Sitka or Bust: Commute The World

Last night I got the great idea of waking up my frozen feet by sleeping with hand warmers. I knew they would fall off if I just slept with them on my feet so I put them inside socks and wore them. Now for my brain to even fix the problem of them falling off I consider that a small win. My feet did not feel any warmth with the heaters against them, but I figured they were just heating up, so why waste precious sleep time? Besides, my survival kit consisted of hot chocolate mix, hand warmers, gum and ginger chews. I could only use what I had and as useful as hot chocolate is to warm up toes I didn’t have a mug to dip them in.

As my father likes to say, I woke up to the smell of bacon and my toes were covered in huge blisters. I guess I should have read the parts of the packaging where it said things like: “Burn hazard. Do not use while sleeping. On those who cannot feel heat or who have nerve damage.” This is why reading directions is useful and can even keep you from hurting yourself. I don’t even care if you’ve used the product before. I’d used them plenty, and sadly, I’d also read the back because that is an odd compulsion of mine.

Well, too late to do anything but smear on some burn paste my roommate just happened to have and shove those tootsies gingerly into a pair of boots. My shift started in 12 minutes. It was to be our last 16 hour day and everyone was working with a renewed vigor.

A friend of mine named Jinky only sleeps two hours a night. I don’t know how that is possible after having to work so long. I’m already on a version of autopilot and I‘m floundering. I wish I was an indistinguishably ageless Philippino woman. Mostly because of the superhuman lack of sleep, but also because she’s a little bad ass.

My Tech sweatshirt smells of microwaved salmon because I got so feverish during my shift that the caked on chunks are beginning to cook. I also have the plague. Apparently most people up here get the plague at some point, from lack of sleep, exposure to cold temperatures and close living quarters. I wasn’t expecting to get sick because I have the immune system of a boss. Bad choice on my part. You know I’m sick when I rummage through my backpack for anything resembling a lose pill, and finally turning to the pack of ginger chew candy I’d bought but found disgusting enough to never eat.  Ginger chews are helping, but I’m running low and have rationed myself to one for breakfast and, if its really bad, one for dinner shift.

I had my first conveyor belt dream last night. Don’t remember any of it, but I woke up to a spinning loft, climbing down my ladder to go to work was much more difficult than it normally would be. It lasted almost ten minutes, ending just when I was putting my rain gear on to find me some salmon to debone. They are very common here, common enough for me to hear about them throughout my stay from pretty much everyone I ever met. People also hear their names whispered over the machines. That one has been plaguing me for the entire season. I think it is haunted. Really.

The salmon are slowing down so we probably only have about four or so 16s left. The plague has struck me hardcore and I was covered in salmon and attempting to contain my runny nose within an hour of working. I even sneezed inside my sweatshirt so as to not infect the salmon. I worry that neither my hygiene standards nor my health will never recover. I  just ate an orange hunched in a bathroom stall. What more can I say. Literally, hunched in a stall. My work addled mind finds this a suitable alternative to waiting five seconds for my room. I really need some fruit as my teeth felt lose again this morning. How fast does scurvy set in?

I want to be on super crew and I don’t want to be at  the same time. At this point, I’m fairly certain that I will be chosen. Linda and David made sure to put me on line one today, and Linda even made a point to tell me, “get by your machine, girl.” I think she’s finally accepted me as a worker. I never realized how similar to band this plant would be. I mean first seat in band is reserved for the best of the best, same here. First line of conveyor belt gets the best cuts of fish and has the best workers to send up the best quality. I just made first chair. Boo yah.
Linda even joked around with me today after she doused me in water from a faulty sprayer inside the deboning machine. Sure I was sopping and soaked through my sweatshirt, but at least we could have fun with a few hours left in the arctic temperatures of the fillet zone. The music helps so much. It at least gives me a reason to dance awkwardly and keep my feet warm at the same time. David and I danced together today as I was cleaning the machine. Now, I’m not usually one to dance with other people, but David is so charismatic that he can get anyone to dance with him. I love this place so much more than the lodge. Except the people. I really miss the people.

When I shipped off from Sitka there was no advance warning like when one might trade jobs normally. I basically interviewed with the company at 3:00 and was told I would have my answer soon enough.  It was 6:32 and I was officially looking at a confirmation email for my hire and a plane ticket in my email. Let’s just say though, that the only advice I got for this job was spoken a few weeks back when I casually mentioned it to my mother. She told me that I would most likely need to stay away from machinery so I didn’t accidentally lose a hand. I filed it away in the back of my mind, but I apparently sent it too far into the corner.

I got my hand sucked into the conveyor belt today. I work at the junction between the machine belt that feeds the freshly boned fish to the belt that we do final cuts and de-boning on. The first belt drops the fillet onto the second over a tiny gap, maybe two centimeters wide, but just the perfect size to get the trailing edge of a fillet sucked into. We try to rescue the fillets from the chewing of the belts, salvaging what we can before the fillet has to be thrown away completely. I closed my hand around the wide end of the salmon and pulled, but the tips of my gloves must have caught up on the teeth of the belt because I felt my hand being pulled quite rapidly and forcefully where I knew they should not be going. I jerked backwards, completely forgetting about the salmon in efforts to save myself.

I don’t remember what I thought in that moment, but I sure as hell flashed back to the words of my mother. It was reminiscent of A Christmas Story, “you’ll shoot your eye out kid,” but instead of my eye I was thinking about coming out of Alaska a whole lot lighter. I watched the belt chew up two of my three sets of gloves, flapping the layers of latex and cloth against the belt like a frantic wave. I looked at my stripped hand, carefully examining it for anything more than the extreme pinch I’d very clearly noticed as the teeth gripped it. Mind you all of the life flashing before my eyes up to the examination lasted a mere five seconds, but it seemed like I understood and noticed more in those instances than I did any other five seconds of my life.

I could see the belt getting hung up on my gloves so I reached back in to pull them free, only to have my hands knocked away by my supervisor, a guy probably younger than me. He looked at me as he wiggled the gloves back and forth out of the jaws of the belts saying, “Girl, I just about pissed myself. Stay out of the machinery. I don‘t want to see that shit go down.” I laughed, shook my hand awkwardly and shoved it instantly into the maw of the machine to dislodge the massive clog that had appeared while I was busy. My supervisor gave me the stink eye and he now roams by my machine every few minutes to make sure I don’t do anything detrimental to my health.