Well, it looks as if I may have finally found a place to live. I had HR Orientation this morning at the yard and then spent the remaining part of the morning into the afternoon searching for an apartment. We found a small 1-bedroom for $850.00/month plus electric. There will be four of us living there and so we expect to be paying about 225.00 each. It hopefully will not be too crowded since we are all highway drivers and will probably be crossing paths more often than not.
Yesterday the company took us on the Chena Hot Springs tour to get us familiarized with that run. This is a tour that I may be doing between highway runs. The facilities run off of electricity generated from the geothermal energy found on the site. The science behind the running of their generators was extremely interesting, but I fear I will not be able to explain how it all works. I am sure that any interested parties can easily find the information on the internet. They currently generate all the energy they need at a cost of approximately $0.06 / KW hour. Once their newest generator goes online they will be able to supply not only all the energy they need, but also enough to run the U.S. Army base that is nearby. The cost to supply this energy will be less than $0.01 / KW hour. Of course being a government contract I expect they will be able to get a minimum of $10.00 / KWH out of the army.
Chena Hot Springs has built greenhouses up in the area that currently supplies all the fresh produce for the resort. It is amazing how fast things tend to grow when you supply them with perfect growing conditions 24 hours a day. The tomato vines and cucumbers in the picture are only about 75 days old. Take special note of the length of the vines that are wrapped around the support pole at the base. Incredible! They have plans to start a shrimp farm in the foreseeable future to supply all the shrimp they will need.
One of the main attractions at the Hot Springs is their Ice Museum. They have a husband and wife team that have more than a dozen world championships between them that now work full time up at the resort. The creations are incredible… I will let the images speak for themselves. They maintain about a 20 degree temperature in the museum. The ice bar is an actual working bar and the rooms in the back can be rented out for the night… why? I didn’t make it inside myself, but there is a working xylophone inside the igloo. I meant to go in and take a picture, but forgot to take my turn when it was available. It was an amazing place of beauty! (other images can be found here: more pics )
I was one of six first year drivers that drove one of the four coaches up and back from the hot springs. This gave me added experience, as well as giving a Fairbank’s instructor a chance to see how well our training in Provo translates to Alaska conditions. When the trip was over he handed me my evaluation to sign and informed me that he had given me the highest marks he was allowed to give on every category. He mentioned that he thought about giving me some lower scores on some of the items just to make himself look better, but he could not justify doing so. I felt pretty good about the outcome and am greatly appreciative of the excellent training that I received.
Oh! I almost forgot… I went to bed early last night because of the whirlwind that I have gone through for the past few days. I was pretty well exhausted. At about 10:30pm an alarm went off. I woke up in a daze and didn’t remember where I was. I was scrambling to find my phone to turn off the alarm, and couldn’t believe how loud it was sounding. I finally found my phone and was trying to shut off the alarm when I realized it wasn’t my phone… It was the fire alarm! I got out of bed and started looking for a shirt and some shoes. I looked out the window and didn’t see anything and then went to the door and heard a lot of people talking and making noise. I opened the door and joined the exodus to the parking lot. It was cold outside! I should have grabbed a jacket, and maybe my wallet... camera... computer... etc… To make a long story short, a dumpster near the ventilation intake had caught fire and filled the hotel with smoke. The fire department arrived and put out the fire and then let us back in about a half hour later. All in all it was quite a fun night. In fact, at about 2am I finally called downstairs to have someone come up and break up the party that was going on outside my door… =P
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