Hiked on through to another Dimension

A few weeks ago I got the chance to take a little boat ride over to the island across from town called Mallik. We had been over there in the winter time with snow mobiles while the bay was frozen, but it's not so easy to reach in the summer time. Even though during low tide there is a land bridge, you don't want to risk getting stuck for 6 hours because the tide has come in too quickly.
A lot was discovered on the other side, everything from abandoned snow mobiles to the more natural elements like unidentified meat/skin from unidentified animal(see photo below). But most importantly what I discovered while on the hike is that I am horribly out of shape! Good thing that Elliptical trainer is coming on sealift!
The best part of this trip was capturing pictures of our town from a different perspective.

Made it to the top!

Crawled up on all fours, but I made it! Took a little nap at the top and then I was ready to head back down. Funny enough this mountain is called "Nipple Mountain"!

Norm Series (part 3)

Traditions

It was a lazy evening, just shy of 10pm. I was already in my PJ pants and a lounging on the couch settled in for the evening when I heard faint screaming. I ran to the window and then opened the front door to make sure it wasn't something to do with our Malamute terrorizing the local children. I determined it wasn't anything to do with the dog just as I heard gun fire. Ok, so lets recap, screaming and gunfire....hmm, but now the screaming is sounding like happy screaming? Does this fit? I turn to the water and notice 3 boats in the bay racing around and hear more gun fire. "They've caught something" I some how tell myself, because now I am some kind of expert on hunting and also seeing in the dark. I race back inside stop my husband from running out in his long johns, we both go back in and put on our pants, this is a much smarter idea. While putting on my pants I simultaneously call my girlfriend on the phone and tell her to put her shoes on and meet us outside. Once outside, more gunfire! We hop in the the truck and "Dukes of hazards" our way down to the beach. I can almost hear those banjos. Stop. Boats and crowds. What is it? What did they catch? I can hardly see anything in all this darkness and confusion. And finally a nice lady stops and tells us "but they haven't caught anything". WHA? She sees our confusion and enlightens us, "it's a tradition". Apparently a bunch of people from Coral Harbor boated over here today, they are moving here permanently. What does all this have to do with gun fire you ask? When someone comes to our community from another community, they announce their arrival by shooting many...many times into the water. I hear those banjos again. It was pretty nice to see so many people grouped on the beach waiting to happily greet the boaters. The children laughed and yelled out to the people on the boats, people on 4-wheelers were arriving to see the commotion and I also saw some friends. It was in a weird way at 10 o'clock on a dark wet beach, some kind of a social. I ask my friends how they could boat from such a distance, they said "with a lot of gas"! They told me that sometimes if they can't bring enough for a whole trip, someone from the destination community will boat out and meet them half way just to bring them more gas. How neighbourly! I returned home to my tradition of spending evenings in my lounge pants.

Just for Deb

Norm Series

Arctic Kitty Training:

*No kitties were frozen in the making of this picture, he got in while I was filling the Ice Cube trays. Curiosity didn't kill the cat this time.

Polar Bear Swim

I went for a little dip in the Arctic Ocean yesterday, the water temperature was just under 4 degrees Celsius and the air temperature was 12C. It wasn't very warm (or pretty, referring to myself in a bathing suite), but at least the sun was shinning.

The How to Do Rambo Style

"Broke Into The Wrong God Damn Rec Room!"

For those of you that don't know, that's a classic line from a movie called "Tremors". A fantastic epic of my time that tells a story of large, worm creatures that live in the ground. And of course eat people and cause a lot of destruction through out the movie. The main character of the movie, Keven Bacon finds himself and his partner Earl (Fred Ward) stuck in a sleepy American desert town, trying to out smart these creatures. Of course living up to true American culture, two supporting characters are played up as a gun crazy couple. At one point in the movie one of these creatures travels through the ground and cracks right through the wall of their basement rec-room, the same room that displays every gun this couple owns. The scene changes to across town where the Keven Bacon character can hear the ring of many distant shots firing. The couple end up using every gun they own (pre-loaded might I add) to kill the beast. The last shot is fired from a Huge Elephant rifle and then the husband stops and says: "Broke into the wrong God Damn rec room, didn't you, you BASTARD!"

This is relevant to my life. Some how my husband and I are turning into the gun crazy couple. We just bought a rifle and it's on it's way up. And now there is talk of others. My husbands eyes widen as we talk of the possibilities, shot guns, air rifles, muzzle loaders (whatever that is), cross bows and of course now that I brought up the fact that we are turning into the "Tremors" couple, he has peeked at a few elephant guns. " Are we going to display them on the wall too, honey," I ask him? Oh and they aren't for hunting, he isn't really into that. I think he is just living out every boys dream to shoot inanimate objects. I think for now we are just going to start with the rifle, even though he thinks that I need to have a gun for me as well, I disagree. One is enough. I do not want to be a stereo type from a movie, and especially not one played by Reba McEntire!

Hair, Hair, Long Beautiful Hair