Bear It All

First things first, big blue is simply amazing! When I first laid eyes on Big Blue, I got a semi...tingle in my heart. Imagine the stories Big Blue will have about the youngins that will occupy her for 3500 glorious miles.

Now on to my safety story about bears.
When I was a young lad, about 22, I had a job in AK for a couple of months where I was sent out to different places (by plane only) to work on cabins. My job was to put finish on the outside of this amazing cabin. One day I was working on the back of the house and I ran out of finish...so I climbed down the ladder to refill my bucket. While I was down there, I put some bug spray on and filled my bucket. As I was heading back up the ladder, I thought I heard something rustling around at the foot of the ladder....at the time I didn't think anything of it because I thought it was just the ladder rocking back and forth. As soon as reached the top, I turned around because the rustling did not stop. Much to my amazement, there was this huge black bear sitting on his rump staring up at me. I am sure all of you know that black bears are descent climbers, so I was starting to freak out a bit at this point, but I pulled myself together and and taught that bear a lesson! After I got out of my daydream I realized that it must have been a young bear because of the way he was acting...so curious and dumbfounded. I ended up watching this bear for about 15 minutes just playing with all my stuff on the ground. The thing the bear was most curious about was my can of OFF...it swatted at it, licked it, stepped on it, and the most hillarious thing, bit into it. As soon as he bit into the can it sprayed all over his face. It was like watching a little kid looking into the end of the hose and dad turning on the water. Booboo freaked out and sprinted into the woods...I have never laughed so hard behind a cabin. The moral of the story is, never get a job. Period. TRUE STORY!