i have returned from my sister's. seriously getting to and from her house is an adventure in of itself. its like a 40 minute ride on a 20' aluminum work skiff through alaskan waters. the weather both ways was rather brutal. not quite whitecapping but not quite happy either. nothing like discussing the finer points of the battletech universe and why minecraft sucks with my brother in law getting hit by a 4 foot wave every few seconds. from the beach its a 30 minute drive over a very bumpy one lane dirt road in an old beat up truck all to arrive at a half finished house that only gets power 4 hours a day. of course you dont go there to sit around the house all day. hit up every fishing hole in the place. didnt catch a thing. my sister and brother in law both caught some cuthroats, and the 2 of them made for a light dinner. you also spend a lot of time burning things. usually wood or garbage or eachother. disgruntled by the lack of progress on their drywalling work, since my last visit (i did an entire house in 3 weeks), i decided to help stick up a couple rolls of drywall tape. i also helped chop some wood, most of which we incinerated. did have some starcraft time on the lan, and i got quite good at foosball, settlers of catan, etc. and there was the impromptu bbq at the gravel pit, after one of the loaders got a flat tire, screwed around on a listing barge, raced my sister on atvs (and won), i insulted my sisters cooking countless times.
the return trip was nice. i got up, watched dvds on the portable player, when somone said that today was the only hole in the weather for a week so i had 30 minutes to pack my ****, and some of the stuff i horked, and get out to the boat. the only vehicle i had was a barely functional atv that didnt like shifting into 3rd very much. i grabbed a peice of twine and "secured" my bag of dirty lanundry, my ugly stick, and my tacklebox to the forward cargo rack. i play some motorhead on my immortal hacked 5th gen ipod which hasnt had the sense to die yet. i was supposed to meet some of the extended family there for the boat ride to town. i get in sight of the beach when i hit a bump and my tacklebox falls under the 4x4 and goes rolling down the dirt road. the thing is laying on the road, unopened, though somewhat damaged. i do a quick inventory of all my (most of it anyway) stuff amd find that nothing is missing. so i "secure" it again and resumed my ride. it must have hit something under the vehicle because i had some transmission trouble. it was making a funny sound i shifted down to neutral and back up to 2nd and it seemed to clear up, and i manage to get it up to 5th using the "special trick" needed to get past 3rd (which was essentially standing up and jumping on the shifter really hard at speed). during this manuver i almost loose the box it a second time, fortunately it just bounded off the wheel a couple times. i was able to pull it back up by the bungee on the go, which was fine because i was only a few seconds from the shore at the time. the boat ride was less eventfull than the first, though still bumpy. and i finally get to town and can post this worthless anecdote that no one is going to read.
