Before my hubby and I were married we were ADORABLE star-crossed lovers, separated during our college summers with me home waitressing in Idaho and him home fishing in Alaska.  By our second summer apart we decided that I should come up and experience his Alaska… and don’t get me wrong, it was very nice,  but there were some experiences I would REALLY like to forget:

Dramamine the devils pill,

Freaking icebergs,

Luggage stealing bastards,

The deadly volcano hike of doom, and

My captaining of a fishing boat.

It’s late and I’m too sleepy to tell all of the stories, but I will give a play by play of the fishing boat incident.  It started with my soon to be hubby asking a simple question:

“Are you ready to steer the boat, so the rest of us can get some sleep?”

“YES!!! Where’s the captain’s hat”

“There is no captain’s hat”

“What do you mean there’s no hat!?! How will people know I’m the captain?”

“You’re behind the wheel”

“But what if I’m not behind the wheel, what if I have to go pee? How will people know I’m the captain when I’m going to the potty?”

“Well you wouldn’t be the captain when you’re going to the potty, your only captain behind the wheel, that’s the rule of the captain’s hat”.

“I thought you said there was no hat”

“There’s not, but if there was, that would be the rule”

“Huh, kind of suspicious that there’s now rules for a hat that doesn’t exist”

“Do you want to steer the boat or not?”

“I DO! I DO!”

“Ok, sit here, now see that tennis ball stuck at the tip of the bow”

“What bow?”

“The Bow, bow is the front of the boat”

“Oh… weird, Ok ya I see it”

“Alright keep that ball aimed at that peninsula straight ahead”

“Ok”

“Alright, when we get to the first buoy, before the peninsula, wake me up and I’ll get us into port”

“What?? That’s it? But what about that sonar thingy, shouldn’t I be watching that?”

“No that’s for us to find fish, you don’t need that”

“But what if a really big fish is heading for us and I need to veer the boat to keep from hitting it? Like a whale!”

“Whale’s are mammals, not fish”

“Fine, what if a mammal is heading for us?”

“It wont hit us”

“how do you know!”

“It has sonar”

“Har Har”

So you all read his instructions, keep the tennis ball pointed at the  peninsula, you don’t need sonar, and there is no captain hat. That’s ALL he told me.  I happily captained the boat (sans a hat) for about 20 minutes.  When an oil tanker crossed my path.  Oh calm down, it was far off and we were never close to a collision… however, it did create a wake.  And let me tell you an oil tanker can sure cause a wake.  Now the first wave wasn’t that big and the boat easily rolled over it, but the others were bigger, a lot bigger and I was impressed by the amount of air I was starting to catch for such a big boat.  By the final wave, the boat was climbing so high my little tennis ball was pointed at the sun and there was no peninsula in sight.  It was at this moment my soon to be hubby came flying through the air, grabbed the throttle and yanking it down to idle. The boat stalled at the top of the wave and easily rolled down over the other side.  I looked down at my soon to be hubby panting on the floor and then behind me at the actual “captain” of the boat, both were white and not looking too good.

“What?!”

“Babe, when you come to a wave you slow down, you don’t go AT FULL SPEED!”

“You didn’t tell me that, that seems important, why didn’t you tell me that?”

“I didn’t think I HAD TO!”

“Well obviously you WERE WRONG!”

The “captain” then suggested my soon to be hubby take over at the wheel and I go outside to the bow and they would go by the glacier for a little sight seeing.  So that’s what we did, and it was very nice, until I saw my first iceberg and all hell broke loose… but that’s for another blog.