A day of spontaneity

Thursday was a busy day and night. In the morning i was in the common area having breakfast and one of the people staying here came down and said "does anyone want to make some money today?" I figured why not and jumped at the chance to make a little cash. He needed a couple people to help move all of his possessions locked up in a storage unit into his new apartment. He is a very overweight guy that can't do any type of physical labor. I usually would have no pity for someone like that but i came here to make friends and be a better person so i bowed to his every demand, that and he was paying $15/hr cash+lunch. I was the only one to help until he had to hire someone with a pick-up to move a couch. Other than that it was eight and a half hours of going up and down 3 flights of stairs, whew what a work-out! After the job was done i made it back home around 6pm feeling really good and was pumped up to go do something. Just then Ralf, someone who sometimes stays at Billies and is a guide that does all kinds of tours came in and said he was taking a group up to Murphy Dome to view the northern lights. I thought that was perfect and said count me in. We took off at 10pm for a 45 minute drive out of the city and up above the tree line, about 2500ft. around here. We had a decent show, not too many colors but it moved quite a lot. Unfortunately i couldn't figure out how to set my shutter time so i didn't get any pics. Someone else had a nice SLR that was picking up lots of color. Wow cameras pick up so much more than the naked eye! We stayed up there until about 2:30AM when the Aurora started fading and made our way back home. What a day and night!

So today i sat down with my camera and figured out how to make the necessary adjustments for night time shots while watching more dog sled racing just across the street from Billies. I also picked up a tri-pod from someone living here at the Hostel. Tonite i might make my way out of the neighborhood and try to catch the Aurora. If i read the forecast right it looks like it may be right over Fairbanks!