....and we're back

Three years have passed without an update to this blog, but it's not because nothing has happened. In fact, a lot has happened. I now live in San Francisco, while Mark is still in San Diego, which means that the format of the Mark and Chuck Channel is going to have to change a bit. Instead of documenting our shared hijinks in the hopes of getting our own fishing show on the Outdoor Life Network I propose that we now start posting write-ups of our separate outdoorsy adventures. It can be like one of those head-to-head cooking shows where each one of us is trying to have the coolest camping trip, catch the biggest fish, etc. Maybe we could even have our readers vote and have a running Badass-O-Meter for each of us in the sidebar, although that would require way more technical savvy than I possess.

Perhaps I'm liking this idea so much because after this past weekend I feel like I have a pretty good opening salvo. On Saturday morning my friend Laura and I drove up to the town of Sea Ranch where Todd and Luke were spending the weekend at a house that Todd has access to. The weekend's quarry: abalone. Here's Laura intensely scoping out the battlefield:

While Luke worked on his tan on the beach Todd, Laura, and I got all suited up and then got started:

Basically abalone diving is a lot like diving for spiny lobsters (see posts farther down the blog), but easier in some ways and harder in others. The basic strategy is to find an area of thick kelp, which is what abalone eat, and then just start diving down and looking for them. SCUBA equipment is not allowed if you're going to harvest them, so we were free diving in water that was from 10 to 20 feet deep. Once you locate an abalone that looks legal (has to be at least 7" in diameter) you get right up to it and try to jam your abalone prying tool between its shell and the rock before it realizes what's going on and sucks the shell down tight to the rock. Then if you have the right leverage you can pop them off with the prying tool and then haul them up to the surface to check them with the length gauge.

Things that make it harder than lobster diving: you're typically in really thick bull kelp which can make visibility and swimming a little difficult, the water is exceedingly cold (my surfing wetsuit was not really up to the task and after 45 minutes I was starting to feel a little hypothermic), and thoughts of great white sharks (we were pretty close to the Red Triangle) added a certain psychological edge to it all. Things that make it easier than lobster diving: the quarry can't see, can't move very quickly, and don't tend to hang out in deep little crevices and cracks. Once I saw an abalone I wanted, I would say there was about an 80% success rate of getting it to the surface - I'd put it closer to 10% for lobsters.

Here's Todd with one of the day's victims:

Todd and I were the only ones with the proper licenses and we both got our daily limit of 3 legals after about an hour, so then we went back to the house to start preparing them. This consists of popping them out of their shells, then trimming off some guts and stuff, then putting them through a slicing machine to turn them into slices about 3/8" thick. Here's Laura operating the slicer under Todd's careful supervision:

These slices have the consistency of a pencil eraser, so the next step is to pound the bejeezus out of them with one of those tenderizing hammers. Laura doing more squaw work:

Just as we finished prepping the abalone two more exciting things happened - a quail committed suicide by slamming into the window of the cabin and Amelia, Andrew, and Kelly arrived from the city. Here's a shot of Amelia and the recently deceased on opposite sides of the window that took its life:

To continue the weekend's theme of living off the land I cleaned the quail:

and then we fried it up with the abalone:

We enjoyed an outstanding dinner and then the cards, booze, and shenanigans came out:

Apparently I somehow totally missed out on a middle school game called 'Chicken or Go' that leads to tons of good times:

After a night that went way too late, Todd the slave driver forced us all back out to the beach at 8am so he and I could go get more abalone to take back to the city. Here's Amelia looking cold even though she isn't the one who has to put on a wet neoprene suit:

The group shot (left to right - Kelly, Luke, Laura, me, Todd, Andrew, Amelia):

From there we started to make our way back to the city, but got stopped for an hour or so on highway 1 because of some kind of construction thing. It was a beautiful day in a beautiful spot, so we started bumping some tunes and had a roadside dance party:

The final event of note on the trip was a stop at a diner when Laura revealed that her hippie upbringing included some kind of crazy macrobiotic diet and that she had never had a milkshake before. So here it is, baby's first milkshake:

In summary, abalone diving is one of the coolest things I've ever had the privelege of experiencing - huge thanks to Todd for showing me the ropes.

All right, Mark - your turn. Better go out and do some shark wrestling or spear a 50lb tuna or something.