Friday, August 10, 2012

Levity and Brevity

Life has been a bit challenging lately, lots of big things, so I felt like I could use a humorous post. Pretty frequently, something will happen on the boat, someone will come across, that's just odd or hilarious, or memorable. I often write up a quick line or two as a Facebook status update, or a tweet (follow me @CapnJennyB). These are all from the last two months: 

Just watched a woman take her dentures out, check them for cleanliness, and put them back in. Reminds me of my grandfather.

A barefoot man wearing nothing but overalls. And maybe 4 teeth.
And of course, the comments turned into all the reasons I was hot for him. SOOOOOO not true. I took a pic, but I think it's too mean to put someone's picture up like that, so I deleted it.

Just took a guy across the river super fast! He's a falconer and his juvenile falcon got free and is heading due west at a fast speed. He was sticking a radio antenna out the window to keep following the bird.
He never came back across, so I don't know if he got his bird.

Knitters!! A guy just came across with the bed of his truck full of bags of freshly shorn suri alpaca and he gave me like 3 lbs of it!! I guess the universe is telling me I need to learn to spin! :)
This sort of blew my mind. I don't think he really understood what he had. Suri alpaca is extremely soft, and the spun yarn is often really expensive. I haven't done anything with it yet, and I don't know if or when I will. It's full of dust, and needs a lot of work.

At some point I need to make a list of all the various tools, machines, and random crap I'm now comfortable operating. Grinders, machetes, weed whacker, outboard motor boat, ferry boat, pressure washer, etc. Some of them are handy. this morning I was using a fire axe.
The fire axe was to hack at the algae I mentioned in my previous post. Sometimes the machete just won't whack through it. The weight behind the fire ax can usually do the trick, it's just super hard to swing. And a bit scary.

In today's case of What The Hell Were They Thinking, two teens put their pool floaties in the river in Albany, intending to float to Salem. That's at least 30 river miles and their single oar looked like an oversized ping pong paddle. They took out at the ferry to call for their parents to rescue them.
When the parents showed up, you could hear them being yelled at for being so stupid. It took me 5 hours to kayak 12 river miles, and that wasn't in a pool floatie, which would slow you down even further. 

My last car of the day and the guy has an angry birds tattoo on his arm.
Just imagine, in 2 years, nobody will have any memory of what the hell angry birds was.

Today is made of stupid with a side of dumbassery.

Today of all days, why are the binoculars missing?? There's a naked guy swimming on the other side of the river! I just watched him strip down.
Evidently, he works for one of the farms near the ferry landing. They have a irrigation pump in the river, and occasionally, he'll have to get in the water and clear the intake. The previous operators were quite familiar with him.

Yesterday was the first time I've ever come home from work and thrown away my shirt and shorts.
I worked a 16 hour day trying to get the WL Ferry back in the water. I was covered in paint, grease, river water, grime, sweat, and who the heck knows what else. It was a very long day.

One tandem bike plus tag-along and heavy bags, the second bike with a trailer of stuff. Parents and their two young kids heading from portland to eugene to baker city. I'm amazingly impressed.
I'm still really impressed when I think about this family. Baker City is on the eastern edge of the state, over a huge chunk of mountains followed by scorching hot desert. 

Dumb idea: landing you canoe in the middle of the ramp (where I land the ferry). Absolutly fucking nuts idea: yelling at the ferry operator when I come across the river to get a car forcing you to move your precious boat. Assholes.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves. There are signs stating "Ferry landing not for recreational use," but for the past 50 years, it had been ok to land boats there. Even so, I make a point of being really chill when I tell people to move, so I'm always extra pissed when they yell at me. Especially when they're drunk.

‎"how'd you get this job? It's a mans job." are you freaking kidding me?????
This guy pissed me off so much! He kept trying to talk to me, and he wasn't kidding at all. Finally I just turned and went into the cabin. 

A bike rider just paid me with a dollar bill that was tucked under his skin tight shorts. It was soaking wet. I almost gagged. He's also wearing a helmet that looks like a golf ball.
The dollar was tucked under the inner thigh end of his skin tight shorts. So it was ball sweat money. ick.

my life: running fingers through my hair, pulling out bits of seaweed.

Did the whole world take extra stupid pills today? Someone almost drove into the river at 30 mph. Dude, the road ENDS.
This happens with some frequency. Even though there are about 20 signs saying there's a ferry coming, people come roaring down the road not really looking, and stop with a screech just before the water's edge. It's pretty scary, actually.



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