<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have been driving this little four-wheeler around the community of Twin Hills, Alaska, for almost four months now, and this is the first time I have ever hit thirty miles per hour. What makes this occasion especially noteworthy is that I have two passengers. These passengers come in the form of two of my august colleagues, each of whom is sitting on one of my rear fenders, hanging on for dear life. As I zip along at this unheard-of rate of speed, I keep glancing over my shoulder to see if my passengers are still with me. So far, so good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why, you may ask, am I running around the back roads of Twin Hills like a person one-third of my age? And why are these other two adults-who-probably-should-know-better encouraging me in this behavior? Well, pull up a toadstool, and let me tell you about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The mandatory backstory: on the day prior to this adventure, I was able to successfully network with the community to bring three fifteen-pound turkeys over from Togiak (just across the bay), in time to start thawing out for our upcoming school-community Thanksgiving feast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So far so good. But what, you may ask, about the stuffing, and the potatoes, and the fresh vegetables, and the corn on the cob, and the jello, and the canned pumpkin for the pies? What, indeed. Since this phase of the project required some actual shopping, i.e., browsing of the shelves of the Togiak grocery store, it became evident that some of us school-staff types needed to go over there in person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Togiak is close to Twin Hills\u2014you can see it across the bay\u2014but getting over there is not a task to be undertaken by amateurs. At the time of this writing, the river was iced over, so the only way to get over in a skiff was to drive the mile-or-so to the beach and put the skiff in there. We learned that a trusted friend was going over and would give us a ride. When this friend called and said he was on his way to the beach, we knew that time was of the essence, because around here, if you keep folks waiting they sometimes don\u2019t, if you catch my drift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Turns out we weren\u2019t late. There were two boats getting ready to go, with many of the other frequent flyers milling about on the beach, trying to stay warm, while the owner\/operators of the skiffs considered the conditions for traveling. Eventually, we got going, and while we pushed through a substantial amount of ice, we made our way over without much excitement. We loaded up on all the Thanksgiving groceries our tiny community could possibly want, and on the way back two guys with rifles sat in the bow and looked for seals. The closest they got was a shadowy chunk of ice that looked kind of like a seal until you got closer. We speculated that the seals, clever animals that they are, might have placed that chunk of ice as a decoy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Riding back from the beach to town, I went considerably slower than thirty, because not only did I have my two passengers (sitting on the back fenders as before), I also had a huge box of groceries (strapped to the front). About halfway down the road, one of the other four-wheelers passed me on the right, and I said a bad word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The only thing that didn\u2019t make it back in one piece was the receipt, but the lady in accounting was really nice about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have been driving this little four-wheeler around the community of Twin Hills, Alaska, for almost four months now, and this is the first time I have ever hit thirty miles per hour. What makes this occasion especially noteworthy is that I have two passengers. These passengers come in the form of two of my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[550],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-twin-hills"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1472,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471\/revisions\/1472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}