Georgia's in the house

Drumroll please. . . . After much ado and waiting, the highly anticipated "Georgia Entry" on my "Fifty States" page has finally been posted. Please enjoy and feel free to comment!

My first trophy!

I'm two weeks away from graduating another class of anxious and ready students. They are excited and it always gives me a great feeling to see them continue on into the next phase of their lives. Almost as noteworthy were the events of this morning. I've never competed athletically (yes, I was on the JV golf team my 9th grade year, but I was far from competitive in that!) and I've run a few 5Ks or fun runs just, . . .for fun. Anyway, yesterday I found out that one of my coworkers and several of my students were going to run a 5K near my home, so I decided last minute to join the fold to get a nice run in on a Saturday morning while raising money for the Red Cross. Lo and behold, a thin crowd and my over-zealous spirit was enough to walk away with the 1st place trophy for my age group! You have to understand, this was truly my first sports trophy ever. I never did the little league thing like my brothers or take up any sports very seriously through high school or college, so I was pretty pleased. Anyway, it's interesting that a few songs came to mind as I took on the ups and downs of a local neighborhood for 22 minutes and 51 seconds (official time): Consuming Fire by Third Day and The Finish Line by Steve Taylor. The latter, I sang to myself twice and I am positive that the notion and visage of Christ rising to His feet as I stretched towards the finish line of life was a very motivating notion. It was fun, too, to stretch myself and do something different. That, too, is what Mediocre, Alaska is about - waking up to a new ambition and taking it on, head on. I'm thankful to my coworkers and students who came up with the idea and I've been encouraged to try it again sometime.
I think I need to archive some of this.

Not quite Mediocre, Alaska

What a whirl-wind two weeks! We closed on the house on the 25th and immediately drove to meet friends and family waiting with a 24' U-haul ready to unload. There was little time before I would have to pay a second day on the truck, so we emptied the whole thing in less than 1.5 hours! It was definitely impressive and I made the deadline, saving some cash in the process. Since then, we have tried to settle in, but life never stops in our household - the night of the 27th all four of us left for Atlanta. Rachel and the kids on their way with her family to Missouri while I flew to Alaska to get in some fishing and take care of some business.


The Much More than Mediocre Fishing Trip

Fishing in Alaska is nothing like fishing in other parts of the country. Besides the size of the catch and the lengths gone to get it, the distances between spots and homes is pretty absurd. For instance, I flew into Fairbanks, AK to meet my friends. From there we drove over 3 hours south to get to the campsite for the first fishing trip, a chartered king salmon trip on the Gulkana river. We didn't pull into camp until past 3 in the morning, yet we still made our 6 AM charter and limited out. Next was a 2 hour drive south from there to Chitina, where we would take a half-hour boat ride down one of the most treacherous rivers in the world to dipnet for our allowed 43 sockeye (red) salmon and 2 king salmon. Now with over 170 lbs of salmon fillets in the coolers, we headed south to Valdez, another couple hours through some of the most beautiful country in the world, to get our fish vaccuum sealed and frozen solid. So far we had slept about 6 hours and spent the nights at a campground and in the forest on the cliffs of the Copper River; needless to say, a night in a hotel would be nice. So, we got the last room in town and crashed after some celebratory pizza. Sunday was a day of rest and trout fishing at Blueberry Lake just outside of town as well as fishing for pink salmon off Allison Point. We resettled at our final campground for Sunday night and slept well before our 12 hour halibut charter from Valdez Harbor. The halibut charter left a little to be desired as far as service, but the captain had some things working against him - so I don't hold him completely responsible. Regardless, we ended the long day at sea with meeting our limit yet again and taking home a "souvenir" decent size sea bass as well (not the tastiest, but hey, fish is fish!) Now, with over 230 lbs of salmon, halibut, and sea bass in the coolers, our crew of three drove north, arriving back home around 2 AM, Tuesday. Tired, smelly, disorganized, yet laden with the best fish in the world, we understood why it is called the "suicide run" of fishing. For me, though, it was certainly far from mediocre! Thank you friends, and thank you, Alaska!