Fourth of July!!!

Ten days later, here I type.  I promise I'll blog more, honest (that's probably another lie, but I'll do my best).

I understand the Fourth may have been rainy and nasty for some of you, so much so that some fireworks displays were postponed until the next weekend.  Well, fireworks don't really work here in Kotzebue, or much of Alaska for that matter.  Lighting fireworks under the midnight sun is like writing on a white piece of paper with a yellow marker.  No worries.  We do some fun stuff anyway.

Weather up here was not much better up here.  It was foggy and cold and windy on the third.  The Park Service had a booth space at the fairgrounds that day.  Our booth theme was local medicinal wild plants.  We had a large display board that featured pictures of local plants, where to find them, what the can be used to cure, and recipes for salves, oils, and teas that can be made with them.  We also had a assortment of teas people were able to try and sample of a cough syrup made with honey and coltsfoot (a plant, not an actual horse foot).  The display board kept falling in the wind, so I had to create a wind break by tying a tarp between the two conexes we were in between with some parachute cord (thanks, dad!).

What is a "conex", you ask?  It is a giant shipping crate. Remember that scene in Batman Begins with the nervous henchman with the machine gun?  That whole scene takes place between a bunch of conexes (yes, another Batman reference!).  Many households have them around here and use them like garages.  Some people store there snow machines on top of them in the summer.  I don't know how they get them up there.

We also had our famous buttons as our booth.  Each year that park service does this, they create an easy quiz for visitors to take with questions based on the display.  No one fails the quiz.  After they take the quiz they can search through our button collection and pick one out.  These button are pretty flippin' sweet, too.  We pressed flowers and punched them into the buttons.  They went like hotcakes!

One elder lady needed help taking the quiz, so I read it to her and tried to lead her to the correct answer the best I could.  One of the questions mentioned the National Park Service and she said "Oh, I don't like park service.  They take our land."  I tried making the best of the situation and brought up the fact that rural Alaskans are allowed to hunt on all of our parklands, but to no avail.  We just continued taking the quiz and it was then I realized that this lady didn't actually know she was talking to a park service employee.  She earned her button, which was meticulously chosen from the other pretty buttons as I brought her samples of every tea we had.  I could help but smile as she walked away with her special button pinned to her parkie with the words "National Park Service" written on it.

Other booths sold your standard deep-fried everything and cheap toys.  Temporary colored hairspray was quite popular with the kids and misused.  No kids was safe from aerosol color ambush.  Any other place in America, parents would have scolded their graffitied children, but, eh, it's Kotzebue.

The celebration wasn't without its fun events.  There was a parade I wasn't able to see, a Miss Arctic Circle pageant, a cute baby contest, and an animal call contest.  A muktuk eating contest was postponed because it was too foggy for the plane to land.  I could imagine eating that much muktuk anyway.  Your jaw would bounce loose!

The weather was nicer the next day as the festivities continued.  My roommates and I arrived to the fairgrounds just in time for the foot races.  Kids ages 5-6 lined up and ran to the other side of the crowd.  The winner received some cash money money.  The races were divided between girl and boy races.  The age levels increased for each race, moving onto 7-8 year olds, then 9-10 and in that fashion until they reached 14-19, then 20-29 and all the way up to 60-69 year olds!

After the foot races were the kayak races.  People wen out in waves of three, kayaking around two boats in the lagoon and then back to the start.  You bet I signed up to race.  My wave was probably the most memorable.  We started outside the kayaks and had to push them into the water and jump into the boat, then take off.  Well I got the boat in the water and got into the boat and got into the water myself!  I wasn't able to get my second leg in right away and I was leaning to far forward.  Before I knew it I had a mouthful of salty water.  But I can jump straight out of the water like a ninja and land back into my boat because I'm an adventure racer.  The good part about falling in was that my main competition also dunked right away also.  Soon after I rounded the first boat I passed the girl paddling in front of me.  Then I returned victorious and wet!  I do have video of the start.  It looks like I wasn't even trying to get in he boat correctly, as if I had meant to somersault into the water as soon as I jumped in the boat.

A man from Greenland showed up with his home maid kayak and stick of a paddle and demonstrated some rolls.  He could put his paddle in any position and flip underwater and back up.  Some of the rolls didn't even seem practical.  I'm pretty sure Greenlanders get bored and dare each other to flip there kayaks over with there paddles in any ridiculous position they choose.  I was pretty awesome though.

While Luke was tumbling in the lagoon, some crazies were waterskipping their snowmachines in the lagoon on the other side of the road. Yes, they drove their snowmachines as fast as they could across the surface of the water, seeing how far the could go before they sank!  But I didn't get to see it! Cuz no one told me it was happening! It's alright.  I'm not that bitter.