fun, I learned to parallel park a bus, no small feat, and I have learned all about the pre-trip inspection I will have to be doing every day this summer, (note to self, test not that tomorrow, do some more study). 

Snowboarding

• Every time I think of something that might be fun to do with my time, I compare it to snowboarding. The slopes somehow always win my mental debate. 
• It is pretty time consuming and rewarding. I have lots of fun and am a lot better. 
• I don't think I'll be able to do it next year because classes are really ramping up and then there is that other desire of getting married that becomes more and more prominent as my college transcript's credit hours keep rising. 

Girls

• Oh Yea! Girls! I almost for got about them, it seems like my plate isn't big enough. As I keep piling things on top stuff keeps falling off the sides. 
• I have gone on a couple of dates recently but I'm not nearly as good about going on dates as I was last semester.
• I definitely need to turn this around. 

Well, I hope I haven't bored my audience. Since my M comm teacher says I always need to know my audience I have included some picture below and a video I made of Cody, myself and friends snowboarding. Look in the still photos to recognize our faces so you can tell who we are when we are in the air and can't see our faces. All of the footage is a few weeks old so we don't really land many if any of our jumps yet. I put the video to come cool music so turn your speakers on as well. 

On a date we went to the nickel-kade and we got these

 fake mustaches so we had to take picture afterward.

Cody, Travis and I gouged our selves on tacos at

Del Taco on taco night tuesday.

David: 18, Cody: 21, Travis: 30

The Canyons video

I finally took the time to learn how to use my 

mac's video editing software now that I had some

footage to edit. It wasn't hard at all to learn and it's fun.

New Semester and Tons of Fun

This semester is going to plan out pretty nicely. I have a Real Estate Development class that's going to very fun and educational. My Business writing class is going to be challenging, writing really isn't my thing that's why I'm going to need to work hard at it and learn. My Macro Econ and my Micro Econ classes are very fun and challenging, they both have a lot of calculous, and I haven't done that since 2007, and now it's like 2011, that's 4 years ago! My New Testament class will be fun, the teacher seems pretty reserved but then he goes out of his way to make a dumb joke and that livens things up. Unfortunately this semester won't be a breeze but it'll be good.

Now onto the main attraction, Cody and I are tearing it up on the slopes of The Canyons! We have been doing jumps and hitting the powder in the trees. We go once, and sometimes twice a week if we get a chance and don't have too much home work. There are a few girls and another guy in our ward that has a pass to the canyons. We meet it up with then and have a bunch of fun together.

Sometimes we bring our lunches with us so that we don't have to go back down to the car to get them and loose time boarding. It usually works out all right but often times our sandwiches get all smashed up but they're good any ways.

Cody, Travis and I are still planning on working this summer in Alaska as tour bus drivers. Our trainings start in late January, and everything seems to be on track as planned. We still don't know too much about lodging while we are up there but we aren't too worried.

College is great and I'm definitely enjoying the my studies and the freedom I have to go snowboarding all the time.

-David Hatch

I've Done It! I've Done It!

I've had an amazing weekend. Not to gloat but I got all my homework done on Friday morning so I have disfrutado of the rest of the weekend. I had a wonderful little visit with Annette on Saturday and I got to see her nice little house she is living at now with Charles. (the have an amazing christmas tree)
Durning the week I saw the BYU philharmonic, it was just divine, they played the Planets, I loved seeing all of the violins just playing in harmony with one another. I'd recommend it to all and any. Also on Friday Charles gave me tickets to see the BYU Percussion. His cousin accompanied me, it was so much fun. On Saturday Cody, Travis and I did a triple. They were "tie dates" girls in the ward choose a tie at random and we took them on a date and they did three acts of secret service for us. It was lots of fun, we did paratroopers and paper airplanes in the tanner building. And got frozen yogurt afterwards. (20% off on saturdays if your on a date!)


This weeks BYU New Mexico game was awesome, except all the lame penalty yards, I'm really hoping against hope that we win our next weeks game against the utes. It's going to get a little crazy! 


On Saturday we, our Elders Quorum, got to winterize all the girl's cars in our ward and we cleaned their windows, it was a great project and we had lots of fun.


Now I must comment on how amazing Harry Potter was, I really loved it, they didn't cut out too much but unfortunately they added a little unnecessary stuff.   


Today we cooked Carne Asada for our FHE sisters, they loved it and it was so much fun to cook with them all. Cody out did himself with the salsa and I went all out on the meat and our sisters made some amazing guacamole. (they're from the south they know how to cook) And we are looking forward to some good funnel cake tonight.


I just had to get this update out there, sorry I'm not nearly as creative as Amanda and I will never live up to the a famed Brooke Wilson Blog, but that just so I don't keep anyone in the dark. 

General Conference

A week ago Friday I found my self in a very difficult spot. Cody and I had a double date planned and still had not met anyone new to ask out on a date. So as to not let Cody down I went door to door talking to girls in our apartment complex till I met a girl I wanted to ask out on a date. The next evening our date went well, we played penny golf in the SWKT and Rummy cube then enjoyed Smores together. 


This week I studied a bit for an accounting 310 test for two and a half hours and then proceeded to take it. I didn't want to get too tired from studying so I just took it. I got an A, I was appalled that I missed two questions, oh well, better luck next time. 


Today I got to enjoy an amazing general conference. A (the) girl from my Doctrine and Covenants class invited me over to have crepes before the morning session. So I suggested that my cousins come as well. It was way fun getting to know her roommates and friends. I was in charge of making the crepes, they turned out perfect and tasted great. Between the sessions we played games and one of her roommates wanted to play chess with me, she had a great learning experience. It was lots of fun.


Priesthood session was incredible! Some how I don't think the written version of those talks will do. President Monson's was so animated, Elder Uceda was very personal with the fathers, Elder Kearson was incredibly powerful, Elder Uchtdorf was remarkably adamant. I thought the session was just so powerful and direct. I loved It!