The fair was kinda a dud for me, wasn't nearly as fun when none of my buddies were around. The sun is back out today, we just iced up and are going to head back out to the grounds. Icing up is always quite a comedy, a large amount of physical/mental effort for such a basic task, I'll try to paint the picture, bare with me. So pretend your standing on the deck of the Beryl E, your tied along side of the cannery, you have a mission. There are twelve empty totes on the deck, and before you leave the dock they need to be filled with ice. But how? You look up and see an aluminum box, it looks like a large funnel up on the cannery dock with an old piece of 12" pump tubbing hanging out the bottom of it. That tube has an even larger piece of stiff plastic corrugated drain piping that fits over it, and extends the overall length of tubing. Note: and this is important, the larger piece isn't actually attached to the first length of tube, it's just been slid over it, in order to extend it, and the only thing that holds it there are two string that run from the tube up to the dock . You can tell this is a jerry-rigged operation but can't quite decide what function it serves, however there is a feeling in your gut that this is an important contraption. Someone up on the dock hollers down at you, disrupting your moment of contemplation. They tell you to lift the plastic tube onto deck and position it in one of the empty totes. Well, the tube is hanging straight off the bottom of the box, and when you try to lift it onto deck, you realize that its too long to just pull aboard, its length gets hung up on the side of the boat and its too stiff to bend it much, you try to walk it down the side and pull it over but that sucker is just too dam stiff and heavy. Turns out the only way to get it on board is to put a strap around it, hook one of the deck cranes too it and lift, then push the hose towards the stern until it pops up over the railing and comes swinging back in your general direction. Well now the hose is hanging over the deck, attached to the crane, resting in a position where it looks like anything coming out the end of it will shoot into an empty tote, things are looking good. Step one complete. Next a forklift appears on the dock, races over to the aluminum box with a tote, raises it up, flips it and dumps its contents into the box, to your amazement, shaved ice starts shooting out of the tube and into the tote in front of you. Gravity powered icing! How ingenious right? However from your vantage point it's quite apparent that what came out the end of the tube was much less than what went into the box, in fact it appears the majority of your ice is still stuck in the box. The forklift driver is a step ahead of you and is already attacking the jammed ice with a wooden rod, trying to get it to slide down the tube. He succeeds, and the rest of the ice roars down the corrugated tubing, taking the hose and the human thats trying to hold it in place (you) on a wild ride. Well all the ice has arrived in the tote, but low and behold its still not full! Its pretty close to full, but you have been made aware that it is a cardinal sin to put a lid on a tote that isn't completely full, that makes you almost one twelfth of the way through icing. Waiting for the next tote to arrive, you contemplate your place in life, and when it arrives you holler up "just dump a little, I need to top this one off", well a full quarter of a tote is released into the box and comes zinging out your end, hits the nearly full tote of ice and flies everywhere. That didn't work so well, and el capitan is right there to tell you "Hey that didn't work so well, did it? Maybe next time we try to get some ice into the tote eh?" The good news, after running around the deck with a shovel collecting lose slivers of ice, scooping them into the tote, it's actually full, and you can slap the lid on. One down, eleven to go, adjust the crane a little, push the tube forward to the next tote, holler the all clear to the guys on the dock, and a rush of ice latter, there's about a half tote of ice in front of you. Things seem to be going smooth. You repeat this process until on the fourth tote an over-zealous forklift driver dumps the ice into the funnel in a sloppy fashion, and you catch a good chunk of it right in the small of your back, that ice never made it into the box, just out over the dock and down to the boat, right where it found you and your back patiently holding that dam tube in place. Your alright though, the ice was soft enough, just a good shot of adrenaline really, you get back to the icing and things are going smoothly, five or six closest totes have been filled. Now the tube isn't long enough to reach the remaining empties. Ah, now here comes an enlightening moment, you learn the purpose of that corrugated tube. Turns out it conveniently slides up and down the first, smaller tube, to extend or shorten the overall length of the ice tube-aparatus, thats easy right? Well no, not exactly, because the smaller tube has ridges on the outside of it, and the corrugated tube is, well, corrugated, further complicating this delicate operation is the crane pulling on the end of the tube, putting a a soft elbow into it. The guys on dock un-tie the lines that hold that corrugated piece of tubbing in place and kaboom, absolutely nothing happens. Thats only because the magical ingredient to this operation hasn't been added yet, and you probably guessed it, that ingredient is you. It's okay though, all you have to do is grab the end of that corrugated tubing and pull and twist and jerk and yank, as the corrugated tube grates down the smaller tube, giving you a little more range. It's low tide, and you really have to extend the tube a ways to get the ice to reach the totes on the far side of the boat, but after a brief wrestling match, the tube is longer and things are starting to come together. You adjust the cranes again, until the position of the tube looks good to you, and you give the guys on dock the nod. As ice is dumped into the box, you hear the noise like ice is crashing down the tube, but strange, nothing comes out. The ice got stuck in the nearly horizontal end of the tube, but no worries, you just drop the tube with the crane and start beating on it with a shovel till the ice that's lodged in there breaks lose and sloughs out onto the deck, where you can shovel it into the tote. You decide to extend the tube a bit more, ease off on the crane and try again, hoping for better results. The forklift driver raises the next tote and dumps the ice. You hear a load noise...oh, this is bad, the corrugated tube, the extender, it has slipped off the first tube and now lies on deck! You over extended the ice tube! Disaster!! Ice flies everywhere and you have shovel it all up before coaxing the tubes back together and trying again...
That encompasses just about every incident I've had with the icing game up there at the cannery. Now I've got it down pretty well, and with several exceptions it goes pretty smoothly. There is still comedy in it, ice is a precious resource aboard and it cracks me up when people get worked up over it.. Im not sure if anyone else will follow that story or find it entertaining, but I'm going to write a few others that tackle other equally enjoyable duties aboard...
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