Crab-yaking

Our good friend Tony Mooney and I went kayak crabbing yesterday.

The tide was starting to come in when we arrived at the north side of Alsea Bay near the old Bayshore Inn. Tony had gone out the previous day and caught a bunch of nice Dungeness Crabs, so he kindly called and asked if I'd like to go along for a repeat trip.

We unloaded our boats and gear and packed everything down the bank and over the exposed barnacle covered rocks to the water's edge. I was going to try using a fishing rod with a baited loop snare on the end of the line and Tony was using the two large sized crab traps that he easily handles from his 12 foot, ride on top kayak (ROTK). My little 9 foot sit inside kayak (SINK) however, is too tippy to pull that much weight out of the water, even with the pontoon outriggers I made for it.

The north wind and incoming tide proved to be more than I could handle, by the time I'd get set up with my dinky rig I'd be on my way out to the middle of the bay, have to pull it back in and paddle like crazy to get back to where I'd started. I finally gave up and decided to just take pictures of Tony as he worked his crab traps.

We paddled to the shoreline, Tony packed my ineffective crabbing gear back up to his truck and we headed back out. He has his own super-secret time to let his traps set, or “soak” as the old crabbers say, and the trip to his truck had extended it quite a bit. He strained and grunted as he hand over hand pulled the heavy trap up to his kayak, and with a great heave flopped it onto the deck between his legs. It was loaded with crabs.

I snapped pictures while he separated and threw back the usual females, and small males from the writhing, snapping, pinching mob, until he narrowed it down to two large male Dungeness Crabs.

“I don't even have to measure these!” he yelled. (To be legal they have to be male and 5 ¾ inches across.)

“That's a good start!” he yelled, as the wind commenced to blow me back out into the bay. Every time I'd quit paddling in order to take a picture I'd lose ground and have to paddle furiously to get back in position again. Tony had the same problem but he's in better shape and a lot younger!

My arms started to give out around noon and I headed for the shore. About that time Tony's mom drove up and he came in to show her the four crabs he'd kept so far. While we watched he went back out and pulled his traps several more times, ending up with six crabs total.

It was quite a workout for me, but I enjoyed every minute of it.

Google Carol

Yesterday I downloaded “Google Earth” to our desktop computer. With our dial-up connection it's painfully slow, but if you're patient it works.

I started out by zooming from the earth view down to the west coast, then to Oregon and then on down to Waldport. After waiting for the blurry images to finish downloading and sharpen, I scrolled along the Alsea River and Highway towards our house. When I saw Eckman Lake sliding into view I realized that I'd gone too far, so after waiting for things to catch up I started backtracking.

When I thought that I recognized the empty, grassy lot across the street from our house I stopped and began zooming in. Sure enough, there was our house from above, I could even see our pickup parked in the driveway! I zoomed in even closer but things got pretty blurry and stayed that way.

I noticed an option called “Street View” so I put a check in the little check box and watched as the view morphed into ground level. The camera view was on the highway in front of our neighbor's house looking south.

I clicked on the arrows to rotate the scene and suddenly there was a picture of our neighbor, Fran walking up her driveway!

I went in to the kitchen and got Carol to show her what I'd found. “Go a Little further and see if you can see our house,” she said, leaning over my shoulder. I clicked my way down the highway a couple of notches and began rotating the camera view. “There's the driveway!” I said, “There's our mailbox! Holy crap! That looks like... it looks like...like you!”

As the fuzzy picture sharpened there was no doubt, and Carol pointed at her image. “Fran and I had been talking at the mailboxes, see, I've got the mail in my hand!.”

It's an amazing, wonderful technology, but more than a little bit spooky. Is Google the modern equivalent of Orwell's “Big Brother?”

Tiki Bar

Carol and I decided to get a canopy for our patio so we could spend more time outside on hot sunny, (Ha!) and the more likely, rainy days.

We found some 10' X 10” nylon canopies at Wal-Mart for $97.00, bought one and set it up over our patio furniture. Several weeks later they went on sale for $69.00. Oh well!

I saw a project on the Popular Mechanics web site for building a “Tiki Bar” and thought that it looked pretty cool, so I talked Carol into letting me partially enclose the canopy with roll-up blinds and make a bar for ice and drinks.

We found an old 78 RPM record cabinet at a yard sale that was the right height for the bar and I had salvaged a heat lamp table that I made for the restaurant years ago for the bar top.

We hung the blinds from the canopy frame and we now have a cozy enclosure that we can open or close when we want.