Game On, Redux

Tired.

Full of Pizza and Victory Beer.

It's not game on until you have other players, so we went recruiting today. Shaping up for a fine season, we must say. 4 hours, a few visits...all signs point to go.

Season has arrived, fellas. We will post when we can, but for now, it's game on.

Game On

Tomorrow we is flyin' out on the first spring steel trip of the year, weather permitting. We say "weather permitting" because lately it has been blowing like a busload of whores, and as some of you may already know, you can get dropped off in crappy weather, but you can't always get picked up again.

So the remainder of the day will be spent in the throes of last-minute gear prep, and considering that the last time we did anything with our gear was about 3 months ago, we gots a long day ahead.

Flyers-Habs in 15 ticks, though. That will break up the day just enough to make it tolerable.

Game on, fools. First line is goin' in.

Sicko

We be sick.

Not as in deathbed sick. But then again, not just the walking sniffles that office-workers complain about.

Just sick enough to not be able to do anything.

Does that suck, or what? We were gonna go play hockey yesterday, one of the last ice times of the year, but we figured that in our tenuous condition, we would probably end up worse for wear than if we just stayed home and did nothing...

So we tied instead.

MoneyBugs


Seekers


All of 'em getting tucked away until they go into the daily rotation.

There are rumors of fish in the locals, but we're gonna give them a break for the moment. When we get over this respiratory crap and are able to hike a few miles without coughing up a lung, it's game on, fish.

Enough, Already.

Midway through the Rangers-Devils game last night, it started to snow. This would be rather un-noteworthy except for the fact that it was snowing like a bastard, and sticking too. As We were in the middle of a gear-prep session, we took this as an omen...but what was the root cause?

Tax Day?

The fact that Jersey had just scored?

The impending Steelhead season?

Us getting our gearwork done a full 3 weeks before guiding season?

After awhile the snow seemed to peter out, and we gave it no more thought. The more precipitation, the merrier. More water to fill our locals, sweep out the dust of winter, let the fish know that we are, in fact, open for business.

By dark, the snow had pretty much stopped falling, so it came as a shock to see so much of the white trash on the lawn this morning. Now, with nighttime temps of 25° and daytimes maybe ten degrees higher, it looks like all the locals that have been steadily rising and running will lock up again, delaying our finny friends yet another week or two.

Makes us wanna kill a groundhog, y'know?

Last night's happy little snow flurry.


Today's 12" of wet SE AK spring crud.


It's been spring for damn near a month...Enough, already.

Out of the Haze

With the Folkfest over and the resulting pickers exodus from town, we have rejoined polite society in keeping normal hours, actually eating instead of drinking our meals, and trying to lose the twitchy, far-away look and ringing in our ears.

Tunes were played, beer was drunk, and good times were had by most. In semi-chronological order, we present the 2008 Folkfest in full surround-sound and Technicolor...

When your friday starts like this, you have nowhere to go but up.


From the Driver's Seat, 6:30 or so on saturday.


Ladies and Gentlemen, Todd Grebe of Well Strung. After this jam session, We were told that we were in a new band of Todd's called "Whiskey Machine"...somethin' tells us this is gonna hurt.


Ray Troll and the Ratfish Revue...yes, THE Ray Troll. Of shirt and fish-art fame. Badass musician, too. Get his CD and listen to "Bombastodon".


Buddy Booth the WonderDog at the Bourbon Brunch. Buddy went completely nuts when the ceremonial food was brought out...


Speaking of ceremonial food...Behold.


The Pilot Cracker Playboys givin' it their all on a Sunday night.


Gary Markley, gittin' all of it from a supine position...yes, he's actually playing, not just restin'.


The aftermath of folkfest, on a bleary monday morning.


Todd in his Monday attire, gettin' all of "Old Joe Clark" with the Young Joe Baxter.



That's a wrap...now back to sleep for a few more days.

Lost Weekend

Folkfest, Fools.

Rockin' the comfy shorts, backpack full of beer, extra sets of strings, tuner, cheeseburgers, red bull, and gatorade, we're gonna go for it old-style. The boys from Fairbanks and Los Anchorage fly in tonight, so expect some mayhem into the wee hours.

We're particularly excited to see one Anchorage head in particular, partly 'cause he's a hell of a picker and a nice guy to boot, but mostly it's because we loaned him a wicked good mandolin last year and have regretted it for exactly 363 days, 18 hours and 23 minutes. We'll get our Hughes back in the fold, but we'll prolly hafta pry it outta Co-Mac's hands...with a few beers, of course.

Nothin' like a hallway dance at 5am, or a monster pickin' session in a 3rd floor laundry room. Laundry room? At a music fest?

Well, Folkfest is the event held every year in Juneau at the Centennial hall for 7 days, but the REAL folkfest goes on at...other venues. Costa's Diner, the Red Dog, the Alaskan Bar, the Triangle Club, and Paradise Cafe, to name a few. Great traditions are seen to, including the Cowgirls Keg, the Freudian Slips Brunch ("Brunching in fine undergarments since 1993" says the sticker), Friday and Saturday night all-nighters, and the new "Burgers, Bloody Marys, and Bluegrass" lunch, hosted by Juneau's own Great Alaskan Bluegrass Band. Now in it's 34th iteration, Folkfest is bigger than just 15 minutes on stage, it has outgrown the Hall and oozed out into all the dark corners of downtown.

The Folkfest is a thing of beauty when looked at in the dim light of a misty Juneau morning, squinting one-eyed through 13 beers and 15 hours of pickin' in cramped rooms, dark hallways, wherever a fella can stand and git it. Most of our weekend will be devoted to seeking out the like-minded and pickin' a few fiddle tunes here and there, with copious amounts of beer-drinking and a fair amount of good old-fashioned Bee-Essin' thrown in for good measure. We'll tote the camera along, to maybe capture a reasonable facsimile of what all the fuss is about.

Good thing this happens only one week a year...we need the other 51 to recuperate and prepare for next year.

Daughter of Fog, Neice of Snow

As the days get longer and the sun climbs a little higher out of its southern groove, things start to happen in SE AK. The water starts to flow again, slowly at first, as if remembering its way to the sea, then with a little more vim and vigor as the sun gains a toehold on frozen slopes.

As the local flows rise, so do the hopes and expectations of the acolytes of Creek Woman, the ardent followers of the Daughter of Fog. In her ritual spring cleaning, she prepares the flow for her gift of the spring swimmers, the ones chosen by the fish as the first to ascend the water she pours from her basket. If all is right, the spring swimmers returns to the ocean to give the other salmon the news of safe passage.

As Creek Woman and her Auntie Snow awake from their slumber, we anxiously await her signal, her first pulses from the forest that call the spring swimmers home.

We're waiting.

We'll be there.

If you can't Beat 'em, Eat 'em.

A note to our friendly neighbors 1189 miles down the coast...

If you harvest them, they won't eat your salmon and steelhead anymore.

They're tasty. Trust us.

Seal Stew

2lb fresh Seal meat
4qts water
4 beef boullion cubes
2 stalks celery
1 onion
1 turnip
2 potatoes
2 carrots
flour to thicken

Cube the Seal, and boil for 15 min. in 2qts water, lightly salted.
Roughly chop veggies.
Drain and rinse Seal (first boil gets rid of iron-taste from hemoglobin).
Boil 2qts water, add boullion cubes.
Add veggies and Seal, simmer 90 min.
Add flour, salt and pepper to taste.