{"id":3931,"date":"2015-09-23T00:08:43","date_gmt":"2015-09-23T07:08:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=3931"},"modified":"2016-05-08T04:57:25","modified_gmt":"2016-05-08T11:57:25","slug":"timber-ketchikan-alaska-09082015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=3931","title":{"rendered":"Timber! \u2013 Ketchikan, Alaska \u2013 [09\/08\/2015]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"b4f639393f138fa838791b8b6ab26b5c\"<\/a>Ketchikan at the end of season rains\u2026a lot; and when it\u2019s not raining, it\u2019s trying to rain. So we usually gravitate towards somewhere with some kind of shelter; and preferably something in the way of warm drinks.<\/p>\n

In this case, despite being many seasons in Alaska, neither Amras or I had ever been to the Lumberjack Show\u2026which is somewhat strange, as that\u2019s what most people do<\/em> in Ketchikan, at least once. Somehow though, we\u2019d just never made it.<\/p>\n

Our crew ID got us in at the door, and a few minutes wait got us coffee and popcorn. The seats are sheltered, and heated (to a certain extent), so we were out of the elements. The competitors in the show however, were at the mercy of the rain that occasionally came sluicing down as if someone in the clouds was turning on a shower.<\/p>\n

The Lumberjack Show is<\/em> technically a competition, and the lumberjacks who perform in it (lumberjacks, not loggers, as I\u2019ve learned they are not the same thing), are athletes, athletes wielding souped-up power tools in some cases which is rather intimidating. They divide the audience into two teams \u2013 one cheers for the Dawson Creek \u2018Canadian\u2019 team and the other for the Stuart Mill local \u2018American\u2019 team. Ironically I ended up being designated to cheer for the American team \u2013 a fact which I tried hard to find amusing! In the spirit of all competition shows of this sort, you cheer for your team and you heckle the other\u2026I tend to get a little too into these things, but our side of the stadium was just not as loud as the other unfortunately.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a good show. It\u2019s a very dangerous show to compete in, being as how they are throwing axes and wielding chainsaws; but it\u2019s not the show itself I really find interesting, but the history behind it. It\u2019s a sport now \u2013 who knew Timber Sports was a real thing? I didn\u2019t know this I\u2019m ashamed to say \u2013 but it started out as actual loggers honing real skills they would then use in the woods. The events the lumberjacks compete in are based off of those skills. The teams are real too, or at least they used to be \u2013 these days the participants all live in town, but when the actual mill camp existed, its rival was<\/em> the Dawson Creek Mill over on my<\/em> side of the border.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ketchikan at the end of season rains\u2026a lot; and when it\u2019s not raining, it\u2019s trying to rain. So we usually gravitate towards somewhere with some kind of shelter; and preferably something in the way of warm drinks. In this case, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alaska"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-11p","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3931"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4225,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3931\/revisions\/4225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}