It’s Hard Out Here for a Wimp:

I just got back from a buddy trip with my three brothers to Alaska.  I expected the trip would be fun (it was), an adventure (roger that), some family bonding (ditto) and a once in a lifetime experience (sure hope not).  What I didn’t count on was that by the end of the vacation I’d be questioning the very nature of my own manhood.  I’ll start at the beginning.

I’m the youngest of five, with three brothers and a sister.  My brother Bill has lived in Juneau for over 20 years.  He got married out here, moved there, and started pumping out kids.  He comes back here with his family when he can.  And I visited him once.  But we’ve never gone out there as a group.

Last year, Bill had a bad health scare.  He had a brain tumor removed.  Which in his case is minor surgery (Thank you.  Tip your waitress.)  Two days before the surgery I told him “Look, they’re just cutting your skull open and removing stuff.  This isn’t brain surgery.”  To which he replied. “I need this like I need a hole in the head.” The single greatest thing I’ve ever heard another human being utter.  Amazingly though, they had him out of the hospital in three days, and he’s doing swimmingly, thanks.

While this was going on, my brothers Jack and Jim and I decided the best way... the only right way... to deal with this crisis was to use it to our advantage.  To guilt our wives into approving a buddy trip to go see him.  (True story: As I started to give my Irish Rose the “life is short and you shouldn’t have any regrets” speech, she interrupted me with “I know where this is going.  And no, I’m not bringing another woman into our bed.”  The woman’s a genius; Alaska was only my secondary goal.)  Anyway, our wives, being the lovely, considerate, spectacularly sexy women that they are, voted unanimously to approve the trip.

If there really was a place called “God’s Country,” and they had a Bureau of Tourism,  they’d use pictures of Juneau in its ads.  Juneau is indescribably beautiful.  It’s the biggest city in America, size wise, with a population of less than Fenway Park.  And Juneau isn’t accessible except by boat or plane.  So you quickly realize this isn’t a town for poncey little sissy boys. 

Everyone who lives there is a bone fide, card-carrying Real Man.  Even the women. (Sorry.  Cheap joke.)  The main industries in Juneau are tourism and fishing.  So everyone you meet is either a float plane pilot, a helicopter pilot, or a crab fisherman so tough they make Sig Hansen look like Capt. Stubing.  And no matter how manly you think you are, in short time you realize that these guys are simply a heartier breed than those of us who grew up back East.  Talking to them, you can’t escape the feeling that you’re the effete stereotype of a fancypants city slicker they always had in the old westerns.  Like the guy who kept telling Butch and Sundance “this train is the property of Mr. E. H. Harriman!!!”

Real Men catch fish.  And I couldn’t catch Chicken of the Sea at Stop & Shop.  You know how if you’re going to Vegas, everyone’s got a story about someone they know who won big out there?  When you’re headed to AK, everyone knows a guy who caught enough fish up there to sink the boat.  Not me.  We went fishing for halibut and as usual, the fish avoided me like I had a restraining order against them.  Later the boys chalked it up to the wrong size hooks, too much current, bad luck.  But I know the reason: me.  When it comes to fishing, I’m jinxed.  Like the kid in “Master and Commander” who jumps off the ship with a cannon ball in his pants because they call him “a Jonah.”  The only fish we did catch was the aptly named “Double Ugly,” the most hideous creature in God’s creation (save maybe Don Zimmer).  This beast had a huge head on tiny body, frog eyes, Godzilla fins and a mouth like Rachel Ray.  And to prove the British had some influence in these parts, the other name for this thing is “Irish Lord.”  Thanks for that, Limeys.

In truth, I did catch a salmon.  In further truth, I caught it at the entrance to the fish hatchery, which to a sportsman is the equivalent of the kiddie game at the Marshfield Fair where you catch rubber ducks with a magnet.  The water is so literally full of fish there you could walk across them without getting your Nikes wet.  Snagging a fish there is like dragging a meat hook through a Jerry Springer audience and hooking a teenage mom.

The real adventure came when we visited Bill’s cabin, which is on Glacier Bay, two hours away by boat.  The ride out was smooth; the ride back...not so much.  We spent it crashing through five foot swells.  But I manned up, no problem.  Boats don’t bother me.  I might not be Bear Grylls, but I’m buoyant.  Then Bill said if you fall in the water up there, at that temperature, your best bet is to swim for the bottom and die quick.  Probably could’ve saved that tip for the end of the ride...

At the cabin, we met a couple who live nearby.  As in full time.  The wife was telling us how they’ve killed moose and black bear in their front yard and she’s skinned them and canned the meat.  I love my Darling Lass, but I can’t get her to kill a moth.  But this is how they feed their children.  They hunt and fish for food and do their laundry in frigid ocean water.  As I talked to her, I realized I’ve never felt more Metrosexual in my whole life.

The husband took me out on his boat the next morning to help pull in his skate lines.  It was 6:30, the fog was so thick you couldn’t see the shore 200 yards away, and it hit me that I couldn’t have been more useless to this guy.  Somehow my ability to quote “The Legend of Ron Burgundy” had no practical application out here.  To a bone fide pioneery Real Man like him, I must have come across like Jay from “America’s Next Top Model.”  I might as well have been wearing a feather boa.  So I just sort of kept my mouth shut because anything I said would’ve come out sounding like “This boat is faaaabulous!!!”

And I realized that this boat is where this guy works. His place of employment.  What if I had this guy back to my soul crushing, shabby little office in Massachusetts?  “See?  I took this eraser and made it into a pig.  He’s got push pin legs and I used the spring from a pen to make the curly tail...”  But to give me some credit, I bet I’d kick his ass when it comes to navigating Storrow Drive on game day.

But it was all good.  The whole trip.  Alaska is great, and I’m glad we got to have the reunion tour of The ThornTones.  If I’m questioning my masculinity, that’s a small price to pay.  And nothing that wouldn’t be cured by another woman in our bed.  Though I’m not holding my breath.