7:43am Kenai, AK
We haven't had fish for 5days which means that a lot of people here haven't worked for 5days. The fish are running slow because the water has been so cold. The fish story says that they will be processing today but the volume is TBD. At first everyone was making me crazy because when they don't work my job gets harder...they come and sit in the break room drinking lots of coffee and hot chocolate and making a mess. Then Saturday night a bunch of them went to the beach and got good and liquored up so most of them stayed in their rooms for a good portion of the next day hungover...out of my hair :) One of the dock guys came to me the next morning looking for solice in the form of a BBQ rib sandwich and said that he had drank his weight in Jagermeister. It was pretty rough.
I went out with the girls Saturday night. I was pretty tired but i was informed that i really didn't have much of a choice in the matter. We got a cab and went to this sports bar in Kenai called The Backdoor. (It's at the back of a motel) It was a pretty cool bar - good atmosphere. We (Molly, Jackie and I) had a grand 'ol time. We were sitting at the bar laughing and carrying on when this younger toothless man (not totally toothless just a few crucial ones in the front) came up and said that he and his friends wanted to talk to us. They worked at a nearby processing plant. So we talked to them for a bit and then Molly got a free drink from some guy across the room. We later found out that the drink buyers were from Canada and that they worked on the slope - that means that they work in oil. We talked with them for a bit, had some nachos, and then decided to call the cab to go home. On the way home we stopped at the Vagabond - the girls wanted to pick something up for later. We pulled into the driveway and there was a moose eating in the trees right by the entrance. So i get out of the cab and walk over to it. It was dusk so i was having a hard time getting a good picture...i left my tripod in my other purse. The girls come over because want to see and they fear for my life. I was so close...probably within 10' - i could see the bristles in its coat. It was just so beautiful. Eventually it went further into the woods and i decided to go back to the building where Jackie and Molly were making friends (they could only take so much moose watching.) They bought their booze and then Molly decided that she didn't want to walk back - she wanted to call a cab. But Jackie had another plan. She met this guy Dan-o in the bar, apparently he works over at the Kasilof plant and has a quad. Jackie asks Dan-o, who she just met, if he can take us back to the plant on his quad. We walk out back where his quad is parked. Now for those of you who don't know, they are called quads because they have 4 wheels...not because they have 4 seats. This is clear to me. I stand there with the THREE other people and look at this thing with its ONE seat. Okay. Now what? "Meredith, you can sit on the front and Molly and I will sit on the back." Oh goody...like a mermaid on a ship. Not really. Dan-o is not a small man...actually none of us are small...we are all life sized adults. This reeks of bad idea so naturally i figure 'Why the hell not?' So Dan-o clears off my "seat" and i sit down and hold on. Jesus take my wheel. I doubt that many of you have ridden on the front of a quad, it being such a good idea and all, but i was having visions of slipping and getting run over. Logical solution: ride the entire way (it actually wasn't that far) back to camp with my feet straight out in front of me. Come on abs of steel. "Dan-o you better drive slow or i-mo cry." Dan-o of course is tickled pink. There are three women to his one man...life is good. So he's laughing and joking around and the three of us are yelling and laughing at the situation we are in. We got onto the trail and he took it slow...it actually wasn't that bad. At one point i took out my camera and was taking pictures...like i do. I couldn't not capture my mermaid moment. As we get closer to camp we tell him to slow down even more and drop us at the gate. It's midnight and we don't want to disrupt Dale and Bobbie or bring him onto camp property. We pull up to the gate and out walks Dale. He looks tired but not angry. He says hi to Dan-o who then says goodbye and turns around and leaves. Apparently while we were out all of the J-1s who were at the beach stumbled home...Dale was having a bit of a night. He just wanted to make sure that it wasn't more trouble getting ready to ride into camp. We offer to help him any way we can but the situation is under control. "Too bad we don't have lots of fish tomorrow," he says, "that would teach 'em." We bid him good night and then go find out what happened. Aside from people dying or being blown up...Inlet Fish is the Melrose Place of Alaska. It was a very long night for us. But for the most part we had fun.