Lisa Kelly: With the Angels

And by "With the Angels", I don't mean there was some sort of unfortunate mishap on Atigun Pass- think more like the US Navy's Blue Angels.

Wasilla, AK native and Ice Road Truckers star Lisa Kelly was able to fulfill a lifelong dream of flying with the US Navy's Blue Angels Precision flying team at an Air Show in Fargo, ND this month.

She says she has always wanted to fly in an F-18. In Kelly's line of work, she faces danger daily, but she says that's nothing compared to what the US Navy faces.

She says chasing this dream was a great experience. Kelly says, “We flew upside down, and I’m like hanging from my seatbelt dangling upside down looking at the canopy. We would go straight up and spin and it looks like the sun is just going around the nose of it.

The flight took place immediately prior to Fargo's AirSho between Aug 13th and 14th.



Both Lisa Kelly and Canadian ice road trucker Alex Debogorski will be making an appearence at England's Truckfest in a few weeks.

Exclusive Sneak Peek at Lisa Kelly's Tatas...

And by 'Tatas', I mean the company that manufactures trucks and other vehicles in India [NYSE: TTM]....jeez, get your minds out of the gutter already. You'd think that was a sugestive or misleading headline or something.
Last night marked the debut or the History Channel's IRT: Deadliest Roads where some of the ice road truckers from Alaska and Canada travel all the way to Delhi, India to haul cement and construction supplies to a hydroelectric project in the Himalayas. To get there, they have to traverse the clogged, chaotic streets of Delhi before heading to a narrow mountain road hewn out of the mountainsides with little or no protection from a sheer 1,000 foot drop in many places. The company assigned spotters to each of the drivers (Alex Debagorski, Rick Yemm and Lisa Kelly) not because they're foreigners (although being unfamiliar with the road rules could play a role) but apparently that's a requirement in India to help the driver negotiate congested areas or parts of the roadway with tight clearance.

The most experienced truckers in the trio, Alex Debogorski, didn't last one day after getting into two accidents before he even left Delhi....and with some of the driving habits in that part of the world, it would be something of a stretch to say he was at fault. Then again, with 30+ years on the northern ice roads, it's not as though Alex has anything left to prove.

The thing I took away from the first episode was that truckers in India must belong to a particularly despised caste. How else could you explain jamming them into wooden-framed trucks with no air conditioning that wouldn't survive any significant impact and then sending them up mountain roads almost narrower than the trucks?

Guilty Pleasure Update- Ice Road Truckers in the Himalayas? Canadians Keep Write On Trucking

Photo Courtesy of Alaskaroads.com

OK- I missed last week's Ice Road Truckers largely because I was imbibing in large quantities of alcohol and watching fireworks before leaving a trail of bottles and patio furniture (but mostly bottles) back to Chalet Fenway. But apparently the History Channel showed a promo that I just now heard about that will feature some of the Ice Road Truckers hauling cement on one of the mountain roads on the Indian side of the Himalayas.

Besides the discussions on the History Channel bulletin boards (apparently some people actually saw the Ice Road Truckers: Himalayas promos themselves but couldn't believe it), a number of articles interviewing Lisa Kelly or Alex Debagorski make mention of their trip to India appear after my customary half-assed internet search while some video of a blue-mohawk sporting Rick Yemm in the Himalayan foothills have been circulating.

OK...besides the really obvious questions like 'What would Lisa Kelly look like in a sari?' or 'Is there some smoldering Bollywood bombshell out there who secretly longs to become a truck driver on a dangerous mountain road?', I have to wonder if the road they're using for Ice Road Truckers: Himalayas would actually be an 'ice road' in the show's definition where they drive across frozen bodies of water. Technically the Dalton Highway might not count but Jack Jessee and Lisa Kelly were shown continuing on past Deadhorse and onto Prudhoe Bay itself.

The two Canadian truckers who have been with the show since its inception- Alex Debagorski and Hugh Rowland- can now add 'author' to their resumes. Last month, Hugh Rowland's On Thin Ice was released by Hyperion press. Alex Debagorski, who wore many hats before the History Channel series even began, has a book due out in November.

Guilty Pleasure Alert- New Season of Ice Road Truckers Begins Tonight

Some people readily 'fess up to having American Idol or Top Model as their requisite guilty pleasure for TV viewing. I'm going to have to say mine is the History Channel's Ice Road Truckers, which has the distinction of being one of the few shows on the network that I've warmed up to and is still around. To be fair, I was watching before the petite Lisa Kelly (above) made an appearance in season 3. The first two seasons were spent on the seasonal ice roads of Canada's Yukon and Northwest Territories with 18 wheelers hauling supplies across frozen lakes into and out of the otherwise inaccessible diamond mines there.

Season 3 featured the Dalton Highway, which serves as a corridor for oilfield equipment and supplies between the North Slope and Fairbanks, AK. Apparently season 4 will see a return to the Dalton Highway, which marks the first time the History Channel and Thom Beers' camera crew hasn't been booted off an ice road.

It's also worth noting that for all the bitching and moaning I did about a set aside, no-bid contract where an Alaska Native Corporation pocketed about $20 million for doing nothing earlier this year, the transportation company that's responsible for most of the commercial traffic on the Dalton is in fact a subsidiary of an Alaska Native Corporation itself.

Grim Milestone Watch- Money Thrown Down a Black Hole....or, The Stimulus One Year Later

I guess you could've considered me a skeptic from the beginning. As it turns out, I'm hardly in the minority these days.

I remember sometime about a year ago catching a special presentation on the History Channel called The Crumbling of America. Like many a 'documentary' that network has been known to air lately, it came off as a tad alarmist- although it did raise several valid concerns over the age and condition of America's infrastructure. I only caught the first part of this special, but the release of this seemed to coincide with the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The conspiracy theorist in me might've thought that this was aired for the purpose of scaring up support for the $787 Billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

One of the highlighted structures was the Tappan Zee Bridge, which is the NY State Thruway bridge over the Hudson River north of New York City. It was mentioned how the bridge is being undermined by improperly treated wood pilings that were installed when it was being built in the 1950s. The special went on to suggest that it might actually be cheaper to build a new Tappan Zee bridge from scratch instead of extensively rebuilding the obsolete one.

Well...between the History Channel special, the recovery.gov website and stimuluswatch.org, the only entry I could find pertaining to the Tappan Zee Bridge was a $5,547,824 bid to purchase 7 low-emission passenger buses, two of which will be used for the Tappan Zee Express service. No mention of any work or projects concerning the bridge itself.

Now, while I was aware that much of America's infrastructure needed upgrading and repair, I had my doubts about how this administration planned on going about it. Perhaps most telling was President Obama's bold proclamation that a brand-new Maglev railway would be constructed between Southern California and Las Vegas. If I remember correctly, the Union Pacific Railroad has been looking to expand capacity on its LA-Salt Lake City line (which runs through Las Vegas) for some 10-15 years. Whenever the UP attempts to lengthen a siding or install double-track along their Mojave Desert line, an environmental group will file some sort of injunction demanding the railway ceases work because the tracks run through some endangered species habitat. Then the railroad is ordered to conduct a lengthy environmental impact study, paid for out of their own pockets. And whatever project UP intended to start falls by the wayside thanks to red tape, litigation and environmental obstructionism.

Now, keep in mind that the UPRR has been running through the Mojave desert for over a century. Now, imagine the hurdles that could be thrown out in front of a maglev railway being built through the same desert from scratch. The only people who would benefit would be the lawyers working on behalf of environmental groups seeking to halt construction.

And that is actually one of the less egregious examples. The San Francisco Chronicle and bloggers Zombie, New Class Traitor and myself documented the Federal government awarding Alaska Native Corporation Suulutaaq a $54 million dollar no-bid contract for a rail relocation project for the Napa Valley Wine Train that they promptly subcontracted for $33 million. There are also some pretty stark examples of wasteful ARRA spending here and here.

President Obama seems to have been aware of the growing discontent regarding the stimulus prior to the State of the Union address. With no significant private-sector job creation to speak of, the used-car-salesman in chief shifted the goalposts in the middle of the game and instead touted the effectiveness of the ARRA in saving the jobs of policemen and teachers. To be fair, that would probably be better tack for Obama than togo out there and tout the number of 'green collar' jobs that had been created under his watch.

The cynic in me couldn't help but notice that most public-sector unions, especially teachers unions, had heavily invested in President Obama's campaign so I suppose it's only fair for them that they got some bang for their buck. I guess the rest of us will have to wait to get 'stimulated' by Cap & Trade or Card Check.

This time last year, we were starting to hear what poor shape our infrastructure was in. 365 Days and a few hundred billion dollars later, the infrastructure is no better off...nor is the American taxpayer.