Wonderful Week

I have had a wonderful week with my 1st born daughter, now grown up and 30 years old!  She lives in Austin, Texas, 2,000 miles away.  In this economy you must be where the jobs are.  Not much in my little town.  She has the beauty and sensibility of her mother and my wanderlust and sense of adventure!
   I used to be 34 times her age and am now barely twice!  Funny how time works that way.  I remember years and years ago telling her of my travels, my experiences in life, my adventures and now she is telling me of hers!  I think she has caught up to me already and at half my age has a lot of living yet to do.  She has worked at a lot of different jobs in her life, making fried chicken and serving coffee, working in little cluttered offices, teaching English in Europe and living in a hut in the deepest of Africa.  Not afraid to travel and not afraid to get into the thick of life.
   Now she is an "office manager" of a four office business!  That not being enough she is also a licensed massage therapist and follows sporting events soothing sore muscles.  She is athletic, a jogger every day and runs in marathon races and is into marshal arts!  She has a black belt in kick boxing!  Thank God I have never spanked her!
   It would be easy to think that she is one of the lucky few but she has worked hard for everything she has accomplished, made wise choices and learned the art of being self reflective, knowing what she wants and how to get it.
   We defeat ourselves more than others beat us down.  From an early age both of my daughters have learned to set goals.  It is a simple task that is no longer taught.  You set some goals, plot a strategy, list the things that will bring you closer to what you want and list the other things that will prevent you from attaining your goals.  Things you may also want.  Conflicting goals.
   A thousand dollars will buy a cheap car.  It will also buy you a round trip ticket to Paris!  That is the conundrum my daughter's grew up with!

My Art is HERE

Abstract Paintings

Are not meant to do what a camera can do.  They came to us gradually, one brave painter and then another,

 Three Orange Koi

painting something and then twisting it a bit, not so much to blur it out of focus but maybe to see something in a different light.  They paint the feel of a thing rather than duplicating its image.  This is all the more interesting because each of us feels a bit differently towards anything in particular and all of a sudden a painting can be what you want it to be.  It is personalized in a way a photograph can never be.
   The "painting" on the left is a photograph but it contains the perfect left to right eye movement, nice balance and amount of curiosity.  It would make an interesting begining to an abstract painting.
Where do you get Ideas for your paintings?  What stops you and makes you think, "I want to paint THAT!" That landscape, or texture, or color, emotion or just the feel of life?  Yesterday I was stopped by three fish in a pond.
There is always more HERE.

Upside Down Bench Gives Birth!

Okay, I can't stay away.  The garden is weeded and some corn, a bit splotchy here and there, is up!

 concrete waiting to dry

The sun is out today and it will be a good day!  just like that and just because I said so! Attitude is everything, I know that, it is what allows me to carry whatever it is I want to carry. 
   Catchy headline, huh?  I am thinking of writing for the National Enquirer and have few words to catch your interest.  This is a true story though, it is what guys do.  It is interesting how men and women react to any kind of emotional issue, whatever it might be.  Women may cry or lose sleep or lose weight, talk with their friends, commiserate, that is a word women will understand more than a man. We are loners and just sort of suck it up. We are not good at talking "issues" and probably not much good at listening either.
  On a construction site if a guy were stupid enough to bare his soul and attempt to describe what was really bothering him, the response would be, "yeah, too bad, now let's get this roof on buddy."
It is not that we don't think while we are working.  We do, but we need the distraction. It is easier to feel our muscles ache than wondering the source of our tears.
   So, I made a bench!  It is all made from scrap and left-overs from my shop. I have made hundreds of benches in my life but don't own a single one. Most sold out of my shop before they were even finished.

 a slated bench

This one is mine!  It is steel, of course, with a concrete in-fill for the seat.  I think you can see how I do it from the photo. I am not sure how I will finish it, that remains to be seen. I could "paint" it, some kind of art paint stuff, or perhaps I will slate it.  It will have a back for sure, benches should encourage relaxing and contemplation.
   My benches are never rectangular,

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 Another bench that isn't mine!

 A "Painted" Bench

I leave those shapes to others. My only rules are flat, stable, heavy, comfortable, and never the same one twice.
This is the first "Painted" Bench I ever did and sold it while the paint was still wet.  If you are over 60 you might remember the song, "Sugar Shack".  The guy who wrote it is Jimmy Torres and you can google him for fun. He lives in Eugene, bought this bench from me and we have since become good friends.
Funny, the accidental things that happen in our lives!
More of my "stuff" is HERE.

Irrevocable Decisions

    I am a list maker, have been for most of my life.  Not only do I make a list of "things to do", but they are diagrammed and outlined with methods to do them and the materials that will be needed and where and how to get those.  I think this is left over from my school teaching days and lesson plans. As a teacher you had to set goals and methods of achieving them, alternatives to chaos and a realization that there are several routes to success.  An attitude of "we will see what the day brings" will always lead to disruption in the classroom.
   "Control" in itself can never be a goal because that always leads to nothing.  It is not a good teacher who at the end of the day can only say "my class behaved itself".  That is a poor mark of success.
   I took these same list making and lesson planning attributes with me for my 35 years in the construction industry.  Goal setting in construction is what it is all about.  Schedules and timing and the order of things are the essential elements.  When the concrete arrives on Wednesday you need to be ready for it.
   Art is no different.  There are steps and stages, materials to gather and conditions all along the way. There is an order to things and an allotment of time.  Even now in my retirement I find myself making lists.

2:30 AM!!!

Well, now I have done it.  It is 2:30 am and I am wide awake, here in my shop office drinking coffee.
I have strange sleeping habits I admit.  I go to bed when I am tired, haven't yet learned that napping ability.
My wife works graveyard shift from 3:30 pm until midnight so she is not here to entertain me or keep me awake with chatter.  Television puts me right to sleep and my body says if that is where I want to be I might as well go to bed!  Last night that was 6 pm!  Then at 2 am there was a gentle knock on the door!
     "Jerry, I can't find the dog!"
     "Tuxedo" is actually my daughter's dog.  So I will tell you that story.
Jane and I were married for over fourteen years before we decided to have children.  Getting married was one thing and having a family and a ton of responsibilities was something else entirely.  I had school to finish, a house to build, things to do.  We met by accident on a train in Italy and really only knew each other for three weeks before we got married.  Well, this was the sixties, that should explain it all.  We had discovering to do, more travel, more adventure, more getting to know each other before we wanted children.  Then there was the other problem.
     The flight from London to Portland, Oregon is about 16 hours and Jane sat cross legged the whole way.
She was stiff and sore upon arrival but otherwise okay and we were pretty excited to see each other after three months of letter writing and only one phone call.  A week later we were married!  No immigration hassle and paper work in those days.  A week later she was in the hospital and almost died.
     That deserves a chapter in itself and I will tell it later.  $2,500 later (think $25,000 in today's money!)
with no insurance of course, she was safe and out of the hospital.  No one knew anything in those days and we were just married, right?  So she gets on "the birth control" and a week later she is back in the hospital
with more blood clots!  Again, inches from death.
    So, having a baby fourteen years later was a huge decision, not really the fun of saying "okay, let's do it."
There were huge risks involved.  She had to, "administer" would be the word, heparin twice a day because
warfarin taken by pill would affect the baby.  These are shots injected in the stomach area twice a day which she did herself for the entire pregnancy.  She was black and blue all around the mid section, looking like I might have beat her up!  "Maybe this will work," the doctor said, "there is some risk and it may affect the baby".
     All during this time I did what I do, I built things.  My mind of course is racing, what if this and what if that?  I built a changing table.  I built a rocking horse.  I built a bed and a storage box for toys. I built a set of alphabet blocks all the letters from exotic hardwoods inlayed onto oak blocks.
    Nine months later, "Jennifer" arrives, healthy, ten fingers and ten toes and I am the proudest, happiest dad in the world!  It is funny, having children.  My daughter is certainly her own person but I can see her mother in her and maybe a little too much of me!  As she grew older she developed my wanderlust, my sense of adventure. an urge to travel, always after that expanded horizon.  A genetic curiosity to discover what is on the other side?  This comes with an aversion to being tied down.  My daughter, the traveller and she did it more and bigger and better than I ever did.
    Europe several times, teaching for over a year there somewhere, and she was in Africa in the Peace Corps.  She would do what I did, come home and work for a year, save her money and take off!
    About four years ago she realized that this was going to be a continuing life style unless she could find something to hold her down.  That is when she found "Tuxedo", three months old, a mix breed dog.
He looks ferocious but he isn't.  He is a mix of Pit bull, Rottweiler and Mastiff and now at 128 pounds he is a big boy!  For now Jennifer is in Texas (another chapter to be told later!) and "Tuxedo", so named because of a white single spot on the chest of this otherwise black dog, is in my care.  And now he was missing!
    My yard is fenced and cross fenced, all ornamental iron work, both beautiful and meant to contain my daughter's dog and keep out the uninvited.  Somehow he jumped the damn fence!  How in the heck did he do that?  What excitement goes through a dog's mind?
    So I am up now and I found him quickly, tail wagging and the most thrilling expression on his face!  He had his own adventure!  I will be discussing this with him when it gets light.  We will walk the fence line together, dog and man, talking about "things",  the dangers of the real world, the need for adventure.  We will talk about poetry and love and the necessity of boundaries.  I will explain to him the best that I can, that responsibilities are also valuable.  He is a good dog and will listen intently, looking deep into my eyes, but he can't stop wagging his tail.
My Other Blog is HERE!

Because I think I can...

My attitude did not cure me of cancer but helped me get through it.  It is helping me get through the trauma of the cure and it lingering gifts too.  My lung capacity is about half of what it was and although I am getting stronger, the littlest things tire me out.  Today I will set two big gate posts, hiring someone to dig the holes for me. I will set the posts and mix the concrete with the aid of my helper.  My hands throb during this process and I will take an extra Vicodine but they will still hurt.  It is the gate that I want to build and setting the posts is a necessary beginning to this project.
      All of the work I do now is word of mouth, friends of past customers, someone who has heard of me, seen my work in another place, talked with me during a show a long time ago, somehow heard of me. It is flattering beyond belief, better than three girl friends (I think?).  They don't just want a gate, they want my gate!  Something that I built for them!  I sign them sometimes but it is pretty easy to recognize my work.  If it is stronger and different and unusual, then it is probably mine.
    Most of what I do is "installation art", maybe you would call it that.  Big things.  Years ago I opted for big art just because I could, because that is where my experience led me, because you can't box it up and get it from China and just because I like big heavy things, huge art.  Mostly this means gates and sometimes their adjoining fencing but I have done pretty big wall hangings too, about 10' wide and 5' tall with whatever I could find placed here and there.  I want to steal your focus.
    I am not as young as I used to be and some aspects of this work I no longer look forward to but I am pretty happy that I still can!  The posts will be up today and then the fun part begins, creating like a mad painter, welding actually, steel upon steel until I like it.  It is for a winery and others will see it too and then maybe my phone will ring and I will get another job!  If I do my best that is the way it seems to work, word of mouth.  I'll post a picture when it is done.
My other Blog is HERE!

Ladies' Club?

I have been told that this blogging world is a ladies' club, that we are interested in "niceties" and tea, luncheons and grandchildren.  I don't believe it is that limited, a place where the women talk in the kitchen and men are drinking their brandy by the fire, talking "serious stuff", concerns of the day, political things and "men talk."
   I don't belong to any "political blogs", only this one and I follow my followers and occasionally reach out and drag another into this discussion.  I don't think of women as the kitchen staff, unread, without an opinion,
and tied to the stove, only allowed to talk of cooking, sewing and children.
   We all enter a conversation from some vantage point.  We can read the very same book but we never leave our experience.  Our point of view filters what we see and this is what makes life interesting.  If we all got the same thing from the same experience, well then life would be pretty dull.  The best conversations are not with people who agree with every thought we have.  Sometimes, in disagreement, we can even discover that our experience was limiting, somehow blocking what everyone else could see clearly!  The idea behind a discussion is to allow another your experience because in this life you only have time to digest your own.
   I choose this blog to express my views because mostly I am an artist and it is this artist's view that I bring to the table.  If we ever me an extraterrestrial, who would you want to represent us? A math genius or scientist?  A politician? Maybe a poet?  How about a mother?  Well, that's my point exactly.  Women have a unique view into this history of mankind and it is not limited to sewing!  In fact, sewing has been a terrific inspiration!  Do you realize that it was women with their sewing, working with cloth, designs on pottery and their own spiritual quest that created Abstract Art?  Yes, it is true.
    I enter the conversation as an artist and a cook.  I think some of the best art in the world is meant to be eaten.  Surrounded by good smells and designs on the pottery.  There is a conversation here that has been largely ignored, given over to the men by the fireplace having their drinks.
    Sometimes conversations become political and it is safer to make bread, wear a burka, remain without an opinion, change the subject, be fearful of the secret police, worry about what people may think, leave that to the husband, or think we are powerless.  Or, even worse, think that is has nothing to do with us!
    I have a point of view.  I am reasonably well read and I am a welder.  I am fairly conservative, really I am!
Except for three years as a school teacher I have been self-employed all my life.  I am a businessman.  Most of my life I have had employees, as many as fifteen people working for me.  Over the years I have been to every single one of their homes, seen their children grow, eaten their food, seen them cry, helped them find laughter, encouraged them in their journeys.  The better they became, the better we worked as a team.
    I have a point of view.  I have two daughters.  In some ways the world is better for them and in some ways it is worse.  They are independent young women and I am so very proud of them.  They are "out of the kitchen", not barefoot and pregnant; they can vote, are free to express their opinion.  Both are world travellers, educated way beyond me and even have "good jobs".  They can have conversations in any room in the house.
    Yes, I could go to a political forum and probably argue my little heart out but that is not really who I am.
I am an artist, a welder, a gardener (Spring is coming and I will be talking about my garden soon!), a businessman, husband, father, friend, and I am comfortable in the kitchen and, on occasion, like to drag you into the fireplace room!
My Other Blog is HERE.

When we were very young...

     When I say that I would return to my youth in a heartbeat, well, I think that I should explain that a bit more.  I was not a girl chaser so it was not that.  I have always thought that it is more significant to make love a thousand times to one woman than a thousand women once.  It is not the carefree lazy days I miss.  I am retired and I have too many of those now.
     I miss the strength of my youth.  When I built my house I was working at the local cannery, the night shift,
twelves hours at a time.  I did that and built my house!  My last term in college I took 27 credit hours, that is like two full student's full of work AND I did those same hours at the cannery.  I got all "A's" and one "B"!
Oh I wasn't that smart.  By then I had realized that the professor's didn't really want you to learn anything, certainly not enough to get sidetracked on any issue.  I knew they just wanted me to spit it back at them and that is what I did.  There have been classes where I got "C's" where I had learned far more.  By my last term in college I just wanted to finish so I just did what was expected and got better grades for it.
     When I was young I could lift huge beams, just put them on my shoulder and walk up the ladder.  I have no strength like that now.  The strength of youth is replaced by wisdom but I am not sure it is a fair trade.
Wisdom comes with caution and a particular loss of adventure.  The horizon of life should be huge in your youth.  I have travelled a thousand miles with two dollars in my pocket.  I would go to Europe on a whim and like a rich man, stay for six months at a time.  No agenda, no itinerary, just an amble, pausing as I liked.

This is the little MG I crashed! I told that story yesterday.

    I was a virgin to everything, all was new and exciting and mysterious.  There weren't the evil drugs in those days and people were not so self destructive.  It seems that people were happier and friendlier and not so suspicious and cautious.  I bet I have hitch-hiked 100,000 miles in Europe, as far North as the reindeer go in Norway to the Southern areas of Italy and everywhere in between.  People were friendly and curious and would take you way out of their way and always feed you and offer a place to stay.  It was a time without suspicions.
My Other Blog is Here.

A World of our very own...

     I reread my blogs once in awhile to see what I have said and I reread all the comments to see what you have said.  I check up on you too, wondering who is this person who stopped by to say hello?  I have made lots of friends here from Iceland to Australia, Europe to India, my neighbors in Canada and all over the world.  It is a nice thought to think if I ever travelled again I would have friends there and conversations.
    Some stop by and never say "hello" and I wonder what would I have to do to interest them?  How could I expand this meeting of friends?  I talk about everything here and cancer on my other blog, so I think I have the bases covered.  Life, living, death and taxes, lost loves and new ones, metal art and my newly discovered interest in painting.  I have even tried arguments, joining both sides in a fight, just to discover your view!  I have fought with Art Historians, well, teased them anyway, and posted my favorite recipes.  It is interesting how recipes get more comments than a good fight! 
    I read some blogs about shopping and what someone ate for lunch and these just about put me to sleep. It makes me think what is really important about life?  I read somewhere that if humans were removed from this planet the earth, our planet, would be just fine!  Go about its business in maybe a cleaner fashion?  If the insects and spiders were removed the planet, our ecosystem would collapse!  And we would all die!  Maybe that will be the end?  It seems that we secretly want it.  Only wolverines and humans destroy their own nests.
I like blogs that question.  Blogs that wonder about the sensibility of things. 

     I wonder why cartoonist are the quickest of all artists?  I have seen no really great art, or even much little art addressing "The Great Oil Spill".  Lots of cartoon art on this but I am hunting for that beautiful butterfly drenched in oil, the art we have made of this earth.  In the future art historians will say that this polluting degradation of the planet and maybe our extended continuous wars were the defining moments for artists in the early 21st century.  But I don't see it, except maybe to escape from it all in a digital art madness creating colorful designs and continuous patterns.  Maybe that's it.  The madness of a world gone berserk has reduced us to painting simple flowers.  A wish the world weren't so complex.

My Shop, My Island

View from my shop.

Walnut tree and a look at my shop.

Working on a Bench. Working on a Gate.

Twenty foot single gate in my shop.


I have lived in the same house since 1972.

I have had the same phone number, a land-line, since 1969. I paid $8,375 for the house. It was a "fixer" house and about 900 square feet on a very large lot, about one-third acre. Over the years I fixed the house

making it about 2,200 square feet with a little "granny flat" attached. About 20 years ago I built my studio in the back yard. It is about 1,000 square feet and sits in the far corner of the property, not disturbing the flow of the sun on my garden. Every morning I walk the 100 feet or so, across my stone bridge, coffee in hand, to "go to work". I don't pretend for a second that this is hard. It is not like work at all. It is what I do.

My Other Blog is Here.

New Year's Resolutions?

I feel as though I have been given one more opportunity, one more chance to reinvent myself. I have survived that cancer thing. I almost got run over by a freight train, but didn't.

I once fell sixteen feet off a Church roof onto the concrete below. No soft landing there, and I went on to have lunch! I put my hand into an electrical panel and was thrown clear across the room and got to laugh that one off. Years ago, remind me to tell this story, I was sick beyond belief and the doctors could not even find out what was wrong with me. I was tricked into going to a "faith healer" (I have no faith like that, or at least didn't at the time) and was cured instantly! Seriously. Ten minutes later I was in perfect health after a two week bout with I don't know what. I was supposed to be dead when I was two years old and my brother saved me with animal crackers! Saved by cookies! That is a true story too although I don't remember it. I am sure there were lots of roads I could have taken, maybe even started, that had I travelled them would have been my doom.

I have liked Art all of my life but didn't "do art" until my fiftieth birthday. No near death experience there except that I gave up a successful construction business that was killing me.

One day I just woke up and threw it all away, deciding if I weren't to do it then, when was I going to do it? When would life be perfect and really allow me to do what I wanted? There are two problems with this reasoning: defining "perfect" and knowing what you want.

I am thinking, for my New Years Resolution, on both these blogs of mine, I will investigate

these two issues for me: perfection and knowing what you want out of life. They will clash like school girls but maybe end up dancing like butterflies!

No Rules, Nothing to Say...

I am not a painter but "I slept at a Holiday Inn last night"! I am just having fun. I give paint a will and watch in amazement what it can do when out of the tube. I have ten store bought colors and that is confusing enough. They can become anything. I prefer to paint on metal where the colors aren't sucked into the surface and disappear. I like them alive and moving, mixing or not, going this way and that way. They become what they want, what they need to be, what they have always been.

I admit that I stand back and have a look and always feel a bit pretentious when I do this.

I think artists need to do this, find what is missing and what is too much. I think there are stories within a painting, a vocabulary of color, translations in design. A visual language

My Website is HERE! lots more paintings!.

I don't have a style

No style at all. This is my second oil painting and it can be representative of whatever you like. Call it what you want to. I am discovering that this art painting stuff is a bit like poetry. I write 'em you read 'em and find your own meaning!

Modern Art is color-coordinated. Will it go with the couch? Do I need to repaint the walls? Can you make this in Blue?

Some where I once read that next year's popular colors are found in French underware this year!

I think I need to go to France and do some research on this.

I paint with the colors I have, ten of them, that's enough. I am limitted by my ability but not my vision. I know what I want to do, just don't quite know how to get there. In the mean time I am playing and this is the poetry I am doing today.

My Other Blog is HERE!

Dark Matter

All of my paintings are not light and colorful, but I admit most of them are.

I have 12 store bought colors, all acrylic, and several very cheap brushes. I mostly paint on copper or steel because I have a lot of it in my metal shop but yesterday I found hiding in the corner, a sheet of aluminum and thought I would try that. This is a mixture of paints and grinding and a little shop dust. It lived a happy and short life and then I ground it off, to be lurking in my computer, like a virus, waiting!

My Other Blog is HERE!

In a Corner of my Shop

is the last one standing and it dries just fine there, guarding the Ornamental Iron and providing a sense of color to my otherwise metal shop. I have some in my house too

but they are always the fifth or sixth

upon the copper, painted one on top of the other in quick succession.

I like them in my shop as they quickly gather dust giving them an antiquey feel like they might be worth something. They offer proof and acceptance for my clients: "yes, I am an artist" and "no, I don't work on cars"!

I have had my art in "real galleries" and I like to believe it is the kind of art you can talk about and I like to believe that as you leave the gallery you could identify

which among the colorful pieces were mine and you can! Mine is on metal!!!

Mostly I "do art" for fun, for presents to others and it allows me to charge that "art tax" to my welding work, how I really make my living!

My other Blog is HERE

Getting from Here to There

How does one "become" an artist?
I recently went through an old box

of slides and had them put on CD's, reminders of my youth and the road I have been on. What turn was significant? Did I take the high road when I should have taken the low road, turned left when it was meant to be right? There were other impacts on my life not caught on film, these are just moments caught in a box. The top photo I was twelve years old and had received "The Family of Man", a photo collection of humanity, from my cousin I met while in Disneyland. What is significant about this is that I remember the title fifty years later! How can that be? Curious?
The next photo I was seventeen and doing my laundry aboard the SS Ryndam, a passenger ship that sailed from Montreal, Canada to Rotterdam, Holland. That is when I ran away "the first time", dropping out of High School and off to seek adventure! The one way ticket (I didn't know when nor if I was returning!) cost $225 for the ten day voyage. Why is this exact price in my memory? I hitch hiked my way around Europe for six months on three dollars a day! Those were the days!




The next photo on the far right is me again, proud beyond belief because I had just won this
trip for my whole family to this magical kingdom! It is on this trip that I discovered an idea can be better than reality! This was 1958, a half Century ago and Disneyland was brand new and talked about everywhere! Fantacyland, Frontierland, Adventureland, and I think some kind of
Futureland! It was exciting and crowded and dirty and tiring!






These next two pictures probably had a more significant impact
on my life, more closely resemble "who I became". Me, hanging from the tree branch represents strength and I see myself that way. In my youth I would go back packing in the mountains with
a seventy pound load strapped to my back! I loved Alaska and my
fishing adventures there and arm wrestling with the local loggers!
A lot in life is just plain accidental, without design. I dropped out of High School but completed it and went on to the University, dropping out there as well but always going back. I was trained as a history teacher and did that until there were massive layoffs and I lost my job. I went into construction mostly because a friend of mine owned the company and hired me as a construction foreman!
I didn't know a damned thing about construction! "I am hiring you because you know about people", he said. So, that is how I got there, an accident, and I loved it. Mostly I loved looking back at the end of the day, seeing all the accomplishments and figuring out what to do tomorrow!

The photo on the far right, with the printing press, was one of the most significant things that has ever happened to me! This was 1963 and the height of the Vietnam War! A friend of my brother's

was drafted and gave me this printing press and all its supplies.

This was my introduction to poetry! Although small this was a real printing press with real ink and hand-set lead pieces of type.

It produced perfect products and in the process of learning you

begin by making calling cards. I made these for myself and all

of my friends and went on to create poems which were easy to

print and...said something! In twelve lines I could create a thought

and in sixteen lines I could tell a whole story!

This last photo is Alaska, an adventure I had while eighteen years

old. I had "done Europe" but wasn't ready to settle down and make "something of my life". There was just too much I hadn't seen! That summer I took a train to Seattle Washington and walked along the docks stopping at every fishing boat, asking for a ride to Alaska! One captain had his deckhand for the summer but offered me a ride if I would paint the rails and take my turn at the helm? I didn't even know what that meant but happily hopped on board and three days later was caught in an adventure I will never forget! This was a fifty foot fishing boat and this trip to Alaska took about six days. The captain would teach me how to run it and soon enough I would get my own two hour stint while he took a nap. The captain took the tricky passages through the little channels amongst the hundreds of islands between Seattle and Alaska. His deck hand was experienced and got the second hardest routes

and when we hit the open seas where it was supposed to be safe it became my turn. The third day out in these open waters we hit a storm and the waves crashed over the boat something fierce! The captain and his deckhand became seriously seasick and spent this time rolling about the cabin floor and the boat became mine! I don't get sea sick, so on this trip, "the worst" the captain said, with six hours training, I was alone at the helm! You don't have any time to think yet thinking is all you do, or just reacting to the wheel, trying to keep the boat upright and turned straight into the waves. This was a real roller coaster ride and way better than Disneyland!

If I screwed it up we would be dead. That is a pretty cut and dried assignment. No C+ to it,

you do it right or you fail, simple as that!