3 posts tagged “cyoa”
Well, would you be shocked if I were to tell you that the curled up, sleeping sack of cute you see to the left is none other than a coyote? That's right, not man's best friend. In fact, a farmer's worst nightmare.
Or, a farmer's cutest nightmare.
Over the last few weeks, I've been keeping tabs on the blogging over at The Daily Coyote, and I thought it about time that I fessed up to my distinctly non-masculine habit. You see, I got hooked with pictures like the one you see here and I haven't been able to stop since. I haven't really done too much digging on the matter, but the blog appears to be run by a young woman who goes by the name 'Shreve.' She also just happens to be living the dream (hence, her incorporation into an otherwise un-manly 'Choose Your Own Adventure' post).
From what I can gather so far, she decided, one day, to move from San Francisco to New York City. Purchasing a Vespa scooter and a camera, she blogged and photographed the entire way across. Upon arriving in NYC, however, she'd come to realize that it just wasn't the place for her and promptly turned around and moved to a sleepy little town in Wyoming that she'd passed through earlier. At some point in April, the young coyote you see above, was brought to her after its parents had been shot for killing sheep and he has, since then, been raised by Shreve.
Personally, I think I'd just be happy to be living somewhere as visually appealing as the Wyoming territory that she inhabits, but raising a coyote puppy? Come on! Who wouldn't want to take on this as an adventure?!
As Charlie, the coyote, ages, he is slowly losing that desperately huggable puppiness that drew me in originally. On the other hand, he appears to be attaining more and more of that wild drive that you'd expect to find in his brethren, which more than makes up for whatever cute-factor pulled me into reading about his life with Shreve in the first place. I definitely encourage you to take a look at the blog and, if you can turn down those pleading blue coyote-puppy eyes, then you're more of a man than I.
And, now that I've actually used the phrase 'desperately huggable puppiness,' I think I'm going to go shotgun a beer and frag some aliens in Half-Life 2. Jeez.
This isn't really a post about an adventure that I'd like to take, or even an adventurer whom I envy. Instead, it's just an adventuring tip:
Apparently, you can boil water in a regular plastic water bottle.
Now, I saw this over at LifeHacker.com recently and thought that it went completely against my experience that plastic tends to melt when exposed to fire. However, according to this video, the water within the water bottle actually keeps the plastic of the bottle from melting altogether, thus making it a viable container for water purification. I never really thought I'd trust some little punk wearing a Patriots jersey for my wilderness survival skills, but I guess you've got to make compromises if you intend to survive out there on your own, eh? Also, from what I gather, you really can't guarantee the purity of your water unless it's been boiled for roughly 9 minutes. The video doesn't really mention how long they boiled the water before they made the kid swig it like a pirate downing rum in that last shot - but I'm also guessing that if you had been without water for a couple of days the amount of time that you boiled it would seem pretty unimportant.
Anyway, I've always had a sick fantasy about being stranded in the wild somewhere and stuff like this comes in handy when you're daydreaming about having to hunt wild boar with your bare hands, you know? I mean, you've got to drink something to wash down that boar meat, you manly man, you.
Leave it to me to take some stupid references to my father and a 70's Robert Redford flick for me to start getting sentimental, but I guess that's what happens when family comes to visit.
Last night, for some reason my mother and I were discussing Jeremiah Johnson, one of my fathers all-time-favorite movies. She made some joke about how Dad always kind of envisioned himself as the Jeremiah character. J, pointing out the obvious, piped in and said that sounded strangely familiar - I'm always fantasizing about being a rugged adventurer somewhere and somehow when, in reality, I'm just some guy with a blog living in Southern California.
And, damnit, J has a point.
To my credit, I feel like I should play the old 'I'm still trying to finish up college' card here. However, while I'm putting my dreams of adventure on hold for a BA, I'd like to start doing some kind of pre-planning for my future adventures. That's where this little blog is going to come in. I'm going to start making posts about potential adventuring in my future. Possible adventuring could include South American leopard hunting safaris, visiting North Korea while there's still a ridiculously Orwellian communist government in control, or even something as simple as a motorcycle trip across the desert. No potential adventure is too great or too small for me, here. It just has to be something that I think I'd be interested in experiencing on some level.
And, to kick things off, I thought I'd offer up a link to a blog post I found today entitled 'How To Be An Alaskan Fisherman.' It was written by one Corey Arnold, a gentleman who spent a number of years working as a fisherman on the Alaskan coast, starting from scratch and actually moving onto one of those crabbing boats that you see on the Discovery Channel. If you're at all interested in the hardened life of a modern fisherman in the cold waters of the north Pacific, perhaps you should consider giving his entry a quick read. The photos, alone, seem like they would warrant a glance from even the most disinterested of readers.
Anyhow, I kind of like the idea of making these 'adventure posts' with some kind of frequency. Henceforth, they will be known as the 'choose your own adventure' posts. Assuming that I can dig up enough adventuring to keep myself busy, these might actually become a weekly event. We'll see how that works out, though, after I've got a few under my belt. For now, I'd just suggest that you take a look at Corey Arnolds post and close your eyes for a moment to imagine the cold, salty air of the Pacific morn'.
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