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On my walk down the frozen Tanana River I noticed a lot of sculptorous chunks of ice. Also, a raven had left its print in the snow when it landed. The Tanana River is a busy place during winter. People use it for ice fishing, dog mushing, skate skiing and snow mobiles. I do not mind snow mobiles as a mean of transportation but a lot of people use them for adventuring down the river with high speed making their activities both noisy and smelly.

We had winter for almost three months here in Fairbanks although it hasn’t been terribly cold… until now. When I was riding my bike to work this morning the thermometer was -40ºC/F. At this temperature the grease in the ball bearings get very hard making my bike hard to pedal. But it also keeps me warm. Along with the low temperatures we have less than 4 hours of daylight. So with the sun low in the horizon the entire day is like one long sunrise and sunset. Often the sun will be covered in mist or fog all day because of the fumes from chimneys and traffic. Fairbanks has hardly any wind during winter so the air quality is pretty bad here.