We got socked with snow again. Three feet of snow in a couple days. People looked sort of shell shocked when I passed them along the road as the storm progressed. Shoveling again. And again. And again, as the snow just kept coming. Many don’t have driveways you can really plow, so it’s shovel or snowblow.

I was all fine with it til I managed to bury the truck nearly to the axles in soft ground under the snow in our gravel driveway while I was plowing.  Now it was back to the shovel for me, as I’d given away the snowblower and my tow truck company’s truck was down.

When Sara got home at night, I was bushed, and a little depressed. “This is why people move south or get a condo here” I told her.

But as the storm progressed, and the shoveling went on and on, I realized: hey, this may be good for my hip.

Today was the best my hip has felt in a year and a half. The inflamed bursa finally seems to be subsiding.

I went to the boat to do the post storm shovel off. Chris checked the boat for me yesterday when he went down to check his boat, and said mine was okay, but would “need a haircut” before the rain started. When I got down there today, I saw what he meant-  the wet exhaust pipe, which is usually showing the top half of the pipe above the waterline, was all underwater. Chuck, the dock manager, had just sent me a text when I got there regarding the boat, too, to let me know it was time to get her cleaned off. I looked around and saw I was one of the last boats to get cleaned after the storm. And with my hip feeling so good, I kind of enjoyed it. And I noticed Eaton’s work painting the boat name on the bottom of the skiff pulled up on the stern of the tug has been impervious to the snow.

Weather has warmed up to freezing and supposed to be in the 40’s for a week. Ski trails should be able to weather the warm up now for a long time.

Stopped by the shop with the crab cooking pot I cleaned from Chris’s boat. While I was there, he wanted to give me a couple quarters of deer from their hunt. We went to the freezer, he opened up an 80 lb box full  of quarters, and I grabbed a couple quarters. Chris added two more for good measure. They were beautiful. He’d glazed the whole quarters, just like you do fish.

It’s the first time I can remember I’ve been given raw meat because I didn’t get any deer myself, for the second year in a row no less. But also surprised at how grateful I am. Gives me a good sense of the gratitude others who’ve been on the receiving end of our sharing of fish and game and gathering over the years that I really hadn’t considered much until now. And Chris seemed really happy reminiscing about the success we just had getting king crab and how happy all the people that went along were – many who don’t set foot on a boat very often, much less a big platform boat like his.

Happy to be butchering meat inside with a cozy wood stove ablazing and unlimited espresso from the new machine while it’s a chilly 10 degrees outside, with sun, but that breeze on the waterfront that cuts like a knife.

We pulled the king crab pot yesterday. I forgot on day 1 to keep the king crab tails. I kept them all yesterday, and sure glad I did. We got 8 more crab for the new people we had on board, and I saved the tails as we cleaned the crab. I steamed them when I got home, and opened each one up to get the meat out. There is a LOT of meat in a king crab tail – and 8 of them make for several crab sandwiches. The photo is of the meat from a crab tail on the left, the shell it was removed from on the right, with a Bic lighter for scale.

We had some of Chris’s crew and Sara’s staff on the boat today, along with my brother in law’s nephew and his boss from Craig, a Russian friend of the Ukranians who has lived in town a couple decades, and another friend of Chris. I had to twist Jeff’s arm to get him to give me his proxy form so I could bring one back to him. He likes to make it hard to do a favor for him.

Turns out one of Chris’s crew had worked in the alternator shop here in town, and she seemed to really know her stuff. I may get her to check out my whole 12 volt system on the tug to give me some advice to have enough juice to run the little freezer and maybe the new smoker I got for Christmas next summer. I had one of Sara’s staff, who fished and worked for Fish and Game out of Kodiak and the Bering Sea, talk to Chris about possible work at the legislature, as Chris is a wealth of fisheries knowledge and an excellent writer from his years working as a seafood consultant for his dad.

I went out to Chris’s boat today. We were careful to clean the crab well yesterday, and so I wanted to save some of the broth left in the pot from steaming them all for Chris’s daughter to use for stock. I poured some off through a strainer into a pickle container, then planned on cleaning the pot for Chris. The crab residue was frozen on, so I took the pot home with me to clean it properly.

I then went skiing at Montana Creek, and it was fantastic. But crap. I’m out of shape. It about killed me. But wonderful. Such a pretty trail that runs along beautiful Montana Creek. I was almost back to the start when Mark called. My alternator was fixed.

I stopped there on the way home, and he said that the alternator I took off was now cleaned and tuned up. And the brand new spare did not work. He asked several questions about where I got it. He showed me how it was supposed to be hooked up, which wasn’t the same hook up as the one I took off!  I may have fried the unit myself. More tuition. And it may possibly have been just a loose belt that was making the fluctuations in the charging, and nothing else. Chris’s dad Eric, who taught me to troll, told me to always suspect the simplest, easiest solution first when you have a problem. I did check to see if the belt was tight to the touch. And I thought it was. But Mark showed me how to test it properly – if I could turn the alternator pulley by hand with the engine off, the belt was not tight enough. I didn’t try that. More tuition.

When I got home, though, past tuition started to pay dividends. Sara’s espresso maker is kind of tired. I spend a lot of time trying to make it work for her (and occasionally me) properly. A person had a fancy shmancy Mr Coffee espresso latte cappuccino maker on Craigslist for 20 bucks. Said she only used it a couple times. I’ll take it, I replied. She could even deliver it when she took her kid to hockey practice. Then she got back to me and said the pick up tube for the milk was missing, so she’d just give it to me if I still wanted it. Sure!  I said.

She dropped it off, and it did look like new. I saw where the tube had broken off. When I tried finding a replacement online, I could not find any vendor that had one in stock. The tube fits into a socket, and the top part of the tube was up in the socket, but the part from end of the socket to the bottom of the milk container had somehow broken off. I took the top of the container with the socket to the hardware store, and found a piece of 5/8 inch clear tubing fit snugly over the socket (not inside of it). I paid the $1.72 for the foot of tubing, and headed home. I measured the tubing to the bottom of the tank, and needed to cut it in half to be the right length. Which was great, as now I’ll have a spare. I filled the container with water just to try it, and it worked!

I bought milk on the way home from skiing today. I poured the water out of the milk container and loaded the milk. I first tried the latte function, and out it came. First the milk. Then the espresso. Perfect!  After I finished that, I tried making a cappuccino. Same result!   I looked up the machine online, and a new one is over $300. A win.

So 1 loss and 1 win for this 60 year old this week. I’ll take it.

We got about a one week winter king crab season for personal use fishing in the Juneau Area.  The season opened yesterday, and I went with Chris to set his pot.  The regulations allow one pot per boat, and one crab per family, for the season.  So it usually works out that people with boats and king crab pots and usually a mechanical puller (run by hydraulics, gasoline or dc electric) set their pots, and then they go out to check the pot with a bunch members of other families, each with a permit for one crab.

I hadn’t had much contact with the Ukranian family since late last winter, when they would go out with us fishing for salmon and crab in the channel.  I was out on the tug most of the summer and so regrettably didn’t get them out salmon fishing.   I got in touch with them and they were eager to go.  Mom was working now for the school district, dad for a contractor, the older son in high school still didn’t talk much, and the elementary school daughter was a chatter box, now with perfect English.

Two of Sierra Leoneon sisters also went – Absatu and Dorothy.  Chris’s cousin who recently moved back to town, and who had done missionary work in places like Peru and Papau New Guinea were also aboard, along with Bob and I.  It was like a floating United Nations out there.

It was a cold morning, so we let the boat warm up a half hour, then steamed about about 45 minutes to the pot Chris and I set the day before.  I hung the buoy line with the grapple hook, helped Chris work it onto the hydraulic hauler, then Chris had me run the hydraulic valve while he coiled the line by hand.  The pot came up from about 300 feet in a minute or two.  And it was plenty full of keeper king crab, along with a few tanner crab.

Chris and I attached the bridle of the pot with the hook from a line on the boom, then Chris lifted the pot with the hydraulics over the deck.  His cousin let loose the bottom purse of the pot, and the crab fell to the deck.   I rebaited the bait bags while the rest of the crew ogled all the crab.  We took the 6 biggest king crab and 2 tanner crab, and threw the rest back – many of which were also legal size.

Chris re-positioned the boat to the spot he wanted, and he and I and his nephew pushed the pot back overboard.  Tomorrow we’ll have new people with us to get crab for them.

Before we headed to town, I filled out my crab permit with my catch of one, and I helped the Ukranians and Africans fill out their permits, as permits need to be filled out before leaving the harvest site.

Next, I lit the crab cooker as Chris headed the boat back to the harbor.  I put a few inches of sea water in the bottom of the big pot. Only 3 halves of king crab would fit in the big pot at a time.  It took about 10 minutes of steam to cook each batch.  As we pulled into the harbor about 45 minutes later, we were pulling out the last batch – the two tanner crab – and all the crab was cooked when we tied up.

A beautiful day, with high overcast skies and temperature in the 20’s, and a lot of happy campers.