Man Camp '09

Hello from Cordova! As I'm writing this latest entry I am in the middle of my second two weeks here in Cordova, AK. Seeing that we have the little one coming in July I took some initiative and scheduled myself for all of my summer deployments in May and June. Didn't want Becca to shoot me if I left a few weeks after Green showed up. So here I sit on duty in week three of my four weeks away from home. As you saw in the last entry, while I was home for my two weeks I was gainfully employed getting the house and yard ready.

Since there isn't much here in Corodva for me to do besides homework I have made the best of my time and did the only other thing that I could possibly do from here to get the house ready at home. Catch fish!!! That's right, during the first two weeks here the sockeye salmon were not running yet and we were forced out on to the water to do some halibut fishing. Here is a picture of my work place, I mean off duty time.

I know, isn't it horrible to have to sit on a boat and be forced to catch fish to feed the family back home. I don't know how I did it! It got so bad that we ended up with quite the sun burn after fishing in the sun. To break up the week we were able to participate in the Valdez Bush plane fly-in on Sunday. What a great day for an airshow. We ended up landing and giving tours for about 4 hours, and then demonstrated an SAR case for the crowd. Overall, a great duty day and we got to meet some great people and eat some good food.

Now that I'm here for my second two weeks the salmon have started running I feel like a little kid. We drove out to our secret fishing spot last night and viola, the fish were in there hiding for our taking. The locals here have been complaining that the reds (sockeye) haven't been running yet, and just like last year we are filling our freezers and they don't have a clue. It's not like were not telling them as they drive by, but they think that we are just a bunch of dumb Coasties fishing in a drainage ditch. Hee, Hee! Little do they know that limiting out and they haven't even busted out their fishing poles yet. So like last year, in case you forgot, here are some pictures of our ditch.

In between fishing, we actually have to go flying, the nerve! But the views are amazing, and we get to land at some very cool spots. This one is the Eastern side of Ellsworth Glacier in the western Prince William Sound area. Having to use the little boys room, the crew and I took advantage of this great place and posed with some of the glacial ice.

Well that's all that I have from here. That's were I've been over the last few weeks, "working". Becca will probably be cursing me our after she sees this, and I hope that I don't blow it for any other guys from work who's wives stumble upon this blog. =) I'll be doing more halibut and salmon fishing over the next week and half, and if anything big comes up I'll add another post. Hope you all enjoy, and I'll leave you with one more picture from this year in St Paul. It's me with the crew on Time Bandit from the Deadliest Catch. We got to hang out with them for a while and they let us take pictures with them.