What's up the this nosegear?
 

check this out...

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/435039/M/

first of all, is it normal, second, why is it there? (thing on nose wheel and odd shape of underside)

That is a rough strip kit fitted to the nose wheel. I was designed so that 737's could use poorly prepared rwys. its main aim is to deflect gravel, debris etc. away from the body and engine intakes.

you can finde more info at
http://www.b737.org.uk/
looking in the systems section

As the picture indicates this is a Canadian operator. I can think of a couple of other Canadian operators in the past that had the gravel kit installed, Transair and Nordair come to mind.

Gravel deflector
 

This fiberglass "ski" as its called in the Artic, is a gravel deflector that helps divert the gravel away from the engines. This aircraft is also installed with a retractable anti collision beacon underneath and two vortex dissapators that extend down from the bottom of the nacelles to pump hight pressure air in front for the engine - in order to eliminate vorticies

different uh!

Very interseting Company that First Air. They were featured in one of the Canadian flying Mags recently. Due to the Frontier NAture of some of their work they have to come up with some very interesting engineering solutions. The feature was on their new fleet addition the ATR42, a Combi fitting i.e half Pax and half Cargo.

The kit added about 1100 pounds to the empty weight of the airplane I believe. I won't repeat what the vortex dissipators were known as. :E