July 9

Alcohol Will Not Get You in My Pants, But It Will Land Me in Jail

I woke up this morning in jail.

My readers know this is a first for me, but honestly…it was kind of a bucket list type of thing so I can’t say I’m sad it happened.

I knew that there would be all kinds of perils facing me in the Alaskan wild, but I never thought one of them would be in the form of a five-foot sprite of a girl who was jealous of me.

It turns out that while there are plenty of men who are showing keen interest in going out with me, not all the women in this town are happy about it. It also turns out said sprite of a girl was sweet on the lumberjack (of the famed Grizzly Plate date I wrote about yesterday) and she apparently was not happy that I went on a date with him.

So last night my date was with the logger. Please note, as I made mention in my recap of my date with the lumberjack, that these are two very different types of people. The logger is one of my roommates at the boardinghouse and he really cuts down trees for a living. This would be different from the lumberjack, who claimed he was a lumberjack but that just meant he played a part in a show. The logger really works in the forestry business and I found out over dinner a lot about what that means. Gone are the days of the lumberjack—unless it’s in an adorably cheesy Alaskan show—where trees are chopped by axes or even chain saws. Now there are fellers, harvesters, skidders, and knuckle boom loaders that do all the work, and men to operate those pieces of heavy equipment. My date last night operates a harvester, which takes the cut tree and strips it of limbs and bark. This may sound simple, but it’s really not. It actually takes an operator about three years to get to a sufficient proficiency to operate the machine at the master level, which means he can take a tree, strip the limbs, slice the bark, cut it into thirds, and stack it under twenty seconds. It sounds really impressive.

At first, my date with the logger was off to a good start. He’s gorgeous and well muscled, and I’ve seen him come home from a hard day’s work and his jeans, boots, long-sleeved T-shirt, and hard hat are, well…hot.

Dinner was nice and I enjoyed learning about the logging industry. After, he suggested we end the evening with a drink at The Wounded Caribou. It didn’t take us long to get there as we ate dinner at The Wounded Caribou, so we basically moved from our dinner table to the bar. As a side note, there are other restaurants and bars in town, but I haven’t tried them out yet. Of course, after the hangover I’m nursing today, I’m not sure that will be anytime soon.

So yeah…hangover today.

How I got there wasn’t so fun.

Turns out the logger isn’t all that much of a gentleman. He kept plying me with tequila, which at first I wasn’t really worried about it. I was in a public environment and felt safe enough. But we all know what happens when you think you can handle your alcohol.

You really can’t and things can turn, well, bad.

The logger gave me drink after drink.

So I got drunk.

I mean really, really, really drunk.

And I admit I was having fun. It had been awhile since I’ve really let my hair down and partied. You know me, readers…I do elegant dinners and expensive wine. I most certainly don’t do caribou stew and tequila.

Which apparently leads me to dancing on tabletops.

The logger and about thirty other men who had great appreciation for my dancing skills dared me to dance, and egged me on to keep dancing. It was fun, but in hindsight was probably a little douchy of my date to want me to do this.

Now, back to the jealous sprite.

She clearly was not having fun, as she was still smarting over the fact that I went out with the lumberjack, and I had no clue she liked him. Despite the fact I have no intention of going out with him again, she still held bitter feelings, and this might have had to do with the fact that he was watching me dance along with everyone else in the bar.

The jealous woman, who I really will just now dub the bitch, proceeded to call me a tramp and a hooker, and one thing led to another. You don’t need the boring details, but suffice it to say, I landed my butt in jail.

I’d like to tell you it was a bad experience but it wasn’t, and that’s mainly because the East Merritt chief of police is the one who cuffed me—yes, dirty fantasies, I know—and hauled me off to jail. And let me tell you, ladies, if you are searching for an image in your head of what the perfect Alaskan man would look like, it would be the chief. Tall, big, and muscled. Dark hair, electric blue eyes. A killer smile and panty-melting dimples. Total freaking package, and yes…it was not a chore getting hauled into jail by him.

He’s sweet too.

Let me go the next day without so much as a ticket for disturbing the peace.

So where does that leave me?

Two dates down and I’m seeing some real differences between the men out here and the men back home. No offense to the lumberjack and the logger—they’re not getting my girlie parts tingling, but I’m not about to give up. If anything, I’m more intrigued than ever about the bounty that Alaska has to offer us women.

I shall be reporting back soon. I have a date with the fisherman tomorrow afternoon.