Andys DC-4 experience

Today kimberly and I were just perfecting the daily grind... getting up, grabbin a piece of toast.... wait a second speaking of toast... I just introduced kimberly to toast and hot cocoa and she for the life of her could not understand how toast and cocoa go together until she tried a bite of my toast with her cocoa and she had to run and make her own toast.

anyway, we are just working on getting all the tasks down and dealing with all the people all day. then today Dale asked me to run to the airport with him to help him load some pallets on a plane. the pallets were all like 500gallon supersacks full of asbestos from the local hospital. a company that just left before we got here was removing the asbestos from the building so it could be torn down. so we get to the airport and there is no plane there, when we hear it all the sudden.... it is one of 2 in the world. it was a DC-4 that the british did a front end convirsion on. there was a third but about 8 years ago or so someone crashed it. it had a large door on the back drivers side and the LARGE nose swung open. the cokpit sat right above the cargo hold. Dale forklifted the sacks up there (i would have offered to help seeing as dale had never driven a fork lift before but it was a construction companys large forklift WAY different from what i have driven and i didnt know that i would do any better than him). We got those loaded up and the plane took off... it was really interesting, i was most bummed because kimberly was back at the store, i think she would have enjoyed it more than i did especially because it was kind of a once in a lifetime thing seeing such a rare plane. But i took plenty of pictures and i got to show them to her.

There is this man who is the nicest guy, his brother is amazing too... but they are the kind of guys that when they come in the store a weight is lifted... you can joke around with them and they joke back.... there are a number of others that are like that too. but the brother made a bow and arrow out of birch... hand carved... he brought it in and showed kimberly, and the next day kimberly started to tell me about it when he was in and he said he would bring it by to show me... not 15 minutes later he had gone home and come back with it just to show me. Then i believe the next day the first guy came in and was just overjoyed because we had a box that was the perfect size for some fish he wanted to mail to a friend. kimberly showed interest in the fish and he said he had some more he would bring us. about 2 hrs later he walked in and handed us a glass jar pressure sealed and everything from a month earlier to the day. the fish was decient but it ment SO much that he would do that.

also id like to report that kimberly and i are getting along with cynthia and dale really well today... its amazing. they have kind of been hard to deal with because they were all ready to leave when we got here then all these companys called saying they needed a place to stay for like 10 days. so i think they got a little frusterated that they were so close to their break and now they are so far. and it has showed in their attitued towards me and kimberly, BUT tonight was amazing... I did the dishes (thats right I, Andrew Long) which made it so nice to sit back and chat with them knowing there was nothing they were sitting there thinking we should be doing. today really was an amazing day!

a couple of prayer requests... the lady from an entry or 2 ago who told us she was having a "bluzy" day. of course Kimberly and I we are doing WAY better than the first couple days here and we seem to be getting way better by the day. our relationship with cynthia and dale... this could be a multi year job for kimberly and i and we would like to keep a good relationship with them. for our future here, today it was just brought to my attention. next year Brice (a large construction company doing a bunch of work up here in Tanana) will be here again, and the employees are working 7-10hr days. they are bringing like 5k a month home though.... and if i was to stay here and work for them (they are union and it would be impossible for me to go back to oregon and apply for this job but if i am a "local" then i along with the rest of the locals have first dibs on jobs even before the union guys... ultimately where im at right now is i would like to see my family... but only time will tell.

thanks for reading the update we love you all!