MY NEAL!
I completely forgot to mention my surprise visit from Neal on Friday nite! Neal is a friend of mine from Nome, and he is largely responsible for the amount of alcohol I consumed that memorable summer I spent in 'da village.' Right after I graduated highschool and headed to UAF, Mom and Mike moved to Nome. They'd been hounding me to come spend the summer with them in Nome and, like any respectable college chick, I wisely deduced that the chances of meeting hot guys in a place like Nome would be slim to none, so I held out as long as I could. They finally caught me on a technicallity - they found me a job and practically guaranteed my presence by a certain date - so I abandoned the prospect of another fun-filled summer in Laguna Nigel, CA, and headed to bleary, dreary, cold Nome. I pretty much gave up all hope of meeting anyone fun and threw myself into my job as a teller at National Bank of Alaska and working out at the gym. Mom signed me up on her women's softball team, which played one nite a week, but for the most part I did a lot of jogging and lifting at the gym. I was bored silly, knew no one, and had basically resigned myself to a long, boring summer without the prospect of any fun. Then the real reason for my summer enprisonment was divluged - Mom was coaching the highschool varsity cheerleaders and she wanted my help with teaching them stunting. ;)
*** Disclaimer: I was never a cheerleader in highschool, but Mom coached and I went to one camp before my basketball coach found out and threatened me with bodily harm and a nice place on the bench for the next volleyball season if I bailed on basketball to be a cheerleader. I do, however, know all the technical stuff, stunts, etc, not through my own desire to know these things, but because Mom held me down and forced me to help and give opinions on different cheers, stunts, and routines.***
So, I went to a practice with Mom and met Neal, who'd gone to UAA and had been a cheerleader there. He offered to help the girls with stunting, and from then on I was the test dummy and we'd show them what to do and how to do it. It was actually a ton of fun, and that's when Neal discovered that I didn't know a single person in Nome, with the exception of a very quirky chick who developed stalker tendancies, so he rescued me, signed up to be my tour guide for the summer and introduced me to a bunch of people. The rest is history. That was one of the craziest, funniest, most insane summers ever! We were busy every nite, either hooking up with friends to watch movies, hitting up bonfires, going camping out at Counsil, playing at Pilgrim hotsprings, jumping off Grand Canyon bridge or just chillin' somewhere with everyone. I was under age, of course, so I missed out on the craziness of the BOT and the other 20 bars in town, but we were having so much fun doing other things that it wasn't a big deal. Nome is where I discovered the delicious combination of Captain Morgan and Dr. Pepper. I also became privy to the knowledge that 7 shots of Tequila will not kill you, you can actually drink yourself sober, and if you go camping, get 5 hours of sleep, come home and sleep for the rest of the afternoon, you can completely skip the hangover part of that equation! I went back to Nome once after that summer, for a week and a half of Christmas Break, but other than that I've never been back. Neal and I have sporadically kept in touch through email, so you can imagine my surprise when he waltzed into my office with his cousin Friday afternoon! He just happened to be in town for the weekend, and, although I had plans to be on the road to Anchorage by 8am Saturday morning, I met up with him Friday nite after work for drinks! It was awesome to see him! He hasn't changed at all - he's still crazy, funny, camera-happy and a complete blast to be with - even though he spells his name wrong. :P Neal also handled the unadulterated ass-kicking I handed him at foose ball very well. ;) He took a few pictures, of course, and as soon as he coughs them up I'll email them out. Unless I can figure out how to post pictures on this thing. Don't hold your breath waiting, though! ;)
posted by Arctic Skipper @ 4:28 PM
1 Comments:
Hey, girl.....what's up? Too busy to post? =0) I finally started one....check it out...
Now that I'm homebound for a few days, I've got nothing but time on my hands to post a few times.
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