It Begins!

            So this is going to be Megan’s Blog, also know as my Awesome Alaskan Adventure Blog.  My goal is to try and keep people back home up to date with what is going on during my time in Alaska, as well as to create a record for myself to look back on when everything is over.  I don’t know how often I will be able to update it, but I’ll try to keep it current.

            From the beginning!  On Friday, November 26 (in about 6 hours) I will be boarding a plane to Anchorage, Alaska to begin a two and a half week training course to be a scientific crab observer for a company called Saltwater Inc.  Here’s a description of the job http://www.saltwaterinc.com/alaska_crab_observers_saltwater_inc/alaska_crab_observers_saltwater_inc.html .  In short, I’ll be working on a crab boat (like the ones you see on that Deadliest Catch show) collecting data to help with fishery management.

Since graduating, I’ve been feeling like I need an adventure.  Something somewhere far away, doing something big, novel, challenging, meaningful, that will use this darn degree that I worked and paid for, well, am still in the process of paying for.  Something that, when it is over and finished, will provide me with lots of good stories to tell, and a sense of pride for having experienced it.  That description is vague enough that this opportunity completely fills all of those requirements.  This is my challenge.

So far I have had quite a variety of reactions to this whole Alaska thing: envy, worry (quite a bit of this), excitement, incredulity, amazement, admiration.  Basically, I’m feeling a combination of excitement and terror.  Trying, pretty successfully, to override the terror with the excitement.  The more I learn about Alaska and the job the less fearful I am becoming. 

To quell everyone’s fears, I will not be doing the same job as the people on Deadliest Catch.  Yes, there will be some danger involved, mostly just by being on a ship in the middle of the Bering Sea surrounded by potentially dangerous equipment and being days away from any medical help, but my job will simply be grabbing some crabs from the pot the fishermen pull up and measuring them on deck.  I think that’s what it’ll be like anyways…I won’t really know until I get there, I guess.  However, my safety will always come before the job.

Some people have also expressed concern with me being a female on a ship full of men.  Letters from previous observers said that everyone on the ships were very professional and courteous.  I have no worries in this area of the job.  Even without this reassurance, logically it would be almost impossible since there will be almost no privacy on the ship, so nowhere to secretly drag me away to.  Just in case, though, my mom made me get pepper spray.  I think I’m more likely to use it on a charging bear than a person, but it makes her feel better at least.

One friend via text message said, “You gonna be hardy enough for the job?”  I felt slightly offended, liking to think of myself as being physically able to handle most challenges, but he clarified, “you aren’t going to freeze to death?”  Actually, that’s one of my main fears in taking this job.  As many of you probably know, I absolutely hate being cold.  So!  I’ve been trying to get myself used to being cold.  It’s mostly a mental thing anyways, right?  Yes.  Don’t you dare disagree.  I need to hope that I can adjust to the cold, and it’s working…I think.  Yes it is.  Actually, my mom and I checked the weather both in Anchorage and Dutch Harbor, and it seems like the winter averages aren’t that much different from those in Minnesota.  Right now it’s actually warmer there.  So I should be fine!  Yes, I won’t be cold at all.  

The largest concern is that I will be away from all of my friends and family, probably without many opportunities to contact them, and in such a transient lifestyle that I won’t be able to create many new real friendships.  I’m going to be lonely.  Again, I figure it’s sort of a mental thing.  I will be extroverted!  Yes, I am an extrovert.  Well, I can be if I try really hard.  I’ll try my best to make fast friends, and to think often of my friends and family back home.  Hopefully this blog thing will help too! 

This is getting long.  If I were you, I’d be tired of reading this by now.

            So, if anyone has any words of advice, encouragement (and I suppose discouragement if you feel the need to express it), or simply fun facts about Alaska I would love to hear them.  Also, from what I’ve heard, I’m going to have quite a bit of spare time on my hands once I get out to sea.  Any suggestions as to what I should do?  I am thinking drawing, writing (that’s sorta what this blog is for), learning to crochet, and reading.  And maybe some walrus taming. Anything else?  Please share!