Original subtitles

Rocking and rolling out there.

Hell of a wakeup call.

Looks like it's just basically moving right down the main channel.

Let's just hope that it doesn't turn into, "Oh shit.

Coming up fast."

That's a big wall of ice coming this way.

Well I'm glad this didn't happen in the middle of the night.

That's one good thing.

There's nothing worse than waking up to putting on your rubber boots

and running around in the dark.

I just hope it all keeps moving. [laughs]

It's when it stops moving that I got problems.

Breakup is a symphony of sounds out here.

You can hear the water rushing.

The slushing of the ice.

You can hear big chunks of ice kinda thumping and banging

and booming and popping.

First hour here is really gonna tell the tale on what's gonna happen here.

So right now the river level is actually higher than I am.

It's got a big crown in it.

Keep on pushing, boy, keep on pushing.

Yes, indeed. She's gonna come up!

Oh, crunch!

[theme music playing]

[narrator] Andy Bassich is in the midst of one of the Arctic's most powerful

and fearsome events,

the spring breakup of the Yukon River.

Massive flowing ice and rising waters

could bring severe flooding and destroy Andy's livelihood in a heartbeat.

Andy has done his best to prepare his property and sled dogs for disaster.

But his fate rests solely in the hands of Mother Nature,

and for now, he can only hope that breakup doesn't demolish his camp.

Slippery stuff.

Keep on moving buddy, keep on moving.

It's slowing down a little bit.

Oh, shit.

Yeah, buddy. I'm gonna get trapped here if I don't get outta here in a heartbeat.

Not good.

I'm feeling pretty nervous right now, it's coming in pretty fast.

I mean the water just came up two-and-a-half feet in about five minutes.

Try and gain another higher vantage point.

It stopped.

Everything stopped.

That's a big wall of ice out there.

Uh, my heart's starting to beat pretty good right now.

This kinda reminds me of 2009.

Well, 2009 flood was one of those events in life that you just never forget.

You know, to have pretty much everything you'd worked for,

for 20 years taken away from you in 24 hours, it's pretty hard.

There's nothing easy about carving a life out

in the middle of a wilderness environment.

Throw on top of that the possibility of losing your life,

and it's a pretty powerful experience.

If the ice doesn't come in, I'll be all right.

If the ice comes in, then it's all a big loss here

'cause there won't be anything left of this place.

[Glenn] It's like the whole pace of nature just picks up in the springtime.

Everything speeds up, gets into high gear.

Wow, what a beautiful day. Springtime.

Things are starting to thaw out. Look at this water.

Don't have to chisel a hole through the ice any more.

This whole lake could all be open water in just a few more days.

Ooh, that water's cold. Ice water.

Things are thawing out, warming up.

It's up in the forties today.

Things are changing, it's springtime.

Just a couple weeks ago, there was snow all over this yard.

Breakup, it's one of the best times of the year.

I'm gonna take a walk, head over to the outlet, see if that's flowing yet.

And if that's flowing, it's possible that fish are coming back up the outlet,

and also ducks will be coming in.

I can go over to the outlet, walk down it for a ways and just take a look.

See what's going on out there.

Hey, look at this.

Bald eagle sitting on its nest over there.

She's already got eggs.

It's always good to see the eagles come back

because these eagles, they've been here longer than I have.

When I first came to this lake 16 years ago,

this same pair of bald eagles was nesting here.

And every year they come back.

[squawks]

There she goes.

There's nothing like having bald eagles nesting in your back yard.

Every summer I watch a little eagle or two grow up right here.

The ground, it's all bare now.

The last time I was out walking there was a lot more snow,

and I can get to all kinds of things that were buried under the snow before.

Look at this juniper right here.

Sometimes I like to eat one or two of these.

They're a real strong flavour.

It's not a berry you eat like fruit,

but I like to just suck on one or two of them.

It's kind of a strong flavour,

but that's stuff you can't get to in the wintertime.

You can smell the earth again.

You can't smell that in the winter.

Everything's sterile, it's all covered in snow and ice up here.

Okay, so this is the outlet.

Just a couple weeks ago, this was all covered with ice here,

and now it's flowing out of the lake.

Hey, I think I see a fish.

There's a species of fish, arctic grayling,

that I don't have up here most of the year.

I've never caught one in the lake,

but in the springtime they migrate up this creek.

And they come right up just to the edge of the lake.

They're really good eating.

It's just a narrow window of opportunity.

If I want to eat grayling, this is the time to get one.

For grayling, just a little spinner like this usually does the trick.

Let me see if there's anything in there that wants a bite.

No. Nothing.

Didn't get a bite.

I'll keep going downstream, there's some bigger holes, easier places to fish.

I'm gonna keep moving.

[Chip] We have ideas of what we'd like to do,

and then we bend and shift with them.

Because that's the best way you can survive up here.

Wow, it looks a lot better than it was earlier.

Soaking wet all right, but the rain has passed.

The river's coming up and it's gonna start to flood pretty soon.

The river's not gonna get us today or tomorrow or the next day,

but it is gonna come up eventually.

I wanna go get a few more caribou so I don't have to live on birds this summer.

There should be some down here in the lagoon.

[narrator] In Kiwalik, Chip and Agnes Hailstone

are preparing for the spring caribou hunt,

which provides a key food source for the family this time of year.

But melting snow and rising waters in the region

have made conditions dangerous for travelling.

We're gonna go over towards Mud Creek so we only have to cross the river once.

If we try to go down any other place, we have to cross the river at least twice.

And that hill is pretty barren to be driving over

and especially over with a load.

We're not gonna go past Willow Mountain,

we're gonna stay on the lagoon Minnehaha area.

There should be lots of caribou up there.

If you hear us coming or something,

you make sure there's a thermos of something hot

and take some wood in there and I want to be able to have

a hot place to come back to because it was not only raining,

but it's very wet, and the likeliness of us coming back wet and tired is a lot.

[Agnes] Oh, yeah, you got this.

Yip! Yip!

[Chip] We wanna go get caribou bulls.

The bulls are lean from a long winter

and the females are really wide with babies and pregnant

and we don't want them anyway.

And we don't end up separating cows from their calves

and then having a calf that's gonna starve to death.

So we just let them go right now.

There's a time to hunt a cow, but not when her calf is needing her.

That'll be in the spring.

Right now, it's bull season.

[Agnes exclaims]

Whoo!

[Agnes] That lead one up there is a male.

It looks fat.

[Chip] That's a bull in front, he's got new antlers.

One more time.

[Agnes] You try to pick out the one you want and you try to shoot

without a whole bunch of animals behind them.

Gosh.

[Chip] It's not easy to get 'em when they're running.

[Agnes] It's hard work, but we gotta eat.

There you go, you got him! There's one bull down.

[Agnes] Yee.

Okay, that one's down for sure.

[Chip] Yeah, Agnes did well. She's got one bull down so far.

I'll get a few more, pick 'em up, take 'em home.

We just gotta go take care of what we got right now.

I'm ready, willing, happy, excited.

Ooh, we've done good already.

[Sue] If you're not facing your fears, you're not conquering 'em.

You're not conquering 'em, they're conquering you.

I don't want to be somebody else's bitch.

Warmer temperatures.

Snow melt-off means

my runway is flooded.

The water has no choice, really, but to run over the runway,

'cause this isn't thawed out enough.

The runway currently is flooded.

What does that mean? That means the planes

that bring my fuel in can't land safely.

I am the only refuelling station on the eastern side of the North Slope.

It's about a third of the size of the state of California and one gas station.

This runway is just...

It's gonna be a lot of work.

[narrator] Kavik River Camp will soon open its doors

to bush pilots who are passing through the tundra.

If Sue Aikens is unable to clear the runway of hazards

and get her fuel supply into camp,

she will lose tens of thousands of dollars in crucial revenue.

[Sue] You know, I'm looking down the runway

but my eyes are picking out the inconsistencies.

This is where everybody's damn nose wheel is gonna hit.

And it's not flat across,

it's got a U.

That's dangerous.

Those planes, they won't and can't safely land

when you've got a really shitty setup.

Once all the water stops running, I'm gonna be left

with round rocks everywhere, like this.

You've got gravel and dirt, which will harden up

and become like cement, like concrete.

But over there, all that's being washed off.

But you can't get the plane in, the rest of it won't matter.

I can have him cold, I can have him hungry,

I can have him upset, I can have him dirty.

But if I don't have him, it doesn't matter.

[narrator] While waiting for the water flow on the runway to subside,

Sue's next priority is preparing camp for the clients that will soon be arriving.

[Sue] It feels like the one-millionth time that I have turned the dining hall

from a dining hall into a bedroom and then back into a dining hall.

Sometimes I make it, then it's all done before clients get in.

Sometimes I don't.

But uh, it's time to get this one done.

The goal now is just to empty the room.

To be out here and do what I do, I don't care where you're at.

If you want to do it successfully in remote Alaska,

you better learn how to leave a lot of your emotional

super-highs and super-lows behind.

Am I living the true subsistence lifestyle?

What the hell does that mean?

And if you're talking about living off the grid,

I'm off of everybody else's grid.

I'm just on my own.

That took development.

I didn't just land on an airstrip and go,

"Oh wow, look, somebody's put everything together

and I think I'm just gonna run it and it's gonna be great."

Once I saw the vision of what the camp wanted to be

and I knew that I could help achieve it,

then I can't walk away until I've done my best to try.

[Andy] You know, you just gotta take each day at a time

and do the best you can, and live through it.

Son of a bitch.

That's a whole lot of ice.

Pretty fucking scary actually, when you look at it.

You think, boys, you want to spend the night in a boat?

Might have to.

I think I'm gonna go down and start prepping the...

The ark boat a little bit more.

No rest for the wicked right now.

It's time to go back and keep prepping.

I realise now, looking at the ice conditions,

having some time to assess it, that I think I'm gonna get

flooded a lot worse than I originally thought.

Better to do it now while I'm in the lull than to try and do this in a panic.

Got my water pump in my greenhouse here.

If I flood, I'm gonna need this.

Pump out my root cellars

and all that kind of stuff.

So I think I'm pretty well set up.

The ark has got chains in it.

If I see this river start to move again and the water start to come up,

I'll just throw the dogs in the boat and ride it out.

We'll move some dog food so it don't get wet.

Looks like my fish wheel is just about underwater now.

The fish rack's got water flowing right at the base of it.

There's 2,000 fish on that fish rack gonna go to waste.

That's a whole summer's worth of dog food for me.

So, I decided to take a chance and see if I could

get that thing pulled out with a bulldozer.

Fuck!

Damn it.

Trying to lift it, I broke one of the skids on the tip.

I think where I'm feeling a lot of apprehension right now is,

I just spent six years cleaning up from the last one.

Managed to make the fish rack come up the hill without

coming apart in a million pieces.

That was time well spent.

Huge relief to me, 'cause all morning long I was looking at that fish rack thinking,

there's 2,000 fish on that fish rack gonna go to waste.

I feel like I got a lot done today.

I feel like the most important stuff's done

and who knows what Mother Nature's gonna throw my way tonight or tomorrow.

We'll just wait and see.

[Chip] The weather changes all the time.

The weather makes the plans and we just go with it.

We're, um, heading home and, uh, there is quite a few more up ahead of us,

so we're just gonna keep hunting our way home back to Kiwalik,

until we have five and then, uh, we'll call it a day

and then from there, we will try to get across the river,

which is gonna be a whole different challenge on its own.

[narrator] The Hailstones are hunting caribou in Kiwalik.

Caribou are an essential source of meat and protein for the family.

But thawing in the region means their window to cross the river

and intercept the animals as they migrate is closing rapidly.

[Chip] There's a bull. He's the second to the back.

He's got antlers, he's just immature that's all. You can get him.

Got it.

Give it a second to die, you don't need to shoot it again.

Let it die.

That's a good one, let's go get it.

Yeah, looks like he's totally down.

[Agnes] This is, uh, teamwork, a hunt we both like to do.

I just love following him, and being with him, and hunting together.

It just makes hunting a lot easier

'cause I know what he's up to and he knows what I'm up to.

And even though you see this big red bloody mess,

it's always it's a mess of success.

[Agnes] Yee!

[narrator] In order to get their harvest back to camp,

Chip and Agnes must risk breaking through a river of thin ice.

[Agnes] In the next couple days, we won't be able to cross the rivers,

so, it's critical for us to try to catch our meat right now and bring it to camp

and get it to the other side of the river.

Oh, there's Ting.

[Chip] We still gotta cross this river.

This here is our last real obstacle.

It's overflowing, it's ice on top

and it's water below and then it's water in between the layers.

So it's not a whole lot of fun, but, um, it's gotta be done.

And my daughter's over there as an audience.

She's gonna watch us cross today.

[Ting] Ooh!

Bro! Bro, let's go!

Come on.

I tried to take the best route I could and the load behind me pushed me

over the good ice that I wanted, and back to the water.

I tried to power through that.

The machine would only turn to my left.

So I tried increasing power and bringing my fronting up,

hoping I could straighten out and that didn't even work.

And I basically had the machine stuck.

I was glad my son and Edward were here hunting

and that they just happened to stop by on their way home.

[Agnes] Go!

One-two-three, go!

[Glenn] It's really just about keeping track of the animals,

keeping track of the plants and the change of the season.

Just looking around and having a good time.

Hey, look. There's an owl in that tree.

That's a hawk owl nest right there.

Look, she's sitting on her eggs.

She's all tucked away in there, safe and secure.

Oh look, looks like the owl's caught a ptarmigan.

Yeah, they've been doing pretty well.

White feathers all around, right underneath the nest here.

You get to know the individual animals

and I've been getting to know these hawk owls here for quite a while.

And I'll come over here in a week or two,

and the little ones will be sticking their heads out there.

That's one of the great things about living out here,

keeping track of all the animals, not just the ones I'm hunting.

Not just the ones I need to eat myself.

But the ones I like to keep track of, just to get familiar with 'em.

[narrator] In the Brooks Range,

Glenn is hiking along the edges of the creek

in search of arctic grayling and ducks,

food sources that are key to his survival this time of year.

Here's my bridge.

This is a little bridge I built.

Helps me get across the creek.

I'm glad to see it survived another breakup.

Sometimes in the spring,

this water gets real high and chunks of ice will be flowing down it.

But it looks like the bridge is safe and sound here.

Beautiful. I love this bridge.

I can just walk across here now.

I won't have to take my clothes off every time I go across the creek.

This time of year everything's coming back.

Everything's moving into the area.

And everything that stayed here dormant over the winter is coming back alive.

All the plants are growing again.

The bugs are coming out.

The fish are coming up the creek.

The birds are coming back too.

It's a time of abundance out here compared to the rest of the year.

I'll cast in here a few times.

Typically, in a pool like this,

the biggest dominant grayling will have the best feeding position.

Up at the head of the pool, where the current comes in,

that's where the food is coming in.

The bigger grayling will be up there

and the smaller ones will be further downstream.

So I'm gonna cast right up there.

Something on there.

Okay.

Got a grayling.

This is the first grayling I caught this spring.

Look at that beautiful fish.

Look at that, these are really good eating, small, but tasty.

That's a good start, but I'd like to have a couple more if I could.

See if maybe there's a big one waiting over there.

There, just had another one come at it.

Didn't hook him, though.

Caught a glimpse of it.

Okay, I'm not getting any more action in this pool.

I'm gonna keep heading down the creek.

There will be some other pools down there I'll check out.

And who knows, maybe I'll find some ducks around too.

[Sue] I may be an island,

but I'm on the same planet as everybody else.

I'm getting into kind of a sticky situation this spring.

Can't get the runway prepped to receive the large fuel plane

'cause I don't have the large fuel plane, I've now as of this morning

lost two major clients that, uh, needed fuel to do their work.

If I can't sell fuel, my spurs are going on the wall.

[narrator] Now that the water has dissipated,

Sue must get her runway in working order.

Although smaller aircraft can still land,

it's too dangerous for the larger fuel plane.

But with her recently acquired loader in need of parts

and currently out of commission,

Sue is forced to use the Bobcat, an older and smaller piece of equipment.

It did the job for a lot of years. It's mighty tired.

But that's what I've got to work with.

It currently has the tracks on it for winter.

What I want to do is get the tracks off.

Come on, you motherfucker.

They are heavier than a son of a gun.

You gotta drag, push, pull and just get it done.

Well, that's one job done.

That water just does a number on the runway here.

It's uh, like asking a plane to land in quicksand.

You're not gonna have a lot of control.

This is a flat drag.

It used to be the tongue of a trailer.

This is supposed to take the gravel, and push and move it, flatten it out.

That's not gonna cut it.

The water that's going across, I mean I could even see here,

you've got almost a three-foot elevation change.

This is not gonna do anything to solve that.

I've got my cut-and-drag, it's got a sharper edge,

a little bit more weight to it, a little bit longer,

to hopefully dig in and move some of this ground.

I'll run this up and down a couple of times.

It takes me a little bit to do, but I want to see, will it push the rock.

Will it move it enough

that I can feel confident and say,

"Land on the western side, land on the eastern side, the turn-in is good."

If it's not good it doesn't matter how many people want the fuel,

it's not safe to bring it in.

Turning down the clients that wanted to come in today for fuel,

they're not gonna get their job done.

I'm here to prevent stuff like that from happening.

And yeah, I know it's not fate worse than death,

but you set it up so that people can count on you,

well then you got to be counted on.

I've exhausted, really,

how effective the Bobcat can be with the runway right now.

I really just need to get the loader running well

and have it do the job it's designed for.

[Chip] Taking my wife and going hunting when it's a wonderful day like this

means I have an awesome life.

Pull.

[narrator] With freezing water and unpredictable ice beneath their feet,

the Hailstones must act fast to keep their vehicle

and harvest from being lost to the deadly current.

Okay, one-two.

Watch out, Hon. One-two-three, go.

Ah!

Oh, my God, I did it!

It's happening. This is part of spring.

Although I hate ice and water...

This is what happens.

One-two-three, go.

[Chip] One-two-three.

[Agnes] One-two-three, go!

One-two-three, go!

One-two-three, go!

Oh! Honey!

Chip!

[Chip] I hate it when it happens.

[Agnes] Hold onto my legs, Edward.

[Agnes coughing]

[Agnes] Don't go too close to the edge.

-You didn't touch? -I didn't touch at all.

These guys came out and gave us a hand,

and got off the shallow and hit the deep stuff

right here so the ice broke out from underneath me.

You know, it's one of those things.

I was lucky there was someone here to give me a hand.

Got up on the ice, we started bringing the machine up

and then I broke through,

got soaking wet all the way up to my belly button.

[Agnes] One-two-three, pull!

[Chip] Yeah!

[Agnes] Holy cow. A little bit more.

One-two-three, go.

[Chip] Awesome.

The machine's up and on the ice, the sled is up and on the ice,

the caribou are okay.

I can attend the machine later.

It's time for me right now to warm up and change my clothes

and change my boots, and go get rested up and get back to working

and making sure that machine's good.

-Thank you, Bun. -Thanks, Bun.

Our daughter had hot coffee, nice hot tent all ready.

The dangerous thing isn't getting stuck, it's getting wet.

Everybody gets stuck, everybody.

The water went through the pipe.

Went up and went inside and stopped at the motor thankfully.

I shut the motor off when we were getting stuck,

I could see we weren't gonna get out.

The muffler was full of water. I got that taken care of.

I think I've got most of this stuff out of here.

[Agnes] Hopefully it'll start right up, eh?

[Chip] Let's hope so.

Come on.

-[motor running] -[Agnes] Whoa!

Right on.

All right, that's all good.

That makes our hunt complete, eh?

-[Chip] It sure does. -We could move onto other things.

[Chip] You know, I feel like another cup of coffee and dinner.

[Agnes] Oh, I'm ready for dinner too.

-Boy, am I hungry. -[Chip] Oh, boy.

That cold water took the energy out of me.

[Chip] Well, it's all turning out good.

We got plenty of caribou, we're dry and safe.

Snow machine's running fine.

Now we can go kick back.

[Agnes] Eat and get our energy back

and come up with something new to do.

[Chip] Yep.

[Glenn] Snow melts fast, the ice goes out fast.

Birds come back and everything changes.

I'd like to get across the creek here.

It'd be better to be on the other side

'cause there's some lakes over there that could have ducks in 'em.

It could be a little dicey getting across here.

The water's going under the ice and the ice is all caving in.

Definitely don't wanna get swept under there.

Ice can be tricky this time of year.

It's melting fast.

Even though it's still thick, it's getting weak.

You gotta be careful.

If I can get across, there's some lakes over on the other side.

There could be ducks over there.

There. Made it across.

Right down here there's a little lake.

I wanna check it out.

There could be some ducks down here.

I see something over there.

Yep. Looks like a duck.

Gotta walk a long ways to find a duck out here.

That's the way it is. It's hungry country.

There's a little narrow moat and the duck's swimming this way in it.

So I'm gonna go this way, see if I might be able to intercept it over there.

There're some ducks here.

Problem is the wind.

Wind's blowing this way.

If I shoot a duck out there,

it's gonna blow over there next to the ice.

I won't be able to get to it.

This water's freezing cold, so it's really hard to go in the water for very long.

I got to make sure I shoot a duck where it's gonna get blown to shore,

or where it's right in the grass next to the shore where I can get to it.

Hey, I got my duck.

There he is.

Just had to be patient and wait for the right shot.

Had to wait until the duck was in close enough to shore,

make sure I could get him.

That's a widgeon. Couldn't ask for a better eating duck.

I finally got a good shot at a duck that I could recover.

That's what I wanted.

Got my duck.

Spring's a great time of year, isn't it?

Everything's changing and my diet's changing too.

I get different things to eat.

I haven't had a duck in months and months.

I haven't had a grayling for almost a year.

Mmm.

That's amazing. Got to chew gingerly though.

Mmm.

Little B.B.

There.

Little pellet, that's what killed that duck.

That's why I don't like to shoot 'em more times than necessary.

I love getting a duck in the spring, eating the first duck.

And I love it when those grayling come up the creek, getting the first one.

When you go out there and you hunt your food yourself,

you're connected to it. It's kind of special.

It's kind of nice to live in this environment and be able to go right out

and collect your food off the land like that.

Everybody used to do this not that long ago.

Everybody was a hunter and a gatherer.

Things changed, and nowadays people are disconnected from their food.

This is connection.

It's a very different atmosphere, living like this.

And I like it.

[Sue] I mean, just because I'm not the smiliest bastard on the planet,

don't think I'm not having fun.

[narrator] With her runway out of commission, Sue, is unable to get fuel.

And with clients coming to Kavik soon,

she must turn to an outside source for help.

The USGS guys that come through, they do the hydrology work.

They usually come and get their fuel from me, however, I don't have fuel.

So I referred them to 70 North Happy Valley, and they do have fuel.

So they're delivering it here for 'em so that they can stage

from here to get their work done.

Be safe.

-Okay, fine, bye. -See you later, Bob.

This should have been a sale that I was able to do out of here,

but I'm not ready for it.

And when you're not ready for it, you just do whatever it takes to

keep the customer happy.

Problem will be resolved.

It's not a lifelong issue,

it's just an issue for today.

[Andy] Just 'cause you're hoping something doesn't happen,

doesn't mean it's not gonna happen.

So, you gotta prep.

Some people have coffee and a doughnut in the morning.

I have coffee and a breakup in the morning.

So the ice is moving pretty good.

Looking out my windows here,

I can see it's moving from bank to bank.

Uh, it's pushed up quite a bit more ice up onto the banks,

so that made an even higher levee.

So that's kinda good.

That should keep big ice from coming in here anyway.

It won't stop water, but it'll keep the big ice from coming in.

I'm just gonna drink a little coffee and go up on the porch, keep an eye on it.

Check out my water levels from time to time.

What I know about breakup is, everything looks like it's going good,

and then it just comes to a screeching halt.

Probably moving about eight, ten miles an hour right now.

Not much I can do except for stand here and watch

and be ready to run and get the dogs and put 'em in boats and run for the ark.

It's rocking and rolling, man.

Right now, speed is good.

Speed is safe.

Slow is bad.

I'm out, out about as far as I kind of safely feel coming out.

I'm looking down here and I can see water down about 12 feet down,

so this ice is piled up. It's kind of supported.

I don't wanna stay out here too long, 'cause these big pieces sometimes drop.

But we had a good push of ice

and for the first time I'm seeing a little bit of open water

coming in from upstream.

I think the worst is over.

The day breakup happens is always kind of New Year's for me.

It's a damn good thing I've moved my fish rack,

'cause there would be nothing left of it right now.

I'm pretty much locked in here now for couple more weeks

while this ice melts out.

I'm hearing a lot of ice dropping around me here.

I think I'm gonna come back in.

I'm through the worst of it.

I know I'm not gonna flood at this point in time.

So happy New Year.

[laughs]

Feel like I dodged a bullet.

Thirty years along the Yukon, I've seen a lot of different breakups.

This probably rates as about the second scariest one I've seen.

The horserace is over.

I came in first place this time.

The day of breakup I like to go

and collect up a bunch of nice Yukon River ice,

take it up, put it in my blender,

add a little rum, add a little coconut paste,

a little pineapple and have myself a Yuka-lada.

All right.

It's a lot better to be standing on the ice than being pinned under it.

All in all, what looked like it was gonna be quite a disaster ended up

being a little stressful, but not... Not destructive.

And that's a good thing.

Some people would say I'm locked in here.

I look around here and I just say everybody's locked out.

First day of the New Year.

Got a beautiful sky, watching the ice go by.

It ought to be a song.