Tuesday, October 16, 2007

The water temp has reached ZERO

Hello Everyone,
Why, your asking yourself, do I care what the water temperature is in Tsiigehtchic NWT? The answer is you probably don't but I do. You see all my previous store's have been Sealift store's (where a big boat delivers lots of goods once or twice a year), but this is a road store meaning that almost everything is delivered by truck year round. However due to the fact the community is on the wrong side of the river from the Dempster Highway we need a ferry in the summer and a ice road in the winter to get product to the store. So, your probably asking yourself, and what does that have to do with the temperature of the water, slick. Well, there are 2 very difficult times every year for a store like this, they are freeze-up (the time from when the ferry can't run due to ice, and the ice is not yet thick enough to support a road) and break up (the reverse circumstance in the spring). The fact that the water reached zero degree's this morning means that Freeze up is days away from stopping our ferry service and we will be unable to receive goods for the next month to 6 weeks. Mail will be delivered infrequently by hand by either walking or ski-dooing across the ice when possible. So no more milk, produce, well anything. The other problem is that the huge order to cover this time wasn't placed until I got here meaning I don't have enough product in my store right now to survive freeze-up, so I placed a big order last week. Now, we are days away from the supply chain being shut down, and no sign of our cargo... except for a email this morning explaining that in the bad weather our truck driver left the road while delivering our supplies and this will cause a delay in our recieving the goods.... So, we wait, and watch the ice, and hope that the warehouse in winnipeg sent us what we asked for, we hope that the truck managed to get to Inuvik with our product, we hope that its sorted quickly in Inuvik and shipped down here very promptly, and we hope that it arrives within the next 72 hours, which is how long we have to get this all sorted out before the river is impassable.
Wish us luck
CG

1 comment:

Matt, Kara, Hunter and Cavan said...

Funny story for you! Last spring break up I was walking through our Northern Store when I overheard the manager talking about bread in the river. So I asked him for the story! On the Mackenzie they use a helicopter to get goods across the river and then they are flown up here from Yellowknife. It turned out that the supplies for Kugluktuk fell in the river during the short flight! heheh so no bread or milk for us for that week up here!