TOTALLY RANDOM POST II

[moose eater]

Good luck to moose with that storm coming to Alaska (shudder)!

Thus far we simply got a few days of intermitent precipitation, and maybe a couple hours of variable winds. We're a good distance from the coast.

Coast property is often like river property; know someone who owns it, and launch your boat from their yard. Because while their price/sq. ft. goes up dramatically nearly every year, they're simultaneously often losing sq. footage as a result of their choice of home location.
So I launch form elsewhere, sometimes from others' places, and though sometimes it has its drawbacks, my land is still here.

Can't fish from the porch, though, like I could if I was aboard a float house or something. Float houses can be cool, too. Until you need to change the floats/logs, or a hurricane force wind with water comes crashing about.

The coastal folks up here, however? They got their asses kicked pretty badly in some places. Houses removed from foundations, roofs in the ocean, flooding, etc., etc.

Dunleavy, our staunch John-Wayne-esque, "pull yourselves up by your boot-straps" Governor, has delcared a disaster, calling for ... you guessed it.. Federal Aid. (while Alaska is, I think, 3rd in the Nation for receiving federal tax dollars per capita, while paying no State income tax, etc.).

And, the John Prine Fan Club is all twitterpated about the newer hurricane being named after John Prine's wife, Fiona. John liked his wife. Loved his wife. Literally died in order to stay with his wife. Not sure how he'd feel about a hurricane being named after her, and his fan club thinking it was/is a good thing?

Maybe they were more thinking about Fiona in Shrek? But I think she was pretty cool too, for an animated personna.

 

[moose eater]

A fellow in Northern Quebec, on a lake trout forum I'm a member of, is photographed holding a decent/eating/dinner-size lake trout (maybe 28" to 31"?) next to his homemade lure.

His lure is an OLD soup spoon, drilled through the center of the edge of the round part of the spoon you'd place into your mouth, furthest from the handle, but in line with the handle, and placing a ring for a hook through it.

At the very top of the spoon's handle, he again drilled a hole and attached a ring for a leader to clip to.

And he's apparently catchig lake trout with it..

It helps that when lake trout are eating, they are often -voracious- feeders.

 

[tobedetermined]

So . . . I battled 46 minutes of Toronto’s finest traffic, to get to an app’t with a rheumatologist this morning. I can actually go on and on about traffic, since I have driven in so many cities over the last few decades - but I won't. Anyways, I was on time and he took me right away. But . . . here comes the funnest part . . . he talked to me for 30 minutes to basically tell me: You have arthritis. It isn’t rheumatoid and therefore, you wasted your time and mine and I can’t do a fucking thing to help you. But call me anytime . . .

Somehow, I knew that that was how it was going to go.

 

[Gry]

Pinners and bombers.

 

[VenerableHippie]

Pinners and bombers.

Hmmm. Your post is inscrutable to me, Gry. Must be a cultural reason?

PS Hope you're well.

 

[D. B. Doober]

I smuggled a peyote cactus in my luggage from Holland to Boston many years ago. Wish I'd let it grow...I chopped it up and put it in water and drank the water before bed. Had strange dreams but didn't wake up tripping. Wonder if it was real. Can you still buy them there? Anyone actually tripped off it?

 

[moose eater]

I smuggled a peyote cactus in my luggage from Holland to Boston many years ago. Wish I'd let it grow...I chopped it up and put it in water and drank the water before bed. Had strange dreams but didn't wake up tripping. Wonder if it was real. Can you still buy them there? Anyone actually tripped off it?

I've found that more than 1 button is required. Typically.

 

[armedoldhippy]

I've found that more than 1 button is required. Typically.

quite possibly the most difficult thing to chew up and swallow that i ever ate.

 

[Capt.Ahab]

A fellow in Northern Quebec, on a lake trout forum I'm a member of, is photographed holding a decent/eating/dinner-size lake trout (maybe 28" to 31"?) next to his homemade lure.

His lure is an OLD soup spoon, drilled through the center of the edge of the round part of the spoon you'd place into your mouth, furthest from the handle, but in line with the handle, and placing a ring for a hook through it.

At the very top of the spoon's handle, he again drilled a hole and attached a ring for a leader to clip to.

And he's apparently catchig lake trout with it..

It helps that when lake trout are eating, they are often -voracious- feeders.

Ive made lures from butter knives for bluefish. For those that dont know, bluefish can be voracious predators and will hit almost anything shiny running through the water.
A common butter knife with a treble hook on the heavier handle end and a snap ring and swivel on the blade end makes a fine lure which mimics a slim baitfish when reeled at high speed.
It casts like a rocket and is easy to get up topwater so it skips across the surface.

 

[moose eater]

Ive made lures from butter knives for bluefish. For those that dont know, bluefish can be voracious predators and will hit almost anything shiny running through the water.
A common butter knife with a treble hook on the heavier handle end and a snap ring and swivel on the blade end makes a fine lure which mimics a slim baitfish when reeled at high speed.
It casts like a rocket and is easy to get up topwater so it skips across the surface.

When you look at the Luhr-Jensen heavy silver jigs, they're mostly just a thick, HEAVY, piece of shiny metal with ever so slight a bend. Heavy eough that just jigging with the lure, a person is inclined to check their bait/lure for a fish more often than is needed.

We once pulled a decent-size caribiner from the belly of a 42" hen lake trout in the Yukon Territory.

 

[moose eater]

Not only that, but it likely makes driving at night on hallucinogens all that much more entertaining, too!!

Suddenly it occurs to me what might be done with a large volume of glow-in-the-dark-paint around here.. Hmmm.

 

[tobedetermined]

That's awesome.

 

[moose eater]

That's awesome.

Now imagine those glowing lines getting fatter and thinner as they inhale and exhale, and pulsate like a wrything snake.

Did similar in a snow storm once, going home at night in the Goldstream Valley near Fairbanks, middle of winter, warm front, tons and tons of large, warmer winter-weather type snow flakes falling (the huge, fluffy kind), and the road completely blanketed in the fresh snow, with the flakes turning into rainbow medalions or pendants in the periphery of the headlights' auras, in my 1964 Ford F-100 short-bed step-side.

The next morning there'd been scant traffic over the snow, and I could see that my tracks probably stayed within the lines I -couldn't- even see on the way home, better than on days I was straight, with sunlight.

Reminded me of the Abnormal Pych text books with the pics of the webs spun by spiders that had been dosed, that looked like they were drawn on a spirograph or something.

 

[tobedetermined]

I was in a slot car one night that was even more colourful. Chemically induced of course. That night was probably the highest I ever got.

 

[VenerableHippie]

Very interesting Moose. Now just lie on the couch, get yourself comfortable, watch the little fishies in the aquarium beside the couch ... and tell me more.

This must be the old blokes story-telling forum ...

I went to visit a friend some miles away and he gave me this smoke. When I drove home and looked thru the screen it turned into four separate screens with different activities in each screen. When I focused on the screen that looked the most real (ha ha the most real) it suddenly turned into an image of my car driving down the hiway as if seen from a drone.

Musta been good dope.

 

[moose eater]

A local repair shop just quoted a trailing arm for my AWD Toyota at $736. I found the same part from an OEM Toyota dealer online, and after freight and adding 2 camber adjustment bolts to the list, and US Priority Mail to it as well, I saved over $400.

Someone might tell some of our local shops why they're having a difficult time maintaining business. Theft is only popular among thieves, and even then...

 

[Capt.Ahab]

When you look at the Luhr jensen heavy silver jigs, they're mostly just a thick, HEAVY, piece of shiny metal with ever so slight a bend. Heavy eough that just jigging with the lurre, a person is inclined to check their bait/lure for a fish more often than is needed.

We once pulled a decent-size caribiner from the belly of a 42" hen lake trout in the Yukon Territory.

We used to use those or that type of jig for codfishing . Up to 20 oz. depending on how deep we were fishing.
Strangest thing I ever found in a fish was when I was cutting a large swordfish, maybe 200 lbs and found about 8 inches of the tip of another sword buried in its side.

 

[armedoldhippy]

Did similar in a snow storm once, going home at night ...

tripping during a snow storm is killer. seeing the flakes coming at the windshield always makes me think of how the stars flash by in Star Trek sequences where they hit "warp speed"...

 

[VenerableHippie]

A local repair shop just quoted a trailing arm for my AWD Toyota at $736. I found the same part from an OEM Toyota dealer online, and after freight and adding 2 camber adjustment bolts to the list, and US Priority Mail to it as well, I saved over $400.

Someone might tell some of our local shops why they're having a difficult time maintaining business. Theft is only popular among thieves, and even then...

Seems each time a business handles an item it adds 100% over cost.

Those car companies must be making billions (well, they do) from selling vehicles per their credit companies at 'low' interest and then their subsidiaries make a bomb through the servicing agreements on those vehicles. Closed circle and another example of Ghandi's sin of Wealth without Work.

 

[moose eater]

Seems each time a business handles an item it adds 100% over cost.

Those car companies must be making billions (well, they do) from selling vehicles per their credit companies at 'low' interest and then their subsidiaries make a bomb through the servicing agreements on those vehicles. Closed circle and another example of Ghandi's sin of Wealth without Work.

The best, absolute best mechanic I ever knew here, charged lower end of middle rates, only worked on Subarus and Toyotas, insisted on using OEM parts, never charged me/us more than a 10% mark-up over his 10% discount for OEM MSRP (unlike the financial rapists with cash registers do now), and if the thing didn't run like new, or perform like new-ish when it left his shop door, he was angry; at the car, at whom ever didn't do their job, at himself, etc.

He was priceless.

When I phoned one day and got a disonnected notice in the recording, I phoned his counter person's cell phone, and she confirmed that he'd somewhat spontaneously (though he'd thought about it for a while) decided to close the doors.

I have not met another mechanic like him anywhere.

I once tried to brbe him into doing a couple side-jobs for me for cash. He was happy to be doing what he's doing now.

The notice of his closing was literally nearly the shock of losing a child, imo.

I've literally driven over 2 million miles in my life, or ridden, and my vehicles being functional is paramount. If you can't move when you need to, you might as well be in a minimum security prison.