Roofing in Anchorage, Alaska

Well, I'm not roofing. But the rest of the family is currently laboring on the roof of my younger brother's house. It's Dad, JR & Molly, Jared & Sara, Christina and my wonderful husband. They've been up there since a few minutes before the shingles arrived, around 9:30 this morning, and other than a break for a quesadillas lunch that mom and I made from leftovers, they have been hard at work!!

There are a couple good things about roofing in Alaska. For one, the weather doesn't get too hot. It's warmer than normal here but still pretty comfortable, unless you are working on top of a roof in the sun, in which case it's probably a little too warm. The other nice thing is that it conveniently stays light late into the evening. We can't work all night however, because there are mandatory quiet hours. So we wrapped up phase 1 last night right before 10pm.

On the subject of lighting, it's pretty crazy to have it light so late... it actually never gets completely dark. You go to bed at dusk and even in the middle of the night (which I know well since I have to pee once or twice a night), it's bright outside! Crazy! It's nice but really throws off your idea of what time it might be. We got back to my brother's the other night at 9pm and instead of winding down for bed, we made dinner and watched a movie. You don't realize the time until you look at the clock. It's a fun thing to experience though.

Mark and I are trying to figure out how to spend our last few days here in AK. We arrived around 12:15am Friday morning, 15 minutes before JR, Molly and Christina. We came back to Jared and Sara's and slept until we felt like getting up. We had a great breakfast at a local hot spot (which didn't "look" like the type of place you might call a hot spot in Portland) and then got ready to head to Sara'a family's cabin on Nancy Lake where we enjoyed 2 days of boating, jet skiing (which are called "personal water craft"), tubing, etc. You wouldn't think these are things you'd enjoy while in Alaska, but we did! Like I said, the weather was unusually warm so Sunday afternoon before packing up we all enjoyed a nice chilly dip in the water (without wet suits), which was extremely refreshing! And don't worry, I didn't tube or do the more rigorious activities. After all, I want to keep this child in it's currently location a little longer.

On the way home we did what is apparently the traditional stop at Millers for HUGE soft serve ice cream cones. I had quite the time with mine chocolate dipped and melting all over me. But it was worth it.

Yesterday the roofing started. Mom and Dad (who rode the Harley from Billings, MT) arrived at Jared and Sara's just after we finished cleaning up from a late breakfast. I think dad was surprised to see us all still in our pjs ;) We hung out for a short bit before breaking out lunch and then some of the crew started in on tearing off the roof while others of us ran errands. It was slightly comical as dad arrived ready to work (several hours ahead of what he'd communicated) and the rest of us, not having gotten the memo he would be arriving early, were far from ready to begin the roof work. So we had a funny half hour as dad, being very single minded, got started on the roof and the rest of us tried to mentally transition to the new task at hand, early though it may be!

Like I said before, I'm not roofing. Mom and I are designated kitchen crew. I'm (understandably) not allowed on the roof in my pregnant condition. And Mom brought too nice of clothes to work in. Well, not really. She's good in the kitchen and manages to stay busy doing things around the house, even though there isn't much to do around the house. Personally, I can't say that I mind being the inside crew as I'm near the bathroom and I hate heights, even if it's only 1 story and not overly steep. We go check on the roofers regularly and make sure they have water, gatorade, or whatever else they may need.

Like I said, Mark and I are trying to figure out how to spend our last few days as the roofing project is estimated to finish late this afternoon (there is a celebratory dinner scheduled at Moose's Tooth) and then we're free to spend the last 3 days as we please. We all leave between 1 or 2am on Saturday morning with Dad and Christina heading out on the bike Thursday afternoon. Apparently the most popular organized activities are day cruises to see marine wildlife and glaciers, or train trips to nearby towns. Both of which are reasonably spendy. So I'll hopefully blog again in time to tell you what we ended up doing.

Roofing may not the be the type of Alaskan vacation that people dream of but spending 5-7 days with family on a bonding activity like roofing your brothers house, with some play days thrown in, is sort of a Friesen type thing to do. And I like my family, so am enjoying my Alaskan vacation.