Throughout these entries I’ll jump around from momentous points of the summer, so don’t expect this to be fully linear. Before I left for the fishing grounds, many friends asked whether I’d have access to laundry or a shower? Two out of three of these I can give an answer leaning on the ‘no’ side.

A Bristol Bay Deckload

Yesterday, I stepped foot on dry, solid land for the first time in 19 days.

I’ll let your imagination run wild with the thought of a marathon runner not being able to walk more than 15 feet at a time for 19 day straight and then stepping foot on land.

As far as other forms of hygiene, lets just say that my definition of clean or wearable has shifted tremendously.

I’ve taken 2 showers in 19 days.

Sometimes I think the sweet smell of the Alaskan tundra is blessing my nostrils as I take a deep breath and stretch high into the air. And then a burning sensation fills my nose and I notice all my nose hairs have singed off. Oh thats right, I wasn’t smelling sweet tundra, I’m smelling myself and the most attractive pheromone man has ever seen. Mmmmmm, delicious. I wonder which celeb would promote this new scent in a tv commercial. If only Chris Farly were still alive.

Peeling Salmon Scales off my Skin

In addition to lacking showers, I haven’t done laundry in three weeks. Mind you, we purposely didn’t bring many sets of clothing because of how small our boat is. Therefore, I’ve worn my UPS sweatshirt almost every day. Once you wear something that long you become numb to any odors that it carries. Or maybe it has to do with that burning sensation I described earlier. Someone once told me that like firemen, women go gaga for fishermen. My only question is how many teeth do these women have?

Speaking of famous fishermen, the cannery that we sell our fish to hired two very famous fishing boats to act as tenders this summer. A tender is a large boat that goes out to the fishing grounds and takes all the fishing boat’s catches and brings them back to the cannery. We felt pretty damn cool delivering to one of these boats and being helped by one of their engineers. We had a minor breakdown and Eddie on the Time Bandit helped fix our hynautic throttle control system. Can I be famous too?

Time Bandit

Please notice the picture above when I had to literally de–scale myself with a knife and pick off the hundreds of salmon scales that stuck to my forearms that day. I think I used that hand as a pillow that night to just to make sure the scent was unmistakable in the pheromone.

Quote of the day [from a large, southern boy crane operator on the tender]

“I may not be smart, but I can lift heavy things.”