They sent us to a couple of training courses and then told us to report to the port the next morning. I spent my last night camping on the beach and parked my truck in a big parking lot, the following morning. I grabbed my bag and made my way to the port. I had set up a post office box as my address for my pay checks to go to. I had a warm bunk to sleep in that night. The worst part of the job was seeing all of the dead animals. The oil had killed animals in the sea and on land because the animals on land would eat the oily sea creatures and die. The job itself was great. I was getting a very good salary with lots of overtime. The rotation was a month on and a week off. The scenery was spectacular and the mountains and islands were pristine except for the oil stained beaches. I came home from my first trip and cashed my pay checks. It felt really nice to have money. I managed to find a small hotel room in Valdez for my week off. The town was pretty small so I walked everywhere and did not move my truck. There was not much to do so I spent most of my time walking, having a drink or smoking marijuana. It was legal in Alaska to smoke marijuana or to have some for your own personal use. It was strange to see people smoking it in front of the post office with cops and little old ladies walking past. I kept up this routine during every month off until Exxon announced that it was going to begin drug tests so I stopped smoking it after that. I had a variety of different jobs on the spill and was really awestruck with the beauty of the place. The people were very good to work with as well. I had met one guy at the bar in Valdez that I had worked with on the forest fire thousands of miles away. He was part of the crew that got snowed in with us on the mountain pass in Idaho following the Yellowstone forest fire job. The guy must have had the same idea as I did obviously. The spill cleanup ended in September when the sea began to freeze up. It had been snowing on land for some time already. It was in fact a record snowfall. They had received forty two feet of snow since I left on my last trip. People had dug tunnels through the snow to their front doors. I had been talking to another guy about Nissan trucks on our way back to shore, not realising how much snow had fell at that point. We both got off of the boat and were still discussing Nissan trucks. It was clear that he really liked them. We walked along the road and were now discussing how much snow there was. I had told him that I would give him a lift to his hotel if I could get my truck started. We approached the parking lot where I had left my truck and the snow was over the top of the street lights. The bulldozer had been sweeping the snow off of the streets into the parking lot. There was at least seventy feet of snow piled up over my truck which was right in the middle of the parking lot. It was a mountain of snow. I threw the keys to the guy and said that the truck was his if he could manage to get it out somehow. I had the pink slip in my wallet and signed that over to him as well. The truck would not have been worth the cost of digging it out with the bulldozer. I spent a couple of nights at my hotel and then caught a ride with one of my coworkers heading south. He went past a car dealership and I asked him to stop. I saw a Chevy Blazer with a lift kit and big tires and fell in love with it immediately. It was pretty expensive so I bought it on finance. I thanked the guy for the lift and drove off in my new truck. Some of the guys were talking about a salmon opener on the commercial fishing boats. I thought that I would give it a try so I drove to homer Alaska and got a job on a boat. I did a couple of trips on a long liner boat fishing for halibut and then got on a salmon seining boat. We would let go of a small motorboat that we towed behind. It was connected to one end of the net. The small boat would head towards shore and then put it in reverse and hold the net there. The large boat would then go out to sea a little bit and then slowly come around. The net was weighted on the bottom and had floats on the top. The large boat would then come around and form a horseshoe. We had cups on the end of poles that we would slap the water with to herd the fish into the net. The two boats would then close the horseshoe and pass the ends of the net into a spinning block. We would begin pulling the net in until we hopefully had a net full of fish. The block was not strong enough to take the full weight of the net so we had to help it a little by standing under the block and pulling on the net. The jellyfish would flop all over your face and your fingers would be aching from pulling on the net. I did two or three trips until the sea began to freeze up around the shoreline. I had one trip that was not to bad but the other ones were not good. One of the guys told me that several of the long liner boats went to Hawaii in the winter to fish for tuna. I thought that I would give it a try so I began to drive over three thousand miles towards Long beach California. I had made some friends in Canada when I was on my way to Alaska previously so I thought that I would stop and see them. The town was called Revelstoke near Vancouver, Canada. My friend introduced me to a guy and his girlfriend who sold Marijuana. They asked me if I would drive them around selling it and that they would pay me. It sounded okay to me as my money was almost gone already. We would go to different towns and they would rent a hotel for us there. We would always get one room with two beds. They would take one bed and I would take the other one. We would all take turns going downstairs to the bar and sell the marijuana. The money was not great but it was something. They asked me if I was happy with our arrangement so far and I said yes but that I was tired of listening to them fucking every night. I said that I wanted my own piece of ass. There was a good looking girl that I had met at one of their friends houses called Sherri and I mentioned her to them. They said okay and that they will see what they could do. The next night I came upstairs after the bar shut and got in my bed. I felt a lump next to me and it was Sherri. We had sex several times and I was happy. She began traveling around with us after that and it was causing arguments. Her and I eventually went our own way and I took her down into America with me. We ran out of money after awhile and she buggered off with some other guy. She had left me a number to call if I wanted to find her so I phoned it and it was the Hells Angels headquarters. Some guy with a deep voice answered the phone and I told him that I was looking for Sherri. He said to hang on a minute and came back on and told me where she was. The guy she had buggered off with had dumped her and she was back in Revelstoke staying at a hotel on her own. I drove back to Revelstoke and went into the hotel. She opened up the door and I climbed into bed with her. I started hanging out with some of her friends and the friend that I had made when I first arrived there earlier in the year. We were doing a lot of partying and I was spending money. My money ran out and my friend convinced me to go to the job centre and tell them that I needed an emergency loan. My instincts told me not to do it but I did it anyway. The police were called and I was deported back across the border without my truck. I knew that I had to get back across the border somehow so I went along the border to a golf course and climbed over the fence. The golf course was right on the border. I walked across the greens with my duffle bag. Most of the golfers were pretty far away from me so I thought that I would just put the duffle bag on my back like a golf bag and maybe none of the golfers would notice me. I arrived at the other side of the golf course and climbed a thirty foot fence. I was now back in Canada. I ducked down in a ditch on the other side to make sure that nobody had spotted me. I thought that they might be looking for people sneaking across the border there so I double timed it down the road away from the border. I began hitch hiking and managed to get a lift. I spent the night in Revelstoke and got up the next morning looking for my truck. It was missing and I could not ask the police about it so I asked the taxi drivers. The truck was not one that you would see every day with its big tires and lift kit. It stood out and it was not long before I found a taxi driver who had seen it and he knew who had it. I gave him some money and he took me right to the guys house. The taxi driver honked the horn a couple of times and the garage door opened up and there was my truck inside. The guy in the garage was very surprised to see me and he had been doing a bunch of work on the truck. I had given the keys to my so called friend before they deported me. He had then made some kind of deal with this guy for the truck. I asked the guy for the keys which he handed over with a startled look on his face and I drove off towards California. I parked my truck at the long term car park at the airport and went in with very little money and no ticket. They did not have the security in those days so you could go right up to the departure gate which I did. I stood in the line for Hawaii not knowing what I was going to do with no ticket. The stewardess began taking peoples tickets and tearing off the boarding passes. The line got to me and I just acted like I was seeing somebody off. The stewardess was tearing the boarding passes off and putting them on the pedestal. She finished tearing them off and took the tickets and the boarding passes away but somehow left one boarding pass on the pedestal. I picked that boarding pass up and got on the plane. The seats were not assigned so you could sit anywhere that you wanted. I took a seat and the captain came on the tannoy saying that it appeared that they had one extra person on board. He asked everyone to check their details and make sure that they were on the correct flight. I thought that they would be escorting me off of the plane any minute but they could not figure out who the extra person was. The plane took off about ten minutes later which seemed like an eternity to me. I think the boarding pass that I picked up was for a Chinese woman but they never noticed. The plane landed in Maui, Hawaii several hours later. I got off and began walking and the place was beautiful. I slept on the beach that night and used the last of my money for something to eat the next day. I walked until I found a shelter where I could sleep and get something to eat. Some of the guys had some magic mushrooms so I had some and had a laugh. The place was pure paradise and I thought that you could run around naked year round and be perfectly comfortable as long as you had food and water. The fishing season was not due to start for over a month. I got a couple of odd jobs and made enough for a ticket back to Long beach. I had a rough idea by that time how I was going to get a job on a boat. I thought that I could stay in my truck until I got a job on the boat if I could get the truck shipped over. I got off of the plane in Long beach and went to my truck in the car park. I drove up to the gate and asked the guy if he would let me past. He said that he would not so I drove back towards where I was parked and put the truck in four wheel drive. The car park had 15 foot vertical mounds of earth surrounding it rather then fencing. I put the truck in four wheel drive and drove right up over one and down the other side without any problem. I then took the truck to the docks and shipped it to Hawaii via cash on delivery. I had purchased a round trip ticket so I got back on the plane to Hawaii. The truck was going to take about a month to get to Maui which would just about coincide with the beginning of the fishing season. I found another hostel to stay in and it seemed to be better then the previous one. It was fairly secluded and their were not many people there. There was a Filipino man and his son staying there which I befriended. They were able to give me some information about the tuna fishing season. The only problem was that I needed to be in Honolulu to get a job which was another island. This was another issue which had to be dealt with. My truck was going to be arriving at the port in Maui shortly so I began thinking about how I was going to pay for it. I had phoned the shipping office in long beach a couple of times and asked them for an estimated time of arrival. The manager came on the phone and I made a mental note of his voice and mannerisms. I went into the shipping office in Maui and took one of their shipping receipts from a tablet on the counter. The truck finally arrived at the port and I phoned them and told them that I was the manager in Long beach and that the invoice had been paid by credit card. I then went to the port in Maui with the receipt that I had taken. I had filled in the details and written paid across it along with a reference number that I had given to them over the phone while posing as the manager. I had timed my arrival with the time that the manager in Long beach went on his daily lunch break in case they tried to ring him which they did. He was not available and I told the guy that I had to get going. He handed me the keys and I was off in my truck, free of charge.

Next Chapter: Chapter eight