My life as a deckhand

I feel a special kinship to the seagulls that feed at the edge of the water on halibut carcasses left by successful fishermen. Like them, I feed off of others leavings, both figuratively and literally. When a sandwich, soggy with day long perspiration is found wedged between seat cushions my heart palpitates, a half eaten bag of Doritos tossed into the trash makes my mouth water. I am the omnivore of dirt bag fishermen. It has (no joke) become a game to see how long I can live off of scraps without buying food, four days and going strong. I am however going 7 days of cleaning fish and busting ass for 8-12 hours a day without showering, I no longer smell myself but I do worry about attracting bears.

I smell and am not really making much money but I am feeling really good about it. I am not rich in money but I am earning dividends on experiences. It feels good to lean and do something new and different even if it is just working on a fishing boat. Now the real question is how do I keep doing this (working and learning new things) for years to come or the even more difficult to figure out question is how do I stop and re-enter the real world.

Adventures in AK

So much has happened recently, lets go over the past month:

• Working at Home Depot (kinda hating life)
• Kaitlin (my friend from Alaska) invited me up to hang out
• Gave notice to work, flew out three weeks later
• Arrived in AK drove directly to Prudohe Bay to jump in the Arctic Ocean naked on the solstice
• For the next week I helped Kaitlin with various porjects
• Started working as a deck hand on a halibut charter.

To say the least it has been a bit of a whirl wind tour. Now I live in a shed. No really, we keep the bait in here along with a huge pile of other random crap needed for fishing. I go out on the charter every day with six people all looking to catch a huge fish. 99% of the time we catch our limit of 12 fish. While motoring back to launch I fillet and pack the fish, then I clean the boat go back to the shed and go to sleep to wake up and do it all over again. It's not the most fulfilling thing I have ever done but it pays the bills (if I had any bills it would pay them).

Picture Post

Oh the good 'ol picture post, used for those times when a lot has happened but you're kinda tired of talking about it. So with out further ado I present the last two weeks in pictures:

Made some amazing fresh pasta with a salmon cake on top.

And some fresh ravioli....pasta machine=great investment

Dehydrated some more mangoes.

Built a totally awesome back porch with kick ass fire pit.

Tried out to be the jib man on this totally awesome boat...

...got sun burnt and the position.

And then I bought a boat.

That's it, all built and looking bad ass.

oh ya and I worked a bit...

 But back to this boat thing, it's an 18' Hobie cat with black hulls...and she needs a name. This is your chance to help me name her...thoughts?

A Day in the Life

I feel it's long over due that I answer a question long ago posed and quickly forgotten. 

"What do you do?"

Well, I am the program director at Camp Timberline on the island of Oahu. The camp is dedicated to the education of school age children. We focus on leadership, teamwork and critical thinking, but what do I actually do? Well lets run through an average day...well no day is average, it's always different, but lets look at January 23rd...my Birthday.

110 seventh grade students from Millilani Middle School descended on camp in three buses. They brought enough luggage to sustain a small army on an arctic voyage despite only staying for two nights and three days. Once moved into their cabins I read the riot act listing all the rules and expectations then broke the them into 6 groups to be headed by the 6 new seasonal staff I hired last month. For the rest of the day I ran around putting out figurative fires, from clogged toilets to adjusting dinner schedules, all while sending emails and receiving calls on my Blackberry from other groups that would arrive between next week and next June. I was called to repair our ropes course and to cook dinner, though a blown fuse caused an impromptu dash to Home Depot to fix the latter the former only required a harness. After that, two night hikes led by yours truly then off to bed to do it all again the next day.

They are long days and can be physically and mentally tasking at times but in the long run I really do enjoy my job. It is always challenging in good ways and bad.

During the days that I don't have groups or projects or hours in the office I like to get around and enjoy the island as much as possible. Most recently I have been sailing a lot in Kaneohea Bay and hiking the occasional trail. When at home I either read or cook or build something new to make my house more a home. It's a good life and has been a good year the only draw back is being isolated socially. Between long hours and an isolated location, living "on the hill" can be tough but I have good friends I don't see often enough and no one, but me, can be blamed for that.

Well this post wasn't filled with the usual fart jokes...maybe turning 28 has made me grow up...hahaha nooooo...no worries there. I will at least leave you with a few pictures for your trouble. Enjoy

The first ripe mango from the tree outside my front door.

110 kids....

New crew sitting on the new benches we built.

China Wall, my favorite place to swim on the island...and cliff jump.

A dead chameleon I found outside my house this morning.

Highs & Lows

I was flying high on 4/20!!! 

Yup got to about 2500' during a 2.5ish hour flight. It was absolutely amazing!

Then I stopped by work to break a window....not so cool.

But then I bought plane tickets for this really cool bike trip I'm going on!!!

Then I came home and got a 862.82$ bill from Enterprise-rent-a-car...

So I wrote them and, politely, said "F#@K You."

Then I backed over a pipe at camp and broke it....

So Now I'm waiting on the next awesome thing to happen, cause there is no way I'm ending this run on a low point, so if there is anyone out there that can help me out....I'll be waiting.

Finally

It was starting to look like it would never happen, too busy with work, then injuries, but finally I was able to fly. As you all know, because I'm sure I told you MANY times, I love paragliding. I love it so much that I annoy people constantly by talking about it, reading about it, and looking for places to do it. I'm sorry....but not really. I'm passionate about it, some might even claim fanatical, but its my hobby, my sport but also my therapy. I love being up in the air, once I land I'm thinking about the next time I get to go up. Maybe I have gone too far though, I had Kira, Adam and Danielle visiting this last week and we decided to go sky diving. I was excited for this new thrill but the day we chose to go happened to be the "perfect" paragliding day at Kahana. So the entire morning while everyone was nervously waiting to jump out of a plane I was anxiously waiting to leave because I wanted to go do something "fun". When you start feeling that jumping out of a plane is less exciting than your other hobbies you might have a problem. Now don't get me wrong, I had a great time falling from the sky, but flying was ten times better. Everything worked out in the end, we got the boring sky diving out of the way and I got a 30 min flight at Kahana. It was amazing and this video does not do it justice (sorry about the camera angle too) but I hope this helps people understand better why I am so devoted to my sport. Enjoy

Intresting Times in Oahu

Trying to catch up on rest after an eventful week. First we had a Burning Man regional event stay at camp which translates to 96 straight hours of techno music (no shit...it turned of for about 12 minutes total when some one to stoned to DJ, impossible you say, alas no he unplugged the turn table so he could recharge his cell phone....his slightly less stoned friend remedied the situation and we went back to constant house rattling "ungg tiis unggg tissss"). On the bright side the crazy hippy people loved being topless while spinning fire (exhibit a) and looking like Fidel Castro with a purple beard (exhibit b).

                                    
In other news I messed up my ankle though I have told this story sooo many times that I'm having trouble finding the will to tell it once more here, but inquiring minds want to know....
Camp Timberline has a portable ropes course that we take to events around the island. It's basically a scissor lift trailer with a track-leash system that is 17' tall. We have many leashes but few carabiners therefor I brought my own personal carabiner, this proved to be my fatal flaw. My harness was clipped into the leash by a co-worker who had only ever used auto locking carabiners where as mine was a screw gate carabiner, long story short he didn't close my gate properly which allowed it to open when I weighted the harness. Thus I fell 17 feet but due to my cat like reflexes I landed on my my right foot instead of my face. I sprained my ankle but shattered my pride. Moral of the story don't fall 17 feet.