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Update Since Alaska

Quite ovbiously it has been some time since my last post. The truth behind it...my life is quite boring!

I left Alaska about a month ago and ever since then have been going to school. I was actually a week late back, but it wasn;t too hard to catch back up. School for me has hit the extremely waay too long point. This being my 16th year in a row and all (18 if you count pre-school :-)

None the less I have been getting the work done. I had two tests this week and pulled out great grades for both...one of them was even an accounting test!!! Thats a good sign.

When I got back to Pullman this year I was promoted, given a sleight raise and hired back at the place I was fired from last year. The manager and I at first didn't talk much, but we do all the time now. So everything at work is ok, but I still want a new job..its just gotten waay too old.

Anyway, I'm back to the same old stuff here in Pullman, so don't be too shocked if I don't post as often.

I'm a Pumper Baby...

So you are probably wanting more of a description of what it means to be a Pumper. I would first like to point out that after putting in a few hours here and there in other work areas, Pumping is probably the one and only job in this place that I could handle for such a long period of time. I have a picture below that if you click on will show you a larger view of some of the pictures I have taken.

The first two are taken inside fishing holds. Once the fish level gets down far enough so that we can get in, we will. We take these big plastic shovels with us and shovel fish towards the pump or use the return line (see first pic) to create a circulation of water towards the pump. While the fish level is dropping we don't really do much and in Jose' case will often take naps on the bigger Tender's. The middle picture is Pump 1 and its dock. Boats will pull up right beside it kind of like in the next picture and we'll pump their boats for them. The bottom left picture is that of the view I got to look at this entire summer whenever I was not inside of the fish holds. It was always different, usually with fog in the morning and a pending afternoon.

The last picture there is of one of the sorting tables. Every person on it is pulling something into their own tote which a forklift driver will come by and pick up when its full, He'll weigh it, get a lable put on it and take it off to get it iced. I'm hoping to get trained in driving a forklift next year. It sounds like a good skill to have, and they will of course train you for free.



If you are still a little unsure about what I did these past few months. I have a couple short soundless movie clips taken inside these fish holds. Click below to view them.

Clip One
Clip Two

Beach Crew '05

Today was my first day off in close to two months up here in Petersburg Alaska so I thought I would take a little time and introduce you guys to the really cool people I have been pretty much living with over these few months. At this cannery they have divided up all the workers into areas. Ours is called Beach Crew. I haven't really figured that out entirely yet but thats beside the point. Other areas for example are Fishouse, Cannery, Cold Storage and Crab Ally.

Anyway Beach Crew's main job is to get the fish off the boats and sorted into types of Fish (Chum, Humpy/Pink, Coho and Soki) and then get them sent off to their proper place in the cannery. My job, with a partner, was to actually get on the boats with this huge vacuum (pump) and get the fish in these huge holds up to the dock as fast as I possibly could. We were constantly being timed which always added a lot of pressure. Once the fish got up to the dock, anywhere from 4 to 12 people would stand on the line to sort out the fish as they came flying by on this belt. You really have to have a good eye to catch these fish. All the humpies were run off the end of the belt and straight into the cannery. The specialty fish are shipped some place else, usually Cold Storge.

So now that you know a little more about what goes on, here are some of the people I have been working with:



Top Left- Yeah I met a girl up here this summer. I guess you could say she found me. Her name is Erin and she lives in Idaho not too far from Pullman. Right now she is just a good friend

Top Middle- This is my boss Rudy and my first pumping partner Jose. We pumped together for about a month before Rudy split us up. Jose pumped with another person for a while and when he quit Jose stopped pumping as well for the rest of the summer. He went up top and sorted instead.

Top Right- These three beautiful women are (from right to left) Lyndsey, Hannah, and Marty. They are all sorters and always fun to be around.

Middle Left- Thats Erin and I at a Barbecue Rudy held at his house a couple days ago. Damn she is a cutie!!!

Middle Middle- That would be Hannah, Matt and Greg hanging out during one of our breaks.

Middle Right- This is Greg. He became my pumping partner when Jose and I split up. He had been working with Frank on Pump 2 and they absolutely did not get along at all. When he came to me he seriously got a new take on the whole pumping atmosphere, he loved it! That picture was taken on our break in the Engine room of the Nordic Mariner (the biggest occuring tender we had coming in.)

Bottom Left- This would be J.P. and Bryan in the back of the cannery. There are about 7 great big tanks back there that Beach Crew is constantly filling up with Humpies over the coarse of the day. Every day I would say that the Fishouse and the cannery empty that thing completely 3 or 4 times.

Bottom Middle- Another picture of the gang at Rudy's BBQ. That is Steve Ruddell in the back, my most immediate boss. He pumped for a couple years and is now the assistant lead to Beach Crew.
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Bottom Right- One last picture of some of the crew playing with a hacky sack at Sandy Beach a week or so ago. This BBG was significant becasue it marked the very first time that we got off work even the sleightest bit early...1 hour. But just enough to have some fun so we took it!

Record Number of Hours

I just wanted to check in and let anyone reading know that I am still alive and kickin. Today was defiitely hard to get through. Falling alseep here and there and taking every break I had to sleep on a tote. We did get off early and I will be getting close to 10 hours tonight so I will go do that right after this.

Anyways I just checked the time clock for this pay period that just ended (last 2 weeks) and I pulled in approximately 180 hours. I quite literally get up as early as 4 AM to work till as late as 11:30 PM go to sleep and do it again. Its pretty hard to find hours when stores are open. One fact about Petersburg, this Island has no fast food what so ever!!!

I think my pumping partner is really enjoying me as a partner. We are totally kicking ass, knocking out boats faster than anyone and our boss is loving us! We have backed up the cannery today and I hope tomorrow will be a light day, but who knows. He has worked here for 2 years now and he thinks we may be one of the best working teams they have had. It is so cool to actually get positive reinforcement from your friends and employeed.

However there is one down thing, I have been a half hour late to work twice now...sleeping through my alarm. Therefor whenever I get to a store that is open when I am not working I will be getting a couple more alarm clocks! Ok, G'night all!

Berries for Supper!

The other day a fellow pumper and I along with a few others from Beach Crew walked up to sandy beach (yeah an original name I thought too!). Well I wasn't going to go unless they promised me we would be back for dinner so they did! It just happened to turn out that there are berries everywhere in Petersburg. I ate around a gallon of various berries just on the way to the beach! The 1 rasberry I has was the best, but besides that the salmon berries were the best...go figure :-) They were right off the road like we had back home on the penninsula.

We got to the beach and yes it was the only sandy beach in the entire area, but the beaches around it were pretty much just like the ones we have back home, all rocky. We got to the beach and had a half hour to get back for Dinner, however it took and hour and a half to get there ... we hitched a ride home :-)

First Day

Today was my first day of actual work. We started out unloading fish from several boats over in Cold Storage by hand, which at first sucked, but once I was all slimy, wet, and most uncomfortable I just dug right in.

We had to grab the fish by the mouth and gill and chuck them in this tort (hand operated lift) however for a newbir, I just was trying to grab the damn fish anyway I could. They are so slippery, and often it was very cold down in the storage tanks, becasue the captain just turned off the cooling minutes prior to us boarding (need to keep the fish cool).

We did get to pump two boats as well, which could have gone better, but didn't go too bad considering 2 of the 3 of us had no idea what we were doing. The first boat was a disaster really, we ran out of water and all. However we made up ground with the second. We didn't even have to haul a single fish out by hand, we got em all!

I'm on the schedule for tomorrow, so hopefully it will go much better. It would be a lot easier if the boats had storage holes that were designed for pumpin fish, but in fact these are mostly crabbin boats.

Made it to Petersburg, Alaska

I have Internet! Not only that but I got to Petersburg just fine today and all is as well as could be. The town is very neat and the people are....well...very different and will be a pleasure to work with. These guys know what a hard days work is and they aren't going to hold back from showing me. I got a few pictures of the town...nothing to great. The middle far right is the cannery I believe, or it could be the housing for some boats at the docks, got a little lost when I took that. The other two in the middle are fishing boats for the area.

I do have to say that the moment I walked in my room, it smelt of fish and thats something I am just going to have to get used to. These guys are used to working 16 hour days and 120 hour weeks. I met a guy from Poulsbo Washington who literally set me up with the head guy at this place and gave me an opportunity at making 75 cents more an hour than the other first year guys. Which is not bad and I wouldn't be cleaning the fish. I'll let you know more details when I know whats up.

For right now I am waiting for my orientation on Wednesday morning and just enjoying the new company in the mean time. You can click on this image to se a bigger one.

I Want my Summer Back!

Tomorrow will be my last day spent in Olympia before I head up to Petersburg for the job up north. I seriously can't believe it has already come. Not too sure yet if I will have Internet access but if I do you better believe I will be posting to this Blog a lot more. Alaska will be the 9th state I have been to! Woohoo! :-)

Hope to talk to you guys soon.

--Morgan

More Colorado Pictures

Angie was wanting more pictures of my trip to Colorado and this is the most I can get out for the moment. You will have to wait to see the rest of them until the next time I see ya Ang. The first one is from the plane looking at Mount Raineer, which looked so much better than my camera could capture. The cluds definitely made it better. If you have any questions about tany of them, ask, but I'm not going to explain them all here :-)