Swamp Road Ice Trucker Logger Miner People

“Well, we didn’t catch any fish this time,” Geoff confesses, probably a first since I’ve known him and he’s taken a weekend in the swamp.

“Why not?” We’d had to run to DNR at the very last second Friday to get the correct license, so I was expecting fish, lots of big catfish (not that I eat them).

“They broke the hooks. Big hooks. Didn’t bend them, broke them right off.” Uh huh….

“And, like a good lawyer, I kept the broken hooks as proof!” Geoff’s friend.

“Hmm….well, maybe they were bad hooks?” Dad, trying to solve the problem.

“No! Don’t you understand? They’re telling a big fish tale. The fish they didn’t catch were SO BIG they broke the hooks.”

Big fish story.

Dad and Geoff love to watch those programs together. The ones about the Swamp People catching alligators. Or the Ice Truckers and logging. And then they like to comment on them and be arm chair Trucker-Logger people.

And they laugh at my suggestion to put a carpet over a hovercraft and make a flying carpet.

Science Experiments

I don’t remember how old I was or much of the other surrounding events, but I do remember one afternoon when my dad for some reason decided we needed to conduct a science experiment. (Odds are this was one of mom’s well-planned father-daughter interaction times complete with lesson.) We made a complete mess while learning how to create a siphon from water blocked up in the sink to a pot on the stove and back. I don’t understand the science behind it, but I did remember the basic concept. Hose. Water in location one. Moved to location two with minimal effort.

Science experiment application. It is late and I am in bed. Geoff has made a mess in the boat by forgetting he was filling the water tanks, allowing the tanks to fill and the bottom of the vberth to fill and overflow onto the floor before we notice a problem. Normal solution is to get our small shop vac and move the water outside one gallon at a time. However, I have no desire to climb out of bed to help with this process.

“Can’t you just siphon it into the bilge and then let the pump take it out from there?” I still don’t completely understand why the water doesn’t flow from underneath the vberth into the bilge in the first place. Who designed a boat where that area is completely blocked off without a tunnel to slide downhill under the flooring? There’s certainly space for one.

Off Geoff goes in search of a hose. I’m beginning to suspect that even this easier solution will require me getting out of bed. I finally point out to him that there is a hose right under his nose, the one that connects the air conditioner to the bilge, which can be removed for a while for this purpose. He claims he’s amazed its long enough.

The hose is filled and the siphon is stretched from the vberth to the bilge, the siphon action started and we sit and happily watch the water flow by the gallon without having to use the shop vac. Science success. Geoff may understand how it works, but I knew we had an air conditioning hose.