You Call Yourself a Fisherman?

I was participating in an e-mail exchange today that involved a list of qualities one might attribute to a "real" man (I’ll post the list and my revisions in the comments section). At some point I remembered the following:

Erik the Red skipper 'Iceman' kills shark with bare hands

October 24, 2003
Sydney Morning Herald

An Icelandic fishing captain, known as "the Iceman" for his tough character, grabbed a 300 kg shark with his bare hands as it swam in shallow water towards his crew, a witness said today.

The skipper of the trawler "Erik the Red" was on a beach in Kuummiit, east Greenland, watching his crew processing a catch when he saw the shark swimming towards the fish blood and guts - and his men.

Captain Sigurdur Petursson, known to locals as "the Iceman", ran into the shallow water and grabbed the shark by its tail. He dragged it off to dry land and killed it with his knife.

"He caught it just with his hands. There was a lot of blood in the sea and the shark came in and he thought it was dangerous," Frede Kilime, a hunter and fisherman who watched from the beach, told Reuters by phone from Greenland.

Icelandic author and journalist Reynir Traustason, who knows the trawler captain, said the act was typical of the man.

"He's called 'the Iceman' because he isn't scared of anything," he said. "I know the people in that part of the world. They are really tough."

For all of you that are metric challenged, 300 kg ~ 660 lbs. This guy is easily the toughest guy that I’ve ever heard of (Aron Ralston, Ronnie Lott, and John Shaft are in the team picture). Even if he’s not the toughest man ever, he’s definitely the most bad ass fisherman of all time.

Slow News Day

Johnny Weir (pictured) might be gay?!?!? Oh the humanity! Next you’re going to tell me that Rudy Galindo was also gay.

Apparently, there are some people out there who are confused about the sexual orientation of U.S. mens figure skater Johnny Weir. Read all about it here. First of all, asking people to announce their sexual orientation is ridiculous and inappropriate in any setting. Secondly, who’s confused about his sexual orientation in the first place? Have any of these people actually seen Mr. Weir? If we’re being honest here, I pretty much assume that the vast majority of North American male figure skaters are gay, not that there’s anything wrong with that. C’mon, we’re talking about FIGURE SKATING! Is there a more gay oriented athletic event than men’s figure skating? Women’s rugby is a close second, but nothing can match men’s figure skating in this respect. It must have been a slow news day at the Chicago Tribune.

Humorous Blog Description

I recently read this description of a blog entitled Cinemashow, "Thwarting stereotypes by being a young, left-leaning writer and musician living in Wicker Park." Thwarting stereotypes? More like "Steroetypically young, left-leaning writer and musician [a person that describe themselves as a writer and musician is more commonally known as a barista] living in Wicker Park". This person would have to move to Lake Forest to thwart any stereotypes.

"What the f is a Chinese downhill?"

Taking the fact that I have always lived in the midwest into consideration, I consider myself to be a bit of a downhill skiing enthusiast. My Dad is a very good skier, although he doesn’t really ski anymore. He used to ski on these really, really long Kastles and his form seemed to be impeccable. If you skied prior to 1994 you’ll know the style I’m talking about. Knees together, effortless turns, pole plants, etc. You still see these guys on the slopes every once in awhile; they’re like the classic cars of the skiing universe. My Dad put my brother and I on skis when we were 3. We primarily skied at the Otsego Ski Club until I was around 10. I remember thinking one of our first instructors (I was probably 5 at the time) looked a lot like Officer John Baker from CHiPs, which I thought was awesome. Otsego was a great place to learn, but the terrain isn’t all that challenging. It was also kind of snobby, and my brother and I didn’t exactly click with all of the jr. yuppies. We went back to Otsego when I was 16 with another family. At the time they had this crazy relay race, I don’t remember what it was called, that consisted of a 1 mile snowshoe, 100 laps ice skating on a pond, cross country skiing to the top of the ski mountain, a downhill race, and a run back to the lodge. I did the skating, my brother did the downhill, and my Dad, valiantly I might add, did the snowshoe, cross country skiing, and run. Needless to say, we dominated and posted the best time of the day. My dad won the snowshoe race outright and I did the same on the skating, by that point we had such a big lead that no one was going to catch us. We went to the awards ceremony that night expecting to receive our awards. We were the guests of another family and we were relishing the fact that the organizers would have to give the grand prize to an "outsider" team that dominated them with 3 people for a 5-event race. We quickly came to find out that they changed the rules after our victory. Our time was "handicapped" (like only using 3 people wasn’t enough of a handicap, when we signed up as a 3 man team the organizers laughed) because we didn’t have any women on our team and we ended up, conveniently for them, in 4th place. The top 3 teams all had 5 people, 4 men and one woman, and the women only did the downhill leg. If the organizers would have made the rules prior to the end of the race we could have put my mom on skis and pushed her down the hill for the downhill leg, gravity’s doing all the work anyway. Lame. Everyone knows who really won that race.

We started skiing at Nubs Nob in the mid 80’s. In my opinion, Nubs has some of the best skiing in the midwest. Nubs is all about skiing, they don’t have a hotel or a golf course, they have the best snowmaker in the business (very important in our neck of the woods), they have the best ski resort chili I’ve tasted, and they close down for an hour to groom the whole mountain every afternoon. Smokey, Scarface, and Chute are some of the best runs in the midwest, and Revelry was the first run that I ever wiped out bad enough for the ski patrol to offer the dreaded sled ride to the bottom. I’m sure it was a spectacular crash, I wish I had video. The Ski Patrol at Nubs could ski their proverbial aces off (the skill level of the ski patrol is a good measure of how serious a place is about skiing). We had a cottage in Indian River, MI and we would get up early for the drive to Nubs. My Dad had a strict policy that required us to be suited up and ready to ski when the lifts were cranked up for the day. We’d occasionally stop in Alanson for some breakfast at a local diner. The ride seemed to be about 45 minutes, but my Dad always insisted we were only "5 minutes away". Christopher Cross songs seemed to dominate the airwaves, broken up with American Pie or some Hall & Oates classics. Christopher Cross still seems to be big in Northern Michigan, it might be a side effect of the nearby Mystery Spot.

My Dad sold the Indian River cottage in 1989, and I’ve been a vagabond skier ever since. I loved skiing at the currently defunct Sugarloaf in the Leelanau Peninsula. Sugarloaf was very similar to Nubs, they were serious about skiing and had some great runs. The Loaf closed down about 5 years ago due to some ownership issues. The ownership issues are still keeping the doors closed, which is a shame. Hopefully, someone will realize what a great place it is and re-open it, I’ll certainly come back. The Homestead is a small place near the Loaf that I’ve skied a bunch. The Homestead used to be decent, but the owner put a golf course in and began to neglect the skiing side of things and it’s not what it was around 10 years ago. A little further south you’ll find Crystal Mountain. Crystal is not bad, but the terrain can’t hold a candle to the Loaf or Nubs. They do have a lot of lift capacity and some challenging, albeit short runs. I set my runs-per-hour record recently at Crystal when I skied 40 runs from 9:00 to 12:15 on a Sunday morning.

Since I’ve moved to Chicago I’ve gotten a taste of skiing on the other side of the lake, and it hasn’t always been pleasant. My brother and his gang, we’ll call them the Warriors, go on an annual ski trip and I’ve tagged along a few times. As the older brother of the gang leader I’m allowed to hang out with them without going through the initiation. The first time I went with them we skied at Chestnut Mountain, on the banks of the Mississippi. The company was fun, but the mountain sucked. It just seemed like no one should be skiing that close to Iowa. On top of that, I almost killed my wife while I was "teaching" her to ski on more difficult terrain.

The second time I skied with the Warriors was this past weekend at Devil’s Head in Wisconsin. I decided to get a room at a local Best Western rather than stay with the Warriors. The Warriors tend to party pretty hard and once you reach a certain age you know there is no way you can play beer pong until 3 a.m. and then get first tracks on the slopes. I was on the trip to ski, so I opted out of the partying. It’s kind of sad considering my past… I was never one to shy away from partying, especially if competitive drinking was involved. The runs at Devil’s Head are o.k. They are relatively long, but not particularly challenging. The place seems pretty serious about skiing, but they have a few disadvantages. First, the chair lifts are all 30+ year old 2 seaters with a center bar construction, basically first generation chairlifts. These are uncomfortable and really, really slow. I was rockin’ the mp3 player while I skied by myself and I could only make one run and one lift to the top throughout the whole duration of Rush’s classic "Working Man". That’s slow. Second, they are on the wrong side of the lake. The resorts in Michigan have the benefit of getting dumped on with lake effect snow. I didn’t see snow anywhere besides on the runs. Devils Head has done a good job building base with man made snow, but a total lack of real snow leads to crappy conditions. Everything tends to ice up and man made snow is "heavier" so it will kind of grab your skis, which makes it hard to ski real fast and real smooth. I managed to go fast, stay upright and not break anything, so it was a pretty good trip. It was also nice to ski with my brother and the Warriors. Skiing solo can get a little monotonous and my brother and I have always had fun skiing together.

One last note about midwest skiing. There is a place at the very top of the UP in the Keewanaw peninsula that I want to try. It’s called Mt. Bohemia and it looks gnarly. You can actually rent a trail side yurt for lodging. They also get 300+ inches of snow a year, which is nice. Anyone up for the long trip to Mt. Bohemia?

Guilty

Cardinal Francis George is guilty of aiding in the molestation of children and he should be punished as such. The people that support him* should be ashamed of themselves. The Cardinal was very vocal during the Catholic church’s recent issues regarding abuse of children by priests. The church has been tolerant of child molesters for decades, maybe centuries. It was, and apparently still is, church policy to move “troubled” priests from parish to parish when word of their abuses made it back to the local bishops. Basically, the church sanctioned the abuse by moving criminal priests from place to place which, (a) greatly decreased the possibility of criminal prosecution, and (b) gave the priest a fresh group of kids to molest each step along the way. CFG made it clear that the church would not tolerate this behavior any more. Turns out that he’s a liar. As if giving the leadership of the church a second chance wasn’t sickening enough, CFG allows Daniel McCormack to molest 2 additional children after the church was notified about his initial victim. CFG, at the very least, should have immediately stepped down from his position, and if I was in charge he would be going to jail. Isn’t one of the tenets of the church to protect the innocent? How does this scenario fit into that?


* Who are these people? Who says to themselves, “well, Cardinal George was informed that McCormick was accused of molesting a kid. He had the power to remove him while the police investigated, but instead he chose to leave McCormack in place while he molested 2 other kids. Sounds good to me. I’m with the Cardinal on this one.”? Nothing like cheering on the enabling of child molesting.

"Cartoon Protests Turn Deadly"

Has anyone been following the world-wide protests regarding the cartoons depicting Mohammed? I have trouble gettting over the fact that the sentence "Cartoon Protests Turn Deadly" is being printed on any newspaper/website besides The Onion. Not that I ever thought there was, but is there any hope for the world when hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, are enraged enough to kill over a stupid cartoon in a Danish newspaper?

On a related note, it was nice to see that the French were the first to surrender, again ( a french paper issued a grovelling retraction and fired it's editor after running the questionable cartoon). It would really suck to be French.

One more note, Europe seems to frequently look down their collective noses at "cowboy Americans" and our country's, allegedly, less refined culture. In this case, the US will take a lot of the heat for these stupid cartoons while none of the cartoons originated here. I don't know why the euro's get such leeway from the pundits of the world. Anyway, I'll save the "take your euro-trash to the curb" post for another time, but feel free to leave a comment if you have some thoughts.

“Now I know why tigers eat their young…”

My daughter’s sleep schedule is slowly wearing me down to the nub. Lately, the best case scenario has the kid sleeping from 8 to 12:30, usually without making a peep. This is good and bad, it’s good that she sleeps for so long without waking up, and I use the time to do the stuff around the house that needs doing. It’s bad because, if she’s going to be feisty it’s easier to deal with her when I’m already awake. After she eats and is changed she sleeps from 1 until ~3:30, then she eats again (my Dad is the only other person I know who can eat this many meals in the middle of the night). Then the wheels come off. If, and I can’t stress if enough here, she goes back to sleep at all it’s usually only for about a half-hour. She loves hanging out with people from this point until ~8, when she takes a short nap. If one of us doesn’t hang out with her she starts talking and gets progressively louder until she’s screaming in her crib. Once she reaches this point she demands constant attention, even diverting your attention from her for one second is dealt with harshly. It starts with the very effective Big Lip (extended lower lip….very sad indeed) and reaches full-blown screaming within 5 seconds. Sounds fun, doesn’t it? The rub is that she’s pretty much perfect the rest of the day, and if you give her your undivided attention she’s happy, but it’s real hard waking up at 4 to play with someone for a couple of hours. I also love to sleep more than most, and my wife is in the same boat. So, typically, we end in a weird half sleep, half baby screaming in your ear, getting up every 15 minutes, 10th level of hell.