Pre-season June 13, Day 14

Birthday of two wonderful friends. One from Seattle, Michael Medina, and one from Naknek, Allen Tibbetts. Happy Birthday to you!

Not as much time for reflection with so many people here now. Cooking for this group is hard only because I can’t figure out how much to cook, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to believe it. I made a curry dish today with vegetables, chickpeas, and chicken. Josh had a serving bowl size serving. It was truly awe inspiring. And frightening. My fear is that there is no amount of food that is enough. And even though we seem to have an inexhaustible supply of food, it took four cups of rice just for the partial crew here now. Today, Chris and Bob (new guys 2 and 3) came in. Paul will be here on Tuesday and Trina and David will be in next week.

I called Northland Naknek today to try to track down the lost box of waders and heard this message. “You have reached Northland Services in Naknek. We cannot take your call at this time.” That was it.

We got the inside site ready today, but we’re not allowed to fish till tomorrow. We’ll put out that net then – fishing for dinner. And we’ll try to get the buoys out for the other nets, but we don’t want to get them out until we have skiffs to fish them with.

The crew did a great job of preparing the crew cabin, and (finally) insulating the bunkhouse. Tomorrow, getting the skiffs ready.

When Bob got in, he started in on the pump. It was next to, but upwind of, the warehouse as it burned last season. The belt was melted and it looks like a couple of other important things were melted along with it. But he tested it and the motor works. So we’ll get a belt and see if we (he) can get the pump part to work too. It will be great if we can get water to the edge of the cliff.

Internet access is extremely inconsistent. It goes in and out, and once it goes out, it seems to take something like 30 minutes to find itself again.

Josh moved over to the crew cabin today. It was sad – I like having my own space, but it was sad.

I realized that as the crew grows, the chaos of the living conditions will also grow. Even if some of these crew members are tidy, if any are not, that will be enough to make a mess. And a general guideline, like "pick up after yourself" doesn't really have much meaning with a group of people with varied habits and distributed responsibility. So I decided to try a new approach: divide up the categories of responsibilities and assign one person to be responsible for each. So Jake volunteered to be responsible for dishes, Jeff will be surfaces, Chris will be the supply guy (keep the Brita filled, the water hauled, the gas supplied, toilet paper in the outhouse, etc), Bob will be trucks - keeping the beds and the cabs emptied and ready, Paul will be the outside - keeping garbage moving to the dumpster, gathering up the debris that accumulates outside (like cardboard boxes and anything that leaves anyone's hand while they are outside - maintaining the clothesline and drainline will probably fall to him as well), and I'll ask Erik to take responsibility for the beach in front of the cabins. This will mean keeping the ropes straight (what do we have, where?), attending to things that get blown off the cliff, keeping the fish cleaning operation organized and clean, being aware of the tideline and which side of it our stuff is on. When Trina gets in, I think I'll ask her to help with cooking - there is a lot of chopping involved in this program.

Liz