BACK ON THE STREET! Coffee@thegreatnorthern LIves! It's amazing to be back after such a long unanticipated hiatus. A few months back saw "the emergence of some sort of brain malfunction that lead to the untimely demise of my comps logic board". Or a case i'd like to refer to as " the laptop fell off my lap and now the monitor is screwed". How ever i choose to think of it, i was kept away from regular Internetting of any sort! This unfortunate incident combined with the 2011 salmon canning season meant I was out of the loop for almost 6 months! I feel so behind! In the meantime I moved to ultra hip Portland, Or and finally got a decent MacBook. Now I'm back on the scene shredding it up once again. Stay tuned for regular rants, updates and random nerdery.
On june 16 Martha, Tigris and I left once again for the salmon season in Naknek Alaska along Bristol Bay. This was the second consecutive season as willing slaves in the warehouse for Tigri and I, and after skipping the previous year, Martha came for her third. The cannery work is not nearly as brutal or fishy as it sounds, for us lucky bastards at least. Working in the warehouse means casing up sealed cans of cooked wild alaskan salmon. All the freezing wet processing, the guts and blood have been sprayed long before we ever see the cans. They are wheeled in to us in near thousand pound iron "bussies" layers of gold tin cans separated by metal sheets. They are manually thrown on a small conveyer belt then palletized twenty layers high by a fairly large and intimidating square magnet head. The stack is then boxed up manually and taken to the loading dock on a forklift. Incredible. Our jobs are relatively cushy compared to the poor fools who earn the same 7.75 wage on the slime line or in the freezer. This is because of our boss, the warehouse foreman, Dean. Dean understandably fell in crushy love with martha the first time they met in the warehouse years earlier. I don't mind this at all. Not one bit. Considering that I kinda fell in crushy love with Dean. This makes for an amazing working environment and a very fun summer salmon season. There were enough hangovers and dance parties to show for it at least.
The best part of the whole Naknek experience is getting the opportunity to meet a few amazing individuals amidst such a clamor of utter assholes and people so far from the type that i would like to hang out with normally. But there we all are, stuck for 12 to 16 hours a day with one another. Its very surreal. I also have met some of my favorite people i know in that strange place. Dean and Max, Sean, Jean, are people who i would love to know for the rest of my life. i really didn't realize how much i missed them or the whole AGS routine until I came back to Humboldt for a friends wedding. The wedding and my friends were beautiful. I never want to live in Humboldt again.
I dont know why this song makes me so nostalgic. Its coming into the warehouse on a chilly alaska morning, tired and hungover, its trying to wake up, it just makes me remember how much fun this summer was.
Showing posts with label Alaska. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alaska. Show all posts
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Back After A Month Long Stint in Alaska!!! Ive finally read DOOM PATROL Vol 2!!! Yet Another Party In Flagstaff!!!
Back in the Lower 48 as they might say, Ive finally returned to the confines of the continental U.S. after working my proverbial Arse off in Naknek Alaska Salmon cannery. Picture Naknek Alaska. Not the postcard pictures of Anchorage illuminated at dusk my the setting sun nestled in the shadows of the mountains or majestic glaciers flowing towards crystal blue lakes, but a coastal plain of small shrubs, a sandy squishy tundra desolation, ramble of modest teetering wooden shacks and trailers and immense canneries and tiny home businesses that dot the path of the Peninsula Highway and at the end of the road eventually form what can loosely be called a small town consisting of a post office, a town museum and three heavily trafficked bars, The Red Dog, The Fisherman and poor poor Hatfield's, and the homes of its customers.
There is no real way to describe the Alaska General Seafood cannery other than comparing it to a summer camp for juvenile hall all-stars. Packed two story dorms, footsteps echoing through the entire hall off seemingly hollow wooden floors, and I even roomed with the self-proclaimed "best rapper in Naknek". Incredible.
The "slime line", the freezer, the egg house, the warehouse. Thankfully I was placed in the warehouse under the semi supervision of Dean, aka the best boss one could ask for. Relative to the rest of the cannery's operations, being a warehouse worker is a cushy job. No dressing up and down in thick full body rain gear, no unbearable fish smell, no fish gutting dis assembly line. The warehouse is the last stop on the poor Salmon's journey through the massive never ceasing seafood slaughterhouse. The fish are cooked inside the cans then stacked inside near 1000 lbs steel crates which are rolled into the "cooling room" where they sit until they are cool enough to handle. then i come over and pull the "bussy" in front of a mini conveyor belt and toss them layer by layer down toward the giant magnet head which stacks them 20 layers high on a pallet. We throw a cardboard shroud over the "bright stack" and strap it up and call for the poor forklift driver scowling at us from the dark. They are loaded on an extremely slow moving barge and head toward Seattle. There you go. More on the Alaska adventure later.
On a super quick nerdly note, the Grant Morrison run of DOOM PATROL is quickly becoming one of my top favorite series. The first Trade really got me hooked. More classic comic initially. Small contained episodes where a villain rises then falls, but there are traces of the trademark Grant Morrison style and subject mater of meta universes, androgyny etc. Trade #2 THE PAINTING THAT ATE PARIS expands even more on the worlds within worlds idea and brings in more elements of absurdism. More awesome and creative adversaries to compliment our increasingly complicated and conflicted "heroes". A good friend of mine who we shall call Maggie the Mechanic, says she likes it even more than the INVISIBLES. Im not so sure about this. Maybe. We shall see. Full and complete nerd review later.
I have to put all these sweet pointless topics on hold, because I am currently sitting in the best food/coffee shop in Flagstaff AZ, eating possibly the best order of veggie b&g I have ever eaten, about to go to Oak Creek to swim in the red rock river, just before we head down to to see our friends band CUSTODY BATTLE play the first show of their tour. There are no words to describe how awesome this is.
There is no real way to describe the Alaska General Seafood cannery other than comparing it to a summer camp for juvenile hall all-stars. Packed two story dorms, footsteps echoing through the entire hall off seemingly hollow wooden floors, and I even roomed with the self-proclaimed "best rapper in Naknek". Incredible.
The "slime line", the freezer, the egg house, the warehouse. Thankfully I was placed in the warehouse under the semi supervision of Dean, aka the best boss one could ask for. Relative to the rest of the cannery's operations, being a warehouse worker is a cushy job. No dressing up and down in thick full body rain gear, no unbearable fish smell, no fish gutting dis assembly line. The warehouse is the last stop on the poor Salmon's journey through the massive never ceasing seafood slaughterhouse. The fish are cooked inside the cans then stacked inside near 1000 lbs steel crates which are rolled into the "cooling room" where they sit until they are cool enough to handle. then i come over and pull the "bussy" in front of a mini conveyor belt and toss them layer by layer down toward the giant magnet head which stacks them 20 layers high on a pallet. We throw a cardboard shroud over the "bright stack" and strap it up and call for the poor forklift driver scowling at us from the dark. They are loaded on an extremely slow moving barge and head toward Seattle. There you go. More on the Alaska adventure later.
On a super quick nerdly note, the Grant Morrison run of DOOM PATROL is quickly becoming one of my top favorite series. The first Trade really got me hooked. More classic comic initially. Small contained episodes where a villain rises then falls, but there are traces of the trademark Grant Morrison style and subject mater of meta universes, androgyny etc. Trade #2 THE PAINTING THAT ATE PARIS expands even more on the worlds within worlds idea and brings in more elements of absurdism. More awesome and creative adversaries to compliment our increasingly complicated and conflicted "heroes". A good friend of mine who we shall call Maggie the Mechanic, says she likes it even more than the INVISIBLES. Im not so sure about this. Maybe. We shall see. Full and complete nerd review later.
I have to put all these sweet pointless topics on hold, because I am currently sitting in the best food/coffee shop in Flagstaff AZ, eating possibly the best order of veggie b&g I have ever eaten, about to go to Oak Creek to swim in the red rock river, just before we head down to to see our friends band CUSTODY BATTLE play the first show of their tour. There are no words to describe how awesome this is.
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