Something fishy here...

[Alaskan Rover]

I went snowboarding last Saturday for what I presume was officially the 'last' day of riding in Virginia this season...unless I see forecasts of a freak 4 foot snowstorm in April, in which case I probably wouldn't be able to get to the mountains anyway, due to the sudden occurence of flying pigs and snowballs in hell making driving quite hazardous.

The weather was going to be a good 30 degrees cooler than the weekend before, so I chose some different riding attire...one of my favorite shells I hadn't worn in some time. Couldn't find it at first, but finally found it packed away in one of my duffle bags...along with a miscellany of other articles I'd presumed lost: 11 single hiking socks w/ no mates; a lost cell-phone, now found; a balled-up IRS tax bill from 2008 (I thought crumpling it up and tossing it would get rid of THAT problem...it didn't); a set of keys to locks that I've now had to replace because I couldn't find the keys; and oddest of all, my 7th grade math homework that I WAS going to hand in to Mrs. Peabody...I guess the dog DIDN"T eat it after all; and of course my slightly lost bright green outershell that I was now going to wear snowbaording.

While riding that day, I kept getting wiffs of fish in the air...and couldn't for the life of me derive it's source...cook-out?...fish factory next door?...dead and dying fish at me feet that had somehow dropped from the sky?...nope, couldn't track it. It really got bad when I got down to a fairly crowded lift line...what WAS it?? And then, as I noticed various noses turn my way and turn quickly back in the consternation that only upturned noses can have, I decided: My God, it's me!!...or rather my bright green spring outshell. It smelled like a school of fish had somehow swam into my prized jacket and then died there 18 months ago...their "essence de fish" remaining to aggravate sensitive nostrils. Somehow, in my haste and exuberance to get on the snow, I had donned it without realizing that it smelled exactly like a fishing boat. I then quickly remembered that the last time I had worn it was on a Alaska Dept of Fish and Game King Crab biological species sampling survey on the Bering Sea...we had contracted out a King Crab boat to do our survey sampling. Anyone that has ever spent time on a fishing boat KNOWS that everything you wear on that boat immediately takes on every scent of that boat...in this case, the scents being VERY dead herring and what-not that we'd been using as bait in the pots.

The rest of that Saturday, I just made sure I stood VERY downwind of the upturned noses at the lift-line...and didn't pay much attention to the caudrey of kitchen cats that tried following me everywhere, they couldn't snowboard anyway.

I also made SURE I didn't wear that same outershell while hiking in the woods that next day, as the bears are now out of their torpor stage, and are foraging and HUNGRY...I am sure they wouldn't turn down what at LEAST smelled like a tasty fish meal.

It turns out that fishy smells, like hard feelings, last far longer than I had thought.

Gravity IS Life.

[eajracing]

It turns out that fishy smells, like hard feelings, last far longer than I had thought.

Further to that......

we had a gentleman 'hunting' with us a few years back up near sudbury at our usual camp in town from Calgary. His idea of 'hunting' involved playing cards and drinking til first light and repeating for a week. Those of us that actually cared to hunt grew tired of the routine of him trying to wake us up at 3am for a round of whatever.

His final day, he had to leave camp at about 8am to get out to the highway in time to make it back to Toronto to catch his flight. We were up before 6, he was still at his usual routine, so my old man stuffed a few whitefish into the bottom of his sleeping bag. Around 7am this gentleman was in a panic, rolled up his bag, packed his belongings and left, still drunk.

The following August, a phone call was received informing us it took him weeks to figure out what the smell in his basement was, his wife has been furious, he had no idea what the jellied mass in the sleeping bag originally was, and that he would not return to hunt with us ever again.

"it turns out that fishy smells, like hard feelings, last far longer than I had thought."

Indeed.

[snowboardworm]

THAT IS HILARIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!! Sudbury is my home town and i knew an awful lot of people who hunted like that. I just thought it was the people i knew. didn't know it was "normal". maybe its why i don't hunt very much anymore or with people who like to "alter" their senses in the bush.