Gold Mining and Bath Tubs

There has been some pretty exciting events the past few weeks.

First of all, I discovered someone wrong with the radio station. Since I work solo on Sundays, I saw some readings that didn't seem right on the transmiter. We have to periodically record the numbers and one of the numbers that should have been around 50 was at 1. I immediately called Ric, the station manager. He came over right away. It turned out that we had a cable break on the transmiter and we had to turn the station off for almost 4 days. It was the longest we have ever been down. It was such a valuable experience because we received so many phone calls and emails from listeners who said they missed us. Bless their hearts, most of them thought their radios were old and they weren't getting the station so they called the station to see if it was us or them with problems.

Another eventful Nome activity that I participated in includes gold mining. One of my friends is a miner. His fellow miners were out of town and he needed a deck hand so I volunteered. It was certainly an experience. When we were launching the gold dredge, the waves were so high that I was splashed head to toe with water. Good thing I had a water proof outfit on! I tried to drive the boat but the motor was too much for me to understand. Andrew, the miner, added a tube to the motor to make it easier to steer. If you ask me, it was a little more complicated. Once we got to the location they were working on. Andrew jumped in the water with a large tube that served as a vacuum. It was made of metal to prevent it from floating up. While he got the gold, I was on the dredge pushing big rocks out of the sloose box. While on the water, the waves got so high that I got sea sick. After that, Andrew and I decided it was time to go back and the current was getting to much. Once we got back to land, we went through the sloose box and tooke out the gold carpet. Since gold is so heavy, it feel in the carpet and didn't get pushed out like all of the rocks. We emptied the gold and other stuff mixed with it into a container. We went to Andrews camp and filtered out the bigger pieces. I got to keep the flakes while Andrew go the gold dust. After going through the gold, I got to shoot a 44 Magnum gun. Andrew has the gun just in case a bear comes by. It was fun to shoot but I can't see myself ever owning a gun.

The final exciting event to report was the bath tub race. Every Labor Day, the town has a wacky tradition of having a team of 5 people race bath tubs down main street. KNOM was of course more than eager to participate. We strategically selected our team captain, a 6 year old girl who is extremely light. We threw here in the tub so it was lighter to push. The race has all kinds of rules. One of them is there has to be a bar of soap, wash cloth, towel, and bath mat with every team. Kind of unusual event. It was a lot of fun though! We came in last place and got a trophy for it. It was great! There is a picture above with our fabulous team and our tub!